Kill Fee (2 page)

Thinking of it that way always gave Walsh a warm glow; it was that self-generated aura of noble aspiration that kept him going. The only advertisements he'd ac
cepted
in
Summit
were for books. Since he knew nothing about distribution, he'd contracted out to a jobber who didn't exactly strain himself pushing what to him was just one more egghead rag that didn't have a chance in hell of making it. But
Summit
had attracted an enthusiastic (although minuscule) readership; Walsh's choice of material struck a responsive chord in those who could get hold of copies. He would have done much better if he'd had an efficient subscription department. His subscription department was his first wife, who knew just as much about circulation procedures as her husband did, which is to say nothing at all.

From the day the first issue appeared, Walsh had been in debt. Some bills he forgot to pay, others he couldn't pay. But bill-collectors soon found he was easy to intimidate, so Walsh first sold his wife's car, then took out a second mortgage on the house, then went to work part-time elsewhere just to keep
Summit
going. It killed him to admit it, but he finally faced up to the fact that he couldn't do it alone. He needed help. He needed a partner well versed in the mysteries of accounting and marketing and circulation and keeping the IRS placated.

Enter Jerry Sussman. Sussman had an eye for spotting potential in the publishing business and realizing a nice profit from that very convenient talent. He'd looked at the
Star Trek
subindustry in this country—and had taken a Trekker fanzine and promoted it into a full-scale, big-selling professional periodical. He'd bought up a printing outfit that specialized in seed catalogues and the like, and through the printer's contacts had built a staff that put out a successful rival to
Farmer's Almanac.
And somewhere he'd learned there were quite a few people who would like to read
Summit
if the dumbhead editor could ever figure out a way to make copies available to them.

Sussman
had been quite blunt. "I run this show or my money stays in the bank. When it's my own dough I'm putting into a project, I gotta have majority ownership."

Walsh had bristled at hearing
Summit
referred to as a "project" and said well, now, he didn't know about that.

"Not open to negotiation," Sussman had said, shaking his big head. "We can argue about the exact figures later because we'll have to put some shares on the market—but either I end up with a majority or I'm pulling out."

"I can't agree to that!" Walsh had sputtered. "I have to retain creative control—I built
Summit
from nothing and I'm not just going to hand it over to you. Why, you could even fire me if you wanted to!"

"Oh hell, man, I'm not going to fire you." Sussman's thick lips had spread in a big grin. "Leon Walsh and
Summit
magazine are the same thing. I wouldn't
want
the mag without you to run it."

Walsh had liked hearing that, but he didn't know whether to believe Sussman or not. The big man repeatedly gave his word that he would never interfere in editorial matters—in exchange for majority ownership. Walsh muttered under his breath, eyed the stack of unpaid bills on his desk, and agreed.

That had been eight years ago, and every day since then Walsh had kicked himself for being such a fool. There must have been some other way to save the magazine. He just hadn't looked hard enough.

He realized he'd been staring at the same page of manuscript for twenty minutes. He looked at his watch: six-thirty. Might as well call it a day; he was in no condition to give anything his full attention.

The changes Jerry Sussman had made were drastic. The first thing he'd done was move the magazine from Summit, New Jersey, to Manhattan. Dealing with sup
pliers,
printers, advertising agencies, mail services, lawyers, and the like right on the spot had enabled them to cut
Summit's
lead time from ten months to six, and then later to three.
Summit
had gone from quarterly to bimonthly to monthly as the subscription lists and newsstand sales grew more or less steadily.

Of course, for all that to happen, Walsh had had to give in on a few things. Advertising was the main point of capitulation. Instead of restricting its advertising to books as it once did,
Summit
now aggressively solicited the patronage of the airlines and the big computer firms and the insurance companies and the automobile industry and the tobacco and the whiskey and the oil businesses. Jerry Sussman's procedure was to raise the advertising rates every year, to tap
Summit's
advertisers for as much as traffic would bear. The advertisers in turn looked at the magazine's circulation figures and asked for breakdowns—what percentage of
Summit's
readers were high earners, what percentage academics, etc. When most of the advertisers had balked at the latest rate raise, the word Sussman got was that the advertisers wanted their messages to reach a greater number of that amorphous creature known as "the man on the street"—a euphemism for
Use shorter words.

Use shorter words, avoid subjects that get too esoteric or require the reader to think for more than four minutes, insist on a snappy and easy-to-read style, simplify, simplify, simplify. Sussman had started the ball rolling in that direction by asking Leon Walsh to include occasional articles on sports and pop music. Impressed by Sussman's obvious know-how in the magazine-rescuing business, Walsh had acceded to these early requests. But it very quickly became a habit. A representative of one of the airlines would indicate his company's willingness to
take
out more advertising space in an issue that featured a story set in a certain romantic, out-of-the-way place. A place that only
his
airline serviced, of course.

Walsh had objected, but to no effect. Several times a year, and against his better judgment, he'd commission a story catering to an advertiser's special interests, feeling slightly whorish every time he did. He knew that kind of mutual payoff was a common practice; what shocked him was the utter lack of awareness of wrongdoing on the part of the participants.
That's business,
Sussman had shrugged. Walsh didn't like it at all; he could never fully accommodate his sense of ethics to that way of doing business. One time the commissioned work for a promotional tie-in was so poor that Walsh had paid the writer his kill fee and refused to print the story.

Sussman had promptly informed him that next month his manuscript budget was being cut one-third.

That was Sussman's way of handling any resistance on Walsh's part. He'd
punish
him—as if Walsh were some recalcitrant schoolboy. He'd punish him by withholding the money Walsh needed to attract the writers he wanted. Back in the early pre-Sussman days, Walsh would publish an occasional story by a name writer who'd accepted far less than the usual fee just because he or she liked
Summit
and wanted to give the struggling quarterly a hand. But
Summit
had gone big time since then; no more handouts from anybody.

"How do you expect me to put out a quality magazine without the money to pay the writers?" Walsh would protest, even though he knew protest was useless.

"You pay those writers too damn much anyway," Sussman would say dismissively. Subject matter was what mattered to Sussman, not good writing. If he'd been editing
Summit,
he'd have installed a staff of competent
hacks
who could grind out stories and articles on any subject on demand.

So Leon Walsh burned with a fury he could find no safe way of expressing. Slowly, watching Sussman take over by inches, Walsh had witnessed the gradual cheapening of his once-meritorious publication. Very few of his original readers were still with him; now he was publishing for the sort of reader who looked up answers to crossword puzzles and called it doing research. Walsh was no longer proud of
Summit.

Perhaps I should resign,
he thought for the hundredth time. He wasn't happy seeing his name associated with some of the pieces
Summit
carried, but he could never quite bring himself to make the break. Twelve years, two wives, and several hundred thousand dollars later—he couldn't just walk away.
Summit
was a much-loved child who had fallen in with bad company. You don't abandon a child who has been led astray.

If only he didn't feel so damned helpless. He went into the small private restroom next to his office and washed his hands and face. The strain of the past few years hadn't improved the face any. Thin nose, slightly hooked; black, staring eyes; two deep furrows in his cheeks, bracketing the thin lips like parenthesis marks. Noticeably receding hairline.

Jerry Sussman had a head of hair of the sort called leonine. He wore it slightly long because he was all too aware of the effect created by his big veldt-colored mane. Walsh grimaced at his own appearance; his name was Leon,
he
should have been the lionlike one. In America hair was still equated with virility, and Jerry Sussman played the King-of-the-Jungle bit for all he could get out of it. Walsh had once told him the male lion didn't even rule his own pride much less the whole jungle, that he
was
only a follower kept by the females for stud purposes. Sussman liked that even better.

Leon Walsh made up his mind. He would publish the short story that presented the electronics industry in such an unflattering light. It was good fiction and that was all that mattered. If Mueller Electronics withdrew its advertising—well, that was too bad.

He closed his office door behind him. The tapping of a word processor sounded from down the hall; someone working late. Walsh found himself wondering which of his employees it was that kept Sussman informed of what was scheduled for upcoming issues.

A name immediately popped into his head: Fran Caffrey. Walsh smiled sheepishly; he'd been quick to suspect her simply because he didn't like her. Fran Caffrey was his fiction editor, and she was only twenty-six or -seven, young enough to be his daughter. She had this overly careful way of speaking to him, as if he were growing more senile by the day and she had to take extra pains to make sure he understood everything. But Fran did her job well; Walsh had no real reason to get rid of her. He'd always thought personal animosity a poor reason for firing a good worker, and he liked the feeling of fair-mindedness that attitude gave him.

Just the same, he thought, she's the type to play
I Spy
for Jerry Sussman. Maybe he could get a friend in one of the publishing houses to offer her a job. Who owed him a favor?

In the elevator a man stood on his foot. Walsh had to ask twice before he moved. On the street, two pushy young women crowded in front of him and took his taxi. As usual, he muttered under his breath when he was frustrated.

As usual, it didn't do any good.

CHAPTER

2

As if the Russian army had marched through barefoot.

That's the way his mouth tasted. He'd first heard the phrase twenty years ago but hadn't 'fully appreciated it until now. The pounding in his head didn't help. He finished his Alka-Seltzer and wished he'd stayed at home.

"Would you like me to repeat it for you?" Fran Caffrey asked.

Don't get mad,
Walsh told himself. "No thank you, dear, I managed to get it the first time."

"My name's not 'dear,' Leon."

He muttered to himself. Aloud: "Don't be so damned touchy, Fran."

She made a noise of exasperation. "Will you listen to yourself? Now you're telling me how to
be."

Just what he needed. "You're making something out of nothing. All I said was 'dear.' "

"I've never heard you call any of the men 'old buddy' or the like. The men in this office you treat with respect—whether they deserve it or not. But you treat the women
with
a kind of offhand familiarity that's just plain insulting. As if we were cute little performing dogs instead of professionals."

Is that what had turned this intense young woman into an enemy? "I'm not a sexist, Fran." His head hurt.

She laughed. "Why, Leon, you're one of the worst kinds! The kind who's convinced he's so open-minded he doesn't need to make any special effort to treat people fairly."

An echo from the past that made him wince: his second wife had once said something of the sort. He certainly didn't intend to be discriminatory in the way he treated his staff. Why hadn't she said anything before? "Fran—are you feeding information from this office to Jerry Sussman?"

She stared at him blankly. "What?"

"Would you like me to repeat it for you?" he asked sarcastically, echoing her own words.

"I heard what you said—I just don't know what you mean.
Feeding
information to him? Illicitly? Are we supposed to be keeping secrets from Mr. Sussman?"

It was either a great act or Fran Caffrey honestly didn't know what he was talking about. "No, no—just forget I said anything. Now beat it, will you, Fran? I've got a hangover and I feel lousy."