Final Edit (8 page)

“For now.”

Dismissed from my own conference room, for God’s sweet sake, that was one hell of a note!

I was quite certain now that this was going to be a day when little or no business would be done in the offices of Barlow
& Company.

However, I didn’t reckon on the tenacity, the fierce concentration, of my editor in chief. Not long after I returned to my
office, slammed the door, and lay back on my couch, hands locked behind my head, I heard a soft knock from the adjoining office.

“Come in, Sidney.”

He peered around the edge of the door, hesitating to come all the way in. “You’re sh-sure you duh-don’t mind, Nick?”

“I don’t mind, Sidney. Not you, anyway.”

“It’s hell having the cuh-cuh-cops all over the place, no?”

I did not feel his question needed a reply. Sidney had always been sensitive to my changes of temper and forgiving of my occasional
moodiness. He merely nodded and pressed on.

“I’ve guh-got something that might interest you, NuhNick.”

“What is it, Sidney?” I said, sounding, I supposed, rather like Eeyore conversing with Christopher Robin.

“A promising nuh-new author,” he said. “Nick, it’s your cup of tea, not muh-mine. A puh-private eye. Fuh-female.”

I brightened instantly, as though I had been confronted with a balance sheet showing nothing but black ink. Female P.I.’s
were, at the moment, at least, highly fungible. I didn’t have one, how I would love to have one.
Yes, yes, yes.

“Tell me more, Sidney.”

“Well, Nick, it cuh-came over the fuh-fucking… over the fuh-fucking…”

“Transom?”

“Right!”

That meant it was submitted by the author directly, and
not through an agent. Better and better. One of my colleagues has a sampler behind his desk which reads: “An agent to a publisher
is as a knife to the throat.” I think most of us in the trade would applaud that sentiment.

“Who’s the author?” I said.

“A wuh-woman—”

“I would hope so.”

He ignored my feeble jest. “—nuh-named Sarah Goodall.”

“What do we have, Sidney? Outline and chapters? A complete manuscript?”

“Muh-manuscript,” he said with a deep sigh. For Sidney, speaking at any length must be like what running a marathon would
be for most of us. And I know for a fact that Sidney
has
run the New York Marathon.

“Give it to me, please, Sidney,” I said, “before I break down and cry.”

He did, and I didn’t. Instead, I packed a manuscript of comforting heft into my attaché case and headed for home, knowing
I would not want for bedtime reading.

Hope lived once again in my mercenary publisher’s heart.

Home for me is a town house, number 2 Gramercy Park. The house is located on the western side of the park. The block is not
altogether pristine, that is, not all the houses are original historic landmark buildings, but mine certainly is, built sometime
around 1885. Walking there from my office, I stopped again outside to admire its lines. The front stoop that I’m sure once
fronted the street has been replaced by a recessed entryway, but the rest of the façade remains as it originally was; I know
this because I have seen early photographs. Like The Players, number 2 was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White
fame. The façade is limestone, peach in color, with two large windows on the second floor, two on the third, and an oxeye
on the top story, where there is also a small terrace. The roof I altered by adding a deck for sunbathing and for cocktails
or brunch in fine weather. Despite the naysayers, there
are
glorious days in New York City. Someone once wrote that if it had not been such a superb natural seaport, consequently a
center of trade and commerce, the climate might have made Manhattan Island a playground on the order of Hilton Head or
Fire Island. Alas, there are days when it is windier than Chicago ever was, rendering my rooftop aerie unusable.

Inside, I also find much to admire, beginning with a long hallway covered with white-and-black-checked ceramic tile, a steep
hardwood staircase, the original white brick wall on the left, and immediately on the right, a long, wide, high-ceilinged
living room. This room I created when I bought the house, by having a wall knocked down between two nineteenth-century parlors,
one no doubt for the gentlemen, in which they could smoke their cigars, sip their brandy, and talk politics, and the other
for the ladies, to gossip and do needlepoint or whatever nineteenth-century ladies did. Two sliding doors led into a large
formal dining room, which, like the living room, has a wood-burning fireplace. Then comes the kitchen—completely contemporary,
of course, but with brass plumbing, a butcher-block carving table in the center, with copper pots hanging overhead, two deep
ovens, and a microwave. Here my cook, Pepita, holds sway, her wonders to perform. Out back a walled-in formal garden with
a fountain, a pool stocked with Japanese carp and goldfish, and a sundial. Upstairs… well, the upstairs rooms are what might
be expected: bedrooms, a suite for Pepita and her husband, Oscar, a sitting room, bathrooms, the usual.

I realize that all this might sound pretentious, even ostentatious, but it is not, really. I have been in Manhattan town houses
that are equipped with gymnasiums, movie theaters, and indoor swimming pools; me, I prefer a dwelling place that might have
survived untouched from the Victorian period, fine antiques and all, except with all the modern conveniences.

Oscar, my houseman cum chauffeur, met me at the door and relieved me of my hat and stick. In a brass salver on a
side table in the hallway were several messages Oscar or Pepita had collected for me. I pocketed them and headed upstairs.

Once I had changed into slacks and a sport shirt, I buzzed Oscar and asked him to bring me a vodka and tonic. When that had
been safely placed on the coffee table in my sitting room, along with a wedge of Camembert and rice crackers, I leafed through
the messages.

Neither Oscar nor Pepita is an adept of our mother tongue, and their interpretations of my callers’ names in particular were
somewhat garbled; however, I was able to make out all but one; and for that one I would have to rely on the phone number.
One of the messages was from Margo. I decided to call her first.

“Nick,” she said when I got her on the line, “are you all right?”

“Absolutely. After all, murder is an everyday affair around my office.”

“You must be serious, Nick.”

“When was I ever otherwise?”

I had not spoken to Margo since my call from Washington, and I suddenly felt a compelling need to see her again.

“Margo…”

“Yes?”

“I feel a compelling need to see you.”

“When?”

“Tonight.” Realizing that I might sound somewhat peremptory, I added: “If you’re not otherwise occupied, that is.”

“Well…”

“Yes?”

“Come on over, Nick. I’ll whip up something—an omelet
and a salad, maybe. Bring something from your cellar, okay?”

“I’ll be there within the hour,” I said, and hung up.

The second message was from my brother, Tim, and his calls were infrequent and almost always important. He picked up his phone
almost before it had started to ring.

“Nick,” he said. “Buddy. I thought you ought to know.

Mother has been carrying on something ferocious.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it’s your man Mandelbaum. He’s got Gertrude convinced that you’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Not you, I mean Barlow
and Company.”

“Oh, beautiful. Just what I need. Shit!
Sheeit.”

“I hope you’re planning a trip out to Weston this weekend.”

“I wasn’t, but—”

“You will.”

“I will indeed.”

“Some excitement, isn’t there?”

“I see you watch the five o’clock news,” I said.

“Faithfully. The outside of your office building is quite photogenic, you know, Nick?”

“So is the interior. Anyway, no matter what they say, I didn’t do it.”

“I want to hear all about it.”

I bet you do,
I thought. Tim is the nearest thing I know to an armchair detective. In his case the armchair has wheels, it is true, but
in it, he reigns like a monarch of the cerebral, seldom more than a few paces from his Macintosh and his modem, his library
of several thousand volumes, his fax machine. I do believe that if Tim reads something once, he will remember it for at least
a year, and if he reads it twice, he will remember it forever.

“Do your best to calm Mother down,” I said, “and I’ll see you on Friday evening.”

“D’accord.”

My last message was the one I couldn’t decipher, so I dialed the number.

“Seven eight seven four two hundred,” a voice chirped. If there’s one telephone practice I detest, it is hearing someone answer
with a number instead of a name.
I know the number I’m calling, damn it, I just don’t know whose number it is!

It was a struggle to keep my tone of voice civil, but I did my best. “Whom have I reached, please?”

“Kay McIntire and Associates.”

“This is Nicholas Barlow. I believe Ms. McIntire called and left a message for me.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Barlow.” I waited while vaguely symphonic music played tinnily in my ear. I continue to wonder why people
resort to telephone music, which is merely elevator music of poorer sound quality, when silence is so much simpler and more
soothing to the ear. I realize I sound like a curmudgeon, but then, that is precisely the reputation I have and must steadfastly
uphold.

“Hello, Nick. Thanks for getting back so promptly.” The voice of Kay McIntire was the real telephone music: husky and warm.

“You’re working late, aren’t you, Kay?”

“An agent’s day is never done.”

“Or a publisher’s, either. You called.”

“Yes. I have pleasant news for you.”

“Oh? I’m glad. It’s been only unpleasant since yesterday evening.”

“I know. I heard about Parker on ‘Good Day, New York.’ What can we say, Nick?”

“Only that now he knows something we don’t know.”

Her laugh, like her voice, was throaty and soft. “You never liked him much, did you?”

“I liked his credits,” I said. “But it’s too soon to figure out what his epitaph ought to be, isn’t it?”

“The editor’s editor?”

“Surely,” I hastened to say, “you didn’t call to praise Parker?”

“No, you’re right. Nor to bury him, either. I called to tell you that Herbert Poole wants to talk book with you. Mystery novel.”

“That’s welcome news indeed, Kay. Like when?”

“Can you fit him in this week?”

“Lunch on Friday, perhaps? Just the three of us.”

“Let me look.” I waited with my own pocket diary at the ready. She was back almost immediately. “That’ll be fine. You say
where.”

“The Century,” I suggested. “Twelve-thirty.” We murmured our goodbyes and rang off.

Herbert Poole, best-selling author,
I said to myself.
He had written three losers and then, with his fourth novel,
Big Casino!
Welcome to Barlow and Company, Herbert
—
I hope.
My motto had proved out again, hadn’t it? “Something will turn up.”

With two bottles of 1990 Nuits-St.-Georges in a canvas book bag with the inscription “TEMPUS VITA LIBRI” on its flank—a souvenir
of the recent ABA Convention—I cabbed to Margo’s apartment on the Upper East Side. The doorman greeted me by name, which startled
me slightly, because I had not been there all that often; Margo cherishes her privacy rather more than I do mine. “Evening,
Henry,” I said, and headed for the elevator.

The apartment is listed as a semi-duplex. The rent, which
is stabilized, is somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars a month, I believe. It is almost, but not quite, on
Sutton Place.

The door was slightly ajar when I arrived at her floor, so I walked in and down a flight of seven steps leading from the entrance
gallery to the living room, which has high chalk-white walls and a powder-blue ceiling, a somewhat ecclesiastical window,
leaded and fourteen feet high, and a lot of furniture covered with chintz, white with giant cabbage roses. A grand piano with
the top slanted up made a splendid silhouette against the windows, which looked down on a fashionable, urban view of the Queensboro
Bridge, with the wastes of Yorkville reaching northward and the white stone monolith of the Cornell Medical Center standing
out in the night like a fresh bandage on dirty skin. Car lights flashed across the bridge and there were hundreds of golden
squares of light on the sheer apartment-house walls. The stars, as always in Manhattan, were blotted out by the lights of
the city, and there was no moon in the sky.

Margo called out from the kitchen. “Come on in, Nick. Fix yourself a drink.”

I went straight to Margo’s bar, switched on the fluorescent light, and proceeded to build myself a dry Absolut martini, straight
up, with an olive—ice-cold, of course, and stirred, not shaken.

Margo joined me as I sat on a barstool, sipping away, contented as a pig in clover, though I would not wish anyone but me
to apply that metaphor to myself. She was wearing a black silk cocktail dress, cut low and square in the bodice, and rustling
slightly as she moved. There was an apron in her hand, which she tossed on a nearby chair, just before reaching up and kissing
me.

“Nick,” she said, beaming at me with her cat-green eyes and flashing her tiny, perfectly shaped white teeth, “we have a lot
to catch up on, starting with murder and working backward to the ABA.”

Margo and I have gotten along much better since we divorced than we did in the last year or so of our five-year marriage,
and I still find her the most alluring woman I know. Unfortunately she does not necessarily find me always the pick of my
gender. Ah well, I keep making the manly seductive effort. I lifted my glass in a silent toast.

“May I fix you something?” I said after a liquid pause.

“I’ll wait for the wine. I’m sure it’s superb.”

“It ought to be. The 1990 Bordeaux were the best vintages for red burgundy in over thirty years.”