Andrew and Todd trailed after the other mourners. I watched them all drive away. There was to be some sort of reception at one of the local hotels, hosted by a couple of O’Malley cousins. Andrew had told me that he wouldn’t be there, that he would be heading back to New York immediately after the funeral. A cold wind chopped at my face, but I could not bring myself to move.
The canopy was still up, the grave still unfilled. I kept expecting gravediggers to show up, to take down the canopy and begin to fill in the grave, but the site was unchanged when I finally wandered away toward my car.
A beautiful and mysterious woman, a lover of literature, has secured an appointment with one of the most powerful literary agents in New York. The agent assumes that the woman, like so many others these days, wants to market a memoir. Instead, she reveals that she is the representative of a secret society of book collectors. Among her treasured volumes are leather-bound editions of works by Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway, all stamped with the thumbprints of those authors – prints made after their deaths. But now the dealer who once provided the collectors with their copies has passed on, and they are searching for a new supplier.
I didn’t care for that approach, either. I put down my pen and stared at my notebook. Andrew, I told myself, had probably left town by now; even if Cormac O’Malley’s death was an unexpected accident rather than a planned demise, he and Carstairs should have had time to get O’Malley’s thumbprint on the requisite title pages back at Carstairs’s funeral home. Andrew could surely have provided enough books for the purpose from his own shelves, couldn’t he?
Maybe not. And even if he could, maybe having Arturo Savoy out of the way was now to his advantage. Whatever Arturo might have done, I had always been able to trust him during my limited dealings with him; he was scrupulous about the provenance of all the books and documents he sold. Forgeries, volumes in less than ideal condition, limited editions of one hundred copies that actually turned out to be editions of two thousand – he had claimed that any such deceit, if discovered, would destroy his business, that he had to operate honestly. I was also finding it hard to believe that he could be involved in the murder of anyone, even if the deaths of authors would admittedly increase the value of some of his items. No, he might only have been the connection between the collectors and those providing the special editions, the man who could assure them that they possessed the only copies of a very limited run.
“You can’t do that,” I imagined him saying to Andrew, almost able to hear his voice. “You can’t promise to keep the run to fifty copies and then offer a hundred copies instead.”
“But no one has to know,” I could hear Andrew reply, “and it’ll be even more money for us. All each collector will know is that he has a copy, and every one of them understands the need for secrecy about how he obtained it. How will he ever find out that there are more copies than he’s been told about?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Arturo might have replied. “If it’s fifty copies, fine, and if it’s a hundred copies, fine, but you can’t create two sets of fifty copies each and say there are only fifty in all. It just isn’t done. Never in my life have I deliberately deceived–”
“If we tell them there are one hundred instead of fifty,” Andrew might have interrupted, “we’d have to lower the price for each. The whole point is to increase our profit.”
I could see Arturo getting extremely irritated at this point. “You’re asking me to betray everything I’ve lived by. I can’t do it. You’re getting too greedy, Andrew.”
I stiffened at my desk, gazing through my office window at the darkness outside. O’Malley’s mourners would be at the reception. The grave had still been open when I left the cemetery. Maybe Andrew hadn’t left town. He had managed to dig up Dechen Thorsten’s grave; this would be easier, since no digging would be required. He could just slip in there, get his thumbprints, and slip back out again. I wondered if Cormac O’Malley’s coffin had a sliding panel in the side.
I jumped up, nearly knocking over my chair. If the grave was still open when I got to the cemetery, I would know that all my imagineering had been right. All I would have to do was wait.
I crept through the dark, shivering in the cold, then found shelter from the wind and a hiding place behind the marble tomb of Brendan and Bridget O’Malley. My car was parked some distance away from the Peaceful Glade Memorial Park, and the gates at the entrances were now closed to traffic; it had been necessary for me to climb over the stone wall. I had raced toward the gravesite, terrified that I might run into Andrew along the way or that he would already be at the grave, while simultaneously hoping that I would find the grave filled in. That would have settled the matter; I could have gone home and convinced myself that all of my suspicions were wrong, that I had completely misunderstood Andrew’s conversation with Savoy and that my imagination had led me astray.
But the grave was still open, still sheltered by the canopy; I had a fairly good view of it from the small hill on which the tomb stood. I could assume that Cormac O’Malley had signed a contract similar to mine, allowing Andrew Wilde to arrange for his funeral. Andrew could have bribed the gravediggers to fill in the grave a day later. He would have to come tonight, I told myself, before the coffin was covered.
But how would he bring in the books? I asked myself. I knew how much space even twenty copies of a book took up, and also roughly how much they would weigh. Even bringing in title pages, to be bound with the other pages later, would be a hassle, especially if one had to affix a thumbprint to each.
Then I saw a light in the distance.
I scrunched down, certain that I was concealed yet still afraid of giving myself away. I might sneeze, might be overcome by a sudden urge to cough or clear my throat. As if on cue, my nose began to itch. The light was moving toward me, and soon I could make out the shadowy shape of whoever was holding it.
“Don’t worry.” That was Andrew’s voice, and somebody else was with him. “We’ll be done with this and out of here before you know it.”
“You’d better be right,” his companion said. I tensed, recognizing the slightly whiny voice of Del Murton, Andrew’s junior partner. “I don’t like it. We should have had the books ready so that Carstairs could have done the prints at his place.”
“It isn’t my fault that the printer screwed up. One more missed deadline, and we’ll find somebody else next time.”
My mind was racing. If a deadline had been set for the printer, then Andrew had planned for Cormac O’Malley’s special edition ahead of time. I wondered if he had contacted the printer before or after O’Malley’s death; that would probably depend on whether his death had been an accident or by design. Andrew and his partner were approaching the canopy; the light bobbed up and down between them. I could see them fairly well now, and pressed closer to the tomb, holding my breath.
Then I noticed that they weren’t carrying any books, not even anything that resembled a package of title pages. One of the men climbed down into the grave as the other continued to hold the light. The man below ground seemed to be rummaging around the coffin; I heard a squeaky sliding sound and then a snap. For a moment, the light caught something that looked like a disembodied hand.
The man holding the light knelt down and pulled something out of his coat pocket. “Hand it to me,” Andrew’s voice said from the grave. “Come on, give me the damned scalpel.”
I was still hunkered down next to the tomb, relieved that I wasn’t standing. If I had been standing, I might have fainted, and would surely have been discovered. It was all I could do to keep from tossing my cookies right then and there. Of course Andrew hadn’t brought any books or title pages; he didn’t need them. All he needed was a thumb, neatly severed and packed away, to be preserved just long enough to make the needed imprints. And Andrew was avaricious enough to have thought of preserving the thumbs for a while, in case he wanted to create more editions later on.
&
nbsp; “Cut the thumb,” Del whined. “You’re taking long enough, Andy. Cut the thumb already!”
I imagined that I heard the scalpel sawing off the thumb, small bones cracking as Andrew went about his work. How foolish of me to think that he would go to all the hernia-inducing trouble of lugging books to a cemetery when all he needed was the thumb. I wondered if Dechen Thorsten had also lost a thumb to his own special limited edition.
“Give me the box,” Andrew said. “I’ve got to get the damned thing into the box.” I felt dizzy; my temples pounded and my ears began to ring. Ka-ching, my ears chimed, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. My gorge rose as I kept hearing the sound of the cash register ringing in Andrew’s mind.
My guess is that Andrew and his partner left the cemetery about an hour after they got there; it couldn’t take all that long to cut off a thumb. But I sat there for a long time afterward, my back against the cold marble, afraid to leave until I was certain they were long gone.
Arturo Savoy had spoken to me once about the various categories of collectible books when I had sold him my signed copy of Willy Edwardson’s second novel, Ice Smash, which had brought me less money than Hyperphysicist because Ice Smash’s print run had been considerably larger than that of Willy’s first book. There were volumes that were genuinely rare, Arturo had told me, with only a limited number of copies in existence. There were those that were valued because they were the first printings of a book by a celebrated and revered writer. Some were valuable because they were autographed, especially if the author’s signature was hard to come by, and some were limited editions created especially for a particular market. Ultimately, what determined the value of anything was its scarcity and how many people wanted the item.
I wondered how many people would covet a posthumous thumbprinted edition and how much they would pay for such a book, and then remembered that one book dealer had laid some canceled checks signed by the cult writer Philip K. Dick into copies of one of his posthumous editions in place of the author’s autograph. Arturo Savoy had told me that story.
There might have been other stories he could have told me. A number of celebrated American authors had come to messy ends that might have been disguised murders. Maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn’t died of a heart attack. Maybe Ernest Hemingway wasn’t really a suicide. I wondered if Edgar Allan Poe had made it to the grave with his thumbs intact after his mysterious end and how much a thumbprint of Norman Mailer’s might eventually be worth. There are readers who prefer their writers dead, especially if they are critics or potential biographers of those writers. How different were these cabals of collectors from them?
I made it home just after two in the morning, and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning as visions of severed thumbs tormented me. There was something about the idea of being without thumbs that struck me as especially nightmarish and frightening, that seemed to strike at my core. I dreamed of having four-fingered hands, of struggling to write with a pen or pencil and being unable to grasp such an instrument, of trying to set down my words and losing my grip. The logical solution of going to a keyboard, the use of which did not require thumbs, didn’t occur to me, trapped as I was in my dream. I had thought a writer’s block was the worst psychological torment for a writer, but the possibility of having the words and being physically unable to set them down was far more painful.
Fighting off my nightmares, I finally got out of bed, made a pot of coffee, and sat down to make more notes:
A writer who has just signed with a celebrated and prominent literary agent discovers that he is supplying a mysterious circle of book collectors with books bearing the thumbprints of dead authors, authors who may have been murdered in order to increase their collectibility. All of the authors are writers who died when their careers were on the downswing, and this writer, who’s been having trouble coming up with a new novel herself, begins to suspect that she may be the next victim.
But I wasn’t having trouble coming up with a new novel. A new book was there, in all the notes I had been making, and transmuting my experiences into fictional form would free me to explore and set down various scenarios for which I had no real proof. If I could get such a novel out there, it might even spark an investigation. I thought of Dominick Dunne or some other chronicler of crime among the rich and famous digging into the doings of Andrew Wilde; I knew Dunne wasn’t one of Andrew’s clients. It occurred to me then that putting out such a novel might also serve to protect me; it would look mighty suspicious if I died right after the book was announced.
But if I gave such a proposal to Andrew, it would never leave his office, and my fate would be sealed.
I picked up my pen again:
A writer, aware of a scheme to sell rare thumbprinted editions of works by recently deceased authors, suspects that there is more to the scheme than is evident. Those selling the editions are too impatient to wait until their targets die of natural causes, and have taken to bumping them off with the help of a couple of experienced hit men with literary aspirations. Originally they acquire the needed thumbprints immediately after death, with the help of a mortician, but soon their greed impels them to cut off the thumbs of the dead authors so that they can manufacture another collectible volume whenever a new opportunity arises to sell one.
Fraud, murder, greed, mounting suspense as the writer realizes that her life is now in danger – I could make that work, and turn it into one of those rare novels that garners critical acclaim while also raking up sales that might match Joe Waldo Bender’s. Then there would be the suspicions I could raise about Andrew that might provoke an investigation. The resulting scandal might be enough to land me on 20/20 or 60 Minutes as an accusing modern-day Zola.
The phone rang, throwing me out of my musings. I picked it up without waiting for the machine. “Hello.”
“Shanna, Andrew here. Sorry we didn’t get more of a chance to talk yesterday. Hope you’re making some progress with your proposal, I just got off the blower with Fran and she’s got a couple of holes in her schedule, two of her writers are looking as though they may need to extend their deadlines. If you can pull something together soon, this is the time to strike.”
“I’m pulling something together,” I said. “I’ve got a pile of notes for it already.”
“Good, because I want something in my hands before the pub date of The Connections.” That was an order. It was also a threat.
“Andrew,” I said, “believe me, I’ve got just the thing for you.” I haven’t exactly been twiddling my thumbs, I did not say.
He must have picked up on the confident tone of my voice, because he immediately switched the subject to how brilliant I was and how the queries from foreign publishers and movie moguls were rolling in at a record rate. Time to make hay while the sun was shining, and when it’s pouring milk, go get a bucket; the sky was the limit.
“It might take until The Connections is out to get my chapters to you,” I told him, “but I’ll try to finish sooner.”
“You do that, Shanna. I have faith that you’ll come through.”
“Oh, I’ll come through. I won’t let you down.” It’ll be the best book you’ll ever have, but unfortunately you won’t be able to represent it, I thought.
I hung up hoping that I had bought myself some time. The Connections would be out in six months, and I had every incentive to bust my ass writing in the meantime. Of course there was the problem of how I was going to submit my book; I would have to use a pseudonym. But now that I knew about the holes in Fran Morrese’s schedule, there was nothing to stop me from sending her a recommendation under my own name for my alter ego’s work.
All I needed was an agent to take the book to her.
I thought of Rob Saperstein. If he even deigned to speak to me, he would demand some sort of explanation for my change of heart, and I would have to explain what I was about, fill him in on at least a few of my suspicions. With his help, I could expose Andrew and possibly save the lives of other authors who might ru
n into creative difficulties and declining sales in times to come; I could avenge those whose only crime was to have become less profitable, to have fallen among the ranks of washed-up writers in the eyes of Andrew Wilde. I could become the lead character in a story that would surpass all of those I had written. Rob might leap at the chance to strike back at Andrew for the damage he had inflicted on traditional author/agent agreements, or else he might want nothing more to do with me.
If Rob refused to speak to me, I might as well call up Todd Thorsten and arrange for a prepaid funeral now.
At last I punched in Rob’s number, expecting his assistant to answer, but Rob picked up the phone. “Robert Saperstein,” he said.
“Uh, Rob.”
“Shanna.” He sounded so neutral that I couldn’t tell whether he was glad to hear from me or deeply regretted answering the phone.
“I’ve got a big favor to ask of you.” I could hear the whine of desperation in my voice. “Well, actually not a favor, more like a proposal, because if it works out the way I think it can, there’ll be a lot in it for you, too.”
I paused, but he didn’t say anything.
“It’s a long story,” I continued, knowing that I would have to tell him everything, “so I hope you’ve got time to listen to it.”
He sighed, not a good sign.
“I’ll give you the short version first.” My lungs felt constricted; I took a deep breath. “Things aren’t working out for me with Andrew Wilde. I mean, he got me a great deal for The Connections, but I’m working on a new novel now, and it’s not something I can really give to Andrew to handle for me. In fact, I’m writing it under a pseudonym because I really don’t want him to represent it, and if you want to know why, I’ll tell you the whole outrageous story. This is really important, Rob. I’m afraid I found out a lot of stuff I’d really rather not know about, and now I’m in big trouble, somebody might come after me because of what I found out, I mean my own life might be at risk. And there isn’t anybody else who can help me, at least not that I know of. So I really need to talk to you, because I’m going to need your help.”
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