Part 16 (1/2)
Candy and Karl.
Among the anointed.
TWENTY-THREE.
Clive sat the next morning running a pencil across the tops of his fingers, trying to ignore the Dwight Staines novel piled high and untidy on his desk. Perhaps in time it would molder into dust and he'd be shut of it. Not that it was at the forefront of his consciousness; that particular spot was reserved for the twin psychos, Candy and Karl, and the a.s.surance that they were on the job, given last night.
Clive frowned. How in h.e.l.l had they got into the Old Hotel on the previous evening? If those two could get in . . . (But then hadn't he seen someone in there who looked like Danny Zito awhile back?) Well, the two hoods had gotten in and they were sitting only a few tables away from Ned Isaly. What occupied Clive's mind this morning was finding a way to extricate himself from this plot. He glanced at the ma.n.u.script. What Bobby should have done was set the two of them onto Dwight Staines and save the best-seller list a dozen weeks of yawning popularity.
Maybe he could have another talk with Paul Giverney. No. Pure wishful thinking. Still, he didn't think Giverney meant he wanted Ned Isaly dead, for G.o.d's sakes. Just out of the publis.h.i.+ng arena, that's all. But what in h.e.l.l had Ned done to arouse such enmity?
Clive sat there rolling the pencil for another minute or two, then yanked out the Verizon, thumbed through its Yellow Pages wondering whether it was ”Investigators” or ”Private.” He found it. There must be hundreds of them; why was he surprised? This was New York, wasn't it? He didn't much like the idea of picking a name out of the Yellow Pages; there was the randomness of it, the gamble. It was hardly any more of a gamble than what was already going on, though. He closed his eyes and thought of people he knew who'd used a private detective.
Helen Shearling. She could recommend one; she must know a dozen. She'd got out of marriages one, two, three, and four with all of the houses, the BMW, the Mercedes, the Porsche, the condo in Cancn, in addition to hefty alimony payments that should keep the ex-hubbies in hock for the rest of their lives. It was all owing to the PIs and their cameras, catching hubby (one, two, three, four) with his current inamorata. Flash. Click. ”How s.e.xually puerile,” Helen had said on seeing the photos as she chose among them for two or three to present to her lawyer, who would in turn present them to the husband's lawyer. What Clive couldn't understand was why none of these husbands had turned the tables, given that Helen was no stranger herself to s.e.xual puerility.
The trouble was he didn't want a private investigator whose work was largely finding the bedrooms of unfaithful husbands or wives. A recommendation-Clive sat up suddenly. Of course! There was always Danny Zito. He searched through his desk drawers, through layers of paper clips and rubber bands and then remembered he'd copied the number from Bobby's Rolodex card onto a sc.r.a.p of paper that might still be in his overcoat pocket. He moved to the closet and went through every pocket. Right!
Clive picked up the receiver, dialed the number.
”What is it with you guys you spend half your time whacking people?” asked Danny, cheerfully. ”How the h.e.l.l do you get any books published? I sure hope you got a few minutes left over to read my ma.n.u.script when you're done with capping your authors.” Danny fake laughed a ho-ho-ho.
Lowering his voice without actually whispering, Clive said, ”Cut it out, Dan-I mean Johnny-”
”Jimmy, f.u.c.k's sake. You can't even get the fake name right?”
”Okay, okay, sorry. Anyway. I'm not trying to cap anybody. I just want someone, you know, followed.”
”Yeah, sure, I bet, and I want the Pen/Faulkner Award.” He paused, Clive a.s.sumed to turn up a name. ”Yeah, I do know somebody. Just don't go thinking this person'll take out Candy and Karl, man. We don't gun down our own-I mean not unless it's war declared. But on a daily basis, no way. We got scruples, unlike you publis.h.i.+ng w.a.n.ks that don't give a s.h.i.+t as long as you can get some birdbrain on the best-sell-”
Clive broke into this building rave with, ”Okay, okay, Danny. Spare me the lecture. You can get in touch with this person?”
”Have you forgotten I'm in the f.u.c.king witness protection-”
”Yes, yes. I mean should we handle it the same way? I meet you-”
”At the Chelsea Piers. Same place, same time. Tonight if you want. Listen, I got nearly a third of my book done.”
”Danny, how could you have that much? It's only been a few days since we saw each other.”
”I write all the time. Me, I'm another Trollope, who I've been reading-well, glossing over kind of. I do what he does. I set my clock beside me and write two hundred fifty words per fifteen minutes. Actually, I can even go faster. I'll bring along what I done.”
The writing habits of Danny Zito. What the world is waiting to hear about. Clive cast a weary look at Dwight Staines's pages and shook his head. Nothing could be worse than Staines. ”Why not, Danny? See you.”
Rarely did Clive veer from their main corridor, the one hung with posters and framed Mackenzie-Haack book jackets, at the end of which was Bobby Mackenzie's office. But today he did turn a corner to a narrower pa.s.sageway off which Tom Kidd sat in his book-swamped little room. Clive pulled up at Sally's desk, situated outside Kidd's open door.
”Is he in?”
”You're taller, you tell me.”
Clive went up on his toes, looked over the stacks of books on Tom's desk, then came down again. ”Nope.” He was really here to see Sally, not Tom, hoping he could pry some information out of her, since he'd seen all of them in the Old Hotel last night. Isaly's last book, what was it called? s.h.i.+t. It started with an S, he remembered that. It was one word, he also remembered: Sadness? Sorrow? No. Oh, let it go.
He sat down in the hard, uninviting chair placed to one side of Sally's desk. It occurred to him then that he had, for a change, a conversational opener. ”Saw you last night in the Old Hotel.” Just having been there should be enough to engage anyone, given how difficult it was to get into the place.
It didn't engage Sally, however, for she didn't respond. He thought she looked a little grim and not because he was there.
”I was eating upstairs”-Clive poked a finger toward the ceiling, toward which Sally raised her eyes. He had never noticed it before, but Sally had, at times, a medieval look with all that thick dark hair and those peasant dresses-”with Mort Durban.”
Sally made a face, straightening up some ma.n.u.script pages. ”I didn't see you.”
”Great place, isn't it, the Old Hotel?” said Clive.
She smiled and looked now as if the memory of it were coming back.
”For some reason, it makes me feel-” Clive stopped. There it was again, the impossibility of putting it into words. ”-I don't know. Kind of . . . homesick, or something.”
Sally's expression changed again to the gloomier one of before. ”It must make Ned feel that way because he's leaving.”
Clive's spirit soared. Was it possible? Could it be? ”You mean he's leaving Mackenzie-Haack?”
No, it couldn't. ”Of course not. I only mean he's going home.”
”Where's home?”
”Pittsburgh.”
”Pittsburgh?”
She looked almost wounded, as if she'd defend this city to her dying day. ”Well, people do live there, after all. And what's wrong with Pittsburgh?”
”Nothing, nothing at all.” Oh, thank you, G.o.d, for this free information. ”For how long?”
She shrugged as if a day or a year made no difference. He was going, that's all. ”Three days, maybe.”
Clive zipped his thumb along a stack of pages. ”Huh. Does he have a house there? His parents still live there?”
”No. They're dead. They were the ice cream people, you know, the Isaly's Ice Cream people. It's that really famous ice cream in Pittsburgh, probably still is.” If it weren't, wouldn't Ned have said so? It was his favorite topic after writing, Isaly's. ”He's going to stay at some hotel.” She pretended to have to dig for the name, which was branded into her brain. ”The Hilton, I think that's what he said.”
”I'll be d.a.m.ned.” Clive rose, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. ”I guess I won't wait for Tom. I'll come back. Uh, when's he going? I mean, you know, in case we need him for something.”
Sally looked at him with suspicion. ”What would you need him for? Tom's his editor. And Bobby probably wouldn't know Ned if he fell over him.”
”Oh. Well, Ned's supposed to get his new ma.n.u.script to us in a couple of weeks. I think that's what the contract says.” He wondered why Sally glowered at him.