“Oh, my God.”
“
Savage
is the word the police are using,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry. I thought for sure you’d know by now.”
“Somebody just broke in and killed her?” Carl asked.
“There was no evidence of a break-in. They think it was someone she knew. An ex-boyfriend, maybe. Apparently there were plenty of those.”
The words hung in the air, the silence Amanda’s way of asking if Carl was one of those boyfriends. He said nothing. After a few moments she either decided his answer didn’t matter or had gotten the response she had been looking for.
“Had she decided to buy your novel?” Amanda asked gently.
“She
did
buy it,” Carl said. “Plus she hired me to ghost a—” He broke off suddenly.
“A
what
, Carl?”
“A … political memoir.” The shock of Maggie’s murder had momentarily overshadowed his vow of silence. But he realized he still couldn’t talk about
Gideon
. He had made a promise to Maggie, and her death didn’t necessarily release him from the promise.
“Politics? She wanted you to write something political? Whose memoir?”
“Nobody’s. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s supposed to be a secret, but I’m a little shaken up. It’s nothing important.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“I … I still worry about you, you know. Can’t seem to help myself.”
“I know. And I’m glad.”
They spoke for another minute, but there was really nothing else to say. Carl desperately wanted to tell her everything that had happened, everything he’d been working on, everything he’d learned. But he couldn’t. And it wasn’t just his promise to Maggie. It was all that had happened between them over the past year. So their conversation petered out until Amanda ended it with the words, “I’ve got to go back to work.”
The moment he hung up the phone, Carl threw on a pair of shorts and a gym shirt and ran down to the bodega on the corner for the papers. It was pretty much as Amanda had told it. The
Daily News
had a photo of Maggie’s building, the brownstone on East Sixty-third. Her neighbors had neither seen nor heard a thing. Apparently it happened late at night. According to the
Times
, she had been at a dinner party that evening with a bunch of other media heavy hitters to honor the prime minister of India. She had appeared in good spirits, although she had left early, saying she had a lot of work to do. The several hours between her exit from the party and her murder were unaccounted for. The Apex-owned
Herald
carried a statement from the publisher of Apex Books, Nathan Bartholomew, who said: “Maggie Peterson was the shrewdest editor in the business, with an unerring instinct not only for what was commercial but for what was quality. She was still a young woman. There’s no telling what she would have accomplished. We will miss her. The entire publishing community will miss her. Not only because she was an invaluable asset but because she was our friend.” Lord Lindsay Augmon, the man who owned and ran the Apex empire, was described by a spokesperson as “devastated.”
That was a pretty good word to describe how Carl Granville felt, too.
There were other words that were applicable as well.
Confused. Anxious.
And finally
impatient
. It was impatience that won out. Which is why, after a twenty-minute shower under steaming hot water and much soul-searching, he finally picked up the phone and began to dial.
* * *
The fifty-seven-story chrome and glass world headquarters of Apex Communications was located on Fifth Avenue at Forty-eighth Street. The building housed the offices of the
New York Herald
; several floors of high fashion trendsetters who were running Apex’s various women’s magazines; the television programming offices for TAN, The Apex Network; and the offices for the conglomerate’s various book publishing divisions, hardcover, paperback, and book club.
Nathan Bartholomew’s office was on the thirty-fifth floor, the so-called executive floor for Apex Books. The office was quite large and tastefully furnished, befitting the publisher of the second-largest book company in the English-speaking world. Almost everything in the room was white. A white carpet. Off-white bookshelves covered with a most impressive display of recent best-sellers. White sheers ran across the enormous span of windows, which revealed a drop-dead view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. White curtains partially covered the sheers. The desk, a dark, deep mahogany, was the only thing in the room that wasn’t white. But even that was covered with stacks of white paper—memos, printouts, financial reports, sales figures.
Normally Nathan Bartholomew loved sitting in his office. It had taken him twenty-two years to work his way up to this position, from salesman to sales manager to publisher of the very profitable young-adult division, to head of the whole shebang, a position he’d held on to for nine years now. The spaciousness of this corner office, the sense of orderliness, infused him with a feeling of power he truly relished, but today he couldn’t wait to get out. He had a twelve-thirty lunch at the Four Seasons with Elliott Allen, perhaps the biggest agent in the business. Certainly the biggest asshole. It would be a solid hour of listening to Elliott boast about the French impressionist art on his office walls and the Italian marble countertops he’d had made especially in Milan. He’d have to hear about the signed photographs from the various politicians and movie stars Elliott represented. He’d even have to listen to claims of the agent’s sexual prowess, which Nathan had heard from a very good source—Elliott’s mistress, one of Apex’s best-selling authors—was not all that much to boast about. And, of course, he’d have to hear about the Dalai Lama because, to the astonishment of almost everyone in the book business, the Buddhist man of peace had decided to write his memoirs and had picked none other than Elliott Allen to sell it. Bartholomew could hear it already.
Can you believe it? Can you believe this Jew from the streets of Brooklyn is representing the holiest fucking guy on the planet?
Of course he could believe it. If Jesus Christ himself ever came back to earth, within five minutes Elliott Allen would have sold his tell-all autobiography.
But he still couldn’t wait to get out of his luxurious office and into the restaurant. He didn’t care about any of Elliott’s posturing or the phony kisses and waves coming from the other tables in the Grill Room, from editors looking for jobs and authors looking for bigger paychecks. Not today. Oh, no.
Especially
not today, when his life had turned to pure and absolute shit.
The book business was in the toilet, he reflected. The only books that anyone wanted to read were big best-sellers. Books by celebrities. By big-name writers. By war heroes and TV comedians and homosexuals coming out of the closet and Mafia hit men. By the authors who wouldn’t take anything less than a million dollars. A million?
Five
million.
Ten
million! If you paid ten million bucks for a book, you’d better sell a lot of copies. And how do you sell a lot of copies? Print a lot, which meant ship a lot—which meant, since booksellers had the right to return any unsold copies, you’d probably get most of them right back. Jesus. The business was impossible. No cash flow. Running on a 5 percent margin—in a good year. Pain-in-the-ass authors. Bigger pain-in-the-ass agents.
Bartholomew shook his head. He was fifty-eight years old, with record high blood pressure, and what little hair he had left was absolutely silver. Was it any wonder? The worst part was that he didn’t see an upside for his business. And unfortunately, upside was one of Lord Augmon’s favorite things.
The only person who’d been making any money for the company was Maggie Peterson. A bitch on wheels, for sure, but she knew how to pick ’em. Very few people in or out of the company were aware of this, but Maggie was responsible for a third of the company’s profit that year. She was humorless, arrogant, and, with her connection to Augmon, dangerous as hell and uncontrollable. But she was also a money machine. And impossible to replace.
It was typical of Maggie. She couldn’t just resign. Or retire. No. The bitch had to go and get herself murdered.
Chris. Whoever had done it hadn’t just killed the smartest, most ambitious, most foulmouthed woman Nathan Bartholomew had ever met. He’d murdered thirty-four percent of Bartholomew’s profit! No wonder he had a headache.
The media had been all over him the entire day, from the moment he’d gotten to work. How many times could he say the same thing?
She was a treasure. She was a friend. Her potential was unlimited.
She should just be thankful he hadn’t said a word about the time he’d found her giving a blow job to the Apex sales director in his office.
Maggie Peterson murdered. Jesus.
Well, God rest her fucking soul, but he had work to do. A
lot
of work to do.
He buzzed his secretary. He had plenty of dictation he needed to get through. And today she was wearing that pinstriped skirt and matching jacket with, a far as he could tell, no shirt underneath. There were worse things he could imagine than dictating to that. He buzzed again. Why didn’t she answer?
What the hell was going on today? Maggie Peterson dead and his secretary ignoring him. Had the whole goddamned world gone mad?
* * *
“Mr. Bartholomew’s office.”
“This is Carl Granville. I’d like to talk to Mr. Bartholomew, please.”
“I’m afraid he’s quite busy right now. People have been calling all day and—”
“I can imagine. But this is important. I’ve been ghosting a book for Maggie Peterson.”
“Perhaps I can switch you to Maggie’s assistant. Ellen is—”
“I need to talk to Mr. Bartholomew
personally.
”
“Well, I—”
“Please give him that message. He’ll want to talk to me.”
“I’m sure that Ellen can—”
“Just give him the message. Carl Granville. All right?”
“Yes. All right. I certainly will.”
“Thank you.”
Click.
* * *
“Hello?”
“Mr. Granville?”
“Yes …”
“I’m Ellen Ackerman. From Apex. I’m … I was Maggie Peterson’s assistant. And I’m just calling to assure you that you’ll be reassigned to another editor as soon as things calm down. Mr. Bartholomew is very committed to the idea of continuity and—”
“Ellen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t think you can help me. I need to talk to Nathan Bartholomew.”
“Okay, right, I know you do, but his assistant asked me to—”
“Yes, I’m sure she did. But I’m working on something very important and I can only discuss it with Mr. Bartholomew.”
“Sure, okay, I’ll tell him, but … um … what is it that you’re working on?”
“I’ll discuss it with Mr. Bartholomew when he calls.”
“Right, uh-huh, but the thing is, I don’t have a file on you, so when they asked me what you were writing, I had to tell them I didn’t know. Which I don’t. Which is probably why he didn’t call back himself, so maybe you should tell me and—”
“
Gideon.
”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell Bartholomew I’m the writer for
Gideon.
”
“
Gideon
?”
“He’ll know. That’s all you have to tell him.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
“I do. I really do.”
Click
.
* * *
Nathan Bartholomew looked at the young woman standing before him. She was nervous, not used to being in his office. And she looked out of breath, as if she’d sprinted all the way down the hallway after he’d summoned her. He wondered if he’d been this nervous around his superiors when he was her age, but he couldn’t remember. It was too long ago.
“Ellen,” Bartholomew said, taking a deep breath as if the subject were already too painful to discuss, “run this by me again, please. This, what’s his name, Granbull?”
“Granville. Carl Granville.”
“He says he’s one of Maggie’s authors?”
“Yes, but he’s not. He said he’s writing a book called
Gideon
and that you’d know all about it.”
“Did he say why
I
would know about it?”
“No, Mr. Bartholomew. But I checked the author files and there’s no record of any contract with him. Or even contract request. And there’s no record of any book with that title, either.”
“No record of
Gideon
?”
“No, sir. I called accounting and contracts, just to make sure. No contract’s in the works, no check’s gone out.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head and started to turn away. But the young assistant made no move to leave his office. “Something else?”
She nodded, kept nodding nervously, and for a moment Bartholomew was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop. He head bobbing up and down like one of those Garfield dolls stuck on the back window of a car. “Well, I checked correspondence files, and there
is
correspondence,” she said. “With Granville. His agent submitted a novel several weeks ago and Maggie rejected it.” She held up a manila folder she’d been cradling in her arms, removed several loose pieces of stationer, and waved those in front of her. Bartholomew took the papers and the folder and put them on his desk. He waited until her head stopped bobbing before speaking again.
“Thank you, Ellen. I appreciate it.” The young assistant turned to leave, and Bartholomew began perusing the papers in the folder. As she reached the door, he muttered half to her, half under his breath, “There are some sick fucking people in this world.” Then he punched the white button on his intercom and asked his secretary to come into the room.
* * *
“Mr. Bartholomew’s office.”
“This is Carl Granville again.”
“Mr. Granville, I’ve got to ask you to stop calling—”
“Look, I’ve got a serious situation on my hands.”
“I’m afraid it’s got nothing to do with us.”
“I’m afraid it’s got
everything
to do with you. I need to know who my contact is. I’ve got a problem and I need to—”
“Why don’t you try another publisher?”
“Because
you’re
my publisher! I know this is a very hard time for everyone, but—”