by Anna Porter
“And now the deal may be off.”
“Right. That would explain why Francis took Max’s death so hard. After a while, he sent Gladys to fetch me and told me it was imperative we go through all George’s papers immediately. Even if it took all night. He said I should even search the manuscripts and folders in the editorial department and make lists of everything. That’s crazy with about two hundred unsolicited manuscripts in there, but he insisted.”
“What do you think he’s looking for?”
“I’ll tell you when I find it. Maybe some papers to do with an offer to buy.”
***
Judith arrived at the Provençal late, as usual, and out of breath. Allan was used to both. The federal Department of the Secretary of State seemed to give him ample reason for frequent visits to Toronto.
Initially, Judith had found Allan attractive. There was a sense of steady power about him, something she thought could only come from unquestioning confidence in himself. The kind of confidence Judith had always aspired to and now, on the threshold of her thirty-ninth year, knew it was too late to acquire.
Allan was sitting at a corner table, drinking the last drops of what would have been a double martini. He was a man of habits. After hanging her handbag on the arm of her chair, Judith bent down and kissed him, lightly, on the lips.
“You look terrific,” she said. “Have you been on another vacation?” She hadn’t noticed his tan the night of her birthday party.
“Working at State is vacation enough,” Allan said. “Drink?”
Judith chose white wine—a nod to her ongoing diet. He ordered a bottle of Montrachet, which was about four glasses and $27 more than she had planned for. She hoped he would insist on paying. He could easily bury her in a series of meetings to “interface with the private sector.”
“You look harassed,” Allan said. “What’s up?”
“I’m working on an unusual sort of story, and I’ve been chasing my tail all week.”
Allan leaned back in his chair, adjusted his neat tub-shaped, rimless glasses and raised his eyebrows in anticipation.
“Well?” He waited.
“I don’t want to talk about it much yet.” And when she saw his expression, she added, “It’s not ready for the telling. How have you been?”
“Traveling mostly. Just back from Sweden, Venice before that, and London. Bonn wants us to join the Europeans in banning the Cruise, and even though I’m doubtful we can go for it, there’s a lot of pressure to keep our skies safe. I’m sure you’ve been reading about it. The Prime Minister thinks we should at least appear to follow Trudeau’s peace initiative. He’s become quite a hero over there. Next week it’s Washington. Haven’t had time to unpack. Another conference on cooperation. As if we weren’t cooperating enough already. The Americans are never quite happy unless they have us peeking out of their hip pockets.”
Judith was not entirely sure what it was that had earned Allan his formidable salary and reputation. While he enjoyed discussing the peripheries of his work, anecdotes about the famous and foreign dignitaries with long pedigrees, little secrets about who had had a hair transplant, or elevator shoes, or chipped china, he never discussed what he really did. All she knew was that he moved effortlessly through the upper echelons of government.
“What are we cooperating on this time?”
“Security, mainly,” Allan whispered, so that it came out as more of a hiss than a word. But Judith didn’t blame him. Silly as it may seem, one should not discuss national security at the Provençal.
She ordered the Filet of Sole Amandine; he had fresh salmon with dill sauce and told her of his travels, the problems he had been having with the twins—nineteen—his ex-wife’s hysterical outburst at a Spanish embassy party when she saw him with the PM’s press secretary. He told her of his meeting with the King of Belgium and what they ate at the state dinner, and about his own skiing accident in Austria. He would show her the knee injury later.
Judith congratulated herself on drinking all of the Montrachet without Allan’s assistance and decided she would not examine his knees this afternoon.
She left him looking fragile and forlorn at the corner of Bloor and St. Thomas. His neat, tailored dark suit seemed more like a schoolboy’s than a federal mandarin’s. He looked so vulnerable, Judith felt a sudden surge of affection for him. Another sign the romance was over.
It wasn’t until she made it to the Renault in the Colonnade parking garage that Judith discovered how effective the Montrachet had been: she was trying to find the keyhole on the car door with one eye closed.
Instead, she found her way back up the elevator and to a taxi.
Ten
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR David Parr was sitting on the top step of Judith’s small trellised front porch, reading The Sun. The two squat pine trees James had planted when they had first moved to Brunswick Avenue almost hid him from view. All Judith could see at first was an arm of the tweed jacket, part of a newspaper and a Sixties brown loafer, but she knew right away it was Parr. Maybe it was the wine, but she felt strangely thrilled when she saw him. And pleased. He fitted into the surroundings. The sun was shining directly through the bare branches of the neighbor’s oak and onto his light brown hair, making it softer and brighter than she had remembered.
“I was beginning to worry about your answering service,” Parr said, folding up The Sun. “They said you’d be back around 2:00.”
“I was at a luncheon,” Judith said very formally. “Perhaps you would like to come in?” She was hoping that some coffee would counter the effects of the wine. Meanwhile she was enunciating carefully. Too carefully? James had always known when she had had too much to drink from the way her speech became private-school precise.
“Thanks. I like it out here. Don’t see much of the sun any more.”
“You’ve found the briefcase?” Judith tried hopefully. “Not yet,” he said, “we’re still working on it. You thought I’d come to rat on Francis?” he grinned. “Not yet. I need to ask you some questions about the last interview with Harris.”
“Oh. Perhaps you’d like coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“I would.” She maneuvered into the kitchen, plugged in the kettle and waited. She made two mugs, black, double strength, carried them back to the porch and sat next to Parr on the top step.
“Well,” she said, “what would you like to know?”
“Did he talk to you about a manuscript he was going to publish this year? Something special?”
“They were all special—to George. He had a big line-up for the Fall. I told you.”
“Could you check your notes, in case he said one of them was…unusually special?”
“I’m absolutely sure he didn’t. I don’t need to check. But maybe if you told me why…”
“It’s Francis Harris. He thinks he’s lost a valuable ‘property’—his word—his father was planning to publish. He says it was worth well over $100,000 and that it may be the only copy they had. That would be rather unusual, wouldn’t it?”
“That they didn’t have another copy?”
“No. The $100,000.”
Judith nodded. Vigorously.
“Are you OK?” Parr asked, leaning forward and examining her closely.
Judith would have nodded again except she suddenly had a vision of her head bobbing up and down like a yo-yo.
“I’m fine. Just fine,” she said, but Parr was still studying her face.
“Why doesn’t he ask the author for a copy? Authors usually keep copies of their manuscripts.”
“It seems he doesn’t know who wrote the thing.”
“He doesn’t? Now, that’s extraordinary. So how does he know what it’s worth? No manuscript, no author—”
“From another publisher. They had, apparently, offered to buy it.”
“They don’t do that sort of thing without seeing a manuscript.”
“They got a copy.”
“Well?”
&nb
sp; “Francis says they lost it.”
“Oh.”
Such beautiful blue eyes, she thought; she was going to have to pull herself together. She took several big gulps of coffee.
“Does this mean you’re reopening the case?” she asked.
“This means that Francis Harris is convinced we have overlooked his old man’s briefcase, and he’s making a dreadful fuss about us finding it. Fast. He thinks the manuscript’s in it.”
“How are you doing?”
“Not so well.” Judith could relax for a while. Parr had his own problems.
“Can I have that coffee now, Judith?” He stopped. “Mrs. Hayes, of course. I’m sorry.”
“Judith is good. I like Judith better. Haven’t cared for the Hayes part for a long time. It used to be DeLisle. Maybe I should change it back…” Babbling. That’s what it was: babbling. Judith kicked herself on the ankle. There, dummy.
“David,” he said placatingly. She thought he must have seen her wince. Then he reached over and touched her hand.
Judith believed hands revealed a lot about their owners. David Parr had a strong, warm hand with a broad palm and long fingers.
She brought out more coffee.
“We’re having trouble locating some of the witnesses,” he said. “The first two we checked, they’re not at the addresses they gave. Muller—and that’s probably not his name either—looked like the type who doesn’t want to get involved. Jenkins, he was a cabdriver, relief, lived in a rooming house. He’s moved since. Didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“What about the others?”
Judith was wondering whether he had felt anything when their hands touched.
“We’re trying to locate them.” He rolled the newspaper and shoved it under his arm.
“I have to get back now.” He started toward the front gate. Judith followed. “Thanks for your help.”
“I wasn’t much help.”
When they were almost at the gate, he turned. It was so sudden that Judith fell against him. He caught her shoulders in his hands and held her for a moment, so briefly she wasn’t sure afterward whether it had been accidental, whether he had been trying to steady her. But she was almost certain his mouth brushed the top of her head.
“I’ll call you if something comes up,” he said.
“Great.”
As an afterthought, Judith asked: “Who’s the other publisher who made the big offer for that manuscript?”
“Some outfit called Axel Books,” Parr called back over his shoulder.
PART TWO Marsha
Eleven
MARSHA’S MORNING never recovered from her reading of the New York Times. Her first appointment was with a visiting Australian publisher who had written several weeks ago. She had reluctantly agreed to Friday morning at 9:00, breakfast at the Plaza. Ever since Patrick White’s Nobel Prize and the publication of The Thorn Birds one had to take Australian publishers seriously.
She tried hard to evince some interest in his list, but it was full of children’s titles with robust Australian settings and down-home cookbooks like Chinese Food the Australian Way. She agreed to look at a big novel by a young writer and a book of baby-food recipes because she wanted to make him feel he had achieved something. It’s a long way to come to be rejected.
Afterward, because she hadn’t wanted breakfast, she stopped at the Oyster Bar and treated herself to half a dozen oysters and a Rémy Martin.
It was after eleven when she reached M & A. On the way from the elevator to her office six people asked if she had read about Max. The managing editor, Lynda Manning, stumbled in, slumped on the couch and announced: “I’m going to start taking cabs at night. This damned city is like a minefield.”
“I know,” Marsha said. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“Max wasn’t the victim type.”
“Nor was George Harris.” Marsha stared out at the Fifth Avenue sunshine. “Maybe we should have picked another profession. This one’s deceptively unsafe.”
Lynda had once worked for Max and admired him for choosing to stay with the editorial people after he became president, rather than move up to the administration floor. Even though he had developed a keen sense of finance he liked to be where the action was, and the real action for him stayed around manuscripts and authors.
When Lynda left, Marsha wandered over to her desk. Margaret Stanley had, as usual, rearranged the papers to suit her own vision of an efficient executive’s place of work. In-tray to the left with new mail and everything Marsha had left in disarray; out-tray to the right, empty. Directly in front of her chair the freshly typed letters, ready for signing. Next to the phone, a spike on which Margaret had carefully impaled Marsha’s small yellow messages. It never ceased to amaze Marsha how Margaret managed to run all the message slips exactly through the center, so that they lined up one on top of the other.
She pulled them off and spread them out on the desk, ready for another game of solitaire. There were two urgents from agents demanding offers for their authors’ new manuscripts today, or Marsha could kiss her options good-bye; confirmations of appointments in London with Pan and Michael Joseph next week; Geraldine Brunner asking if she had finally read the new chapters; invitations to book launchings; and a request to make a speech at a gathering of visiting Japanese booksellers—sorry about the short notice, details of the trip had only now been announced. There were calls from editors at Morrow and Harper & Row. Gordon Fields of Axel had left a message yesterday—before Max died. Two impromptu meetings had been called in the office for today, one of which she had already missed. Good. It was the rescheduled “Future Trends in Publishing” planning committee meeting—another opportunity for David Markham to parade his recently acquired business-school savvy. Amusing, maybe, but a waste of time.
Jerry had called to say he could still be available this evening, should she change her plans. There was a message from Mrs. Gonsalves—Marsha’s cleaning woman—who was supposed to come three times a week.
Marsha decided to tackle Mrs. Gonsalves first because she felt guilty about the paper towels. Mrs. Gonsalves had made it abundantly clear that if she was to do her job right, she needed paper towels, and if Marsha didn’t feel it was important enough to remember to buy them, Mrs. Gonsalves would not think it important to clean the bathrooms. No one picked up the phone in the apartment, which, Marsha figured, meant that Mrs. Gonsalves was a woman of her word and had packed it in for the day.
As she dialed each number on the yellow message slips she tossed them into the straw waste basket under the desk. She kept Gordon till last. On second thought, she decided to leave it today. She had an hour till the 1:00 p.m. promotion meeting, and a chance to run through a few manuscripts.
After fifteen years in the business, Marsha’s idea of a good time was still the same: settling in for some quiet reading. Her office was alive with manuscripts, the desk covered at both ends, the windowsill piled to waist level. Her coffee table had no room for coffee.
Most of the typescripts had already been read by others before they came to her, and were topped by “evaluation forms,” recommendations and summaries, yet she still approached each one with a sense of discovery. That hadn’t changed since her year as sifter of the slush pile at Macmillan. She closed her door—normally it stayed open: she still remembered what it had felt like lingering outside an executive’s door, hoping to slip by the secretary, unnoticed—settled into the beige corduroy armchair, kicked off her shoes and propped her feet up.
From here she could see down Fifth Avenue. After three years the splendor of the view still surprised her. It was a clear, cool April day and the sun glinted off the double-glazed windowpanes all along the upper floors. A few trees were beginning to show a hint of green along their branches. April fools.
She reached for her you’ve-come-a-long-way-baby red, blue and white presentation mug and took a couple of sips.
The first manuscript was entitled Human Factory, an overwhelming
ly familiar title, but she would not let that put her off. It had been read by Mark Klein who was attempting to develop a line of business books, and Lynda Manning, who was notoriously good-natured and could be persuaded to give something a review overnight. Lynda’s only weakness was a slavish devotion to schedules and charts. She could not tolerate even a day’s delay on delivery of a manuscript to production—therefore most editors lied to her about deadlines. That made it difficult to establish publication dates in her presence.
Human Factory was true to its title: it praised the human factor in management of people for greater productivity. It cited numerous examples of successful people-management, and drew point-by-point conclusions. Well, at least it didn’t suggest you had to work it all out in one minute. The author had credentials and wrote simply and coherently. Mark was recommending it for his lead next Spring, with a title change. All right, she would encourage him to present it at the editorial meeting.
Next the one she had been looking forward to for a couple of days: Geraldine Brunner’s new outline and chapters. Geraldine had written some eleven books, all moderately successful, all edited by Marsha. She had followed Marsha to M & A—one of her devoted stable of authors (from time to time, Geraldine threatened to whinny, just to prove it) and a friend. She had been struggling with this novel since December. It kept wandering off in all directions, characters changed overnight and without warning. Now she felt she had found the solution. Did Marsha agree?
Within half an hour, she was able to call Geraldine to tell her the new chapters were exactly as she had hoped. The characters had come to life and Marsha didn’t want to have to wait another few weeks to find out what happened to them next. Nor would any other reader.
She grabbed a quick lunch of fruit-bottom yogurt and left for the boardroom, where the marketing people were filing in for the June titles final promotion meeting. Normally, Marsha enjoyed these meetings. She came armed with a few fresh ideas or approaches to add to the list of plans the heads of publicity and promotion had drawn up. They found her enthusiasm catching. The meetings went on longer than scheduled, but nobody minded. Nobody, that is, except David Markham. As Marsha chaired the meetings, she made a point of not allowing him a chance to shine. He did enough damage on the planning committee.
