On this date, the missing date in Sonny’s calendar, Irving Wolfe died. On this date, King’s book was born.
Why would the page be missing?
But I knew why. There was only one explanation. There was an appointment there that Sonny never wanted the world to discover. Or me. It was his secret. His four-million dollar secret.
“You were on that boat, weren’t you?” I said to Sonny.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t say yes or no. He just sat there in silence with the smoke billowing around his face.
IV
35
Knock knock.
“Who’s there?” Bree said through the hotel door at the Gansevoort. It was early. Crazy-early. 5:00 am early.
“Julie.”
“Julie who?”
“Bree, just open the door.” I was operating on thirty minutes sleep, and I wasn’t feeling very funny right now.
Bree opened the door without undoing the chain and peered at me through the crack. She wasn’t happy with me. “You couldn’t be Julie Chavan. I put Julie Chavan in a cab twenty minutes ago.”
“It was three hours ago, actually.”
“Like that makes a difference, darling. We should both be in bed. Separately. Sleeping.”
“Sorry, but it’s important.”
“Nothing is important at this hour of the day. Nothing is important until I’ve had six hours of sleep and two cups of coffee.”
“Bree,” I said.
“Oh, hell, all right.” She undid the chain and opened the door. Her eyes were bleary. She wasn’t wearing makeup. Her hair looked like a multi-colored bird’s nest, sticking out in little bits of straw. It wasn’t a pretty sight. “You were a lot more fun before you started making mature decisions about your life,” she told me.
I went into her room and paced anxiously. Bree sat down on the end of her rumpled bed and watched me. She was wearing an oversized I Love New York t-shirt and men’s boxer shorts.
“You know, darling, I brought coffee when I invaded your apartment early in the morning,” she told me with a yawn. “Donuts, too. Would it have killed you to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way over here?”
“Sorry.” I glanced at the boxer shorts. “There’s not a guy in the bathroom wearing your panties, is there?”
Bree sighed. “Yes, Fernando came back with me from the restaurant. He asked if he could sleep in my underwear. It’s a popular fetish.”
“I was just asking,” I said.
“Speak, darling, before I pretend you’re not here and fall asleep again.”
I tried to talk, but I kept walking back and forth like an overwound toy. To the window. To the door. To the window. To the door. Finally, Bree got off the bed and stopped me with both hands firmly on my shoulders.
“Julie, you’re making me dizzy,” she said. “What is going on?”
“He was there. He was on the boat.”
“Who was where on what boat?”
“Sonny. I think he was on Irving Wolfe’s yacht with King on the night that Wolfe disappeared. I think that’s what King has been covering up all this time.”
Bree sat down on the bed again. She ran her hands through her hair, which made it worse. “Aren’t you the same girl who told me last night that she didn’t care about this anymore? You were done worrying about King and Wolfe and Sonny and the book and the money. Remember? You are out. You are selling West 57 and moving to Los Angeles. It’s Helmut’s problem.”
“If it were your father, wouldn’t you want to know the truth?” I asked.
“My father covers Parliament for the Times. The bar for scandal is set pretty high. Dad would have to be a cross-dressing necrophiliac before I got too excited about it.”
“This is big,” I said.
“Fine. Okay. I understand your concerns, and yes, if my Dad were hanging out on a yacht with a billionaire crook on the night the bastard committed suicide, I might have one or two questions about it. However, first things first, okay? Why do you even think Sonny was there?”
I told her about the missing calendar page. She wasn’t impressed.
“That’s your big revelation? Sonny’s calendar? There’s no need for your knickers to be up your arse crack, darling. It’s probably nothing. Maybe he was at lunch and he needed a piece of paper to scribble out some contract terms.”
“There’s more,” I said. “I checked his cell phone records. Sonny didn’t make or receive any calls after nine o’clock that evening. That’s impossible, right? He was always on the phone. So either Sonny turned off his phone or he was out of signal range. Like several miles out on the Atlantic.”
Bree blinked at me through her fogged brain. “Well, what difference does it make, and what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I came here.”
“You came to me for advice?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Darling, you really are desperate.”
“I know.”
“All right, fine. You want my advice? It seems to me you have two options. The first and clearly the best option is to forget it and get on with your life.”
“I can’t do that. I thought I could, but I can’t walk away.”
“Then I guess that means we’ll go with the second option, which is to wake up King and throw your suspicions in his face. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish. If King tells you that you’re wrong, you have to decide whether to believe him. If he tells you that you’re right, you have to decide whether you want to besmirch your father’s public reputation. I’m not sure you’ll feel better either way.”
“I realize that.”
“All right, let me go pee and shower and resuscitate my face, and then we’ll go upstairs and see if His Robust Manhood is awake.”
“Thank you.”
“This is a big favor for someone who arrives at my door coffee-less and donut-less.”
“I understand.”
Bree hopped off the bed and headed for the bathroom, but as she did, her phone began ringing. “Lord in Heaven, does everyone in this freaking city get up when it’s still dark out? In London, people are freaking civilized. We get up at noon and we have COFFEE.” She answered the phone with a shout: “WHAT?”
She heard who it was, and she continued more quietly. “Oh, sorry, sorry, darling, it’s early, I’m not awake. I know you morning show producers work crazy hours, but those of us in the real world are supposed to be asleep. I confirmed everything yesterday, didn’t I, so what’s the problem? King’s segment isn’t for three hours, which means I could be dreaming about Vince Vaughn for another two hours and fifty-eight minutes. Now what the hell is so urgent?”
She took a breath. The producer at Good Morning America finally got a chance to talk. When he did, Bree bellowed “WHAT?” again even louder than before. This was followed by a string of expletives that I won’t repeat and several more questions.
“He said what?”
“When?”
“Why?”
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
Bree hung up the phone and tried to calm herself with a deep breath. “Apparently, King Royal just called and cancelled his appearance on Good Morning America today.”
“What? When? Why? Are you freaking kidding me?”
“Is that supposed to be funny? That’s not funny. Now she wants to be funny!”
“I’m sorry. What did King say?”
“Nothing. He left a freaking voice mail. Awfully sorry, can’t make it, hope it’s not a problem, blah blah blah. That son of a bitch!”
“We better get up there and find out what’s going on.”
“I still need fifteen minutes to make myself presentable. While I am showering, please find a murder weapon I can use.”
I think she was kidding about that.
Bree needed twenty-five minutes, not fifteen, to finish her ablutions. When she re-emerged fro
m the hotel bathroom, she was pink and naked. It occurred to me that I am seeing way too many people naked these days. I don’t even particularly like seeing myself naked. If you are naked as you read this, please put on some clothes.
“How do I look?” Bree asked.
“Naked,” I said.
“I was hoping for some variant on ‘ravishing’ or ‘stunning.’”
“Stunning,” I said.
“I will consider that a sincere compliment. Did anyone call? Did King call?”
“No.”
Bree got dressed quickly. With her makeup and lipstick on, she really did look stunning, in a True Blood sort of way. We marched out of her hotel room and took the elevator up to the floor where King had his mammoth suite. At the door, Bree knocked. Well, she pounded actually. There was no answer inside.
“King, it’s Bree,” she announced pleasantly. “Bree and Julie Chavan. Remember us, darling? We need to chat. Now be a love, and open the freaking door.”
Still no answer.
Bree dug in her purse and produced a hotel key.
“You have his room key?” I asked.
“Always get your client’s room key, darling. You never know when you will need to wake them, revive them, kill them, or fuck them.”
Sorry, that one slipped by me. I’m tired.
She slid the key in the lock and opened the door. We entered the Taj Mahal, and I had visions of finding an orgy inside and seeing more naked people. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Instead, the suite was empty and dark. There was litter on the floor. It looked like someone had made a fast getaway.
“King?” Bree called again. She wandered into the other half of the suite and checked the bedroom. The bathroom. The closet. If King were anywhere to be found, I was pretty sure she would have dragged him out by his engorgement. She came back alone, not looking happy, and reported: “He’s gone. No luggage, no clothes, nothing.”
“He talked about disappearing,” I said. “When I saw him yesterday, he was asking for money so he could run away. He was pretty scared.”
Bree sat down on the plush sofa and stared at me through her psychedelic bangs. “Darling, don’t you think that little bit of news was worth sharing over dinner last night?”
“We were busy dancing. I didn’t take him seriously.”
“Great. Good. Fine. Okay, we have a #1 bestseller and no author to do the media promos. Let’s not panic. If the word goes out that he’s disappeared, the rumors alone will sell 50,000 more copies. If he’s dead, that’s probably 100,000 copies.”
“Bree!” I chided her.
“I’m just saying.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now you both answer some questions,” said a voice in the doorway of the hotel room.
We looked up and saw a very brown person staring at us. She was so brown she was Goldy Brown, in fact. Goldy Brown of the FBI.
36
“Where’s King Royal?” Ms. Brown asked us without foreplay. “I’ve been trying to talk to him for two days. He doesn’t return my calls. He’s avoiding me.”
“Maybe he’s just not that into you,” Bree said.
Ms. Brown’s brown face turned cherry red. She’d only met Bree twice, but let’s face it, Bree is an acquired taste under the best of circumstances, and we were not in the best of circumstances. Anyway, I think Ms. Brown was calculating whether she could arrest Bree under the Patriot Act and make her disappear.
“I waited for him at the bookstore yesterday,” Ms. Brown went on, “and then he sneaked out.”
“You were there?” I asked. She could have at least said: Nice catch on the flying dog.
“I was. King was supposed to meet me after the event.”
“Well, things got a little crazy,” I said. “Maybe you noticed the madman with the gun? The one pointed at my head? Thank God Bree whacked the man with a huge copy of Breaking Dawn.”
“Yes, if Stephenie Meyer had shown even a hint of editorial restraint, Julie might not be alive today,” Bree said.
Ha ha, she’s just kidding, Steph. Go, Bella.
“That man, Walter Pope, he needs help,” I said. “He tried to kill King.”
“Which brings me back to my original question,” Ms. Brown said. “Where is King Royal?”
“Gone,” Bree informed her. “He’s not here.”
Ms. Brown looked at me. “Where did he go?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “He called and cancelled a major engagement a few minutes ago. We came up to talk to him and discovered he wasn’t here. He took everything with him.”
“You two are his agent and his publisher, and you don’t know where he is? I find that hard to believe.”
“If I knew where he was, I’d already have killed him,” Bree said.
“Bree, maybe this isn’t a good time for jokes,” I advised her.
“Who says I’m joking?”
Goldy Brown of the FBI didn’t take Bree’s word that King was nowhere to be found in the Gansevoort suite. She told us both to sit down, and then she did her own search of the hotel room. She even looked under the bed and behind the shower curtain. When she was satisfied that King was missing in action, she returned to confront us. As tall and brown as she was, she looked vaguely like a #2 pencil.
“I need to find King Royal right now,” she told us.
“What’s the rush?” I asked.
Ms. Brown wasn’t in a mood to share information, so she didn’t answer me.
“We’re also going to need everything King Royal gave you related to Captain Absolute,” she went on. “Drafts, notes, tapes, videos, anything he submitted to either of you. And yes, we have a warrant.”
“We typically don’t get any supporting materials,” I said. “We just get the finished manuscript.”
“What about you?” Ms. Brown asked Bree.
“Yes, I keep all of that material on a little USB flash drive in my knickers for protection. Do you want me to wipe it off before I give it to you? This is all very exciting, so I’m a little moist down there.”
Ms. Brown looked ready to explode. She definitely had an enhanced interrogation planned for Bree. Waterboarding. Toilet swirlies. Whatever’s in fashion at Gitmo these days. (Is that place still open? I’ve lost track.)
“It would help if we knew what you’re looking for,” I said to her.
“That’s not your concern. Just assemble what you have when you’re back at your office. Someone will be in touch with you about it later today. Right now, I want to know what King Royal said before he left.”
“He asked me for money,” I told her. “He talked about wanting to disappear.”
“Did you give him any money?”
“No.”
“Did he say where he planned to go?”
“No.”
“Why did he want to disappear?”
“He thought his life was in danger. This was right after Walter Pope pointed a gun at us. He was scared. I figured he would calm down. I had no idea he would actually leave.”
“Did he mention Nick Duggan’s death?” Ms. Brown asked.
I frowned. “Yes, he thought there was a connection between Duggan’s death and his investigation into Irving Wolfe.”
“What connection?”
“He didn’t say.”
Ms. Brown didn’t look happy. “We found Nick Duggan’s research notes. He was digging into Irving Wolfe’s death. He was asking around about the last night that Wolfe spent on his yacht. Duggan didn’t think it went down the way King Royal describes it in that book. Turns out he was right.”
“He was?” we both said.
“Yes, he was,” she snapped. “So I need to talk to King Royal. Now. Today. I also want to know if either of you knows what really happened on that boat.”
I opened my mouth to tell her about Sonny. He was on the boat. He was there. Instead, before I could say a word, Bree slung her arm around my shoulder and squeezed until I winced in pain. I got the message and didn�
�t say anything.
“King Royal’s the only one who knows what happened on the yacht that night,” Bree said. “When you find King, you can ask him.”
“What about your father?” Ms. Brown asked me. “Did he tell you anything?”
“He didn’t,” I said, which was true. Alive or dead.
Ms. Brown turned to leave, but Bree called after her. “Whoa, whoa, that’s it? You said Nick Duggan was right and that King was lying. We’d like to know what’s really going on.”
I could see the wheels turning in Ms. Brown’s mind. She was debating how much to tell us.
“We found Irving Wolfe,” she finally admitted. “It’s probably on the news by now, so you’ll hear about it anyway.”
“He’s alive?” I asked.
“Not alive,” she went on. “Dead. A fisherman in the Atlantic found something in his nets a few days ago. Turns out it was the remains of Irving Wolfe. We’ve kept it under wraps, but word is leaking out to the media.”
“So he’s dead,” Bree said. “Big deal. King said he was dead, and he’s dead. What’s the problem?”
“It’s not that simple,” Ms. Brown told us. “Wolfe didn’t throw himself off the boat. He didn’t commit suicide. Someone shot him in the head.”
37
There were lots of people I could have called for help.
I could have called Cherie. My mother was back in Los Angeles. She would have told me to rub on some SPF 45 and hop a plane to join her. I could have called Thad and poured out my heart to him. I could have called Libby, and she would have sent her nephew, Drew, to pick me up in the limo, and we would have gone to lunch at the Tavern.
They would all have been right there to comfort me in their own ways, but I didn’t call any of them. That should have told me something.
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