Rejection: Publishing Murder Mystery (Lou Drake Mysteries) (13 page)

“Damn,” he sighed when he refreshed the server and thirteen new queries added themselves to the deluge.

Most frustrating was that many of the ideas were actually quite good, ideas that he could have nurtured into saleable manuscripts five years ago. Today it was like casting lines with succulent bait into waters with no fish. When his wife had demanded that he should get a real job, he refused and she left. Then came the drinking and the eventual collapse, so now he rented a lower level apartment next to the university.

More queries came in through his mail server and he laughed.

“Sorry folks,” he said and took another drink from the vodka bottle beside the computer.

Tonight was Halloween and he looked forward to the revelry as a blessed distraction. He was prepared for trick-or-treaters, as well as the assorted university students looking for a sweet handout. With a quickly carved pumpkin on the landing and spooky sounds on his CD player, he would take part in the celebration and forget about his failed life, if only for a few hours.

His doorbell started ringing as staff from the campus came around with their children. Gary happily handed out generous wads of miniature candy bars. A few teenagers showed up and he made good-natured remarks about their age as he loaded sweets into their plastic grocery bags. Kids dressed in hellish garb drove by on the way to parties and Gary gave them all a friendly wave. By eight the foot traffic dissipated and he watched the street go quiet. Music wafted from homes as parties geared up and Gary felt a wave of regret. He was too old to join the fun. He suddenly felt a hundred years old.

At that moment nothing seemed more eerie than the post-rush loneliness on Halloween night. Gary thought of it as a time of desolation, when the true ghosts of the holiday filled the streets to frolic in late October darkness. Eight to midnight, when real ghosts danced in graveyards, long forgotten bones wailed for discovery and children wept in their beds. This was the time when lonely spirits and giddy demons celebrated the one night that society embraced them, if only in childish fun. Gary considered them the four most frightening hours of the year.

“If somebody wrote that, I could probably sell it,” he said and took a drink.

His jack-o-lantern smelled of burned cap and the candle was down to a struggling flicker when he switched off the porch light. Gary started to turn away and then sighed when the bell rang. Latecomers. He opened the door to a tall trick-or-treater dressed in a hooded sweatshirt, a bony reaper mask and gloves with finger bones printed on the backs. Gary turned to retrieve his candy bowl.

“I’ll give you what I have left.”

As Gary turned back to hold out the bowl, a wet spray hit him in the face. The costumed figure held out a spray bottle, the tip only inches from Gary’s nose. He choked on the misty cloud, coughed and felt instantly woozy. The masked attacker stood still, the arm still outstretched and the red tipped nozzle still dripping from the blast.

“What the hell?” Gary said as he dropped to his knees.

The skull-faced figure pulled a garish clown mask and a roll of duct tape from his sweatshirt. Gary caught these details with unfocused eyes as the world plunged into blackness. With a grunt he teetered to the right and fell with a slow, languid slump. He felt nothing when his head bounced off the parquet wood floor.

* * *

Gary’s head throbbed as he regained consciousness and realized he was tied in a seated position. His mouth was gagged with what felt like a rag and his lips flattened beneath what must be duct tape. His eyes were shut and he could not open them. Each time he tried he felt a sharp pain where his upper and lower lids met. He could move his fingers a little, and as far as he could tell he was sitting in one of his kitchen chairs.

“I have glued your eyes shut and gagged you,” a hushed voice said behind him. “If you struggle or try to get free I will cut your throat. Do you understand? Nod if you do.”

Gary nodded vigorously.

“Good. You and I are going to have a little chat. I will ask you questions and you will nod for yes and shake your head for no. That clear?”

Gary nodded again and a whimper escaped his muffled mouth.

“Good boy. You will do what I ask, won’t you Mr. White?”

Gary nodded as his stomach rolled. He gagged on the rag in his mouth. Sweat poured down his body and the room grew rank with fear and perspiration. He retched as his stomach tried to purge itself of the alcohol he had consumed earlier.

“Puke and you’ll drown in your own vomit.”

Gary swallowed hard, trembling with fright and the effects of the sedative. He made fearful sounds through his nose. The breath of the masked attacker was at his right side and Gary whimpered as the words tickled over his ear like ants crawling on his skin.

“Okay now?”

A nod.

“Are we going to have any more problems with you losing it?”

A shake.

“That’s very good.”

Gary heard the killer move around in front of him.

“Your pumpkin was poorly carved and your drunken generosity is a black mark on the institution of Halloween. More than that, you are a poor excuse for a literary agent. You know that?”

A nod.

“That in itself is a crime punishable by death. I see many query letters here, and your computer is filled with email queries as well. I know you haven’t sold a book in four years, but you still advertise yourself as an agent looking for new talent. Are you really looking for writers?”

A shake.

“That’s what I thought. Gary, you’re a sham and a liar. I was hoping I’d find you genuinely working to help the writers who contact you, but apparently you lure them in under false pretenses. Do you think it’s fair for an agent to act that way?”

Gary shook his head and quietly prayed to a God he had not spoken to since the eighth grade.

“Please take some solace in knowing you’re becoming a part of the common good, a part of the revolution to inspire people to read again. You are becoming a story to be told, a tale spun around coffee tables and in local diners. The NYPD will make your name timeless. You’ll become a martyr for the cause. Your death will be glorious and part of the lasting mark I will put on the souls of those who struggle against the business of creativity in New York.”

Gary drew a deep breath through his nose. Something darkened the light coming through the thin flesh of his eyelids. It smelled of talcum powder and plastic.

“You’re a clown Gary,” the killer said as he secured the garish clown mask over White’s head. “You are a joke and you have no vision. You stopped seeing the big picture. You ceased to have the sight necessary to carry the talent of the writer to the eyes of the publisher.”

Gary breathed in great gulps and jerked when he felt something jab against his eyebrow.

“Stay still.”

Gary locked his body, bathed in sweat. He tried not move when he felt a sharp poke on his eyelid, but he couldn’t help it. He flinched at the pain.

“You move again and I swear it’ll be the last time you ever do.”

Gary White started to cry and tremble from suppressed terror. He could feel the tears swelling behind his eyelids and seeping out through the glue to run down his cheeks. He braced himself when he once more felt metal against his left eye.

As delicate as a surgeon wielding a scalpel, the assailant pushed the point of an ice pick against the twitching and wrinkled skin of Gary’s eye and pushed forward with slow intent. With one final jerk of his head, Gary swooned as the searing pain sank deeper into his core. By the time the killer addressed the second eye, Gary was unconscious and his only movements were a few involuntary twitches.

“Do you see now?” the killer asked.

He expected no reply.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

COLLINS CAUGHT HIMSELF dwelling on his meeting with Drake as he wheeled his Mustang carefully through the slick streets. The fat prick had actually made a pathetic attempt to defend himself. Collins smiled at how quickly he shriveled when challenged. Only three months more and it would all be over. After that Drake could eat himself to death, drink himself into a stupor, or marry that fat doughnut girl and settle down in New Jersey for all Collins cared.

Collins brought his mustang to a stop in front of the Brownstone and pushed through the crowd milling outside 1264 Keller Avenue. Reporters filled the sidewalk above the scene and two television vans were parked across the street. Reporters stabbed microphones like menacing sabers as Collins pushed past them and said nothing.

Below the street the well-heeled tenement offered four basement-level, rent-controlled studios. Access to the subterranean flats was down a flight of concrete steps to a master hallway that ran parallel to the street. Smelling of urine and mildew, the mossy walkway was lined with weather-scarred doors. One door stood open, crowded with uniformed officers.

“Collins,” Thibido called from inside. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I just got the call. What do we have?”

“It’s bad,” Thibido said in an unsteady voice.

Collins could see white around his eyes.

“Get some air, Thibido. Excuse me.”

Collins elbowed his way in.

Detective Reynolds gestured him over.

“Collins, I want you to see this before the crew starts bagging things up.”

Collins stared at the corpse.

“Christ almighty.”

The dead man was face down over a brown corduroy ottoman. He was naked with his arms hanging to the floor. His hands held bloody blobs in each palm and there was a great deal of blood. The victim’s legs were tied into a kneeling position and secured around the ottoman with yellow nylon rope. The victim was gagged with duct tape and his eyes were closed tight, as though still in throes of intense pain. The killer had sliced open the victim’s back from the base of the head to the tailbone. The skin was drawn back and held open with long nails driven into the shoulders, sides and hips. Exposed with careful surgery, the man’s spine was morbidly white and splayed open. A bloody utility knife with a small blade was left on the bloodstained green shag carpet.

“Pretty gruesome, huh?” Reynolds said.

“What’s in his hands?”

“Judging from the amount of blood around the groin and buttocks, I’d guess it’s his testicles.”

“Jesus.”

Collins saw the Coroner arrive and looked at Reynolds.

“You seen enough?”

“Yeah, all yours Harold.”

The Coroner whistled when he caught sight of the body.

Collins and Reynolds moved into the relative quiet of the apartment’s kitchen area.

“Any idea who the victim was?” Collins asked.

Reynolds handed him a card. “Right here.”

Collins read out loud. “Thomas C. Mueller, Literary Agent.”

“Ain’t that a kick in the head?”

“You have no idea.”

Collins handed the card back and started thinking about how this scene compared with the first two. Here the killer had left an exposed spine and severed balls. The message seemed obvious; someone thought the late Thomas Mueller had been spineless and lacked the balls to do something, presumably something to do with selling books.

And now the pattern of grotesquely mutilated literary agents left no doubt. Malcolm had its own serial killer.

“Fuck,” Collins said.

“Gonna call Andrade?” Reynolds asked.

“When I get back to the car.”

“Lucky you.”

Collins walked slowly out of the apartment and over to his Mustang. He dialed Andrade’s private number.

“Yeah?”

“It’s another agent.”

“Oh God, you’re kidding. Okay, what’s the scene?”

“Guy is bound naked. His spine has been exposed and his nuts cut off and put in his hands. The Coroner is here. It’s goddamn ugly.”

“Come on in,” Andrade said. “We need to talk about how we are going to handle this.”

“There’s press. I don’t know who called them.”

“Then we don’t have too many options. Just get back here.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Collins fired up the Mustang, stomped the gas and squealed his rear tires as he pushed the muscle car to the red line. Things were going to get dicey.

* * *

Drake was enjoying his day off by having breakfast with Robin, Sandy Alexander and Sandy’s girlfriend Kelly. The four talked about writing and work. Robin mentioned Drake’s altercation at the card shop and Sandy asked him what had happened. With a dramatic flailing of his hands Drake regaled them with the confrontation and his victory over the boyfriend.

“I wouldn’t want to tangle with you,” Sandy said. “You’d break me like a twig.”

“If I could get a hold of you. I’m pretty slow.”

“Well, I congratulate you on your restraint.”

“Did that make you feel powerful?” Kelly asked.

Drake paused and then was honest.

“Yeah, I guess it did.”

“That’s great. I bet you scared that punk straight as an arrow,” Sandy said.

“To be honest, I doubt it.”

The waitress arrived with their check and Drake picked it up.

“Let me pay our share,” Sandy said.