Foul Matter Part 5

On the other side of the window, though, were two small oval frames of some rich and seemingly pliant wood. One was a sepia print and the other a charcoal drawing of the same woman, who was Saul's grandmother. Her beauty was almost unnerving, for one had to wonder how in G.o.d's name she could manage ever to coexist with the no-nonsense menfolk in this abstemious household. Even though neither picture was in color, Ned could still see it from Saul's description: reddish gold hair and eyes of the dark blue of lapis lazuli.

Saul's grandfather and great-grandfather were men of so grim an aspect that they looked as if they embodied every homily on thrift and the curative powers of work imaginable. They would probably be scandalized to find they would live out their days in these opulent gilt frames overseeing their descendant who sat around writing.

But they were also powerful paintings that looked as if the artist had sucked out the soul of his subjects and returned them to the canvas, reconst.i.tuted. That was how alive they looked.

"Don't look at him too long; he'll burn your cornea," said Saul, coming in through the dining room carrying a whole coffee service on a heavy silver tray. He poured out coffee for both of them into thin, nearly transparent cups. He handed one to Ned, then he retrieved his cigar from a heavy gla.s.s ashtray that the sun, striking it suddenly, turned to a swirl of blue. Saul had to light the cigar again to get it going.

Both of them remained standing, looking at the inhospitable trio on the wall. Saul said, "The irony is, of course, that the life I lead is far more austere and rigorous than anything they could ever have devised, much more than were their own lives. I don't do anything. Their ghosts probably move about, watching me in the exciting act of holding a pen. My grandfather was a legendary ladies' man; and old Noah, there"-he nodded toward the portrait near the butler's desk-"was addicted to both gambling and booze. How boring I must seem in comparison. No, they wouldn't be able to stand me, you know. Too dull, a dull life, nothing in it but writing and reading. For them, it was all action, and most of the action was aimed at making money. That was probably their recreation, too, together with slipping at night across the back porch of the lady of the moment. How in h.e.l.l did I descend from such people? Maybe I'm a changeling. More coffee?" Saul raised the silver coffeepot.

Ned held out his cup. "That was your father's side, but what about your mother?"

"I remember my mother only as an un.o.btrusive woman, silent, but never quite still, always moving, like a fleeting shadow. But I always remember myself as stationary. That window seat there-I spent my childhood in it, reading. That gold cord that holds back the drape? I can remember pulling at it or working the threads apart as I sat there. I'm surprised it held up at all. My reading drove them all crazy; I don't think they read a book through, in spite of the library back there." He nodded toward a room behind him. "Reading was what I did. Funny, but I think that was my way of rebelling, instead of dope or fast cars or f.u.c.king. Reading. It was only a small step to writing, I guess. My past seems to be a series of flickering images, like an old silent movie." Saul laughed. "I've never done one d.a.m.n thing, except in my head. How would they like that?" He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down on the moss-brown sofa.

Ned sat down then in the leather wing chair he always favored, positioned to take in most of the objects in the room. He could not imagine the things here as fleeting. In firelight and lamplight they looked crusted over, sealed against the looting of time.

"You know more about the past than I do. You've cracked its code. I don't even recognize these people sometimes." Saul prodded the air with his cigar.

" 'Cracked its code'? Don't I wish. Yesterday I couldn't write at all. Literally, I didn't set down a word for three hours. The story's set in Paris, yet I keep thinking of Pittsburgh."

"Pittsburgh, I've always thought it a mysterious sort of city."

Ned laughed. "That's the last thing I'd think. Why?"

"Oh, it's reinventing itself. Becoming beautiful after having been so ugly. At least, that's what I've read."

"Maybe so. Anyway, it stalled my writing well enough. What do you do when you can't write? I sharpen pencils into spears. They're lethal by the time I get through with them."

"According to Jamie, we can always write. How the h.e.l.l she does it, all of those books, all of those different genres, I don't know. I wander around and pick up things-silver bowls, pieces of porcelain-and look on the bottom to see whether the stamp's there and looks authentic." Saul blew a smoke ring and pierced it with his finger.

Ned got up to look at the pictures again, the two small ones of Saul's grandmother. Saul, like his grandmother, was a softer rendering of the sharp-eyed, imperious male ancestors. She had been alive through his childhood. Saul felt himself lucky; he was fifteen before she died, and even then she was young, only in her late fifties. She had been quite young when Saul's mother had been born-the un.o.btrusive mother. Her death (Saul had said) had leveled the house and everyone in it.

It had not occurred to Ned before that "everyone" was not really Saul's grandfather (he of the mutton whiskers) or Saul's father (of the chilly, painted smile), but Saul himself. It rattled Ned to think this; it shook him, only because he'd pictured Saul as another, altogether different sort of adolescent-distinct and distant, a writer even then who didn't trust anyone or anything not of his mind's own making. Because his mother and father had pretty much cast him adrift, Ned had a.s.sumed everyone else had, too. Or at least that Saul felt they had. But this was not so.

He turned from the two oval pictures and asked, "Do you think about her much, your grandmother?"

Saul took the cigar from his mouth and studied the coal end in the way of those strange lunar moths that beat their wings slowly before fire in an unquenchable need of light. "All the time," he said.

Ned looked at him, surprised again; he would not have thought Saul to be stuck in the past. Then he wondered why, why had he not thought this? The End of It dealt precisely with an overwhelming loss suffered by the austere and exacting narrator. Indeed, how could anyone have written this book other than a person who had never recovered from the loss of someone-or something, even-and never would. The End of It. Ned foundered here, wondering if there was some clue in this that would explain why Saul couldn't finish the novel he'd been working on.

"They called her Ossie; her name was Oceana. She was the dose of good humor that the others had to take daily. Though you could see," Saul said, "it lay on their tongues like lead." Saul looked at him. "What are you thinking?"

Ned just shrugged; he did not want to say what he had been thinking because he hadn't thought it over enough. Neither of them was given to talking off the top of his head. Neither was given to epiphanies in their writing, either. Any page or paragraph that seemed prompted by "revelation" they each saw as suspect.

Saul stood up. "Listen: let's go to Swill's. Early yet, but I want to get out of the house. At least, go to the park or for a walk."

Then Ned wondered if he'd been wrong, too, about the house. Perhaps it wasn't a refuge, a "safe house."

ELEVEN.

Clive was still in his office, where he'd been waiting for Amy to go home since 5:30. He still heard papers rustling, the printer stuttering out pages, drawers opening and shutting with a jarring clatter. What in h.e.l.l was she doing? At times he found Amy's devotion to her job irritating as h.e.l.l. But it wasn't really "devotion"; it was merely its semblance, imitation "devotion," which she hoped would carry her up the ladder to editor. There were enough t.i.tles sailing through the windy corridors of most publishing houses that Amy should have been able to s.n.a.t.c.h one out of the air. And a lot of them meant the same thing: executive editor, editor in chief, managing editor; then there were publisher, president, vice president. And G.o.d knows what else.

He would have to tell her to go home. He did not want to be overheard when he made this telephone call.

Just as he was getting up, Amy stopped in the doorway, wearing her coat, and said, "Well, good night?"

As if it were a question. "Yes, good night, Amy. Did you finish that copy?" Stupid of him not to leave it at "Good night."

"I told you before?" It was close to a whine. "I finished it, yes."

"Good, good. Well . . ." He nodded. She didn't move. Would there be any closure here at all? He picked a rubber band from a little jar and started snapping it.

Then "Bye!" she said, as breathless as if she'd been running past the door and the sight of him had taken her by surprise.

With her gone, he had no further reason for procrastinating. What he needed was a drink, a bracer, a snort of cocaine, an anesthetic. He kept a bottle of Bombay gin in his bottom desk drawer (homage to Sam Spade and the others), but decided against the gin, which would, at this point, have traveled to his brain like a cruise missile. Bobby had Scotch, which would warm him without putting his mind out of commission.

Clive rose, pocketed the Rolodex card (afraid that it might be discovered by someone), and walked out of his office, through the open-office pen, and down the corridor to Bobby's office. He walked through the outer to the inner office, where he opened the little doors of the burled mahogany cabinet, took out the Scotch, and poured a couple of fingers into one of Bobby's Venetian gla.s.s tumblers. Bobby didn't mind anyone helping himself to his private stock. Bobby was, in things like this, quite generous. Then he sat down on the old soft sofa and stretched out his legs.

Yes, Bobby would've been a great guy to work for if only he could stay the same guy for three days running. Some of this erratic behavior could be explained by the man's being a kind of publishing genius. But, really: wasn't all of this business about Paul Giverney pretty childish? He finished off the first drink, got up, and poured himself a second. He felt a little looser, more relaxed, composed, in charge of the matter, and decided to make the call from Bobby's office. Lie on the couch and call. The image pleased him. This whole half-baked plan was so crazy he might as well relax.

One of the telephone extensions was sitting on an end table by the arm of the couch. He took out the card, dialed the number. It surprised him that it was a 212 exchange; he would have thought Danny Zito would have gotten as far from New York as he could.

He coiled the phone cord and listened through six rings and was about to hang up (with thanks to G.o.d) before he heard the receiver's being lifted. He wondered how big this apartment was the bureau had found for Danny.

"Yeah." The voice wasn't surly, just bored.

"Dan-sorry. Jimmy Bradshaw, is he there?"

Silence. "Who wants him?" More interested now, perhaps a little tense.

Clive wondered if there was a sort of pa.s.sword Bobby had neglected to give him. "Tell him (why not string out the game?) that Clive Esterhaus would like to talk to him. See, I know Jimmy."

"Clive!" All pretense of Jimmy Bradshaw and taking a message dropped through the floor. "Hey, man, long time, no see."

"An interesting comment coming from someone in the witness protection program."

Danny was easily amused. He laughed.

Clive said, "I thought you'd be living somewhere like Bozeman, Montana, Dan-ah, Jimmy. I'm surprised you're still in New York."

"Couldn't live nowhere else, Clive-O."

"But-isn't it dangerous?"

"n.o.body's found me yet, pal. Nice to hear from my publisher. Book's doin' great, ain't it? But what happened to my Barnes and n.o.ble win-doooowww?" He sang the two syllables, trilled them up and down.

Clive shut his eyes tightly and tapped his forehead with the cold black receiver. Give me a f.u.c.king break! Every d.a.m.ned fool who put pen to paper thought he deserved a shot at a bookstore window.

"Sorry about that, ah, Jimmy" (and if Danny Zito insisted on mouthing off about his book, what the h.e.l.l difference did it make what Clive called him? Jimmy or Danny or semiretired Snitch, who'd brought the Bransoni family to its knees, got "Papa B"-as they fondly called him-a stretch in jail, together with two of his sons, but left plenty more relatives who were looking for Danny).

Come to think of it, Clive decided it was not such a hot idea to be belting his own name and the publisher's around, either. "We did try to get it for you (a lie), but DreckSneed beat us to it with that Dwight Staines book-"

"s.h.i.t. Genre stuff. No cla.s.s at all. So what's up?"

"Well, Bobby's talking a sequel."

"No problem."

No problem? Christ, the writer's ego. At least he supposed he had to give Danny credit for actually writing Fallguy. It had taken several bouts of heavy editing but it had, in the end, been readable. So here he was, revving up for book number two. Almost taking for granted there would be a number two. "What I'd really like is to talk to you in person. Can you manage that?" He wondered if Danny ever went out.

"Me? h.e.l.l, yes. I just take a little extra care, is all. Gotta watch my back. You know."

Which gave Clive the uncomfortable feeling that he soon might have to be watching his. "You should work in publishing for a day. Listen: there's something you can do for us. It's a, uh, another kind of contract. We figure you'd have the connections."

"Connections? To what?"

"Maybe you could give me the name of a, uh, an agent? A representative. A middleman. Someone like that?"

Danny seemed to have gone away from the telephone for something. Clive heard him laughing in the background. Probably went to get his drink. Clive checked his own Scotch. Then Danny was back. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"So just pick any place you like. I'll meet you wherever."

"You mean now? Tonight?"

"Why not? In a couple of hours. If you're not otherwise engaged."

"Nah, I ain't got nothin' on. As you can guess, my popularity's suffered some. Okay, so let's say the Chelsea Piers. Say, Pier Sixty-one?"

"All right. Around seven thirty, eight?"

"Great. Should we exchange contracts?"

Hysterical laughter. Clive hung up.

He lay on the leather couch with the phone on his chest. He checked his watch. Two hours. The Chelsea Piers, then afterward he could go to that restaurant on Ninth that was getting a lot of play. Would Danny want to go with him to dinner? He hoped not. Clive sighed and replaced the telephone receiver.

The Chelsea Piers, for G.o.d's sakes, for someone in the witness protection program.

TWELVE.

The Chelsea Piers.

It was not a mise-en-scene Clive had often feasted his eyes upon. Rarely did he venture below Thirty-eighth Street, either West or East, and never had he done it in the last decade. His mental map of this far downtown was covered with fuzz and dust. Yet many years ago, he had gone all the way down to Greene Street to talk to one of Mackenzie's young hopefuls, sitting outside some coffee bar at a table on the pavement. The funny thing was, he forgot the writer, the book, what either of them had said, but the little wedge of Greenwich Village, shaped like the Flatiron Building, had stayed in his mind, had never dislodged.

Clive wondered why. And why he hadn't gone back.

Bobby Mackenzie, never reality's groomsman, had finally come across a scheme, a marriage of greed and inventiveness that truly merited the Mackenzie-Haack imprint. It made kicking out Andre Schiffrin seem small potatoes. It made HarperCollins's reneging on a hundred contracts hardly worth the postage it took to send the ma.n.u.scripts back.

So why hadn't Bobby just done that? Found some flea-bitten clause in Ned Isaly's contract, or some unacceptable thing in Isaly's ma.n.u.script when it came in that would "forbid" publishing the book.

Well, he'd already said it, hadn't he? This scheme had the Mackenzie-Haack logo all over it.

So here he stood on Chelsea Pier 61, waiting in a dim, dim light. Ever since Clive had been a small boy he'd been in love with fog. Fog was the gray area between black and white; it was the medium of deceiving and forgetting. You could hide in it; you could walk out of it, mysteriously.

It was in this broody state of mind that Clive (still clutching his collar) saw a black shape bearing down on him like a small ship plowing through the pier mist. He shook himself.

Danny Zito stood there dressed head to toe in total and unforgiving black, looking as if he'd invented the witness protection program single-handed.

"Clive-O," Danny stuck an affectionate O on the end of names, including (Clive imagined) those of most of the men he'd murdered. He put out a hand to slap into a handshake.

Clive put out his own, almost felt tiny bones shatter in Danny's sudden grip, like a bat cracking against a ball. "Dan-" Clive caught himself. "Jimmy. Sorry."

"Hey, forget it. n.o.body's listenin'. n.o.body probably ever was."

Clive frowned. Danny had a way of making these inscrutable p.r.o.nouncements.

Slowly, Danny chewed his gum. "You bring it?"

In the furtive way a pusher might bring out a Ziploc bag filled with white powder, Clive pulled the contract from his pocket. It had been written up and signed in record time. Usually, it took months, but with no agent involved, minutes sufficed.

Danny shook it open; in the dark it glimmered, a magical thing; a book contract from a reputable New York publisher, the Great White Hope and aphrodisiac of every writers' workshop, colony, conference, convention. Of course it was worth killing for.

"Only one copy?" Danny quickly thumbed through the eleven or twelve pages.

"We're sending the others."

Danny brought out a pen flashlight. (During one frantic second of which movement Clive was afraid he was going to burn the contract, toss it flaming into the Hudson, and pull out a gun.) "Lemme just check it out. Same terms? I'd like a better paperback split, say fifty-five/forty-five?"

Christ, these writers. Clive wanted to hit him. With what restraint he could muster, he said, "I imagine we can manage that."

It obviously hadn't occurred to Danny they couldn't. He was already on to another clause. "Jacket approval, too." He turned a page, traced it with his light beam.

"Danny, what the h.e.l.l do you know about jacket art? Come on-"

"Yeah? I know as much as that stogie-smoking d.y.k.e you pay no doubt a handsome salary to. Did you see that last jacket?" He turned another page of the doc.u.ment.

"Obviously. I was your editor."