Bloody Horowitz (30 page)

“I agree,” I said. “What do you think we should do?”

Michael thumped his fingers nervously on my desk. For a moment he looked like a piano player trying to find a tune. “I suppose we have no real choice,” he said at length. “If we don't publish them, somebody else probably will and we'll not only lose the profit, we'll upset Anthony. But I really don't think we can let them go ahead as they are. We're going to have to make some cuts.”

“What cuts do you think are needed?” I asked.

“I have them here.” Michael opened his leather briefcase and took out a sheet of paper. He unfolded it and set it in front of him. “There are seven cuts I have in mind,” he said. “They're simply too violent and unpleasant. They'll have to go.”

“May I see?”

He turned the piece of paper around and this is what I read.

I counted up the number of cuts that Michael was demanding. There were seven of them, just as he had said. I thought for a moment. “If we were able to persuade Anthony to make these cuts,” I asked, “do you think we would be able to publish the book?”

Michael paused before speaking. I could see that he was reticent to answer my question. “I suppose we could slip it out without anyone noticing,” he admitted. “Perhaps if we published it just after an Alex Rider book . . . without advertising it.”

“But what if he refuses to make the cuts?”

“Then I think we'd be putting our reputation on the line. Honestly, Don, I think it would be a mistake.”

It was almost lunchtime. The Penguin offices are at the southern end of Manhattan, with SoHo a five-minute walk away. We have some of the best food in the city close at hand, and as it happened, I had been invited to a brand-new Tex-Mex/Japanese fusion restaurant, the only place in the city where the sushi came deep fried. I was hungry and eager to be on my way.

“Well, you'll have to go and talk with him,” I concluded.

Michael went pale—and he had never been what I would call deeply colored to begin with. “I really would rather not,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“Well . . . I know this is a terrible thing to say, but . . .”

“Come on, Michael! Spit it out!” I didn't know whether to be annoyed or concerned.

“It's just that Anthony worries me. If you really want the truth, Don, I sometimes wonder if he's right in the head.”

This was news to me. I sat back in my chair, astonished. Michael went on.

“He sits on his own all day in an apartment in London. I've heard it's right next door to the Smithfield meat market. It's like a crematorium with great slabs of raw flesh hanging on hooks. Apparently he has a human skull on his desk. It was given to him when he was a boy. And there's a horrible spider in a glass case . . . I know he can be very pleasant when he wants to be, but sometimes I look into his eyes and I see something strange.” He took a deep breath. “Be honest. You've read these stories. Don't you think you'd have to be a little bit disturbed to write something like them?”

“Lots of authors write horror stories,” I responded. “Look at Stephen King. And Darren Shan for that matter. Are you saying they're all crazy?”

“No. I'm just saying they have a dark side, and with some of them you can't be sure where that fictional dark side ends and the real one begins.”

This was going nowhere. I decided to draw the meeting to a close. “Listen,” I said. “All we're doing is asking Anthony to make seven cuts in a book that will be three hundred pages long. I can't see that he'll complain. I'm sure that he'll be delighted that we're publishing the book at all.”

“He's very precious about his work, Don. You don't know him the way I do. His books are full of death. And you haven't spent hours with him, arguing . . .”

“I want you to go over to London and see him. Don't look so gloomy, Michael. I'm in a generous mood. I'll give you two days' vacation. Maybe you can visit Buckingham Palace or something. See some theater.” I got up and opened the door for him. “Just make sure you're back here in a week with the changes settled.”

Michael flew to London to see Anthony the following Tuesday. His meeting was at 2:30 P.M.

He did not call the next day. Nor did he e-mail. I figured he must be jet-lagged. And then, to be honest, I forgot all about him. Maybe that was wrong of me, but I'm a busy man.

The first I knew that something was wrong was when I got a telephone call from his wife, Elece. Michael's return flight had been scheduled for Tuesday night. He hadn't been on it. No one had heard from him. Elece had reported him as a missing person to the police.

I'm not quite sure what I thought about this. Editors, even the best ones, can be highly-strung people and I wondered if Michael hadn't simply taken off for a tour of Europe. The last time I had seen him he had, after all, been in a state of nervous excitement. The police actually came to Penguin to investigate. I spoke to a nice detective and I was relieved that he didn't seem to be too worried. He was sure that Michael would turn up.

He did, two days later.

In London.

Floating facedown in the River Thames.

It seemed that he had been attacked by a maniac. The killer had taken a knife to him. He had been stabbed repeatedly and then thrown off the Waterloo Bridge. I saw the headlines in the daily paper that night as, dazed and distressed, I made my way home.

Seven cuts. . . .

I'm sure it was just a coincidence. I mean, I'm not suggesting that a bestselling author would descend into madness and murder to defend his work. Absolutely not. And I can promise you that Michael's unfortunate death played absolutely no part in my decision.

But in the end, I went ahead. I decided to let the stories appear exactly as Anthony had written them. I didn't want to upset him—that's all. Perfectly understandable, don't you think?

I just hope you enjoyed them more than I did.