“Even the Haji will be glad to see him leave India,” one of Khan’s brothers said. “They are afraid of Gulle. No one has been able to control him. He is an animal. Treat him with care.”
Within a month after Gulle’s arrival, Khan’s union problems had subsided, amid a spate of unreported assaults and one unsolved disappearance. And Gulle had turned out to be more loyal than expected, especially after the incident with the dead hooker. He never voiced his appreciation for Khan’s support in what was, after all, a personal matter. But their relationship changed subtly. Khan had no illusions that he could control the man, but he also knew that Gulle would never betray him and that, more importantly, his enemies were now also Gulle’s.
With labor problems solved, the money again started flowing into Khan’s company. He resumed his sybaritic lifestyle but soon tired of it. His success with Gulle as the tip of his corporate spear whet his appetite. It wasn’t enough to own fine houses, eat at the best restaurants, drink the finest wines and liquors and, almost literally, have a mistress in every port. Chandra Khan chafed with the knowledge that he wasn’t listed in Forbes as one of the 400 richest people in the world. That would have to change. He knew what he had to do. First, he had to buy out his silent partners. That was easier said than done. His success worked against him. They liked their investment. Again, his family came through. As part of an insurance settlement, the Khans came to own an abandoned ramshackle factory in Darjeeling.
Following time-honored Indian tradition, Chandra Khan established a dummy printing operation in the rat-and-squatter-infested building and had his brothers insure it for 50 times what it was worth. Khan programmed his Bengal Publishing accounting system to submit false invoices and purchase orders to India’s Directorate General of Central Excise Taxes. The phantom factory allowed him to dodge almost £20 million in taxes by pretending to print books in a money-losing factory that didn't exist. The £20 million then went to compensate his family for the insurance money they paid when he burned the building down. His brothers then sued Khan and his partners, claiming gross negligence. Not wanting to get involved in a messy family squabble, the partners were relieved when Khan inexplicably offered to buy them out, especially when he told them that the death of five squatters in the torched building would probably bankrupt them if they still were listed as owners. As soon as he was clear of his partners, he called his brothers who, as planned, dropped their suit. They even made a tidy profit of £2 million on the scam, from which they paid the squatters’ survivors a total of 350,000 Rupees, a little less than £5,000.
Khan then set his sights on the United States, where, if anything, the publishing industry was in even greater disarray than in England. He knew he was shooting for the moon. Which was his destiny, he believed. In Hindi “Chandra” meant moon.
It wasn’t easy at first. The contraction in the American publishing world had been brutal. Major bookstore chains and iconic publishing houses were contracting, consolidating or going out of business under the assaults from the Internet, e-book self publishers and Amazon, especially the latter, a marketing behemoth that started out as a bookseller and still knew the business better than anyone. The financial debacle that began in 2007 exacerbated the situation. Financing dried up.
Fortunately for Khan, the demand for schlock, Bengal Publishing’s stock in trade, did not dry up. He rapidly added American authors to his stable of British titles, promoting their books with titillating covers and risque ads. His most successful author was Lisa Lovepuddle, whose steamy series of novels about vampire call girls had sold an astounding 12 million copies. Two movies based on her books were already in production and Khan had a piece of those. There was even talk of a video game and a line of dolls, although even Khan had his doubts about that.
CHAPTER 16 - SEX AND POODLES
The advance team from Safeguard Security wasn’t due at the Bascombe until late afternoon on Friday, but Scarne, who wanted to become a familiar face, decided to attend the Killerfest’s morning sessions. He arrived at the hotel at 7 A.M. and, as expected, his room was ready for him. After checking in and dropping off his bag, he grabbed a coffee and a bagel from one of the tables set up outside the Grand Salon, where late arrivals were registering. He then spent the rest of the morning bouncing around among various panels in the breakout rooms: “How to Craft a Good Spy,” “The Advantages of Writing a Series,” “The Bare Bones of a Thriller,” “Making the Most of Social Networking,” “How to Go From Mid-List to Magnificent,” “Insiders View of Betrayal,” “Applying NASA Technology to Forensics” and a half dozen other topics.
Each panel presentation was attended by scores of aspiring writers, with a heavy preponderance of women. Arrayed above each audience on a stage were agents, editors and a sprinkling of published authors. A “Panel Master” ran each session, which typically consisted of a 30-minute presentation from the people on the dais, followed by a Q&A. Many of the breakout sessions ran concurrently and attendees had to preselect the ones they wanted. Since he hadn’t selected any, Scarne’s V.I.P. credentials, which gave him access to everything, came in handy.
He tried to look interested in the presentations he attended, but it was hard. Most, he soon decided, were pure boilerplate, designed to convince would-be authors they had a chance to succeed in an industry that was harder to crack than a hooker’s heart. Chandra Khan apparently had not cornered the market in snake oil. But judging from the rapt faces in the audience with him, Scarne knew his opinion was in the minority. Dozens of men and women bent to their notebooks, writing down the gems of wisdom being cast their way from the dais. The Q&A’s were particularly intolerable, dominated by a few people who used their long-winded “questions” to establish their alleged knowledge of whatever subject they pretended to ask about.
The morning group of panels was split in two, with a 50-minute “Spotlight Guest” session in the Grand Salon featuring Lee Child in between. Child was actually an author Scarne read and wanted to hear. A tall, handsome man and a facile speaker, Child described how he came to write the wildly popular Jack Reacher series. Scarne was dying to ask him how Reacher managed to travel around the country solving crimes and killing bad guys while only possessing a toothbrush and one set of underwear. It seemed to him that bad breath and a nasty fungal infection might crimp his effectiveness. But Scarne kept his mouth shut and listened to other audience questions, which invariably included one about Reacher, who in the books is six-foot-five, being portrayed in films by Tom Cruise, who may be five-foot-six standing on a L. Ron Hubbard book.
In addition to the Spotlight session, the two-hour midday break allowed time for a lunch and book signings (and sales) in rooms specifically set up to hawk the books of the authors who had been on the panels. Scarne grabbed a quick burger and two cups of black coffee in a hotel coffee shop and then plunged back into afternoon sessions.
This time he chose only two and sat through both. “Does Sex Really Sell?” was hosted by a female author who (Scarne learned from promotional material he was given) had sold more than two million copies of her books, mostly on line. Her name was Penelope Swelbuns and, from what Scarne could tell from reading some excerpts of her novels in the brochures, her characters were almost constantly engaged in activities involving “pulsating,” “throbbing,” “biting,” “clenching” and “groaning.” The women were often described as “panting” and “melting,” which was fortunate, because the male character’s “manhood” was always “fully engorged.”
As it turned out, Swelbuns, a zaftig blond who would have been right at home on one of the bodice-ripping covers that adorned her books, turned out to be a wonderful, humorous speaker.
“I’ll make no bones about it,” she said, “and no puns intended, I’m not a writer, I’m an author. The sooner you realize that’s what you are, too, the better. My books sell and that’s all I care about. Now, let’s talk sex, semen and semantics.”
Which she did, for an entertaining half hour.
&
nbsp; The other session Scarne attended was entitled “Has the Day of the Private Eye Novel Passed?”
The panel on the dais consisted mostly of young agents, who generally agreed that the private investigator genre was now dominated by fanciful characters whose adventures were too wild to be believable. Scarne listened to the agents, none of whom appeared to be out of their 20’s, pontificate on the “real world” and urge those in the audience to avoid fantastic plots and “larger-than-life protagonists.”
Scarne thought he might have a little fun. When the Q&A began he jumped up.
“I’m writing a series about a private eye who on one case is almost eaten by a crocodile and in another survives a car crash at 200 miles an hour. Are you saying I should probably tone it back a notch?”
There were condescending looks all around the dais, and some titters from the audience.
“I think that’s a perfect example of what we mean,” one of the agents said. “Those things just don’t happen in real life. You might want to change those scenes to something believable.”
“Do you think if I substituted a poodle for the crocodile and had my detective ride a bike I’d sell more books.”
“Definitely,” the agent said, seriously. “The most important thing is a strong, realistic narrative. Next question.”
I should show this smart-ass kid the bite marks from the damn croc and the burn marks from the car wreck, Scarne thought as he sat down. And they weren’t even the worst things that happened on his last two cases.
***
“Have you found out anything useful?”
“Well, creating my unique writing voice is very important, the third-person point of view allows for more character development and, despite what Sister Mary Margaret told us back in the fifth grade, a sentence is something I can safely end a sentence with a with.”
Karen Porcelli rolled her eyes.
“I mean, can you tell me anything helpful about the security situation?”
Scarne smiled at her. They were sitting at a table in the far corner of the lounge of the bar where many of the people from the Killerfest were congregating after the final session of the afternoon. A waitress had just taken their order. A Diet Coke for her and a beer for him.
“I don’t drink on duty,” she had said pointedly.
“After what I sat through today,” Scarne said, “you’re lucky I’m not on heroin. But to answer your question, you have your work cut out for you.”
He then spent 10 minutes explaining the layout of the conference and the obvious areas of vulnerability.
“What a nightmare,” she said when he finished.
“Look, Karen, it might not be that bad. Arhaut’s killer had the advantage of almost total surprise. That’s not the case now. You can’t cover all eventualities but you can narrow the window of opportunity. Any potential assassin will have to know that Quimper will have plenty of security, much of it unseen. He’d have to realize that his chances of escape would be minimal.”
“What about more than one attacker?”
“Don’t get paranoid. We’re talking Sebastian Quimper here, not the President of the United States.”
“Arhaut’s killer had a getaway driver. Who you think is a woman. This place is crawling with women.”
“I think she was more than a driver. She was a facilitator. She probably eliminated the hit man. Probably too high up the food chain to risk her own neck. I don’t think we’re dealing with fanatics, which we couldn’t do much about anyway.”
“Then, who are we dealing with?”
“See. You ended a sentence with a preposition. As for the real threat, I don’t know. But I’m working on it.”
A man approached their table.
“We’re all set upstairs, Karen,” he said.
Porcelli introduced him.
“This is Nick Dennen, Jake. He flew up with me. Used to be with the Bureau.”
The two men shook hands and Dennen sat.
“I see they let you keep the blue suit,” Scarne said.
“And my J. Edgar Hoover coffee mug.”
“You can fill Jake in,” Porcelli said.
“Quimper’s suite is on one end of the floor and ours is on the other, with a private elevator in between. We’ll always have a man posted by the elevator on our floor. You need a special plastic key to access the floor. The one you have for the Concierge Level won’t work for the penthouses. We’ll get you one for that. Once Quimper is in his room for the night we should be OK.”
“What if he wants to bring someone home with him,” Scarne asked.
“Yeah. I heard he’s a hound dog. We’ll check out anyone he scores.”
“Do you have enough troops?”
“With me,” Karen Porcelli said, “we’ll have six, once Quimper’s Connecticut crew arrives. That means four-hour shifts at the elevator, even when Quimper is not on his floor.”
“I assume everyone will be packing.”
“Glocks,” she said. “What will you be doing?”
“Roaming around, trying to stay out of your line of fire and keeping literary groupies a safe distance from my throbbing manhood.”
CHAPTER 17 - QUIMP THE CHIMP
With Sebastian Quimper not due to arrive at the conference until late afternoon, Scarne decided to attend as many presentations and functions as he could during Saturday’s morning programs, to see if he could pick up any suspicious vibes or spot someone who looked like he or she didn’t belong. Considering that there was a fair number of eccentric-looking characters among the 700 or so attendees he soon realized it was a long shot.
One of the seminars was called How Do You Knock Off Your Characters? Unique Ways to Kill. Scarne thought it unlikely that a potential assassin was still doing research, but perhaps the intriguing title would be too hard for a killer to resist. Not surprisingly, the room was packed. The panel was made up of thriller and horror writers, who took turns describing how they came up with the macabre ways they dispatched people in their books. The sheer inventiveness of the mayhem described astounded Scarne, who had seen plenty of mayhem in his day.
“This is like listening to testimony at a war crimes trial,” an elderly man sitting next to Scarne said.
But Scarne found what came next even more chilling. During the question-and-answer period that followed the official presentation, many of the aspiring authors in attendance asked whether their descriptions of murders were credible. Attendees, including some little old ladies who looked as if they were at a church social, described eviscerations, impalings, scaldings, smotherings with bread puddings, enemas laced with sea wasp poison, bidet electrocutions and exploding dildoes. After a while, even the panel looked stunned.
“My God,” the elderly man said, “people are actually taking notes.”
Scarne looked around the room. Good choice, he thought. I just discovered about 200 suspects. He went to get lunch. He found another small coffee shop off the main lobby and took one of the last tables available. He ordered a cheeseburger and a coke. As the waitress walked away he spotted the old man who had sat next to him at the murder seminar. The woman who handled the seating was obviously telling the old gent that he would have to wait for a table. He got up and went over to them.
“If you’re alone and don’t mind sharing a table, I just ordered,” Scarne said.
“That’s very kind of you. I think I will.”
Introductions were made. His name was John Vincent and he had made the trip to the Killerfest all the way from Kentucky. He also ordered a cheeseburger and a coke.
“I really appreciate this, Jake.”
“Well, I feel like we shared a foxhole together in that seminar.”
Vincent laughed.
“I know what you mean.”
“Are you a writer, John?”
“Yes. I used to be a newspaperman. Small paper in Lexington. Retired. Thought I’d try my hand at thrillers. But I only shoot or stab people. Exploding dildoes, indeed.”
; “It’s a relief to meet someone with culture,” Scarne said, smiling.
It was an enjoyable lunch. Vincent told Scarne that he was halfway through his book, which dealt with a murder at the Kentucky Derby.
“Please tell me it has nothing to do with a Taliban plot to infect Kentucky Derby entrants with hoof-and-mouth disease.”
Vincent looked at him quizzically.
“Good Lord, no.”
Scarne laughed and then told him about the “elevator pitch” Bart Cobb had related during their lunch as Joe Allen’s.
“Someone merely gets shot in my story,” Vincent said. “I’m no Dick Francis, but I covered the Derby for many years and know my way around.”
He then proceeded to regale Scarne with tales from not only the Run for the Roses but also from bluegrass country in general. Scarne, who loved horses and horse racing, was fascinated. He also listened politely as Vincent sketched the plot of his novel, which turned out to be intriguing.
“Can I ask you something,” Scarne said when Vincent finished. “You’re a savvy guy. You were a newspaperman in the South, so I know you can write. You have some wonderful tales to draw from. Your plot line is terrific. What is someone like you doing at a conference like this? You must know that this is all mostly for show.”
Vincent laughed.
“Don’t judge these things by that seminar we were just at. I know most of what goes on here is fluff. Smoke and mirrors. Just a way to drum up some revenue. And most of the people here, myself included, probably stand little chance of ever being discovered. But there is something to be said for mixing with other people who have the same dream you do. It’s reinforcing. I’d hate to think I’m the only screwball aspiring author out there.”
The waitress came over and they ordered coffee.
“You should try the apple pie,” she said, “it’s made special for the Bascombe.”
“Can they put a piece of cheddar cheese on it,” Vincent asked.
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