Foul Matter (35 page)

This was probably the single piece of evidence police would choose to withhold. Ned had read enough of Jamie’s novels to know that. Too late now.

The disaster scene—though short a documented disaster—was in fact becoming a block party, with the café owner distributing coffee and bottled water to whoever wanted it.

“A red Porsche was seen speeding away from the scene; there is speculation as to whether it was a failed drive-by shooting or if the Porsche transported the missing child, whose mother, described as a redhead in her midthirties, has not come forward.”

Ned wandered on to another clutch of people, the onlookers dying to be interviewed, claiming to have witnessed one thing or another. Here was another newscaster (Nicole in sea green with a frothy collar) from another channel, this one Channel 13, according to the print on the big white van stationed near her.

“—blonde in dark glasses and a trench coat who appeared to have shoved this carriage—” Here she gave the empty baby carriage a poignant look before returning to her brisk manner.

Ned moved around with his pistachio ice cream cone and made his way to a police officer to tell him he, too, had seen the red Porsche, which struck him as acting suspiciously. “It was at Schenley Park, driving around slowly, you know, circling around more than once.”

“You didn’t see the driver?” The officer had his small notebook out, taking down what Ned said.

“No.”

“Nothing else you can tell me?”

Ned shook his head. “No. Nothing. Are you sure there was a baby in that carriage?”

The policeman frowned. “Why wouldn’t there be? It was a baby carriage.”

Ned shrugged. “Just a thought. I mean did anyone actually
see
the baby?”

The officer studied Ned for five seconds and then said, “What kind of ice cream is that? I’ve never seen green before.”

“Pistachio. Isaly’s.”

“Oh.”

“You want some, there’s a store just three doors down.”

The policeman nodded and returned his notebook to his pocket.

“That’s my name, Ned Isaly.”

“No kidding?”

“It’s my family. I’m from here, from Pittsburgh.”

The officer nodded, not terribly interested in this personal history. He looked toward the ice cream shop. “Did they have any Rocky Road?”

“Oh, they must have.”

“You’re visiting your family, then?”

“Not really. My mother and father are dead.”

“But there must be a lot of other Isalys.”

“Well, yes. I don’t know any I’m directly related to, though.”

“Oh.” The policeman looked puzzled by this obscure relationship. “Well, I guess I’ll go check, see if they have any Rocky Road.”

“Probably, they do.”

“Nice talking to you.”

 

Ned pondered the scene that had taken place that afternoon and which he had a hard time believing was an honest to God crime scene. It struck him as an event—no, a nonevent—he might want to write into his novel. He stopped halfway to the bar and thought of the possible implications of such a thing happening to Nathalie in the Jardin des Plantes. In the hands of a Camus or a Kafka, the blackness of the comedy would shine like ink.

But think (he walked on, giving the blonde on the lobby sofa an absentminded smile): Nathalie . . . couldn’t it be used to show her self-delusion? Why not? Certainly not in the last part of the story, but in the first part? Nathalie with an ice cream cone. What was that famous ice cream you used to be able to get only on the Ile St.-Louis? He remembered that ice cream vividly—Bertelsmann’s? No, that was the German conglomerate that was eating up publishing houses. This ice cream—Berthillon, that was it!—had the most nuanced selection he had ever tasted, far more subtle than Isaly’s. It was the fine print of ice cream, the slow sunrise of ice cream: “Maron glacé,” “Grand Marnier,” “Amandine.” Stuff like that.

He was leaning against the bar and registered some conversational buzz before he realized the talk was directed at him. “What? Sorry. I was thinking.” He was being introduced to Clive.

Ned gave Clive a sort of smiling frown. “Aren’t you with Mackenzie-Haack?”

“I am. I’ve never had a chance to talk with you, though. You’re always jammed up (Clive was getting somewhere with the argot) with Tom Kidd.”

Ned asked the bartender for a beer. “Yes. Well, he’s my editor.”

As if everybody at Mackenzie-Haack, indeed of all of New York publishing, didn’t know. “I admire your work. I really do.”

“Thanks. What are you doing in Pittsburgh? Bobby trying to nab some writer?”

Clive was surprised that Ned had any consciousness at all of the underground (not to mention underhanded) workings of his publishing house. “Nab” didn’t necessarily mean “steal.” Except where Bobby was concerned, it did.

Clive smiled; since he couldn’t use the Dwight Staines excuse for being here, he’d have to find another reason, but let it go for the moment, saying, “Do you know Dwight Staines?”

Dwight turned toward Ned, eager to meet anyone famous, or, rather, eager to have the anyone meet him. Dwight knew that Ned Isaly wasn’t in the same ballpark—hell, wasn’t in the same hemisphere—when it came to royalties. “Me, I’m here on a book tour. This is my first stop. Tomorrow it’s Chicago.”

Having nothing to say about book tours, Ned simply nodded. Clive was sure you couldn’t get Ned on a book tour at gunpoint. Well, he didn’t care much for that analogy. Clive always thought there were two kinds of writers: public and private. He preferred the private ones. On the other hand, didn’t readers deserve to see a writer they were paying out a good bit of money to read over the years?

“It’s already on the
TBR,
” said Dwight.

“No,” said Clive, “it isn’t. It can’t be because the pub date was only four days ago.” Why was he arguing with this idiot?

Dwight brushed that aside. “I meant it
will
be. Have you read it?”

The question was addressed to Candy and Karl.

“No. I’m reading Ned’s.” Karl held up
Solace.

Dwight brushed that aside as he had the
TBR.
“Hell, that’s five years old.” He said this as if quality could rub off the book like dust from a butterfly’s wing. “My new one is a megamonster! Creepy as hell!”

Arthur said, “I can believe it,” and drank his bourbon.

While Dwight was monopolizing the conversation, Blaze appeared at Clive’s elbow, burnished hair glowing like cognac. “Oh, Bla—” Wait. Was he supposed to know her? “Uh, sorry, have you met—?” Clive waved his hand around.

Blaze said, “It’s Betty. Betty Bunting. People call me Baby.” She moved over to Ned’s part of the bar, laid her hand on his arm, and ordered herself a martini.

Sally squinted toward the people at the bar. These drugstore glasses were killing her, the magnification was so strong. But she certainly knew the woman with the fiery hair. “Bloody hell,” she said, slapping down her copy of
Architectural Digest.
She rose, flounced across the lobby to the elevator bank, and fairly threw herself into one.

Ned turned to Candy and Karl. “What’re you guys doing here?” He laughed as if their presence were outlandishly amusing.

“Remember?” said Karl. “We’re from here.”

“Yeah,” said Candy, “the both of us. Funny running into you. And here’s another pal of ours—” He introduced Arthur.

Ned started to shake hands at the same time he felt a hand on his shoulder. “What the hell—?
Saul!
Where in hell did
you
pop up from?”

Saul shrugged, smiled. “Manhattan. I got bored.”

“You could’ve gone to the Bahamas for
that.
”

Saul ordered a Dewar’s for himself and another round for everyone else, tossing a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

Clive was simply stunned. “You’re Saul Prouil. I’m an editor at Mackenzie-Haack. I’m a great admirer of your work. I feel honored.”

Saul thanked him. “There’s no honor in it, believe me.”

Ned shook his head. “The only person missing is—
Sally
?”

Saul turned and stared for here she came walking across the lobby as if she were perfectly at home in it, even wigless and minus her dark-rimmed glasses.

“Sally!”

“Well,” she said, “aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” It was the one friend, Blaze, she had her eye trained on.

“Betty,” said Blaze. “My friends call me Baby.”

Sally nodded at the half circle of people around the bar, realizing too late she hadn’t made up an excuse for being there. “For God’s sakes,” she said with a little laugh. “We might as well be in Swill’s.”

“Yeah,” said Candy, snickering. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow,” Sally answered.

“Tomorrow,” said Saul.

“Tomorrow,” said Clive.

“Tomorrow,” said Blaze.

“Tomorrow,” Candy, Karl, and Arthur said in unison.

“Tomorrow,” said Ned, “or maybe the next day.”

Seven pairs of glazed eyes glared at him.

P
aul returned, he hoped for the last time, to the steamy environs of the crepe and cappuccino café. Since he’d hired Arthur Mordred, Paul had been in a highly agitated state during which he’d watched several different newscasts, hoping not to hear a report of a dead writer in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, it seemed, was far less enamored of dead writers than New York City. Here you might find a dead writer at the bottom of any subway stair.

There was nothing. He could not help supplying Channel 4 with the details they weren’t reporting:
“Police say the shooting is a complete mystery. Whoever fired the fatal shot that killed writer Ned Isaly—”
No, it would be more like
“Award-winning novelist Ned Isaly has disappeared and—”

At several points in his newscast, Hannah had appeared, clutching one of her stuffed Dalmatians, in order to change the channel to
The Simpsons
or some other cartoon. To get her away from the TV, Paul would tell her one lie after another:
“Wile E. Coyote finally got the roadrunner so it’s not on anymore; the Simpsons have been kidnapped—the whole family—and the producers are waiting to see what happens . . .”

(Hannah did go away on these occasions; he heard her telling her mother that Daddy was acting really weird, even for a writer, and her mother would find some alternative activity to absorb Hannah, better than watching television, but not necessarily better than watching Daddy.)

Back to supplying his own details:
“—the fatal shot. The body was discovered in a dark alley by a child with her dog . . . with her Dalmatian—”
And in the middle of this, the phone rang. It was Jimmy McKinney.

A welcome interruption. “Jimmy! You’re back! How was the weekend? . . . No? . . . Sure, I can meet you. Tomorrow, how about that coffee shop? . . . Can I take it this Birches colony wasn’t a howling success . . . ? For some people, maybe . . . Okay. Tomorrow around three. Good. See you then.”

Paul went back to haunting the TV.

When last night there had still been nothing reported from Pittsburgh except for an incident in Shadyside that involved a red Porsche and people with guns, none of whom had yet been tracked down, Paul found that he could breathe a little easier. At eleven P.M. Molly asked him if anything was wrong. Would he like a drink?
“Do you think there might be a mention of
Don’t Go There
on
Larry King Live?
It wouldn’t surprise me; you remember how much he liked the last book.”

Paul smiled and took the drink she brought, knowing that Molly knew not even Larry King could stand himself for three or four hours two nights running. It was her way of making up a story to let him know she didn’t find his watching television all of this time peculiar. She just wanted to give Paul an excuse for gluing himself to the TV and not insisting she know why.
What a wife!
It would have been impossible, even given his fertile imagination, to make up Molly.