Final Edit (14 page)

He stiffened. “Yes?” No
sir
this time.

“I recognized her—at least I think I recognized her, and I wonder if you could tell me—is her name Althea Frank?”

If I thought I could catch Victor the doorman off his guard, I was sadly mistaken. He gave me the kind of look I myself reserve
for IRS auditors.

“We don’t give out no such information,” he said.

For a moment I thought I might try this gambit:
Look, I just met the woman this afternoon, and it was love at first sight, but I don’t have her name, so I followed her here.
You wouldn’t want to interrupt the course of true love, would you?
but I decided against it.

“Look,” I said, lowering my voice to a growl, “I’m a private investigator.” I reached in my wallet and flashed a card that
looked vaguely like an official ID; actually it was my Connecticut driver’s license. “My client has asked me to find the lady
in question, and I can’t very well find her”—I leaned heavily on the gutturals—“unless I know her name. It’s worth—” I pulled
out a twenty-dollar bill and waved it at him. He just stared at me, looking like a Hollywood Storm Trooper.

I pulled out a second twenty. Still no response.

On the third twenty, he perked up; at least he permitted himself a thin smile, and on the fourth he grinned broadly, pocketed
my eighty dollars, and said: “The name you want, buddy, is Judith Michaelson. Mrs. Judith Michaelson.”

“Thanks.”

“Apartment 3-D.”

“Thanks again.”

“My pleasure,” said Victor. I could certainly understand
why. “Just don’t tell the lady I told you,” he added, with an unspoken threat as the subtext.

At the corner of Madison and 88th, I looked around to see if I could spot the taxi that had followed me up the avenue. Only
one yellow cab was in sight, parked at the curb across the street. I decided to check it out. When I reached it, I looked
in the back window. The passenger seat was empty. The engine was idling, however, but the overhead signal light was out. I
stuck my head in the driver’s right window.

“Looking for a fare?” I said.

The driver, a short, beefy man in a short-sleeved shirt, wearing a yarmulke on the back of his head, gestured toward his meter,
which was still running.

“I got a fare already.”

I drew away, wondering if it would be worthwhile to wait and see if the cab’s passenger came back. I decided I’d better move
along. Anyway, how could I be sure this was the cab that had trailed me? They all look alike, after all.

Well, now I knew a name. Enough sleuthing for the day. What next?

What was next was Jerry Hart, the sales rep with a problem. When I got back to the office, I asked Hannah if Jerry was around,
and she allowed that he was somewhere on the premises and that she would be happy to track him down.

She found him in record time, and when she brought him to my office, she was glowing, and he was chuckling, so I figured he’d
told one of his famous jokes. Probably the one about the traveling salesman and the private secretary.

“Jerry,” I said, pumping his hand, ‘ I’m so sorry to hear about Ellen. What a rotten goddamn break.”

He waved his hand like a magician, and like magic his
smile disappeared. Jerry was short, paunchy, balding, nobody’s idea of a sharp operator, but no Willy Loman, either. He was
a damn good sales rep, the kind of man who, if one of the stores he serviced was burned out, would show up the next morning
to help clean up the mess and restore the stock, not only our books but other publishers’ books as well. At Christmastime
he always volunteered to work as an unpaid salesclerk in one of his customers’ shops.

At the same time, he was not one of our more literary reps. When asked what a book was about, Jerry might reply: “It’s about
twenty dollars.” If nothing else, Jerry was honest; he wouldn’t attempt to fake it with a bookseller, by pretending he’d read
a book when he hadn’t.

“Jerry,” I once asked him, “do you ever read
anything?”

He took a long few minutes to answer me. “I read everything you provide me, Nick. The title information sheets. The catalog.
The advance reviews. The author’s track record. I tell them everything they need to know except the least important thing
of all—what I personally think of the book. If I read it and thought it stunk, I’d have to say so. If I loved it, it wouldn’t
be me being businesslike, it would be only one man’s opinion.”

Then he looked straight at me, and with his leprechaun’s grin, said: “But I don’t make too many mistakes, do I, Nick?”

He was right. Somehow he had an uncanny knack of putting the right quantities of a book—or nearly the right quantities—into
the right stores. His returns were lower than anyone else’s on our sales force; his sell-through was always at the top of
the charts. That he loved books, I was sure; he just didn’t
read
them. I could live with that.

And somehow I knew we had to keep him working for the good of the firm.

“Jerry,” I said, “Mary Sunday tells me you want to come in out of the cold.”

“That’s right, Nick.”

I opened the humidor on my desk, took out a cigar and offered it to him. He fondled it for a moment and then stuck it in his
inside coat pocket.

“Thanks, Nick. I’ll save it for a special occasion.”

Just then the phone rang softly. Just once, before Hannah intercepted the call in the outer office, but the single ring was
enough to give me an idea.

“Jerry,” I said, “you’re too young to retire, and too good to leave the book business—”

“Nice of you to say so, Nick.”

“—so I’m going to make you a proposition.”

“I’m listening.”

“For some time I’ve thought that Barlow and Company ought to have a telemarketing department.”

“Like the big boys? Simon and Schuster… Random House… Doubleday?”

“Exactly. These days personal sales calls are costing us up to two hundred fifty dollars each, and there are stores it just
isn’t worthwhile to send a rep to. Stcres who do enough business with us, however, to rate a regular phone call.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Well, here’s my proposition, Jerry Give up the road, come back into the office, and set up a telemarketing department for
me. I can’t pay you as much as you’re earning with your commissions and bonuses, but—”

Jerry waved his hand in dismissal. “I’m sure you’ll be fair, Nick.”

“So how about it?”

“Well…” He was silent for several long minutes, and then a “Have a nice day” smile creesed his face. “You
wouldn’t do this just as a favor to me and Ellen, would you?”

“Abso
lutely
not. I’m in this business to make money, Jerry.”

And sometimes,
I added to myself,
sometimes we
do
make money.

“Then I accept.’

“Good.”

Hart stood up, and we shook hands. At the door he turned and said: “I thank you, Nick. And my wife will thank you, too.”

“The hell with the thanks, just do a good job.”

When my office door had closed behind Jerry Hart, I buzzed Hannah.

“Yes, Nick?”

“Call Little, Brown for me, please, Hannah, and see if you can locate a Susan Markham. That’s the New York not the Boston
office.”

“Will do.”

A few minutes later, my call was put through, and I was listening to a voice that rose at least an octave when I said hello.

“Nick Barlow! How pleasant to hear from you.”

“I’ve been meaning to call. I got your letter, Susan, and I would like to see you.”

“Of course, Nick. What do you suggest?”

I glanced down at my desk calendar. For the balance of the week, it was a tabula rasa.

“If it’s not too short notice, how about cocktails this evening?”

“I’d like that,” she said, and once again her voice took a thrilling little leap. “Where?”

“Let’s say… the St. Regis. King Cole Room. Six o’clock.”

“I’ll be there. And thanks for calling, Nick.”

“My pleasure.”

When I had replaced the phone in its cradle, these lines of Ezra Pound’s occurred to me: “It rests me to be among beautiful
women. Why should we lie about these things? I repeat: It rests me to converse with beautiful women, even though we talk nothing
but nonsense. The purring of the invisible antennae is both stimulating and delightful.”

“Nick,” said Hannah a short while later, “Lieutenant Hatcher is here and would like to see you.”

I groaned.
Oh shit, what now?
“Sure. Send him in.”

Despite the weather—it was hot enough outside to suggest that June was somehow already pushing into July—Hatcher was wearing
a wool suit; his collar and tie looked uncomfortably tight. He took out a bright red handkerchief, the kind cowboys tie around
their necks and passed it across his forehead.

“Sit down, Lieutenant. Take a load off your feet.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Pretty hot out there, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Makes me glad I’m not still walking a beat.”

“What can I do for you?”

He cleared his throat, paused, then cleared it a second time. Another one of his pregnant pauses—there’s that cliché again—finally
brought forth this: “Mr. Barlow, were you aware that you’re mentioned in Parser Foxcroft’s will?”

“What?”
This was the
last
thing I’d expected Hatcher to say. I stared at him in simon-pure disbelief. If he’d counted on giving me a jolt, he’d succeeded
admirably.

“Foxcroft named you his literary executor.”

“Just what does that mean?”

Hatcher shrugged. “You tell me, you’re the literary man.”

“What I meant to say was,”—and here I cleared
my
throat—“what does that entail?”

Again, he chose not to field my question, but just looked at me with those beady eyes.

I pressed on. “How did you learn that?”

“From his attorney. Man named”—he took out his notebook and flipped it open—“Sherman Archer.”

“And you think that being mentioned in Foxcroft’s will gives me a motive?”

“Did I say that? I didn’t say that.”

I’ll bet you thought it, though, you cunning bastard.

“Anything
else,
Lieutenant?” I said in my best Uriah Heep tone of voice.

He came back at me, Heep for Heep. “Not at the
moment,
thanks.”

Once Hatcher had taken his leave, I asked Hannah to get me Sherman Archer on the phone. When I got through, I skipped the
small talk and stated my business at once.

“Ordinarily,” he said, “we wait to notify the legatees until the will is through probate. However—” Here he sounded uncertain,
as though choosing whether to hem or to haw. “—however, you know what the police are like…” Then: silence.

“Tell me, Mr. Archer,” I said. “What do you think I’ll be facing as… literary executor for the late Parker Foxcroft?”

“There are letters, of course. Private papers. And a good many computer disks.”

“When do you think I might have access to them?”

“Anytime you wish, Mr. Barlow.”

“I’m wondering…”

“What?”

“Why Parker named
me
to deal with his literary remains.”

“Well, sir,” Archer said, “Parker Foxcroft was certain that a horde of scholars would descend from academia to do his literary
biography once he was dead. As a result, he probably saved every note he ever committed to paper.”

Lucky me, to inherit all of Parker’s laundry lists! On the other hand
—

“On the other hand,” said Joe Scanlon, detective cum author, when I told him the news, “we may turn up something in all those
files.”

“Are you suggesting I turn detective myself?”

“Our chief purpose, as I understand it,” he said, “is to clear you of any suspicion. If in the course of doing so, we find
out who killed the man and why, so much the better.”

“I don’t know but—well, I suppose you’re right, Joe.”

“Just let me know when you’re ready to start. Ready for
us
to start, that is.”

By the time the cocktail hour rolled around, I was feeling more than one galvanic charge of anticipation. I thought I’d better
opt for prudence as against daring, and go to the St. Regis without any amorous expectations, so that I would not be disappointed
no matter what happened. After all, why should Susan Markham be interested in me romantically? There had been that hint of
a flirtation in Washington, but any ardor she felt then may well have cooled down by now.

When I got to the King Cole Room, she was already there, sitting at a corner table. A good sign, I thought. I appreciate punctuality,
even though I recognize, as one publisher friend of mine put it, that it’s “the thief of time.”
Get somewhere early enough, and you’re bound to be kept waiting.

She looked and smiled as I approached the table.

“Susan.”

“Hello, Nick.” She held out her hand, and I gathered it into both of mine.

She was striking in a slouchy silk pajama suit, black and white stripes and cut deep, almost to the waist. She was wearing
a long rope of pearls and a black beret. When she leaned forward and inched sidewise on the banquette to make room for me,
the Vandyke collar of her suit opened slightly to reveal the curve of her breasts, and prudence, in my case, suffered a pronounced
setback. She was one damned good-looking woman.

“I’m glad you could join me on such short notice,” I said.

“Thank you for asking me.” She smiled again. Her teeth, as I had earlier observed, were fine and a brilliant white, rather
small but even. In short, perfect.

That did not quite complete my inventory of the Susan Markham person. Her legs were largely concealed by the table and pants
of her pajama suit, but her hands, resting flat now on her lap, were quite slim and elegant, the fingers long, with bright
crimson nails. She wore only one ring, a star sapphire on her right ring finger.

She laughed suddenly, a short, nervous laugh, not at anything I said, because I didn’t say anything.
Satisfied?
her eyes seemed to say to me.

“I like your outfit,” was the best line I could come up with.