Potboiler (11 page)

41.

Lucian Savory’s office was downtown, not far from Pfefferkorn’s agent’s office. The next day Pfefferkorn stepped from the bus and was pummeled by a blast of wind, funneled through a chasm of high-rises. He hurried into the lobby, locating Savory’s name on the directory and taking the elevator to the penthouse.

No other tenants shared the floor, leading Pfefferkorn to expect a suite of offices, fronted by a secretary or three. He was surprised to be met at the door by Savory himself.

“About fucking time,” Savory said. “Come in.”

Pfefferkorn stepped into an enormous room, perfectly beige and almost as bare. Two beige chairs stood on opposite sides of a beige desk. A bank of beige file cabinets ran the length of one beige wall. The color scheme gave him the sensation of being smothered in putty.

“I would’ve called first,” Pfefferkorn said, “but you didn’t leave a number.”

“I don’t have a number,” Savory said. He looked exactly as he had at the funeral. Pfefferkorn assumed that someone at such an advanced age would show greater daily wear and tear. But Savory was like a living fossil. He shuffled behind the desk and sat down. “I take it you finally decided to wise up.”

“You didn’t give me much choice.”

Savory smiled.

Pfefferkorn sat down. He took out the pages and flattened them on the desk. The first page read

SHADOWGAME

a novel of suspense

William de Vallée

“Some of your edits were decent,” Savory said. “I’ll grant you that much.”

“Thanks,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Nice title.”

“It was your idea.”

“Still, you had the good sense to use it.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Savory said.

“I thought I had the only copy.”

“What the hell gave you that impression?”

“Carlotta told me he never showed his unfinished work.”

“Not to her, maybe. And then you went ahead and used my title? It’s like you were screaming for my attention.”

Pfefferkorn shrugged. “Maybe I was.”

“Oh,” Savory said, “I see. It was a cry for help. You wanted to get caught.”

“Sure,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Some sort of deep-rooted Freudian thing. ‘Spank me.’”

“Could be.”

“That’s one theory,” Savory said. “I have my own, though. Want to hear it? Here goes. You didn’t bother to take any of that into account because you’re a lazy, greedy son of a bitch with poor executive function.”

There was a silence.

“That’s possible,” Pfefferkorn said.

Savory slapped the desk. “Well, we’ll never know.”

Pfefferkorn looked at him. “What do you want from me.”

Savory cackled. “Perfect.”

“What is.”

“I was taking bets with myself whether it would be that or ‘Why are you doing this to me.’”

“I don’t see why we have to drag it out. Just tell me how much you want and I’ll tell you if I can afford it. Otherwise we have nothing to talk about.”

“Au contraire,” Savory said.

42.

“A spy?”

“Not quite,” Savory said, “but for simplicity’s sake, we can call it that.”

“But that’s ludicrous,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Says you.”

“I’ve known Bill since I was eleven.”

“And therefore.”

“He wasn’t a spy.”

“Since you seem intent on picking nits, fine: he wasn’t a spy. He was a courier.”

“He was a writer,” Pfefferkorn said. “He wrote thrillers.”

“The man never published a single thing of his own invention,” Savory said. “We gave it all to him. William de Vallée was a perfect fraud, and by that I mean in creating his cover, we all did a perfect job, including Bill. He was a major asset, the result of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars. You can’t imagine how disappointed we were to lose him.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Every Dick Stapp novel has contained encrypted directives for operatives embedded in hostile territories where standard means of transmission have proven too difficult.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Code,” Savory said.

“Code?”

“Code.”

“Bill wrote in code.”

“I told you, he didn’t write anything. The Boys did.”

“What boys.”

“
The
Boys. Capital B.”

“Who’re they.”

“That’s not important.”

“They’re not important but they get a capital B?”

“All information will be given on a need-to-know basis.”

“And I don’t need to know.”

“Bingo.”

There was a silence. Pfefferkorn looked up at the ceiling.

“What,” Savory said.

“Where are the cameras.”

“There aren’t any.”

Pfefferkorn stood. “When does the TV crew jump out?”

“Sit down.”

Pfefferkorn walked around the room. “Ha ha,” he said to the walls. “Very funny.”

“We have a lot to discuss, Artie. Sit down. Or don’t, I don’t care. But time’s a-wasting.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Savory shrugged.

“I don’t believe any of it,” Pfefferkorn said. “How can that make sense? Delivering secret messages out in the open. It’s preposterous.”

“That makes it all the more difficult to detect. Try sending an e-mail to North Korea and see how far you get. But a top-notch thriller penetrates like nobody’s business. He wasn’t the only one, mind you. Most blockbuster American novelists are on our payroll. Anything with embossed foil letters, that’s us.”

“But . . .” Frustrated, Pfefferkorn aimed to score a hit. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to use the movies?”

Savory sighed in a way that suggested Pfefferkorn was terribly slow.

“Jesus,” Pfefferkorn said. “Them too?”

“If you think things are bad now, just imagine what might’ve happened if we’d allowed you to sign a film deal. We’ve been playing catch-up as it is.”

“I’m not following you at all.”

“What do you know about Zlabia?” Savory said.

43.

Pfefferkorn told him what he knew.

“That’s not much,” Savory said.

“Sue me.”

“Let me ask you this: when did your first novel come out?”

“Nineteen eighty-three.”

“Not that first novel. Your other first novel.”

“About a year ago.”

“Can you think of anything in recent Zlabian history that happened around then?”

Pfefferkorn thought. “They tried to kill whatsisface.”

Savory cackled. “Gold star for you. For the record, whatsisface’s name is East Zlabian Lord High President Kliment Thithyich, and he’s a very rich, violent, and unstable man, the sort of fellow who doesn’t take kindly to being shot in the ass.”

“What does my book have to do with any of this?”

“Let’s start by reminding ourselves of one key fact. It wasn’t
your
book. Was it.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“‘In one fluid motion,’” Savory said.

“What?”

“‘In one fluid motion.’ That was the flag. The manuscript you stole wasn’t even finished, and then you had to go ahead and have your way with it.”

“It needed trimming,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Not the kind you gave it. Do you know how many ‘in one fluid motions’ you deleted?”

“It’s cliché,” Pfefferkorn said. “It’s meaningless.”

“Seriously, take a guess. How many.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“
Twenty-one
,”
Savory said. “Three of them you left in. That’s seven-eighths of the code, destroyed. You turned it into cryptographic Swiss cheese. God knows how the operatives made anything out of it. But obviously they did, because next thing we know, the president of East Zlabia is in intensive care. At first we assumed it was the West Zlabians. Everyone did. They’ve been at each other’s throats for four hundred years. But then we get a coded transmission from one of our Zlabian sleeper cells that the operation had been a failure. Well, that set off a scramble. What operation? We hadn’t called any operation. It wasn’t long till we figured out what the message referred to. What stumped us was how the order had been set in motion. In the first place, the manuscript you stole had nothing to do with shooting Thithyich, at least not until you mangled it. It was supposed to be a plain old recon directive. In
West
Zlabia, no less. More to the point, it never should have been released, because after Bill died we ordered all his files destroyed.” Savory touched his lips philosophically. “Although given what you did to it, one could argue that the book was, in fact, destroyed. Neither here nor there. Somehow it missed the shredder and got into your hands, leaving us with a pantsload of angry East Zlabians. Thing about Thithyich is, despite being a merciless tyrant, he’s quite the populist. Born dirt poor, ‘one of us,’ all that jazz. To you and me he’s a run-of-the-mill post-Soviet autocrat. To your average East Zlabian peasant grinding it out at subsistence level in a thatch-roofed hut filled with six, maybe eight, kwashiorkoric children who have, collectively, no more than ten, maybe twelve, teeth, he’s Jack Fucking Kennedy. Try to see it from their side. They’re upset.”

“I shot the president of East Zlabia,” Pfefferkorn said.

“The power of literature,” Savory said. “Whatever. The important thing now is to stop the bleeding.” He stood up. “That’s where you come in.”

Pfefferkorn was alarmed. “Where.”

Savory shuffled to the file cabinet and began opening drawers. “We need someone to fill the position vacated by Bill. Seeing as how you’ve already gone ahead and preempted us . . . where the hell did I . . . and over and above that, established superb brand recognit—ah.” He found what he was looking for: a thick manuscript bound with rubber bands. He brought it over and dropped it heavily on the desk in front of Pfefferkorn.

“Tag,” Savory said. “You’re it.”

44.

The title page read
Blood Night.

“I think you’ll find that it expands upon the themes begun in
Blood Eyes
,” Savory said. “Additionally, there’s a lot of good character development, some real poetry to the descriptions of weather. Killer sex scenes. The Boys are proud of it, and rightfully so.”

“This is outrageous,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Quit being such a prima donna.”

“It’s blackmail.”

“The word is ‘collaboration.’”

“Not if I don’t have a choice, it isn’t.”

“Oh, you always have a choice,” Savory said. “But why in the world would you say no? I guess you could, but then you really are done with publishing. Let me let you in on a little secret, Artie: you haven’t got any talent. I read your first book. It was a piece of dreck. Here’s another secret: I’ve read your interviews. I’ve been to your new apartment building. I’ve seen enough to know that you like being a published author. Of course you do. Your new life is a hell of a lot nicer than your old life. You’d be a fool to give it up. And for what? It’s not like I’m asking you to do anything you haven’t done already. I’m giving you the chance to keep your reputation, serve your country, and build up a decent retirement fund in the process. It’s the best deal imaginable. You should be spit-shining my asshole.”

Pfefferkorn said nothing.

“You can always say no. You can walk out of here right now. I’d hate for you to do that, though. Never mind the headache it makes for me. Never mind that. It’s more that I’d hate to see you suffer. You do understand, don’t you? I’ll expose you. I’d have to. It’s the only fair thing to do. What a field day the press would have with that, huh? Just imagine. You’ll be trash, and so will your agent, your publisher, and your family. Everyone within fifty miles of you will reek.”

“If you expose me,” Pfefferkorn said, “I’ll expose you.”

Savory smiled. “Go for it. I’m sure everyone will believe you.”

There was a long silence.

“Does Carlotta know?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“She’s clueless.”

“I don’t want her to find out.”

“She won’t unless you tell her.”

There was a silence.

“What really happened to Bill?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“Hand to God,” Savory said, “it was a boating accident.”

There was a silence.

“The flag is ‘Hurry, we don’t have much time.’ Got that? So do me a favor. Don’t touch that phrase. Come to think of it, don’t monkey around with it at all. It’s fine the way it is. Resist the urge to mark your territory and everything will be fine.” Savory stood up and put out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

45.

“I love it,” Pfefferkorn’s agent said.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not gonna lie: you had me sweating there, all that stuff about—but, look, the important thing is to realize what we have, and what we have is a gem. A rock-solid grade-A twenty-four-carat gem.”

“Thanks.”

“The thing that sets you apart,” the agent said, “is character development. The daughter—sorry, you know I’m terrible with names.”

“Francesca.”

“Francesca. She is just a fabulous character. That bit where she steals the ruby from her grandmother’s necklace and replaces it with the piece of glass taken from her broken locket that her dead mother got from the man she loved before Shagreen who—it’s fantastic, not just the idea itself but the way you handled it, the subtlety—this guy the mother once loved, and then we’re given to understand maybe Shagreen might’ve had something to do with his death . . . I mean, come
on
.”

“Thank you.”

“Layers upon layers.”

“Thank you.”

“
Great
title.”

“Thanks.”

“Good. Well, if you’re ready, I’m going to get this over to them today and start pressing for the D-and-A.”

“I’m ready.”

“Excellent. Cause as they say on the Ferris wheel, here we go again.”

46.

Blood Night
met with unanimous approval at the publisher, who decided to rush the book to press in time for beach-read season. The accelerated schedule was made possible by the fact that the manuscript required almost no editing. Pfefferkorn’s editor wrote to him that, aside from a handful of typos caught by the copy editor, the text was “as close to word-perfect as I’ve ever seen.” Savory had informed Pfefferkorn of these typos in advance. “If there wasn’t anything to fix,” he told Pfefferkorn, “it would look fishy.” Pfefferkorn thought it looked mighty fishy regardless, but the publishing machine had too many parts, moving at too great a speed, for anyone to dare derail its operation by questioning why a book was better than expected.

Watching
Blood Night
barrel along toward publication, he felt a strange sense of gratification. It wasn’t the novel he’d always dreamed of writing, but nor was it pure schlock, and he took some small amount of credit for laying the groundwork that had enabled the Boys, as Savory referred to them, to flesh out Harry Shagreen’s personal life. They had given him a hobby, playing full-contact Scrabble. They had assigned a sizable role to his daughter, a character mentioned in passing in the first novel. (Pfefferkorn had reconfigured her out of Stapp’s son.) A former math whiz turned drug-addled cat burglar with a heart of gold with a gaping hole in the shape of her father’s missing love, Francesca Shagreen screamed off the page, and the final scene, with Shagreen dragging her into the emergency room, was a serious tearjerker. Pfefferkorn was perturbed to catch himself choking up as he read it. It wasn’t unusual for a writer to get sentimental about his characters. But the operative word was “his.” He had no more ownership of these characters than Bill had. Like Dick Stapp or Harry Shagreen, Pfefferkorn was a man who couldn’t let emotions cloud his judgment. He had a mission. Duty called.