Foul Matter (25 page)

The trouble was that Dwight Staines had a way of asking, What do you think of this character or of that twist in the plot? Did you like the scene where—? That’s what Mercy Morganstein, Dwight’s former editor at Quagmire, had told Clive when she was chirruping away about Dwight. Mercy Morganstein was moving to another house. Hard to believe that the woman had actually liked these books. What she’d—what
they’d
—minded so much at Quagmire (she’d told him) was their not being able to work with “our Dwight.”

“Mercy,” Clive had asked her, “did you ever talk to Staines about going with you?”

No, she hadn’t. It had never occurred to her to do that. She’d sounded offended, as if this practice were unheard of and underhanded. It might have been underhanded, but it was hardly unheard of. An editor would be some kind of chump if he didn’t cart off as many writers as he could. It happened all the time when editors changed houses. The writers themselves would initiate this move if they had developed a tight relationship with their editors. But there was no convincing Mercy of this, and since Dwight Staines must be aware she was leaving, well, maybe he didn’t care or didn’t want her as an editor. Or, rather, he knew on which side his bread was buttered, for Mackenzie-Haack’s image was that of a “literary” publisher, whereas Quagmire’s was almost completely commercial. “Our Dwight” seemed to want to move up a rung. “Our Dwight” was an idiot if he really thought a more literary publisher would turn his sow’s ear into a silk purse. Oh, well. Dwight (Clive had heard) was doing one of his book tours, which would keep him out of the Mackenzie-Haack offices for three weeks.

It was all a fucking mirage as far as Clive was concerned. But it was a mirage a lot of people swore was really that shining patch of water they took it for. All of these editors’ assistants and associate editors working at salaries so low you’d call it slavery, they wanted nothing but to become full-blown editors. The image they packed around was of Peter Genero and his dogs, or else Tom Kidd and his genius. You couldn’t dissuade them.
You’ll never be Tom Kidd,
he’d told the ones who had voiced this hope.
Never. You’ll be like the rest of us.

Us. When had he started devaluing his own work? That wasn’t hard to pin down: when he’d gone along with Bobby Mackenzie in this whole outrageous charade. Up to then, he hadn’t really given his work all that much thought.

Amy’s voice: “There’s a Blase Pascal here to see you?”

Pronounced by Amy to rhyme with “place.” Clive told Amy to send him in.

Only “he” was a “she.” Clive, who prided himself on his cool head, gaped. Ms. Blaze Pascal (Danny Zito was hardly spelling bee champ) was a very good-looking woman with red hair. Fiery red hair, actually. He’d never seen any red like this red. When the light hit its copper surface, it spat sparks.

He adjusted his expression as he rose to shake her hand and to indicate a comfortable leather chair for her. “You’ll have to pardon me; Danny didn’t tell me you were a woman.”

“Mind if I smoke?” When he made a forgiving gesture, she drew out a silver case, offered him one. He said no, but picked up the table lighter—his nostalgic look back at a pack a day—and lit her cigarette. “Incidentally”—he paused, feeling a bit stupid, but his curiosity was killing him—“your first name, just what is it? How do you pronounce it?”

“Oh? It’s Blaze. B-l-a-z-e, you know, as in fire.” She drew out a strand of hair, raised her eyebrows. “I got the nickname when I was in school and I couldn’t ever get rid of it.”

“I see. Well, I suppose it does suit you.”

She wasn’t listening to him; she was peering around the room. “Some office!” she said. Her glance seemed actually to light on this or that object admiringly—the Chinese vase, the cut-glass whiskey decanter (that Clive used only for visitors; he preferring the gin in the bottom drawer). “It beats mine all to hell, I’ll tell you. Mine’s the stereotype. Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe. The dank and dreary cell with the beige paint. Clients like that, surprisingly. You’d think they’d want some indication of success, palpable images—you know, like the real estate agent who drives a Jag. A visible show of riches. Uh-uh—” She pulled over an ashtray. “Once, I put in an espresso machine, but that kind of threw people off stride. What was I, anyway? A private eye or a Starbucks franchise? No, in this game you gotta stay with the stereotype. It’s hard enough being a woman in the trade, much less one who’s into a lot of yuppie shit. But I’ll tell you, it’ll be nice working for someone who knows the difference between Woolworth’s and Waterford”—here she tapped the cut-glass ashtray with a long fingernail—“and it’s gonna be my last job. Actually, I only said yes because Danny recommended you. Good publisher, he said. I read his book. Not bad. A writer’s life, that sounds like the best—”

He stomped on it. “Ms. Pascal—”

“Blaze.” She held out a strand of hair again, winked at him.

“—you’re not thinking of writing a book, are you?”

“Who,
moi
?” She pressed her hands against the green silk shirt that did much for her breasts. “You’re kidding. It never entered my mind.”

Clive relaxed a little.

“I should tell you, though, I’m particular about the kind of case I take. I don’t do divorces. I don’t bust into crumby hotel rooms with a flash and start snapping pictures. Which I never do; I don’t do stuff in the tits and dick department. I don’t do wires . . .”

As she rambled on, Clive stared. What was going on in the underbelly of New York City, anyway? Where had they come from, these boutique killers who wouldn’t commit to a contract until they got to know their subject? Private eyes with more reservations than Danielle’s on a Thursday night? It was all so damned genteel anymore. He hoped he’d never have to hire a stalker only to be told:
“I don’t do nasty messages; I don’t do telephone calls at three A.M.; I don’t go uptown if they move, which they usually do. I’m strictly TriBeCa, Village, SoHo, Chelsea. I might stretch a point and stalk the East Thirties, on occasion, if it’s absolutely necessary.”

What in hell was New York City coming to?

“Don’t worry. There’s nothing in this job that requires any of that. All I want you to do is follow this person.” (Should he come clean about Candy and Karl?) Clive shoved Ned’s book across the desk, back jacket open.

She picked it up, looked at the photo. “An author! What’s he been up to?”

“Nothing.”

“You just want to know where he goes, what he does. Authors are pretty boring.” She raised the book. “Can I have this?”

“Yes, of course.” Clive felt his feathers slightly ruffled. “I wouldn’t say authors are boring. Not the successful ones, anyway.” Why was he defending them?

“I only mean, whatever goes on, goes on up here.” She tapped a Chinese-red lacquered fingernail against her temple. “Their minds are so juiced up they don’t have any energy left over. Except maybe to go to a movie. See, I went with one once. The guy was so into his thoughts he’d walk straight out in front of a fleet of yellow cabs when the light was changing. Or he’d stand on a corner and gape. Or he’d get on the subway, forget his stop—if he ever had one to begin with—and wander around wherever he did get off. His name was Sam Devene.” The slightly raised eyebrow she turned on Clive suggested that possibly Clive knew him.

“Has it occurred to you that your friend Sam might have had some malady unassociated with writing? I don’t think Mr. Isaly has a problem with traffic and subway stops.” Why was he engaging in this talk? “All you need to do is fly to Pittsburgh tomorrow—”

“Pittsburgh!” She hurtled forward in her chair as if she’d been shot in the back.

Clive shut his eyes. She was going to tell him she only “did” Manhattan (and not all of that).

“I lived there when I was married. Not right in the city. In Sewickley. It was so beautiful, Sewickley. Any chance he’d be going there?”

“I’ve no idea. He was born in Pittsburgh. As you can see from the flap copy.” Clive nodded toward the book in her hands. That’s all he needed, for someone to stroll down memory lane with Ned Isaly. Maybe neither one of them would ever come back, which would solve his problem. “Ned will be going to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a couple of days, perhaps three or four at most.”

“Why’s he going?”

“He’s doing research—Look: does it matter?”

“Just curious. So what do I have to look out for, since you’re not interested in where he goes?”

“Nothing in particular to look out for. I imagine it’s just walking around.” Clive fiddled with his letter opener. “I should tell you: he’s being tailed.”

“What? So what you want me to do is tail the tail? Who’s doing the tailing?”

As she was looking over the top of his desk, probably for another book jacket photo of the tail, he said, in as acid a tone as he could manage, “I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of them.”

“Them? More than one?”

“Yes.”

“So let me get this straight: What you really want is a bodyguard?”

“You could say so, yes. Except in this case the person you follow won’t know he has one.”

She held up her hands, palms toward him. “Just let’s get one thing clear: I don’t do wet work.”

Now, if Dwight Staines (and Danny Zito) had taught him anything, he had taught him this term. “That only applies to hit men. Contract killers.” Clive felt a chill and shivered. “You’d only be acting defensively. And there’ll be no need for anything like that anyway.” He said this with more conviction than he felt.

She appeared to be turning this over in her mind. “Okay, but this’ll cost you double my usual fee. And I’d want some now.”

Clive pulled his checkbook out of a drawer. It hardly seemed right that he couldn’t put this on an expense account. Maybe he could if he called it something else. Wet work. That’d be good. That’d go down in the old expenses column really well. He snickered as he wrote the check, tore it out. “Five thousand. That enough?”

She took it, blew on it. “That should do it. What’s his flight number?”

Clive smiled because he had managed to get this information. There weren’t all that many daily flights to Pittsburgh. “American 204. Leaving Kennedy nine o’clock, Wednesday morning. It’s ticketed electronically.”

“I’ll be going, then.” She rose, book in one hand, purse in the other. “Nice talking to you. Expenses, of course, are added on. Hotels, food, et cetera.”

Clive nodded his understanding, rose, and showed her to the office door. “Enjoy Pittsburgh.”

 

He shoved a wad of
StandOff
into his briefcase, thinking first he’d go to Le Cirque, his usual restaurant, then go home and read it. Home was his co-op on Sutton Place, which he’d first rented, then bought at a considerably lower price than was being offered to strangers off the street.

If Candy and Karl were going to move on Ned, somewhere out of New York would be a golden opportunity, wouldn’t it? When Ned was alone and hadn’t much chance of hooking up with friends, wasn’t as sure of himself or of his surroundings? Maybe as disoriented as Pascal’s boyfriend, Sam?

Clive closed up his briefcase and turned to look out of his window at Manhattan, darkening even as he looked. And as he looked the Chrysler Building’s lights switched on, then the Empire State and MetLife. What a triangle of light it was! No other city in the world had it, that configuration of light. Not London, not even Paris.

And God only knew, not Pittsburgh.

S
aul sat in the living room of his house in the wing chair his greatgrandfather had brought from Paris; he knew even more specifically that it had come from the house of a good friend who lived in the Marais. In all of this time, the chair had never needed reupholstering. Perhaps this was because his family, his grandfather and then his father, had not used it much, out of respect for the old friend. The family wanted to keep it in as perfect condition as possible. It was upholstered in tapestry with a dull gold background upon which unlikely birds embroidered in blues and greens spread their wings.

Saul knew the provenance of every piece of furniture in this room—a hand-painted table belonging to his great-aunt Laura; the butler’s desk his grandfather had chosen to place at the window where he could write letters and do his accounts. Saul also used this table for writing. He had turned it around, though, so he was facing the window rather than the interior; he liked to look out and see the passersby: the au pairs and child tenders pushing baby carriages; joggers; cyclists; old men bent over walking sticks. Their movements did not distract him; he could see them and yet they did not register on his mind as separate beings, but seemed all of one with his writing, though they made no appearances in it.

He wrote at this table every morning and some afternoons, despite Jamie’s thinking he’d “retired.” He felt ashamed that she had drawn this conclusion, but then he reminded himself that this was Jamie, whose output was like a rabbit’s, two and sometimes three books a year, year in, year out.

He read all of her books; he couldn’t imagine not doing so; he was her friend. And he was delighted to find in them glimmers of truly fine writing, though not one taken as a whole was finely written. He didn’t see how it could be, not with the weighty superstructure of one or another genre in whose confines she had to fight her way around. He would have liked to talk to her about this, but who was he, with his monumental problem and minimal output, who seemed never able to get to the end to give advice to someone who could cross the finish line twice yearly?

Rising to get the cigarette box, he walked over to the desk and peered down at the manuscript lying there, pages neatly stacked beside an elderly Olivetti typewriter. Upstairs in a small room off his bedroom was the computer that he used only to type the final draft. When there was a final draft. This manuscript here didn’t look like it would ever become one.