Part 9 (1/2)
Then we can talk about the chicken again.”
Kellaway shook his head. ”Chicken first. Then write.”
”How come?”
”Listen, schlep, I don't make up these frapping spells,”
explained the annoyed Kellaway. ”The ancient book of black magic I'm using on this particular problem specifiesa””
”How does an ancient book know anything about Playpen and Houseboy?”
”Actually, the original spell is for selling a five-act tragedy to the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan England, but the principle's the same,” Kellaway told him. ”That's the good thing about magic. Dependability.”
Harmon killed the chicken.
When the first of his new Westerns came out the following spring, it was optioned by Paragon-Mecca Films immediately for fifteen thousand dollars.
”That'll be six chickens,” Kellaway informed him when he announced the sale. ”Tonight at midnight, also in the park.”
”Can't we use a different sort of spell? With that last chicken I almost got frostbite, and I was nearly mugged, and a gay nighttime jogger tried toa””
”Six chickens. Be nice if one of *em was a red rooster.”
Harmon killed the chickens.
”The Book-of-the-Month Club?” Pert clapped her pretty hands together and smiled across the white table at him.
They were dining at a French restaurant where the appe tizers commenced at $17.95.
”I don't know,” said Harmon forlornly.
”But, Junior, it's basically wonderful. How many other adult Western paperbacks get picked as the Main Selection of the month?”
”I have to kill a goat,” he said in a low voice.
The candlelight made her golden hair sparkle as she shook her lovely head sympathetically. ”Just one?”
”One is plenty, Pert.”
”In the park again, same as the chickens?”
He nodded. ”By midnight tonight.”
She sighed. ”Do you have the goat yet?”
”Miss DeBeck's bringing it around in her van at eleven.”
After a moment Pert said, ”It is the Book-of-the-Month Club, Junior.”
Harmon killed the goat.
A morose robin was perched on Kellaway's drab windowsill.
”Can you write a thriller in the Lobo Sardinian manner?”
Kellaway asked Harmon. ”Something like The Eisenberg Runar ound or The Hickenlooper Bypa.s.s or The Hungerford Gambit?
”Sure,” answered Harmon. ”Soon as I finish my third Western, I'll whip up a proposal.”
”Sooner.”
”Well, when exactly?”
”Sardinian's hardcover publisher, Dragoman and Brothers, wants something by late fall.
”Why can't Sardinian write it?”
”He'll be dead before then.” The agent tapped his ample chest. ”Heart.”
”That's awful. I just saw Lobo at the last Suspense Writers of America c.o.c.ktail party a few weeks ago, and he looked chipper and fit.”
”Lobo doesn't know about it.”
”Then how do you . . . oh.”
”To guarantee a seventy-five thousand dollar advance, Junior, requires a very heavy spell and lots of ritual.”
”Such as?”
”We'll need a human sacrifice.”
”No!” Harmon leaped up, shaking. ”No, nope, not at all.”
Making a take-it-easy motion with his left hand, the agent said, ”Look, schmuck, we don't need anybody special on this one. Any sort of human sacrifice will do. A Bowery b.u.m'll be fine.”
”A chicken I went along with, and even a goat. But not people, Alex.”
”A b.u.m, I said.” said Kellaway. ”They got hundreds of *em down there. You go down there tonight, pick out a likely deadbeat, and kill him. They got *em sprawled in every alley.
Use something like a carving knife and . . . zip! No problem.”
”I can't do that.”
”How's you wisdom tooth?”
”What the h.e.l.l does that have to do with this?”