The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (25 page)

I waited for a long time. I waited the whole night, sleeping fitfully with my old leather jacket and Lulu over me for warmth. I waited through the long next day, a day I spent skipping stones on the pond and sitting on the porch in the sun thinking about Ferris Rush and his story, the story I was about to write. It was a story of genius, ambition, and greed. Of sex, drugs, fame, fraud, and murder. A lot your basics. It was not a pretty story, and there was no happy ending to it — at least I sure couldn’t see one coming. One question still nagged at me. Was Ferris Rush the villain of this story or the victim? Was he responsible for what had happened or were those around him responsible — Boyd Samuels, Tanner Marsh, Skitsy Held, and all of their machinery of literary celebrity? I still didn’t know the answer to that question. I would have to face him to know it.

Toward late afternoon I put Lulu back in her life preserver and rowed us across to the Jag. I left the boat there and drove to the general store a few miles up the road from the boatyard. No one there remembered selling any canned goods to a blond guy in the past few days. I bought some ham sandwiches and a six-pack of Guinness and used the pay phone out front to call Merilee.

“Why, it’s Mr. Hoagy,” she exclaimed warmly. “Just wanted to let you know I borrowed the Jag from the garage,” I told her. “It was an emergency, and I didn’t have time to ask if you —”

“Quite all right, darling,” she said mildly. “I still think of it as half yours anyway. Hoagy?”

“Yes, Merilee?”

“Hello.”

“Hello yourself,” I said, pleased she was being such a good sport about my stealing her car. “Listen, there’s one other thing. If Very happens to call, don’t tell —”

“If a very
what
happens to call you what?” she broke in, confused.

“Romaine Very. He’s a short, muscular cop with an earring and bad stomach. If he calls you in the next day or so, and he will, tell him I’ve been writing in seclusion and that I cannot be disturbed by anyone for any reason. Tell him I’m always this way when I write. Tell him I’m weird. Tell him anything. Just don’t tell him where I am, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “And where are you?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Horseradish.”

I tugged at my ear. “I’m in Connecticut. I’ve found him. At least I think I have.”

“But half of the police in the Northeast are looking for him in —”

“The wrong place.”

“Hoagy, may I remind you that this man has already killed two people?”

“I’m well aware of that fact.”

“What’s to stop him from killing you, too, if you get in his way?”

“I have my methods.” I glanced down at my protector, who lay curled at my feet, daintily licking her soft white underbelly. “Besides, all I want to do is talk to him. As a friend. I care about what happens to him. Face it, there aren’t a lot of people around now who do.”

“That’s because he’s murdered the others. Hoagy, Hoagy, Hoagy. You loyal fool.”

“You got that half right. Merilee, will you tell Very what I said?”

“Of course, darling. You can always count on me.”

“Thanks. And thanks for being so understanding about the car.”

“It’s true, I am being terribly understanding. It must be because you let me see Sweetness on Sundays. She’ll come stay with me in the country sometimes, won’t she? She loves the outdoors so.”

“Of course. But you have to remember that deep down inside she’s still a city dog. She likes the hubbub, the ballet, breakfast in bed … ”

“She’s not the only one.”

“I remember. Champagne and fresh-squeezed orange juice for starters. A slice of muskmelon, followed by a caviar-and-sour-cream omelet, followed by —”

“
Mister
Hoagy. There are laws against discussing
that
on interstate phone lines.”

“No law against remembering though, is there?”

She was silent a moment. “No. None,” she admitted softly. “Hoagy?”

“Yes, Merilee?”

“Be careful. Lulu is much too young and innocent to lose you. And so is her mommy.”

I took the long way back to Crescent Moon Pond. Up the winding country road into Hadlyme, then onto a narrower one that twisted its way through a forest before it dead-ended at a small farm set behind old stone walls encrusted with lichen. I stopped there and turned off the engine. The house was set way back behind fields of wildflowers and green grass and fruit trees and a pond, where I could hear the ducks quacking. It was a snug old house, creamy yellow in the late-day sun, with white shutters and trim. The carriage barn was red. It was a lovely place, a safe haven, a refuge. She was right — it was home.

I sat there gazing at it, wondering if it would ever be
my
home. It would never have lasted with Charlie. It would have turned up Merilee again. She and I were destined for each other. Or doomed, depending on how you want to look at it. And maybe it
was
time for this. Time to surrender what was left of New York to the Yushies. I didn’t belong there anymore. Maybe I never had, but when you’re the center of attention, you tend not to notice. Was this the ending for novel number three? Hoagy the country squire — scribbling in his chapel in the morning, shoveling manure in the afternoon? I sat there gazing at it and thinking it didn’t sound too terrible. Of course it didn’t. Daydreams seldom do.

Ferris Rush wasn’t the only one whose line between fact and fiction was awful damned fuzzy.

I started up the Jag and floored it out of there, cursing myself.

I ate the ham sandwiches and drank the Guinness and spent another night on that sour-smelling bare mattress. And another day on the porch, where I reread
The Great Gatsby
, and enjoyed it more than I ever had. And still one more night. And with the dawn came the reality — he wasn’t coming back to his secret place. I had gotten close, closer than anyone else had. But I’d missed him. He was gone, and this time I didn’t know where.

I had no choice now. It was time to go back to the city and get out my mukluks.

M
R. ADELMAN HAD NEARLY
wept when I’d shown up at his shop on Amsterdam with my hammered, ruined Olympia. It was he who had sold it to me and lovingly maintained it through the years. I’d begged him to save it. He’d said he was a typewriter man, not a magician.

He
was
a magician. It shone like new there now on his counter, straining for action. He shone, too, a proud craftsman of the old, old school. Before he would let me take it home, he made me swear I’d never run over it again with a Jeep, or whatever I had done to it — he didn’t want to know. I made him swear he’d never let Benetton or The Gap push him out on the street. We shook on that.

When I got home with it, I made a pot of coffee and arranged the transcripts of my interviews in piles on Ferris Rush’s writing table. I had mixed feelings about his table now. Part of me wanted to saw it in half and throw it in the street. For now, I intended to keep it. I’d earned it.

I got my mukluks out of the closet and put them on. I wore them when I wrote the first novel. I’ve worn them every single time I’ve sat down in from of my typewriter since. They’re starting to get a little ragged, but so am I. After I poured myself a cup of coffee I sat down at the table and got started. Lulu stretched out under me with her head on my foot, swallowed contentedly, and dropped off.

I am not who you think I am. I am not Cameron Sheffield Noyes. My name is Ferris Rush
,
and I am a murderer
.

I took it from there. My opening approach was to weigh the privileged, made-up Farmington upbringing of Cam Noyes against the gritty, real Port Arthur childhood of Ferris Rush. I gave him a sardonic, slightly weary voice, the voice of his
Bang
storyteller. His voice. Quickly, I realized that this would be my hardest memoir to get down on paper. Unlike the other celebrities I’d written for, this one happened to be an acclaimed novelist. His prose, his observations, would have to have some kind of literary merit. The words couldn’t just come tumbling out onto the page any old way. In fact, they soon wouldn’t come tumbling at all. I got stuck in deep mud after three pages, my wheels spinning, and I couldn’t get out.

Something was wrong.

It wasn’t writer’s block. That’s a void, a fear. The stomach muscles tighten. The hairs on the back of the neck stand up. No, this was the nagging itch I get when a scene I’ve written doesn’t work. Oh, it seems fine on the surface. But deep down inside I just know something is wrong with it. Only I don’t know what it is. It’s an itch I can’t get to. Not until I’ve analyzed the scene from every possible angle, taken it apart piece by piece, turned it inside out. Eventually, if I keep at it long enough, I find the flaw. But I can never rest until I do. Because my itch is never, ever wrong.

I didn’t have the whole story. I thought I did but I didn’t. I was wrong. That’s why I was stuck. I was still missing something. Something crucial. But what?

I got up and paced from one end of the living room to the other. It’s not very far. I paced, the floor of the old brownstone creaking under me. Lulu watched me, her eyes darting back and forth, back and forth. I went over my approach. I went over everything that happened from the beginning, step by step. What was I missing? Was it something he’d said to me once, something that didn’t fit? Something somebody else had said? What?

I took Lulu for a walk in Riverside Park, a man possessed now. I turned the soil over and over as I walked, my hands shoved in my pockets, lips moving. That’s one big plus about living in New York. No one in the park paid me any attention — their lips were moving, too. I got nowhere. I stopped at a Greek coffee shop and ate a cheeseburger that tasted like flannel. I climbed back up to my apartment and made another pot of coffee and started working my way through the transcripts, line by line, searching for I didn’t know what. I read all of them. It was nearly four in the morning when I was done. I found nothing. Nothing that took care of my itch.

Lulu was fast asleep now on the love seat. I opened a Bass ale and fell into my chair and drank it. I went over my Farmington trip notes. Nothing there either.

It was only out of utter desperation that I started looking through the carton full of Charlie’s papers, the one Very had asked me to hold on to. He still hadn’t had a chance to sift through it yet — the manhunt was keeping him busy. There were sales records in there for work she’d sold. Some pretty prominent collectors involved. … Letters. One from her sister in San Francisco, who was going through a difficult pregnancy and wondering whether the baby would save her marriage. Another from a man named Alan Berger, who lived on East Sixty-third and whom she’d evidently dumped for Ferris. I set this letter aside. … Clippings — rave reviews for her work from the
Times
,
Newsweek
,
Artnews.
… Tax returns for the past two years. Passport. Checkbook, bank statements, canceled checks. I leafed through her checkbook. She’d evidently taken care of their domestic life in Gramercy Park — New York Telephone, Con Edison, Allstate. Each entry was in her square, careful handwriting. I yanked the rubber band off the canceled checks and rifled through them. She was organized. In the lower left-hand corner of each check she’d detailed precisely what service had been rendered. Phone service, April. Home insurance, first quarter …

And then I saw it. One particular canceled check. And a bomb went off in my head. That odd fact. Here it was. And here was the key that unlocked the door. Maybe. I glanced at grandfather’s Rolex. It was six-thirty now. What better time to catch someone in. I reached for the phone and dialed the party whose name was on that check. Someone who was rather surprised by my call, especially at this hour, but who was not at all uncooperative. We talked briefly. But plenty long enough to confirm my worst suspicions. I hung up shaking, my mouth dry.

It all made sense now. Horrible, ugly sense. Worse than I could have imagined, and I have a vivid imagination. Now I knew why I couldn’t write Ferris Rush’s story yet. I was wrong. About all of it. We were all wrong.

But I’d need Very’s help if I was going to make it right.

He was waiting for me with his bike out in front of the building on Fortieth and Lex where Skitsy’s company, Murray Hill Press, had their offices. The secretaries in their summer dresses and Reeboks were eyeballing him standing there in his tank top and spandex shorts as they went through the revolving door. He was ignoring them. He was too busy glowering at me.

“Yo, what’s this all about, dude?” he demanded coldly, muscular arms crossed in front of his chest.

“A theory I want to test out, Lieutenant,” I explained. “Can’t do it without you.”

“Seem you can do
plenty
without me,” he said, jaw working his gum.

“I can?”

“You purposely slipped your tail outside of the Lincoln Tunnel, disappeared for two whole fucking days. I wanna know where.”

“Didn’t you speak to my ex-wife?”

“Sure, I spoke to her. Got my chain jerked about how sensitive an artist you are, how you require seclusion. … ”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“Show me some respect, huh!” he exploded. “I’m a person! You
talk
to a person! You don’t jerk chains! I want to know where you were! Was it Atlantic City?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He waited for me to tell him more. When I didn’t, he started nodding to his own personal beat, the muscles of his neck and shoulders bunched tightly. “Okay. That’s cool. You wanna fuck around, we’ll fuck around — in a interrogation room. Let’s go.”

“Wait, Lieutenant. Hold on. All I’m asking of you is —”

“Too fucking much, dude. I’m trying to find a guy who blew away two ladies. The trail’s cold. My stomach is in involuntary spasms. You’re holding out on me. And
now
you expect me to play along blind with you. Uh-uh. No way. I’m coming down on you — suspicion of aiding and abetting. You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be —”

“Okay, okay, Lieutenant. You win. What do you want to know?”