The Shattered Raven (2 page)

Arthur Rowe, bespectacled, thin of hair and chomping a pipe between yellow teeth, impressed her immediately. He looked like an editor should look, and talked like an editor should talk. He pointed a pencil at her and told her to get to work that first day and she’d been working ever since.

The magazine was a weekly, with Susan doing a bylined article every second or third week. She had explored, among other topics, the Central Park Zoo, the plans for a nuclear power plant in Queens, the latest walking tours of Mayor Lindsay, the unemployed show folk of Broadway, and the creeps of 42nd Street. Still, Arthur Rowe always managed to produce new assignments for her, and this snowy January morning was no exception.

“I’ve got a great idea, Sue!” he said, lighting up the pipe. “You’re going to do a series for us called
It Happens Every Spring
.”

“Baseball?” she asked, looking a bit askance.

“No baseball. It’s going to be about the awards business here in Manhattan. Look at this—the New York film critics just gave out their awards, and some other critics’ group, too. It happens all the time. Especially, it happens in New York in the spring. You’re going to cover all the dinners and all the banquets—all the ceremonies—and write me a nice series on them.”

“Straight or funny?” she asked, chewing at the eraser tip of her pencil.

“Use your own judgement. I think more funny than straight—a little bit of satire. You know the sort of thing. Make like you’re working for
The New Yorker
on this one.

She chuckled and got out her notebook. “When do I start?”

“First I want a list of them—how many there are, which ones we should cover. We’ll have another meeting in a couple of days.”

“How about the Oscars? Are they included?”

“Oscars are Hollywood. This is Manhattan. No Oscars. You don’t get a free trip to the Coast, Susan.”

She sighed and made a note on her pad, and went out.

For Susan Veldt, that was the beginning of it.

The next meeting actually took place a full week later, because Arthur Rowe had been called to the printers in Albany, where they were having indecipherable problems with web offset presses. He returned gloomy and full of curse words for the men who ran that end of the business, then settled into his leather armchair and stared at her as if he had no idea what brought her to his sanctum.

“What’s up, Susan?”

“Well, what’s
up
is that you wanted me to cover those awards.”

“Oh, yes. Do you have a list of them?”

“Here,” she sighed, starting off with number one. “The Grammy Awards, little miniature …”

He interrupted immediately. “Little miniature is redundant. Susan, I’m going to make a writer out of you if it kills me.”

“All right. All right,” she said, happy to see that he was relaxing. “The Grammy Awards, given for the best records of the year in various categories. The awards are presented at a banquet at the end of February. There’s a television show that follows later, but the banquet is the thing to cover.”

“Good,” he told her, making a note on his big yellow pad. “Next?”

“The National Book Awards, second week in March. Very, very literary. Lots of speeches, including usually a blast at the war or the way things are run in Washington.”

“Good.” He made a note of it, then looked up for her next entry.

“The Oscars come in early April, but we’re not covering those. Then we skip to about mid-April for the Tony Awards. You know, the Antoinette Perry, American Theatre Wing.”

“Right, Then where are we?”

“Usually about a week later, the New York Drama Critics give a …”

He interrupted. “We’re too late for the Film Critics. We’d better leave off the Drama Critics too or we’ll get a rhubarb going about favouritism. The Tony Awards will cover that end of it.”

“Right. That’s just one less article I have to write. Let’s see…” She bit at the pencil again, wishing she had a cigarette. She didn’t really smoke a great deal, but one would have tasted good just then. Of course Rowe kept some on his desk. He even occasionally smoked one when he ran out of pipe tobacco, but she didn’t want to ask and disturb his genial disposition.

“In late April, we have the Edgar Awards.”

“The what?” he asked.

“
Edgar.
For Edgar Allan Poe. They’re given by the Mystery Writers of America for the best detective novel, short story, movie, television show, things like that.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I think I’ve read something about them somewhere. I’m not much of a mystery buff myself, though.”

She hurried on. “Early May—around the first week, the Pulitzer Prizes are given at Columbia University.”

“That’s one we want,” he said.

“Then, I think we could wind up about mid-May with the Emmy Awards—the television things, you know. They have a joint ceremony, in New York and Hollywood.”

“Right. How many does that make altogether?”

“Well, let’s see: We have the Grammys and the National Book Awards and the Tonys and the Edgars. That’s four … and the Pulitzers and the Emmys—which would be six.”

“Six is a good number for a series. Let’s make it six. We might decide on a lead article or a concluding article summarising the whole thing, but figure on six for now. Get at your typewriter and start working!”

She got at her typewriter later that afternoon, plugging away at what would be an initial article, or at least the rationale for the series as it existed in her own mind.

It happens every spring
, she began.
The awards business is big business because it’s the sort of business that encourages other business. Whenever something wins an award in any field of the arts, be it a movie or a book or a television show or a phonograph record or a play or just about anything, it generally means increased grosses, increased sales, increased customers
—
more money to the author or the producer or whoever is involved in the thing. Perhaps the most famous awards of this sort are the Oscars given in Hollywood, but the remainder of the awards business is centred in New York and it is big business, as I have said. It is a business that runs all year round and reaches its climax on the island of Manhattan in the spring, where no less than six major sets of awards are given out to the happy participants. The awards are given at televised events with lavish banquets, or just plain semi-private meetings, and the news generally appears in the New York Times and other papers, the following morning. Sometimes the names of the winners leak out in advance, but generally it’s a well-guarded secret until the actual night of the event.

In this series of articles, I intend to take you to these events
—
six of them, at least
—
being held in Manhattan this spring. I think you’ll enjoy the experience. I know I will.

Susan Veldt was twenty-seven years old, a sharp-tongued young lady with blonde hair and a good figure. She’d been writing successfully ever since college—poems, even one or two short stories published in the women’s magazines. But her biggest success had come with an expose piece she’d done for a now defunct morning newspaper, on a private club up in the Bronx. That had made her name around New York.

She’d always told her friends—and even her father, when he protested about her writing career—that a girl with looks
and
brains could get further than anyone else in Manhattan. She was proving it because she had both. Some called her the sexiest magazine writer in Manhattan, and perhaps that wasn’t very far from wrong. Unfortunately, with Susan herself,
writer
came before
sexy.
Considering the fact of her twenty-seven years, and the number of eligible men on the island of Manhattan, it remained a dour fact of life that she had never married.

She covered the Grammy Awards dinner at the end of February, jotting down notes between courses and glancing around at the top recording executives and the young long-haired singing stars. It was an experience, to say the least, and she wrote a good article on it. Arthur Rowe was pleased. He even raised her salary ten dollars a week.

The National Book awards was a bit different. Most of the writers tended to have beards that year, and they looked at her without really seeing her. All except one young hippie poet, who made a half-hearted attempt to seduce her at the bar. Then they went in and listened to the fellow who’d won the novel award bubble through a prepared speech and thank everyone in sight. Susan felt a discouraging lack of professionalism on his part, and said so in her article.

Things picked up a bit with the Tony Awards. She’d sat at home the night of the Oscar presentation, her eyes glued to the television screen, and it was amazing to see how the Tony show copied some of the best and worst features of the Oscar. It was held in one of the larger Schubert Alley theatres on a Sunday night, so everyone could attend. And again the television cameras were very much in evidence. She liked seeing the stars, and they had a bigger line-up of names than the other two award ceremonies.

The Tony Awards came the Sunday after Easter that year—only five days before the annual dinner of the Mystery Writers of America. She found herself on the street that sunny Monday morning, seeking out the second-floor headquarters of MWA on 48th Street. It was to be a big day in the life of Susan Veldt. It was to be the day she met Barney Hamet.

B
ETTY RAFFERTY, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
of Mystery Writers of America, looked up from her typewriter and called across the room to the tall, husky young man by the window. “Barney, what should I tell Max out in Los Angeles?”

Barney Hamet turned and stared at her. “What’s the problem with Max?”

“He’s not planning to come east for the Award Dinner, and he’s our novel winner.”

Barney walked over to the desk and glanced down at the tentative seating list for Friday night’s affair. No, Max Winters was definitely not on it, and that was odd. He’d made every dinner since Barney joined MWA, and there had been no thought that he’d miss this one.

Although the awards were not announced until Friday, and were kept more or less secret, Betty and Barney and a handful of others already knew the winners’ names. Max Winters had won the novel award for his medium-best-seller, THE FOX HUNT, a fairly successful attempt to blend the detective story with the mainstream novel. Although he was one of six nominees, all of them worthy, the novel committee had wasted little time in picking Max’s book as the winner. Barney knew Max and he was pleased with the choice.

Now, pondering the dinner list, he felt a pang of discontent. “What do we usually do in cases like this? Don’t we generally notify the winner and break the news to him in advance—tell him he’s won? It’s always good to have as many of the winners as possible at the dinner.”

“That’s been the practice in the past,” Betty agreed. “If there’s travel involved, if the person isn’t planning to attend, we do sometimes tell him that he’s won.”

“All right,” Barney said. “Get a letter off to him over my signature and drop a broad hint about it. Tell him I think it would be worth his while, and I hope to see him here for the dinner on Friday.”

Betty nodded and inserted a letterhead into the typewriter. She was MWA’s only paid employee, a pert little brunette she kept the office running, handling the extensive library, correspondence with members, and a thousand other chores.

The office itself was located on the second floor of a building just off Times Square. It was anything but fancy, with bookshelves lining two of its walls, filled to overflowing with mystery novels, mostly by members. The front window looked down on 48th Street, and if one stood close enough he could see the comings and-goings at the restaurant downstairs. Toward the back of the long, somewhat narrow room there was a storage area and a sink—and it was this part of the office which served as the bar during the group’s monthly cocktail parties.

Now, with only the two of them in the office, it seemed spacious and relaxing. When fifty or seventy-five members crowded in for the cocktail parties or monthly meetings, it took on more of the air of a Paris bistro or a rush hour subway car.

“The awards are all set, I suppose?” Barney asked her.

“All set.”

“The statuettes are up from Virginia?”

“Yes.”

The ceramic Edgar and Raven statuettes given as awards were produced in Lynchburg.

“Let’s see. What else? The programmes—the MWA Annual—all printed and delivered?”

“Right.”

He grunted and lit a cigarette. That seemed to cover it all. Another committee was handling the dinner arrangements at the Biltmore.

“Who’s the Reader of the Year award going to, again?”

“Craigthorn. Ross Craigthorn. You know, Barney! He’s on television every night.”

“I watch Cronkite,” Barney said.

He shuffled through the mail and glanced at some of the return addresses, looking for familiar names.

“Well … I guess maybe I’ll hop over to Harry’s.”

“Will you be back in case anybody’s looking for you?”

“Probably. Late this afternoon.”

People were always looking for Barney Hamet, especially this week, with the Awards Dinner coming up. Barney was executive vice president of MWA, and in the loose-knit structure of the organisation, he held perhaps the most important post.

The president this year was a recluse mystery writer from the wilds of Montana, who rarely came down to civilisation. He had accepted the honour and sent a brief telegram acknowledging it, but Barney doubted if he would ever venture into New York City, even for the annual dinner of the organisation.

Barney had started writing out of high school, contributing stories and even an occasional poem to the various little magazines around New York, graduating finally to a quite spectacular short mystery story, which was purchased for a thousand dollars by one of the leading women’s magazines.

Such a sale at the age of nineteen would have been remarkable in itself, but what made it all the more remarkable was the fact that the solution to Barney’s mystery hinged on a scientifically-impossible fact. Letters poured in to the editor. A lengthy explanation and apology was published two months later, and Barney Hamet’s writing career was almost over before it had begun. He wrote a couple of other things, but the editor was wary of them. They came back by return mail and Barney settled into the dull business of collecting rejection slips.