Foul Matter Part 2

The man across the path had gone; the sky eased from dusk into darkness. The huge hulk of the past lumbered on.

Nathalie sat alone in the Jardin des Plantes.

He left her there, he felt, at his peril.

FIVE.

That's his condition," said Clive. "That's it." He seemed to be trying to convince himself even more than he was trying to convince Bobby Mackenzie.

Bobby's office was not a reflection of Bobby himself; it had an almost cabin coziness brought on by the big, soft sofa against one wall, the upholstered chairs, a couple of Audubon-like paintings of birds in flight, a very good and very worn Karastan carpet, and a zillion books. But the thing that separated publishers from a.s.sistant editors in the pecking order was a view of Central Park that could be better seen only by one of those flighting birds.

Bobby snorted. "That's crazy."

Clive nodded. He usually did when he was talking to Bobby. So did everyone. "I said as much."

Bobby's eyebrows danced upward. "You told Giverney he was crazy? Good career move." Bobby wheeled his swivel chair over to the liquor cabinet, which was nearly within arm's reach. He grabbed up the bourbon and a couple of gla.s.ses and wheeled back again.

Now Clive snorted. "Not in so many words, of course not." Christ, he wished Bobby would stop connecting everything Clive did to the furtherance of or the setback to his "career." It was like blackmail. Why was he surprised? "I simply pointed out what would happen."

Bobby unscrewed the bottle with the finesse of a sleight-of-hand artist (which in many ways he was), raised one of the gla.s.ses in question to Clive, who nodded, and then poured a couple of fingers of bourbon into each gla.s.s. He sat back, rolled the gla.s.s between his hands across his chest as if to warm a frostbitten heart, and said, "Of course Tom would leave. Of course Ned would find another publisher. This is what would happen: Ned gets the heave-ho, Tom resigns, Ned waits to see what house Tom goes to, and then goes there himself. Giverney gains nothing-at least as far as we can see, Giverney being not only crazy but an egomaniac-and . . ." Bobby drank and shrugged. "Beats me."

"At least we'd get Giverney."

"Believe me, I intend to. But Isaly and Kidd, that's not all we'd lose. Tom Kidd has the four best writers in this house. You know what would happen; they'd all follow Tom. Tom would get his own imprint, deservedly so, no matter where he went, and in that imprint would be included four of the perhaps dozen honest-to-G.o.d writers we or anyone else has."

Clive sighed. He hadn't thought that far. Of course, Bobby was right. He usually was. Clive took another sip of the velvet bourbon and remembered he had a lunch date. He looked at his watch; he could still make it, but what on earth was the reason for it now? "To say nothing of there not being anything in that contract which would let us slide out smoothly."

Bobby was staring at some point over Clive's shoulder, deep in thought. He shook himself and said, "Oh, that's the least of it."

Least of it?

"Isn't the date for the delivery of his new book nearly up? He's got another couple weeks, from what I remember."

How in h.e.l.l did Bobby remember all of these details? "I think you're right, yes. But, good G.o.d, we've never invoked that clause in the case of a writer as important as Ned."

"No, but we could. Or demand to see part of it and reject it. Though that wouldn't go down well either with Tom. There are a lot of ways I can get out of a contract, but none of them private and none of them without repercussions."

Clive thought for a moment. "And we haven't even mentioned the acrimony it would stir up in the publishing community."

" 'Acrimony'? I don't think so. More like laughter. More like Mackenzie's loss of face, a lot worse. We're famous for publishing good books, literary books, not Giverney-style books. In the wake of getting him, we lose not one but four"-Bobby held up four fingers as if Clive couldn't count-"writers. To say nothing of the best editor we or anybody else has." Bobby shook his head and held out the palms of his hands as if to forestall an unbelievably evil image. "No, no."

"Then I'll tell him it's no dice. After all, we just signed Dwight Staines."

"Don't remind me." Bobby slugged back his drink.

Bobby hated that science fiction-horror writing genre, except for Stephen King. Oddly enough, though, Bobby wasn't a book sn.o.b; he'd read anything. And Dwight Staines, phenomenally popular, would have sales high enough to offset any triviality such as artistry.

Clive was considerably disappointed in throwing the Giverney contract to the winds. He wanted to be the editor who signed him up. What was he going to tell his luncheon companions now? "I'll tell Paul it's a nonstarter, then."

"A nonstarter? Did I say that?" Bobby unscrewed the bottle again.

"I certainly infer that's what you're saying; signing Paul Giverney wouldn't be worth losing Kidd, Isaly, Eric Gruber-" He stopped.

Bobby sat there, eyes closed, shaking his head. "No, Clive, what I said was breaking the contract wouldn't do it."

"I must be dense."

Bobby leaned way back in his ergonomically designed chair. "Think about it, Clive."

Clive frowned. He felt the onset of a migraine. "I don't-"

Bobby sighed. "You remember that Bransoni snitch? We did his book-probably got his dog to write it-a couple years ago."

"Sure. Danny Zito. Actually, he did write it himself."

Bobby tossed back the rest of his bourbon. "Believe that, you'll believe anything."

Clive smiled. "No, I'm telling you. Fallguy. It sold much better than we thought it would. Why?"

"Well, you could look him up."

" 'Look him up?' " Clive gave a laugh that turned into a choke. "Zito's been in the witness protection program ever since the trial. You know the way they do that. Change of name, change of home, change of everything; buried so deep he couldn't find his own a.s.s." So what in h.e.l.l was Bobby doing, bringing up Danny Zito?

"Come on, all you have to do is put it out that we want another book from Zito. You can find anybody that way. If you were lost in an African jungle and said, 'I've got a book contract here,' half a dozen people would pop out of the bush to sign it. Wiesenthal should have come to us when he wanted to find Himmler. Make it known a publisher wants a book out of someone and suddenly"-Bobby rat-tat-tatted on his desk with his hands-"you've got them on the phone or the doorstep. Magic."

Clive rose, walked around the desk to peer out of the window, down at Central Park. Yellow cabs beetled along so slowly it was hard to believe these were the same death traps he took every morning and evening. He turned, brows knotted. Magic maybe, but why? "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"And what would that be?"

Clive stared at the ceiling, doing a sort of little half-turn dance step as if this might shake off what could only be a bad dream.

SIX.

The only thing Clive could do at lunch was to be mysterious. He had made the foolhardy gesture of insisting the meal be "on him" and "on him" at one of the more expensive restaurants in Manhattan. He had wanted so much to enjoy the sheer delight he could take in gloating. Now, of course, he had nothing to gloat about. Lunch would be a trial.

His two companions were well-established editors at two other publishing houses. Nancy Otis was at Grunge. She was almost unfailingly right in the projects she signed on, purely on the basis of a skimpy outline, but more often nothing but the naked and unembellished "idea." ("For G.o.d's sakes, if you've got Tom Cruise saving the lives of an entire Nepalese village, do you have to see a f.u.c.king ma.n.u.script?") Rarely, rarely was she wrong. But there had been those rare occasions, and Clive had basked in one or two of them.

Bill Mnemic's success was in getting his nose in other publishers' bags of oats and then leading off their prize horses in what he called "a moonlight flit." Bill was British; he was at DreckSneed (Sneed having been the once venerable British publishing house, now part of American Dreck, Inc.).

Both of them (especially Bill, for raiding another house's writers was his specialty) had put everything on hold when they'd heard about Paul Giverney's wanting to make a move away from Queeg and Hyde, his publisher for the last decade. It started out as gossip and, as was generally the case in publishing, had not risen into verifiable fact, probably wouldn't, until the deed was done. Folks in publishing rather preferred it that way; it led to much more interesting huddles over lunch. The three of them had, in a sense, "grown up" together in publishing. Nancy had been in the publicity department of Hathaway and Walker, long since embalmed and raised to life again by the Dracula of foreign conglomerates, Bludenraven; Bill had started out in marketing, at which he was brilliant; Clive had always been in editorial, had started out as an editor's a.s.sistant. That was twenty-five years ago and the three of them had risen on the corporate ladder almost nose to nose. A compet.i.tive spirit was hard to avoid, then, and it had been at first a friendly one. But as the stakes got bigger and publishers were sh.e.l.ling out higher and higher advances to less and less deserving writers (nonwriters, most of them), the spirit had changed. Changed slowly, but changed. It became harder to conceal (and it had to be concealed) spite, rancor, enmity. But these three were good at such concealment.

There were times when his memory turned to the lunches of twenty years ago, then held in whatever deli was nearby, and he felt threatened by sadness, a great wave coming over him that he barely managed to outrun before it crashed on an empty sh.o.r.e. Feelings like that were bothersome, and he didn't really understand them.

The waiter had come and taken their order for wine and food. All three of them always ate the same thing. Today, Nancy came down hard on the grilled swordfish, and, after wading around through the monkfish baked with ginger and the steak and shiitake mushrooms, both Clive and Bill had said, yes, they'd have the swordfish, too. They did not do this because they were so closely bound in temperament that they were bound in taste; no, each was afraid that a dish would be brought which was obviously superior to the ones the others had ordered. It was simpler to get the same thing.

"Come on, Clive," said Nancy, leaning toward him until her bosom nearly flattened on the table. "What?"

Over the years the three of them had grown as cagey and monosyllabic as illegal aliens.

Bill gave him a razor smile and said, "Yeah. What've you got?"

Well, Clive hadn't got anything, had he?

Both Bill and Nancy had X-ray vision and mirror eyes good enough for a Village of the d.a.m.ned remake. Because of that, Clive might have believed they could see straight through him had he not known their vision was clouded by their own predilection for sham and subterfuge. So, having nothing at all, he resorted to a wide-eyed innocence designed to pique their curiosity even more about the coup they thought he must have brought off.

His shrug was elaborate. "I haven't got anything."

Nancy put on her disbelieving face, turned sideways in her chair, and shook her head at this witless attempt to convince her.

"Yeah, right," Bill said.

The three of them had never actually discussed Paul Giverney. Had never so much as mentioned it over the telephone, because none of them had wanted the others to think he or she was working ropes and pulleys like holy h.e.l.l behind the claptrap scenes of their dusty stages, trying to grab Giverney's agent's ear, hurling more and more outlandish offers. Clive knew he was right in a.s.suming their offers had been intoxicating. But Bobby Mackenzie's had been so far off the charts Giverney's agent could easily retire on the commission. Never have to return another call in his life, he wouldn't. It was just the sort of advance that would bring the publishing industry to its knees, eventually. Monster advances of the kind being offered would never be earned out.

This, too, thought Clive, was sad. But, again, he wasn't wearing this fifteen-hundred-dollar silk suit by virtue of adhering to the Tom Kidd publishing virtues.

"Lunch, for G.o.d's sakes," answered Clive, affecting a laugh insincere enough to prove it must be otherwise. "We haven't had lunch since-" He bethought himself.

Nancy answered: "Since I signed Tasha Gorky for a one-mil advance on spec."

That was walking right into a trap she should have foreseen, being Nancy. She must be desperate.

Clive smiled. "As I recall, Nancy, the spec turned out to be one purely ghosted outline with the ghost departing into the ether."

Tasha didn't have any ideas, much less could she write. Tasha's writing expertise extended to autographing tennis b.a.l.l.s.

Nancy's preeminent trait was her ability to stonewall anybody. "Yes, why're you surprised? It was obvious I was taking a big chance. But like I always say, no pain, no gain." (The only thing she got out of her occasional bouts with AA were the aphorisms.) Of course, she was managing to turn things around to make her editorial errors look like brave risks. They were off the subject of the reason for the lunch. But Clive knew well enough they'd be right back on it at any second. They were too sharp to be taken in by his we-haven't-seen-one-another-lately gambit. Too sharp and too envious. Too much like him, in other words.

Did he dare? He cut off a bite of swordfish with surgical precision. Given Bobby Mackenzie's determination to sign Giverney, wasn't it already a foregone conclusion that they'd get him? If by some chance they didn't, surely he'd be able to cover himself. So he dropped it right in the middle of talk about Tasha: "We're signing Paul Giverney for two books. That's what we're celebrating."

They seemed to turn to stone right before his eyes. He thought about Lot's wife . . . but, no, that was a pillar of salt, wasn't it? Their mouths looked as thin as fissures in rock. He wanted to chortle out loud, but constrained himself. He had bested them, no doubt of it-grabbed the gold ring, kicked the ball into the end zone, gone for broke, and hit the jackpot.

But it was rather a thin payoff. They both recouped, stone turning back to flesh, and congratulated him and began the process of pretending they hadn't l.u.s.ted after the same writer.

"Naturally," said Bill, "we considered Giverney-"

Didn't you just! Clive wanted to yell.

"-but his agent-what's his name?"

As if he didn't have it carved in blood on his wrist!

"Mort Durban." Apoplectic Mortimer, the agent's agent.

"Ah, yes. Anyway, he was demanding so much we knew the advance would never earn out. We'd lose a h.e.l.luva lot. But Bobby Mackenzie can probably afford to carry the loss. He's got millions to throw around." Bill flashed a smile.

As if, of course, Bobby was some spoiled kid who had no idea how to run a publishing house. Raging inwardly, Clive kept on smiling. "Lose? I guess our people must be using different figures. We're planning a one-million first printing."

Bill laughed. "With a fifty, sixty percent return?"

"Giverney's books never have that kind of return. Twenty-five at the most."

"Come on, Clive. Half those books'll come back, they always do. It gets worse every year; publishers just can't afford these humongous advances anymore-"

Oh, Christ! Bill was turning this to his advantage. Bill pontificating about publishing excess? The very man who'd tried to lure Rita Aristedes away from Mackenzie-Haack by brokering a Tuscan villa? (Rita was mad for everything Italian except their love of the earth and each other.) Clive just sat, swordfish forgotten, arms folded, featherweight smile on his face.

Nancy's turn: "Thing is, Mackenzie-Haack always had this absolutely fabulous list-I don't mind admitting I envy you (a supercilious smile meant to belie that envy)-until lately."

Clive had to respond to that, he couldn't help himself. " 'Lately'? Mackenzie's still got the best list of anybody in town."

"Better than Fritz Pearls?"

Fritz Pearls was the most literary of all of them. "Of course not." Clive grimaced as if surely it was clear F.P. outshone all of them. "Mackenzie's size, I mean."

Nancy went on: "You just signed on Dwight Staines. So you've got him, Rita Aristedes, and now Paul Giverney. I'd say"-she slugged back her half gla.s.s of wine-"you're getting as commercial as Disney." She smiled widely, showing her platform teeth.

Clive managed a hearty, false laugh. "Not much chance of that, Nancy girl. Not when we have writers like Eric Gruber or Ned Isaly. In addition to a dozen others."

Bill strode in again. "Yeah, but they're all midlist writers, except maybe Isaly. And he only turns one out every four, five years. You haven't got a Mailer or an Updike. You haven't got any literary heavy hitters."

"Saul Prouil." This was a lie, but Clive was getting used to it.

"What? Come on. You haven't got Prouil under contract. h.e.l.l, Saul Prouil hasn't published a book in a decade."

"No. But what he's working on is brilliant."

"Like, what's he working on?"

Clive laughed. "You know Saul. He doesn't like anyone talking about work in progress." G.o.d, why had he brought Saul Prouil up? He hadn't as much as said h.e.l.lo and good-bye to him in nine years. And he had never been the man's editor.

"Yeah? Maybe that's because he's not making any." Nancy was helping herself to the last of the wine.

This whole lunch was not going the way it was supposed to, d.a.m.n it. They were supposed to cut open a vein and bleed jealousy all over the gardenia-white cloth. They were supposed to be humbled, supposed to see that in the long run, Clive was the most successful of the three of them, better, the best.

"s.h.i.t," said Bill, pulling himself sideways in his chair, blowing smoke from the cigarette he wasn't supposed to be smoking there. "You know what we are? Pimps, that's all." He inhaled again, his brows rammed together, looking angry.

This pretense of self-denigration might have fooled an outsider, but not Clive. Anyway, the denigrating was all for Clive, so that Bill could push Clive into pimpdom. One could hardly do that without generously including oneself. Clive slumped. He felt he had put himself in jeopardy for nothing. Hadn't he known that their face-saving techniques were every bit as good as his? He couldn't impress them; they were all unimpressible. It was rather a shock to think that.