Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  “What’s the return address on the manuscript?” Max demanded. Edna checked and read it off while Max compared it to the address he found on the Internet for the Atascadero State Hospital.

  “It’s a match! Sigmund Cerletti is locked up at some prison psych hospital. This is perfect! We can pass off the manuscript as Sadowsky’s, no problem.”

  “What if he gets released someday? Maybe some technicality or he does all his time or something. He’ll come out and then say that he wrote the book and the Sadowsky thing is a fraud.”

  “That’s why this whole situation is so perfect. Even if this guy ever gets released from the psych ward and claims he wrote the book, who is going to believe him? He just got out of the psych ward!” Max, still grinning, shot a questioning glance at Edna. “Come on, Edna, why are you worrying?”

  Edna was thoughtful. “I can hardly read more than a page or two because it’s so frightening, the way that man’s head works. What if they release Sigmund Cerletti, and he comes after you?”

  “Edna, you read it for yourself. No state mental hospital would ever be stupid enough to release a guy like that. We have nothing to worry about.”

  A YEAR LATER and a month before the Sadowsky Manifesto’s release date, Max strolled into the office. Buzz, as Edna liked to say, was huge. The public outcry over the sale of a killer’s manifesto had been dampened by the fact that all “author” profits were being donated by his estate to survivors, the victims’ families, and crime victim charities. (Sadowsky’s sole surviving relative was an elderly, financially secure aunt, who as sole executor of the estate wanted nothing to do with the book, Sadowsky, or the money.) As the agent, Max wrangled a hefty commission, but any percentage of the ungodly advance was still a lot of money.

  He bought a Porsche. He started paying the intern.

  “How was your client lunch?” Kimberly asked.

  “Great! This guy has been slaving away for years, and I am the first to discover him. He’s completely brilliant, and his novel is amazing.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, there’s this guy, and there’s this grid of humanity. There’s this anorexic porpoise, but I think it’s symbolic. Probably an indictment of man’s spiritual pillaging of the natural world? Anyway, the whole work is really deep. Humanity is represented by dots and despair is a rectangle, but joy is a circle. It’s very subtle how he draws everything out.”

  Kimberly stared at him blankly.

  “It’s hard putting into words the kind of brilliance this guy is capable of.” Max turned to Edna, who was pulling from an oversized UPS box an object with large wooden levers that intersected with a large wooden bulb at the end. “Whoa, Edna, what is that thing? It looks like some medieval torture device.”

  Edna beamed at the object that upon closer inspection looked a little like an enormous garlic press. “It’s a vintage spaetzle press! And there’s more.” Edna pulled out an intricately carved wooden club. “It’s for baking Springerle, these fancy cookies. You need this special rolling pin to make them.”

  Now that Kimberly worked full-time hours, Max let Edna work part-time hours for her full-time salary. She signed up for French pastry classes and had mastered the chocolate croissant. Recently, she was returning to her Bloomgarten roots and exploring German baking. She would bring in spicy pfeffernusse cookies or cakes with names he couldn’t pronounce, like the one she brought in the day before, a delicious and dense chocolate cake studded with sour cherries.

  “Oh, yes,” Edna added, “the UPS also brought you a certified letter. I signed for you.”

  Max dug out the letter from under the spaetzle press while Edna tried demonstrating the Springerle rolling pin for Kimberly whose gum smacking had slowed, a sign she was paying attention.

  Max opened the certified letter and felt a wave of fear, then nausea, when he read its contents:

  Attention Mr. Bergen,

  You, sir, are despicable. I know (and can PROVE) who truly authored the Sadowsky Manifesto and will rejoice in exposing your fraud. I will be stopping by your office on January 14 at 8 a.m., so that I can see you with mine own eyes while I inform you, in detail, how I will destroy you.

  I expect you will want to clear your schedule.

  Very truly yours,

  Dr. Edwin Rickman

  Staff psychiatrist

  Atascadero State Hospital

  As soon as he read the letter, Max had to get out of the office. Edna and Kimberly looked so happy, still enveloped in the bubble of success and excitement the Sadowsky Manifesto had generated. He didn’t want them to know their joy was on borrowed time. The taint of literary fraud would poison his business, ruin his career, and probably land him in court. Did people go to jail for those sorts of things? Would he go to the nicer white-collar jail or the rapists’ and murderers’ kind of jail?

  He mumbled something, and soon he was out of the office and out the front door of the building. The January New York air was frigid, and a gust of wind hit him like a bucket of ice water. He could feel the cold seeping into his skin and he was shivering uncontrollably, but it was nothing new.

  He had been shivering ever since he read the letter.

  THE IDEA SEEMED brilliant at 3 a.m., when he was a little drunk and very desperate. A big bag of money, a gym bag bursting with crisp packets of tens and twenties, might be the kind of visual spectacle to win Dr. Rickman over to the potential benefits of keeping the origins of the Sadowsky Manifesto a secret.

  While it sounded good in drunkenness and in theory, the reality was trickier, especially running around getting all the money before their 8 a.m. meeting. Max learned that ATMs limit how much money you can withdraw at a time, and after you make lots of withdrawals while schlepping over fifteen city blocks of Manhattan, the bank thinks the ATM card is stolen and cuts you off. Max switched to cash withdrawals from every credit card he had in his wallet. The big bag of money was heavy, and he was winded from lugging it around in the skin-tingling cold.

  Getting to the office building early, the fifth floor was deserted, the fluorescent lights shining rectangles of cold light in the darkened hallway leading to his office.

  A sharp, angry voice pierced the silence. “Max Bergen?” Max stopped, trying to determine where the voice was coming from. A wiry man with a long, pinched face like a Doberman slipped out of a darkened doorway and stepped in front of Max. They were face-to-face, only inches from each other. The man’s eyes stared into his with an eerie intensity, and his lips curled in distaste when he said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Dr. Rickman?” Max took a step back, trying to gain his equilibrium.

  The man stepped forward into Max’s personal space, so close that Max could smell oatmeal on his breath, see a stray flake of it in the man’s twitching mustache.

  Max backed away again and hurried toward his office. “This is my office; please come in.”

  The presumed Dr. Rickman followed close at Max’s heels into the darkened, empty office. Considering the nature of the meeting, Max had given Kimberly the day off and told Edna to come in late. It was a mistake, Max thought, looking over at Dr. Rickman, a man he was standing alone with, a man radiating a barely contained, malevolent kind of glee.

  “After I see you, I go to the police. I brought all the documentation with me,” Rickman boasted, gesturing to an overstuffed briefcase. “Every single shred of paper I need to prove the so-called Sadowsky Manifesto is a fraud and that you have robbed credit from the true brilliant and talented artist.”

  “Please let me explain, I—”

  Rickman brought a fist down on Max’s desk, a loud echoing boom filling up the silence of the empty area.

  “I’m not done yet. After I go to the police and have you arrested for fraud, then I will go to the New York Times with my personal copies of the papers proving your intellectual theft, exposing you for the huckster you really are.”

  Max propped his head up with his hands. He thought he should say somet
hing, but fear had sucked the breath out of him.

  “Then I will take the documentation to a lawyer, the most ruthless, cutthroat, greedy lawyer ever who will take every dime you have, plus some you haven’t even earned yet.”

  Max stared mournfully at Rickman, a man whose face was lit up with his cause, who spoke with such force and conviction that spittle landed in little drops on the manuscripts covering Max’s desk.

  “I don’t care if it will destroy you; that’s the plan, so no begging. There’s only one thing I want to know: how did you think you could get away with it?”

  Max was weakened, melting under the weight of Dr. Rickman’s vitriol. He thought about pleading with him, but opted instead for the truth. “Sigmund Cerletti is locked up in some hospital for the criminally insane. He’s not going anywhere, and it sounds like he shouldn’t be going anywhere. You know the guy. Is he locked up for a murder or something? I mean, clearly he’s a violent nutcase, right?”

  A strange expression passed over Dr. Rickman’s face: incredulity, fear, outrage, and white-hot anger. Rickman plastered his arms close to his sides, his fists balled. Max desperately wished he had some sort of weapon for protection. Two words slipped from behind Rickman’s clenched teeth.

  “Pen name.”

  “What?” Max asked, confused.

  “Pen name!” Rickman roared, his angry bass filling the room. “Sigmund Cerletti? Didn’t that sound funny to you? Probably not, you uneducated cretin. It’s a pen name; I took the Sigmund from Sigmund Freud and the Cerletti from Ugo Cerletti. You know, Cerletti? The guy who invented electroshock therapy? I wrote the book! I wrote the Sadowsky Manifesto, and I deserve all the credit.”

  Lines from blurbs Max had arranged, printed on the back of the book, flashed through his head: “horrific insight into the mind of a madman,” “compelling and viscerally repulsive,” and the star blurb, “the most peculiar and disturbing read to emerge in decades.”

  Dr. Rickman was standing, ranting now. “I want the world to know the man behind the genius. I want my name up on the New York Times best-seller list.”

  Max tried to speak calmly, reasonably. “The reason the book has captured popular imagination is because the public thinks it’s the work of a crazed killer. Some books are well received because they are brilliant; some are more about fame. Once the public knows it’s written by you, they won’t be interested anymore.”

  Rickman startled and looked at Max as if he had just struck him, his face flushing red. “I am a genius. My work will be appreciated on its own merits.”

  “It will be,” Max said soothingly. “People will be amazed and impressed by your words, yours, but it will reach thousands, maybe millions more, if they think it is written by Sadowsky. And you will make lots of money if it’s got his name on it.”

  “I spent fifteen years of my life working on this book. I have poured my heart, my tears, my blood, my soul into this work only to be ignored. My genius will not be ignored. It is time that the world knows the truth about me.” Dr. Rickman had slipped out of ranting stance and back into his chair across from Max. He looked Max in the eye. “My integrity is not for sale.”

  Max sat staring at Dr. Rickman, who remained in focus as the rest of the room shifted and circled around like a kaleidoscope. Max felt dizzy, like the ground was starting to tilt up, or maybe he was sliding down. Everything was slipping away. Dr. Rickman would see to that.

  Then he remembered the money. He could hear Edna’s words from their discussion the day before: “most people like money.” It seemed futile, but what else was there?

  Feeling sheepish, Max put the bag on his desk, letting it sag open so packets of the bills tumbled out.

  Max looked up with hopeful eyes. Dr. Rickman stared at the bills with such intensity, his body was almost vibrating.

  “Let’s work this out,” Max said, pleading.

  Dr. Rickman’s head snapped up, and like the sudden burst of a jack-in-the-box, his fist shot out and smashed into Max’s forehead. It stung like nothing Max had experienced before. Blood trickled down from above his left eyebrow, wetting his cheek and tickling his neck.

  “Why did you do that?” Max sputtered, his fingers pressed to his forehead.

  Dr. Rickman pursed his lips, opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head before lunging toward him and landing another solid blow, this time to Max’s cheek. It happened so fast, Max didn’t even see it coming.

  When he saw Rickman’s arm pull back, like he was aiming another punch, Max raised his arms to block the blows and his mind flashed to a scene from the book, a particularly disturbing chapter in the Sadowsky Manifesto involving a fatal beating and a page-long description of brain matter on the carpet.

  Despite his arms, Rickman’s fist found Max’s cheek with another solid blow, and Max felt something collapse and his eye started tearing from the sharp, burning pain.

  A loud crack split the air. Max immediately thought of gunfire, his hands jumping over his body, feeling for a gut shot.

  Then there was silence, the eerie, hollow kind of silence that follows an explosion. Max looked at Dr. Rickman, whose body was motionless, his eyes staring into something that the living couldn’t see. He teetered for a moment before dipping at the knees and dropping to the ground like a felled tree. Standing directly behind where Rickman had been was the shaking five-foot-one-inch frame of Edna Bloomgarten.

  “What happened?”

  Edna looked frazzled but sheepishly held up a heavy wooden object.

  “You hit him with a bat?” Max asked.

  “It’s a Springerle rolling pin,” Edna whispered, correcting him.

  Edna got a handkerchief from her purse and started to dab at the blood on Max’s face. Max waved her away and squatted down to get a closer look at Dr. Rickman’s crumpled shape.

  “I know where to hide a body,” Edna whispered.

  Max frowned at the man at their feet. “Edna, I think he’s still breathing.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ve got to call an ambulance. Wow.” Max looked at the back of Rickman’s head. He would have never imagined a single hit could do so much damage. “Edna, he looks really bad.”

  Edna’s snowy eyebrows arched with particular meaning. “I know where we could hide a body.”

  Max thought about it. A few seconds later, he sighed and picked up the phone.

  MINUTES LATER, EMTs and police circled around Dr. Rickman while Max stood behind them, pacing.

  The quiet was too much for Max, who after a time commented to no one in particular, “He looks like he’s in really bad shape.”

  A few minutes later Sergeant Williams turned back to him and said with the dry, dark humor of someone who’s stood by on one too many crime scenes, “He is in real bad shape; he’s dead.”

  While they waited for the medical examiner, the EMTs began attending to Max, cleaning off the blood, checking his face for fractures. Edna tearfully recounted the tale to Sergeant Williams while cutting him a big slice of her cinnamon-marbled coffee cake. Max watched Edna, her sweet, bespectacled, grandmotherly face, and imagined how she must be spinning things to Sergeant Williams. Edna was good on her feet. She had managed to shred the entire contents of Dr. Rickman’s briefcase in the few minutes before the police had arrived.

  After Sergeant Williams’s second piece of coffee cake, he walked over to Max, who was sitting on a chair as an EMT flashed a light in his eye, looking for signs of a head injury.

  “I talked to Ms. Bloomgarten, and I’d like to hear from you. How did this whole thing get started?”

  “He came to confront me.” Max took a breath, working up the nerve to tell the truth. “He came to confront me about being the true author of the Sadowsky Manifesto.”

  Edna touched the sergeant’s shoulder, offering him another cup of coffee. “Can you imagine? What a crazy man—delusional, really—thinking he wrote Sadowsky’s book.”

  The sergeant nodded, smiling up at her. Believing her, Max
thought. He decided confession may be good for the soul, but it would do terrible things to his lifestyle.

  KIDDIELAND

  BY TIM CHAPMAN

  The second-to-the-last time I saw Robert Teague Junior alive was the day my mother decided to hand dye the living-room carpet. Bobby was a kid I would never have chosen to play with except that our families were close so we saw a lot of one another. It wasn’t because he was boring and spoiled, a lot of kids in the sixth grade were like that, but Bobby was sneaky. If you didn’t keep an eye on him, he’d pull some stunt, and if it backfired, he’d try to blame it on you. He was in my class at Eldridge Elementary because he had been kicked out of several private schools, including the local military academy. “Those boys are just playin’ soldier,” he liked to say. “Most of ’em wouldn’t know their ass from a teacup.” The kids in my class were wise to him; he hardly had any friends.

  Even though she was just dropping us off, my mother put on a sundress and makeup and fixed her hair. She put my sister in her blue shift, the one she said made Meg’s eyes the color of cornflowers. It was a long ride across town from our little red ranch house to the Teagues’ house, but I enjoyed it. It was a hot day, so I hung my head out the window like a dog to catch the breeze. The air was moist and heavy and smelled green. It was a cicada year, and their drone was relentless. Every few blocks we’d drive through a cloud of them, turning a couple dozen to paste under the wheels of our old Buick, and I’d have to pull my head in to keep from getting one in my mouth. Meg was curled up, napping, on the backseat. When we pulled into the long driveway leading back through the elms to the Teagues’ house, my mother snapped at me, “Get your head in here, and sit up straight. And brush the hair out of your eyes, you look like a beatnik. Megan, honey, wake up. We’re almost there.”

  My father and Mr. Teague had been in the army together, an experience that made them friends for life. The way they talked about it you’d think they’d won the war by themselves; killing Krauts and “keeping Rommel on the run.” When they came home from Africa, Mr. Teague took over his family’s Cadillac dealership. My father went to work on the night shift at the tool and die company. The difference didn’t seem to bother the two men, but my mother was very aware that compared to us the Teagues were rich.