If, he told himself, there was any truth to her story.
Maybe there wasn’t. Vernon’s protagonist Loren Reynolds was a loner, as were so many fictional detectives, but his relationship with his adult daughter Frani was portrayed as warm and affectionate. Frani hadn’t put in much of an appearance in the first two novels, but she had already been on her way to visit her father in the first chapter of All’s Well, and the New Yorker article Lucas had read had hinted that Frani Reynolds played a major role in the last two books of the series. Not that he would make the mistake of confusing an author’s fiction with the actual events of his life; Vernon might have been writing about what he hoped his own relationship with his daughter might have been, depicting the kind of parental bond he had failed to forge in his own life.
Lucas frowned. The article in the New Yorker, like everything else written about Mack Vernon, had mentioned how little was known about the author except that he had been born in Buffalo, dropped out of college during his sophomore year, been constantly short of money, lived most of his life in upstate New York, been a heavy drinker if not an alcoholic, and had in midlife lived with three different women, all of whom were reluctant to talk about him, for varying lengths of time. Somehow Lucas found it hard to believe that a writer for that magazine, with all of its resources, wouldn’t have been able to dig up information about a daughter, if there was one.
He forced himself to stand up and leave the rest room. The woman, he noticed, had moved to his seat; as he came closer, he saw that she was sitting there with his copy of All’s Well propped against the purse on her lap. Her hands were hooked around the book like claws, one hand at the top and the other on the bottom, as if she were about to tear the book in two.
She started as he sat down; the fierce look in her dark eyes faded. “Okay if I sit by the window?” she asked politely.
“Fine,” he replied, wanting to grab the book from her.
“We can switch back later if you want.” She handed the book to him. “He dedicated this one to me, as if that was going to make any difference. I remember when he first showed it to me. It says, ‘To Lindy: may it all end well for you.’”
Lucas opened the book to the dedication page, which he had only glanced at before. “Ah, yes.”
“I didn’t even know what it meant. ‘May it all end well for you.’ What kind of thing is that to write to a little kid?”
“Maybe he thought you’d appreciate it when you were older,” Lucas said. “Look at it this way, Lindy. You had a major American writer dedicate a book to you.”
“Don’t call me Lindy.” He could barely hear her voice above the bus’s motor; her face had grown pale. “I hated that name, my name’s Rosalind, but he always called me Lindy. I’d tell him to stop it and he would and then he’d forget. I must have told him a hundred times to call me Rosalind, but he didn’t listen. He never listened. And then he has to go and put Lindy in that goddamn dedication.”
Lucas said. “I won’t call you Lindy.” He attempted another smile. “It’s just the opposite with me. My name’s Lucas, but I always tell people to call me Luke.”
“He didn’t listen. Didn’t care what I wanted to be called.”
She would ruin the pleasure he took in the work of Mack Vernon; pretty soon, he wouldn’t be able to pick up a Loren Reynolds novel without recalling her harsh words and hoarse voice. He could almost hate her for that, for spoiling something he had come to value so much.
“Look, your father might have had his faults,” Lucas said, “and I won’t try to justify his behavior, but you could still be proud of him, couldn’t you? It’s got to be some consolation that he did his work and there are more and more readers who admire it. You’re not the only person who has issues with your father, but at least yours actually accomplished something.” He tried to keep his tone light, but exasperation had crept into his voice. “Maybe he just had to save whatever was best in him for his readers. More and more people are finding out how good a writer he was, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, think about what kind of money you might get for new editions of his work. Maybe I could help you out. There are ways to find out who’s representing him now.”
If her estrangement from her father had left her unaware of what might be coming to her, he would be doing her a big favor. Far more important, he would be making Mack Vernon’s work available to all the readers desperately seeking the increasingly hard to find copies of the Loren Reynolds series. Vernon had left her the cabin and whatever he might have been owed for “Lethal Intentions,” so chances were that he had left her the rights to the novels as well. Sam would just about bust a gut if Lucas could put him in contact with Vernon’s daughter, and once they found out who represented the books…he might get something out of this encounter after all.
His thoughts were racing ahead of him. There might even be a finder’s fee of some kind, although just helping to get the novels back into print would be enough of a reward in itself. It might even be enough to inspire him to get back to his own writing. He could begin by writing an appreciation of Mack Vernon for Sam’s Web site; better yet, he could write about Lindy—or Rosalind—and her early life with her father. That kind of human interest piece would be a natural for a major magazine, especially if it ended with Rosalind finally forgiving her father for the pain he had caused.
“Think about it,” he continued. “Readers all over the country would be grateful to you, and you can’t tell what might happen later on. With new editions out, there’d be even more interest in your father’s writing. Somebody might even decide to make another movie from one of his books, something truer to what he wrote.”
She turned away and pressed one hand against the window, as if trying to escape from the bus.
“I can give you my card,” he said, “and then—”
“I don’t need your card,” she said without turning around. “I can’t do anything about his goddamn books.”
Lucas was again thinking that she was a fraud, that she was just stringing him along. She probably knew just enough about Mack Vernon to add a few convincing details to her lies, and if her anger seemed genuine, that might be only because her real father had resembled the Mack Vernon she had described. She might only be using a dead man whom she had never known to fill a role in her own personal psychodrama.
He sat there for a while, clutching his book, but apparently she had nothing more to say. Maybe he would be able to get some rest after all.
He closed his eyes and drifted as the bus rumbled on through the night. Usually, if he put his mind to it, he could fall asleep just about anywhere, but he remained conscious of the woman next to him; he sensed the tension in her, the anger, a bitterness about her life that apparently ran so deep that she could not even carry on a conversation with a stranger without spewing her resentments.
“Some ratty old shack in the woods.” That was what she called the modest refuge Mack Vernon had found for so brief a time, and now Lucas found himself growing increasingly angry with her for being so quick to slander Vernon’s reputation and insult the sanctuary of a man she might not even have known, just for the sake of putting one over on a stranger. She claimed to have inherited Mack Vernon’s cabin, an easy enough story to make up, as his only surviving child probably would have inherited the place even if he had left no will; but she had also claimed that there had been no more money coming to her in payment for the movie rights to Good Intentions. She could not conceivably have known that unless someone had informed her of that fact.
His eyes shot open. Then she had to have been lying from the start, because anyone who would know enough to tell Mack Vernon’s daughter what was owed or not owed for film rights either had to be an agent or someone, perhaps Vernon’s lawyer, who would be able to put the daughter in touch with any agent. All of which meant that the woman’s claim of not knowing anything about the writer’s agent or his papers was proba
bly the only truthful part of her story. She didn’t know anything about his literary estate because she had never known Mack Vernon at all, and had picked up what she did know second-hand.
Lucas felt confused and disappointed; his fantasy of revealing a previously unknown daughter of Mack Vernon to the world had abruptly evaporated. But at least he could congratulate himself for not being completely taken in.
He suddenly wanted to get back at her for her deception. Mack Vernon, who had written so movingly and profoundly about a man struggling to help and protect other people even while longing to retreat from them, deserved no less.
“You know,” he said, “I wasn’t telling you everything before, when I told you I was retired. I mean, I am retired, but I have another profession, so to speak. I’ve had a few short stories published, and I’ve been working on a novel, now that there’s time enough to write it, and a couple of major agents are thinking of taking me on as a client.”
She shifted in her seat, then turned toward him. “Oh, really?”
“Usually I keep that to myself. I don’t care to have everybody know all the details of my life. But I can make an exception for you, given who you are.”
“So you are a writer,” she said.
“Well, yeah, even if I haven’t been at it that long, and if I can do half as well as your father, I’ll consider myself lucky. It may sound like bragging, but frankly I think what I’m writing now has bestseller potential, and if I’m successful enough, I’m going to do everything I can to get Mack Vernon as much attention as possible. In fact, my real ambition is to write the kind of fiction he might have written.”
She stared at him, unblinking.
“It’s hard to measure up to his standard,” he said, “but that’s what I’m aiming for, nothing less than to be the literary heir of Mack Vernon.”
He went on to mention an upcoming nonexistent piece that the New York Times Book Review had commissioned from him, then recycled a few other lies about editors and sojourns in Manhattan that he had tested on fellow travelers years ago. She listened without interrupting, without even fidgeting; maybe she had already guessed that he had caught on to her deception.
“So that’s it,” she said when he was finished. “You think Mack Vernon’s such a big deal because you want to be just like him.”
He had to give her credit for keeping up her front. “That’s why you really ought to take my card,” he said, “and let me know if you want me to help put you in touch with his agent.” He reached into the front pocket of his jacket for his wallet and removed one of his cards with a flourish.
She gazed at him without speaking.
He thrust the card at her. “Take it.”
She took it from him with two fingers, stared at it for a few seconds, then opened her purse and dropped the card inside. Maybe she was already thinking of all the money that might have been hers if she had actually been Mack Vernon’s daughter.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to force any help on you, but do let me know if you want me to try to locate your dad’s agent. Even if there’s some kind of problem with the rights, he should be able to straighten it out, especially with all that’s at stake.”
“All the money, you mean.”
“Not just the money,” Lucas said, “but the chance to bring a lot more attention to the work of such an important writer. You might become pretty important yourself. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had people contacting you for interviews as soon as they find out about you.”
“Money’s the one thing I don’t have to worry about any more. Maybe my marriages didn’t work out, but at least my exes were a lot smarter about money than my father ever was. And I kind of like to keep my business to myself, too, so I’m not interested in any interviews, either.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, “but sooner or later, somebody’s going to do something about getting those books back into print. And if his agent and his lawyer can’t figure out how to do it, eventually some fan of Mack Vernon’s is just going to scan all the books and put them in electronic formats and post them on the Internet and dare somebody to come and sue him. Normally I wouldn’t approve of that, but if it’s the only way to make his work available to more readers…”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“But it will.” He wondered if he could needle her enough for her to admit that she had been lying. “Even that would be enough to call more attention to your father. I really don’t think you can stop it. He’s too good a writer to stay buried for long.”
She was staring straight ahead; the small hands on top of her purse were fists.
“So you might as well let me see what I can find out about his agent and what might be done. At this point, I’m about ready to try to contact the agent myself.”
“Go ahead,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Maybe I will.” Not that it would matter; by the time he proved her story was false, she would have disappeared into whatever kind of life she led.
“I’ll tell you what the hardest part was,” she said. “He didn’t need anybody. Maybe he’d use them for a while, but he didn’t really need them. He didn’t need my mother, and he sure as hell didn’t need me. Think of what that’s like, knowing when you’re a little kid that your father wouldn’t even notice if you went and dropped off the face of the earth.”
Lucas said, “Must have been tough.” He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.
“He lived for himself,” she added, “all the time. Those books of his, that’s all he cared about.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, like a ghost come back to haunt her.
“There was no him, never any of him.” She shifted in her seat, and he knew that she felt trapped, wanting to escape him.
* * * *
Lucas had stolen some sleep by the time he got off the bus. The small Norris airport, as he had expected, was nearly empty. A uniformed representative of the airline, a round chirpy woman, was there to greet those who had missed connecting flights. Most of the passengers trailed after her while Lucas strode in the other direction, toward the main entrance.
He did not see the small blond woman anywhere now. She had still been in her seat when he left the bus, her face turned toward the window. Maybe she was feeling embarrassed about their conversation, about her attempt to pass herself off as the daughter of Mack Vernon.
He hurried through the glassy doors of the entrance to find that there were no taxis outside. Lucas sighed and went back indoors, sat down in one of the seats near the entrance, and fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone.
“Waiting for somebody?”
He looked up to see the blond woman. “No,” he replied. “I have to call a cab.”
She stepped closer to him, peered down at him with narrowed eyes, then set down her small suitcase. “I could give you a lift.”
“You live in Norris?”
“No, up in Bayley, but I didn’t want to fly out of there on one of those dinky little planes.”
“You sure it isn’t too much trouble?” Lucas asked. “It’ll take you at least an hour to get to Bayley from here.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not in any rush.” She seemed another person now.
“That’s awfully kind of you.” He was beginning to feel a bit guilty about trying to expose her lies. “My place isn’t that far, it shouldn’t take longer than twenty minutes or so.”
“Then come on,” she said as if they had just met.
* * * *
Her SUV was parked near the airport entrance. It took them only a few minutes to get to the nearest highway. “You can stay on Route 8,” Lucas told her, “until exit 5, and my house is only a few blocks from there.”
She did not reply. She had been silent during the short walk to the car and hadn’t spoken since then.
“I really do appreci
ate this,” he said.
“I had to take this road anyway. It’s not just for your convenience.” There was a sharper edge to her voice. “Maybe you should have just parked your car at the airport.”
“Believe it or not, it’s considerably cheaper to pay for a cab than to park a car there for a few days.” The lights above the guard rail on his right streaked past as the car picked up speed; he wanted to tell her to slow down.
She said, “There’s something I didn’t tell you before.”
So now she was going to admit that she was lying, he thought, and wondered why. Maybe she wanted to become better acquainted with him, and figured that she would now have to reveal her deception. Well, he didn’t want to get to know her better; he didn’t want to know her at all. It had taken him long enough to get his life exactly the way he wanted it, without other people trying to make claims on him. Right now all he wanted to do was get home and crawl into bed with his copy of All’s Well.
“What I didn’t tell you,” she continued, “is that I already heard from my father’s agent. About four or five months ago, I got a call from the lawyer who handled everything when my father died, said he had a hell of a time finding me, maybe because of all the name changes. I mean, I used my stepdad’s last name until I got married, and I’m still using my third ex’s name because I didn’t want the hassle of changing it back, so it took him a while. He said this agent really wanted to talk to me, so I said, sure, I’d give him a call, thinking maybe some money finally came in for that movie.”
Lucas glanced at her, amazed that she was still weaving her fabric of lies. He almost had to admire her for keeping the game going.
“So I called him, and he went on and on about how there was all this interest in my father’s stuff and people calling him a literary treasure and publishers wanting to bring out the Loren Reynolds books again and even a book of his short stories and luckily they still had all the copies in the files from his old agent, the books and stories and contracts, but they needed my permission because he’d signed everything over to me. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I mean, I knew my dad had done what he said, signed everything over to me, but I didn’t know all the details about his contracts and all of that. So I told him I didn’t know anything about it and he said I didn’t have to know, all I had to do was sign what he sent me and he’d make sure everything was in order and if I had any questions about anything, I could run them past my own lawyer. ‘Yeah, well, you let me know,’ I told him, and then I hung up, figuring that was the last time I’d hear from him, but he called back a week later and said he just about had an agreement nailed down and there’d be a good chunk of change in it for me. And that was when I told him I didn’t give a shit, that I wouldn’t sign anything no matter how much money there was, that as far as I was concerned he could take all my dad’s stuff and burn it.”
Puss in D.C. and Other Stories Page 20