The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (22 page)

Hoag:
That’s for the police to do. Not my concern.

Moscowitz:
What
is
your concern?

Hoag:
Cam Noyes.

Moscowitz:
Why?

Hoag:
I work for him.

Moscowitz:
That’s all?

Hoag:
He’s a friend. He’s in trouble.

Moscowitz:
I think I’d like to have you as a friend myself.

Hoag:
We wouldn’t stay friends for long.

Moscowitz:
Meaning we’d become enemies or meaning we’d become lovers?

Hoag:
One of the above.

Moscowitz:
Agreed. … Charlie didn’t seem at all upset when I left. I really don’t know what happened between them to set him off. I guess she made him mad about something and he lost control.

Hoag:
I don’t buy that. He took the knife there with him from home.

Moscowitz:
So?

Hoag:
So that’s what they call premeditation — he went there planning to kill Charlie. What I can’t figure out is why.

(end tape)

(Tape #1 with Boyd Samuels recorded May 17 in his office in the Flatiron Building.)

Samuels:
This place has been a frigging madhouse. Cops, reporters, TV. Everybody wants to know where he is. How the fuck should I know? He’s gone. Wigged out, the poor fucker — don’t say it. I know you warned me. And I didn’t listen to you, and I feel like shit about it, okay?
(pause)
Think he did in Skitsy, too?

Hoag:
So it would appear.

Samuels:
Man, when he breaks it off with a chick he makes it permanent, huh?

Hoag:
Possibly he did it to keep her from talking to me about how he’d hit that busload of kids. That makes some sense. But then he went ahead and told me about it himself the next morning. That doesn’t.

Samuels:
You know about the bus?

Hoag:
I encouraged him to put it in the book.

Samuels:
You
what?

Hoag:
He couldn’t stand holding it in anymore. He was prepared to go to jail for it if he had to.

Samuels:
Why the fuck didn’t he mention any of this to me?

Hoag:
Doubtless because he thought you’d talk him out of it. I don’t suppose
you
did Skitsy in. To protect him, I mean.

Samuels:
Me?
(laughs)
I’m an agent, amigo. The telephone is my bayonet. I’d swear the law was following me though. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

Hoag:
You’re not.

Samuels:
You, too?

Hoag:
Yes.

Samuels:
Well, they can forget it. I’m not making it easy for them to catch him. They’re getting zilch from me.

Hoag:
Meaning you know something?

Samuels: (silence)
Turn off that recorder a second.

Hoag: (rustling noise)
Okay, it’s off.

Samuels:
Okay … We have heard from him.

Hoag:
Where is he? What did he say?

Samuels:
Todd talked to him. I was talking to Ovitz on the coast. By the time I got off the line, he’d split. He was at a gas station somewhere in Mount Vernon.

Hoag:
What’s he doing there?

Samuels:
How should I know? He’s on the run. He called to say he was sorry to bring all of this down on me. And on you, too. He mentioned you.

Hoag:
He’s doing himself no good. He should turn himself in.

Samuels:
You and I know that, amigo. But it’s his life. His decision. I’m not turning him in. They keep asking me if I know where his financial records are, since they turned up zilch at the house. I told them no. I didn’t tell them that everything — tax records, bank statements — is kept right here. Let ’em search the place. Nail me for obstructing justice. I don’t care. I owe him that much.

Hoag:
Mind if I turn the recorder back on now?

Samuels:
Sure. Go ahead.

Hoag: (rustling noise)
I want to talk about Ferris Rush.

Samuels: (silence)
Shit. You know about that, too, huh?

Hoag:
I know very little about anything. All I know is that Cam Noyes doesn’t exist. Nor does his family tree.

Samuels:
Okay … Ferris Rush is his real name. I guess you figured out that much already. The two of us made up the name Cameron Sheffield Noyes in college when he started modeling. We thought it suited his look better. Give him the right sort of image, you know? And gradually, he’s sort of invented a past to go with the name.

Hoag:
All of it?

Samuels:
The Farmington part, for sure.

Hoag:
That explains why he doesn’t have any family photographs.

Samuels:
My favorite part is the bit about the father hanging himself. That weird suicide note and everything. He’s a born storyteller.

Hoag:
He certainly is. And to think he told me he was suffering from writer’s block. Hell, he and I have been writing his second novel all along, haven’t we?

Samuels:
Hey, look, it’s not such a big deal. He’s no different than a million other performers with stage names and made-up backgrounds, is he?

Hoag:
I suppose not. Only, I don’t do windows or heavy cleaning or bogus memoirs.

Samuels:
I know. That’s why we didn’t take you into our confidence. We knew you wouldn’t do it, and we wanted you. No hard feelings, huh?

Hoag:
What did you guys think, that I wouldn’t check any of his stories out? That I’d accept it all at face value?

Samuels:
You would have if the shit hadn’t hit the fan.

Hoag:
And if somebody hadn’t tipped me off. Sent me to Farmington.

Samuels:
No shit? Who did that?

Hoag:
The same person who’s been trying to get me off of this project from the beginning. I wish I knew who it was, and how it fits in with him killing Skitsy and Charlie.

Samuels:
I don’t know anything about that, Hoag.

Hoag:
You wouldn’t be scamming me now, would you, amigo?

Samuels:
I’m not, I swear. Listen, Cam’s publisher called me first thing this morning, salivating. They want to get the book into print fast. Are you in?

Hoag:
Only if you give me the whole story — his real background, how you made him up and marketed him. I can put it together with the tapes I already have, and with Charlie’s illustrations. It should make for interesting reading.

Samuels: Interesting?
Shit, we’ll nuke the best-seller list! You want the real story, crank up your recorder. I’ll give it to you. No point in hiding it now. It’s all going to come out at his trial — assuming he’s caught, and he will be.

Hoag:
Good point. And this way you get fifteen percent of the action, fight?

Samuels:
You’re wrong about me. I’m his friend. Always have been. … Ferris Rush is poor white trash. Grew up an only child in a run-down shack on the outskirts of Port Arthur, Texas. His dad, Ferris senior, is an itinerant oil rigger, sign painter, carpenter, drunk, and full-time douchebag. Killed a guy once in a bar fight. Spent some time in jail for it when Ferris was a baby. Grandpa Rush did some time, too, for robbery. That bowie knife was his. Probably stole it off some rich guy … His mom is a beautician. She and his dad got married when they were sixteen, for the usual reason.

Hoag:
That would be Ina Duke Rush?

Samuels:
Yeah. He sort of likes his mom. Stayed in touch with her after he ran away from home. Not anymore, I don’t think. But for a while there she remained his legal guardian. He ran away when he was twelve. Headed north with cowshit between his toes and an accent you could cut with a knife — sorry, poor choice of words. He ran because his father beat him. He ran because all he could see down the road was him ending up no different. His dad’s brother, Jack, had been in the Navy a long time, working on submarines at the Groton sub base. When he got out, he took a job repairing pleasure boats at an Essex boatyard. Jack wasn’t much more of a bargain than his brother — he drank, too, and didn’t have any money. But he could put Ferris in touch with people who did. So Ferris moved in with him and set about finding his future. That’s something he’s never had much trouble doing. Even when he was barely into his teens he was six feet tall and well built, with the wavy blond hair and blue eyes. Older women have always taken a hands-on interest in him. Two, in particular, have had a major impact on his life. The second, Skitsy, you already know about. The first was a woman named Maude Champion. Thanks to Uncle Jack, who had contacts around the Essex Yacht Club, Ferris landed himself a summer job crewing on a sixty-footer owned by a wealthy Farmington banker named Harrison Champion. Champion was in his early sixties. His second wife, Maude, was forty and a very proper Yankee lady — the kind who think their shit tastes like Häagen-Dazs. Former deb with lots of free time and no children of her own. The model for Jane Abbott Knott. She immediately took a quasi-maternal interest in Ferris, who was so bright and handsome and eager to improve himself. She tutored him. Helped him lose his accent. Taught him how to dress and act like a young gentleman.

Hoag:
So that explains it — that self-conscious, mannered way he has. His gestures, his speech.

Samuels:
Right. It’s all acquired, from Maude. She taught him everything. Gave him spending money. Bought him clothes. And on or around his thirteenth birthday, she also started fucking him. … Now, less than a year after Ferris moved in with him, his Uncle Jack died. Liver failure. The last thing Ferris wanted was to go back to Texas. That was the last thing Maude wanted, too. She had some family money of her own that her husband didn’t know about. She used it to send Ferris to Deerfield for a proper education.

Hoag:
Which is where you met him.

Samuels:
Yes. He was the only member of the freshman class who was already a professional gigolo.
(laughs)
Actually, Ferris was a truly amazing guy to me at age fourteen. I mean, I had some wild instincts, but I still came from a conventional suburban environment. Not Ferris. He lived strictly by his own wits and his own standards. He was like some kind of modern-day adventurer. Not that he ever bragged about it. I was his best friend. I knew he was fucking Maude, and that she, not his parents, was putting him through school. But none of the other guys knew.

Hoag:
Where did he tell them he was from?

Samuels:
He didn’t.

Hoag:
How much of what he told me about your Deerfield days together was true?

Samuels:
Aside from his background, almost all of it. Him getting kicked off the football team …

Hoag:
The suicidal binge? Did he hit that busload of kids?

Samuels:
Yes, he did. But it was no profound suicidal binge. He was just loaded, that’s all.

Hoag:
You talked him out of turning himself in?

Samuels:
It never came up. Ferris didn’t even consider it. Guilt wasn’t something he knew much about then. He’s acquired that along the way. Now what he did eats away at him — though I guess he has some fresh sins on his mind these days. Summers he stayed in the guest room over the garage of the Champions’ historic home in Farmington — the house he described to you as his own. Most of his time was spent in Essex taking care of the yacht and Maude while her husband was busy working in Hartford.

Hoag:
He mentioned a Dana Hall girl named Kirsten who he fell for one summer. He said her mother broke it up.

Samuels:
Half true. He met Kirsten the summer before our senior year. Her parents sailed from the Essex Yacht Club. I think it was the first and only time he’s been seriously in love. Anyway, he got permission from Maude to stay overnight alone on the yacht instead of at the house. And as soon as he did, he started slipping it to Kirsten. You can’t keep secrets around a small-town yacht club — everybody knew Maude was fucking Ferris behind her husband’s back, and before long everybody also knew Ferris was fucking Kirsten behind Maude’s. She got wind of it soon enough. Freaked out. Total jealous rage. Told him he was low-class trash. Told him he and Kirsten were through or else. He refused. She said fine, then I’m pulling the plug on you — no place to live and no Deerfield … Poor little Kirsten never knew what hit her … Ferris was never the same after that. He was very bitter. Despised Maude for what she’d made him do. And made him realize about himself. Still, he let her keep him. She paid his way into Columbia. It wasn’t until he was making enough modeling to support himself that he finally, once and for all, told her to fuck off. But I think he’s always had this need for a mother figure, because it wasn’t long before he’d found himself another Maude in Skitsy. … He did well at modeling. Made righteous bucks at it. Could have become a superstar if he’d wanted. Gone into acting even. The ladies loved him. But he didn’t like it. Kept saying he felt like some kind of show dog. To keep himself sane he started keeping a journal of all the weird, strange shit we came in contact with freshman year instead of going to class — the clubs, the models, the coke. He made me read them. Asked me if they were any good. I honestly didn’t know. I was no literary scholar. I’m still not. I told him he ought to show them to Professor Tanner Marsh — if someone like Tanner Marsh says you have talent, then you have talent. I mean, literature is not like the hundred-yard dash. There’s no stopwatch. There’s only the master opinion-shapers like Tanner. If he says you’re a genius, then you are one. I swear if you got him to call a book of completely blank pages a “major redefinition of abstract minimalism in modern American literature,” you could sell fifty thousand copies at $17.95. It’s all bullshit — I’m the first to admit it. But you need people like Tanner if you want to get a book off the ground. That and the right image. Like with Cam Noyes and
Bang
. I wanted people to think reading it was synonymous with a hip, dangerous good time. And they did, not so much because of its content but because of the public life Cam Noyes leads the people he hangs out with, the women he fucks, the clothes he wears, what he eats, drinks, smokes. I wasn’t selling literature. I was selling
attitude
.