A Dangerous Fiction

by Barbara Rogan

  I looked up impatiently, having told her to hold my calls. Amy’s call was nothing unusual. I had several friends at PW, and we regularly passed on news of sales and suggestions for features. “So?”

  “She asked if it’s true you’re leaving the agency.”

  “What?”

  “She said she heard you’re leaving, and Harriet is taking over.”

  The breath caught in my chest. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said I didn’t know anything about it.”

  I stared at her.

  Lorna, normally phlegmatic, now looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I said she should ask you, only you weren’t available at the moment. What was I supposed to say?”

  “You should have said no, you twit!” Jean-Paul exploded. “You should have found out where she heard such a ridiculous story.”

  “No one asked you,” Lorna retorted, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “Take it easy,” I told Jean-Paul. “Don’t kill the messenger.” Although in truth, I felt like flinging a large book at the messenger.

  “What should I do?” Lorna asked me.

  “Call her back.” But just then the phone rang.

  Lorna answered it. “Hamish and Donovan.” She listened for a moment. “What press release?”

  Jean-Paul groaned.

  Lorna scowled and put her finger to her lips. “Could you forward us a copy right away? . . . No, of course it’s not true. . . . No, sorry, she’s in a meeting. I’ll have her call you as soon as she gets back.”

  She hung up. “Bill Dietrich from the Times. They received a press release in your name. He’s forwarding it now.”

  Bill was the Times’ publishing beat reporter. I logged into my e-mail, and no one spoke a word until it came through. I read it aloud.

  Dear Publishing Friends and Colleagues:

  As some of you may know, this agency and some of its clients have recently been the objects of a malicious attack. Twelve of my clients received e-mails, supposedly sent by me, containing book and movie offers for their work. The discovery that these offers were phony caused great distress to them and to me.

  Our attempts to identify the perpetrator of this cruel hoax have been unsuccessful. The police, too, have failed to find the person responsible. Because all the targeted writers were my own clients, I have concluded that this malicious act was intended to undermine these valued relationships. There is only one way to protect this agency and its clients. As of today, I am severing my ties to the Hamish and Donovan Literary Agency, which will henceforth be directed by my faithful and trusted associate, Harriet Peagoody. I take comfort in knowing my writers will be in such capable hands.

  It has been a pleasure to know and work with you all, and I wish you all the best.

  Sincerely,

  Jo Donovan

  When I looked up, Jean-Paul was on his feet, pacing the room and punching his palm with his fist. Lorna’s eyes were glued to my face. I opened the address list, and even as I ran down the list of names, I knew, without yet knowing how, that this would change everything. The list was a Who’s Who of the New York publishing scene. Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, Publishers Lunch, Vanity Fair, Mediabistro, and Gawker were on it. So were all the major publishing websites and agent blogs, along with the personal e-mail addresses of a dozen top publishers and editorial directors. If I had compiled it myself, I couldn’t have done a better job.

  We would deny it at once, of course, but now there was no containing the story. Before the day was through it would be the talk of the industry. I had no idea what to do, where to begin. Lorna and Jean-Paul were looking at me fearfully. I forced down the panic that rose inside me. Later, I promised myself. I’ll fall apart later.

  “Write a refutation, and explain the backstory,” I told Jean-Paul. “Bring me a draft in twenty minutes.” He turned and ran. I looked at Lorna. “Let all calls go to voice mail till I get this sorted. Is Harriet in?”

  She nodded silently, owl-eyed behind her thick glasses.

  “Ask her to step in, would you?”

  • • •

  Harriet swooped in, all elbows and British hauteur, dressed today in lady-of-the-manor tweeds. “What’s going on, Jo? Lorna looks like she swallowed a toad.”

  “Shut the door.” I hardly recognized my own voice, which seemed to issue from some cold, dark place deep inside me.

  She closed the door and approached my desk but remained standing. I handed her a printout of the press release. “This went out to the entire publishing community this morning.”

  The blood drained from her face as she read. Even her lips went pale. Halfway through, she sat down heavily.

  “Who sent it?” she said when she finished reading.

  “You took the question right out of my mouth.”

  “How can you ask me that?” she cried. “But how could you not? I quite see that. I see how it looks. And after yesterday. But even so, Jo, even so.”

  She looked genuinely stricken, so ill I edged the wastebasket toward her. “Maybe you told Charlie more than you meant to.”

  “I didn’t! I swear to you I didn’t. He did ask, but I hardly said a thing.” She stared at the printout, running a hand through her hair until the gray spikes resembled a turbulent seascape. “‘My faithful and trusted associate,’” she read aloud. “‘Her capable hands.’ You see what this is?”

  “A vote of confidence?”

  “He wants you to suspect me. I’m the scapegoat here. I’m as much a victim as you are.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “Not me. And it couldn’t have been Charlie. He didn’t know enough.”

  “Because you ‘hardly said a thing.’”

  She bit her lips and didn’t answer.

  “Maybe it was a thing or two too many,” I said. “I’m not blaming you. But I have to know.”

  Patches of color returned to her cheeks. She read the press release again. “Whoever wrote this knew there were twelve phony offers. Charlie didn’t know that. Isn’t it obvious who it is?”

  What was obvious was that she was ratcheting back her claim to have told him nothing. Now it was just the number he didn’t know.

  “Not to me,” I said.

  “It’s that stalker of yours, that Sam Spade.” She said “stalker” as if she were saying “husband” or “lover,” as if he were someone I had willfully allowed into our lives. But I observed this without feeling it. I felt nothing at all, except cold.

  “It must be,” she went on in the face of my silence. “It’s his MO: phony e-mails, impersonation. Only now he’s trying to destroy us from within, casting suspicion on me. Don’t you fall for it, Jo! I told you I’d see you through this, and I meant it. But I have to know you trust me. I can’t go on working here if there’s any doubt in your mind.”

  There was plenty of doubt in my mind. Harriet was a skillful saleswoman, but I wasn’t buying. Anyone who knew about our cyber-stalker could have written that press release, including Sam Spade himself. But only someone in publishing could have put together that distribution list, and chances were I was looking right at her. Or so I’d thought before she came in. Now I was less certain. Anyone can fake shock, but she’d actually turned white.

  I looked away from her, and my eye fell on a photo on the opposite wall. Taken at a mayoral inaugural ball, the photo showed Hugo and Norman Mailer embracing warmly. In fact, Hugo had disliked Mailer, who’d once written an essay about the state of contemporary American fiction without so much as mentioning Hugo’s name, and Mailer had loved Hugo about as much as any alpha wolf loves an upstart male challenger; but you’d never know it from the photo. Keep your friends close, Hugo always said, and your enemies closer.

  “Of course I believe you,” I told her.

  • • •

  The first person I called was
Tommy, despite having sworn last night never to call him again. I was in crisis mode, blindered, full-speed ahead. Tommy gave me his e-mail address, asked me to forward the phony press release, and put me on hold. When he came back, his voice was grim. “This isn’t good. It’s escalating.”

  “You were right about one thing. Look at the addresses it went out to. Whoever made up the distribution list knows his way around publishing.”

  He grunted. “Seen Harriet yet?”

  “She was shocked, shocked!”

  “Again with the Bogie references. A guy could get jealous.”

  And he accused me of flirting. I was in no mood. “The thing is, she really did seem shocked. She turned white. How do you fake that?”

  “You’d be surprised what people can fake. How bad is this, Jo?”

  “Bad enough. I expect I’ll lose some clients.” I felt a pang as I said it.

  “I thought all publicity’s good publicity.”

  “For writers, maybe. Agents are supposed to be effective and invisible.”

  “Any chance your media friends will keep quiet?”

  “Not a chance in the world. They don’t do quiet.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be issuing a denial.”

  “Working on it as we speak.”

  “You want to downplay the damage. Refer to the incidents as ‘unfunny jokes’; try not to mention the perp at all. Remember he’s out there obsessing, feeding on every bit of attention he can squeeze out of you. I’ve got to go. I’ll be over later.”

  “Are you going to talk to Charlie again?”

  “So now you suspect Charlie?”

  I looked at the door to my office, gauging the silence behind it. “At this point, I trust the dog.”

  “Now you’re talking sense,” Tommy said.

  • • •

  Jean-Paul brought in a draft statement. I edited out the indignation and downplayed the villainy, borrowing Tommy’s phrase, “unfunny joke.” The result was short on detail but dignified in tone. “Print it on agency stationery,” I told him. “I want it faxed to everyone on that distribution list.”

  “Not e-mailed?”

  “Faxed and e-mailed, then followed up with phone calls. And that’s just for starters. I’m going to need to reach out to every writer in our stable.” Telling the story over and over, listening to the same expressions of shock, issuing the same reassurances—my stomach curdled at the thought.

  “What kills me,” Jean-Paul said, “is that I actually had my hands on the bastard. I wish I’d broken his fucking neck—sorry, Jo.”

  “I wish I’d brained him with my umbrella, but wishes ain’t horses. Now, go fix that statement. I want everyone in my office in half an hour for a staff meeting.”

  He left. To save time, I forwarded the phony press release to Molly and Max, then conference-called them. She was home in Westchester; he was on tour in Houston. I filled them in, and they read the statement. Max was the first to speak.

  “The hell with the tour. I’m coming to New York.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said. “I need you out there flogging books and charming booksellers. Don’t forget, your income is my income.”

  “This is serious, Jo. It’s escalating.”

  “The cops are taking it seriously. There’s nothing you can do that they’re not doing.”

  “How can I help?” Molly asked.

  “Just do what you do. Talk to people. Let them know it was a hoax. Tell them the agency’s on solid ground and I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Won’t that make them suspect the opposite? It would me.”

  “Can’t be helped,” I said. “The false story’s out there; we have to deny it.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “And I’m calling Detective Cullen,” Max said.

  “Keep your chin up, kiddo,” Molly said. “You’re not alone.”

  “You guys,” I began, but couldn’t go on due to something stuck in my throat.

  • • •

  We sat around the conference table in my office, as we did at our monthly slush-pile treasure hunts, but the atmosphere this time was very different. Chloe, seated opposite Jean-Paul, looked everywhere but at him. Harriet was physically present, but so distracted and silent she hardly seemed there at all. Only Lorna was her usual efficient self, anchoring the foot of the table with notepad and sharpened pencils at the ready. The phone rang constantly, two rings per call before voice mail picked up.

  “We’ve got to start answering that phone soon,” I said. “When we do, I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Our attitude is that someone played a nasty prank on us. We’re annoyed but not worried; and despite the recent unpleasantness, it is business as usual here. I want a batch of submissions out of here by the close of day. Any calls from the media should be directed to me. Any appointments you have, keep ’em. Lunch dates, whatever. Business as usual.”

  Harriet shuddered. “As if I could eat. I’m feeling quite ill, actually. I may have to go home.”

  In the silence that followed, there came a loud snort from the foot of the table. We all looked at Lorna, who rarely spoke in staff meetings. “If anyone should feel sick, it’s Jo,” she said to Harriet. “She’s the one getting battered and her name dragged through the mud, and I don’t see her running home.”

  “Nonsense!” I said, bristling. “Do I look battered and muddy?”

  “Hell no,” Jean-Paul said loyally, and Chloe gave him a sharp look. Lorna seemed taken aback, and I regretted my reaction. In her own awkward way, the girl was just trying to support me, and I’d nearly taken her head off.

  “Personally,” Chloe said, “I think you’re taking this really well, Jo. What this creep did was criminal. My dad says you’ll have a humongous civil suit against him, too, if the police ever find out who it is.”

  I’d met her parents once, shortly after Chloe joined the agency: tall, dark, angular people, high-powered attorneys in a large city firm. Very fine people, touchingly proud of their only child. I’d marveled at the lack of any resemblance between them and their petite, kewpie-doll, blue-eyed daughter until the obvious explanation occurred and was later confirmed by Harriet: Chloe was adopted, a much-loved only child.

  I wondered what else her parents had said.

  “Wait,” Jean-Paul said. “You talked to your father about this?”

  Chloe turned on him combatively. “Yeah, so?”

  “So Jo specifically asked us not to discuss these incidents with anyone.”

  “It just so happens that we talked this morning, after the New York Times and PW and everyone else already had the story. I thought he might be able to help. You are such a suck-up, Jean-Paul, it’s pathetic.”

  “Just because I’m concerned—”

  “Concerned? Try obsessed!”

  “Knock it off, both of you,” I growled, and they subsided, glaring off into different corners.

  Lovers’ quarrel, I thought. All I needed.

  • • •

  If that meeting had had a soundtrack, it would have been by Bartók. And yet despite the disharmony, my little crew pulled together over the next week as never before, including Harriet, who did not, after all, go home that afternoon. Later that day, Tommy and another detective came by the office to do a second round of interviews. Harriet emerged from hers with reddened eyes; yet within minutes I heard her on the phone, reassuring someone that I was still at the helm of Hamish and Donovan. The reason I heard it was that she had taken to leaving her office door ajar, in a show of openness.

  Though they still weren’t speaking, Jean-Paul and Chloe worked like demons, while Lorna guarded my office so zealously that Mingus began to feel redundant. Like so much of her solicitude, it was well-meaning but tone-deaf. Solitude was the last thing I wanted or needed. Like Harriet, I took to leaving my off
ice door open.

  My first calls were to the journalists on the distribution list. They were sympathetic but unbending. The story was already out on various blogs and websites; they had no choice but to cover it themselves. I spoke to dozens of book editors and publishers, all full of indignation on my behalf and Harriet’s, for she, too, was seen as a victim. During that week, every agent and editor I knew called to commiserate and share their own horror stories about obsessive writers. No one seemed to wonder about the distribution list, which to me had been the most disturbing aspect of the incident. They assumed that the pushy writer who accosted me outside the office was the same person impersonating me online. I was glad about that, and kept my darker suspicions to myself.

  Everyone worked overtime to keep submissions flowing while we coped with the phone calls. I went to two dinner parties and a book launch; I kept all the lunch dates on my calendar and insisted that Harriet do the same. “Business As Usual” was our mantra.

  My greatest fear was that the phony press release would prove a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to wholesale defections until the agency collapsed around me. But once again I was unjust to my clients. Their support gave me strength I could never have summoned on my own. The first one I called was Rowena Blair. She was the client I could least afford to lose, and the one who could most easily leave, since a writer who churns out a bestseller a year can have any agent she wants.

  “I’d kill him,” she said after I told her the story. “I’d feed him to the pigs. I’d cut off his balls and serve them on a bed of fucking rice.” After that, Rowena called at least once a day. She offered me a private detective, the services of her masseuse, the use of her country house in East Hampton. I was tempted to take her up on the last, just to get away, but I knew that house: secluded in the woods, it had towering glass walls. I’d have felt far more exposed there than in the city.

  And it wasn’t just Rowena. Gordon Hayes phoned daily. He said he was checking on Mingus, but I knew he was checking on me. Keyshawn Grimes stopped by the office to offer himself and a cadre of friends as bodyguards. I explained about Mingus, but Keyshawn wasn’t impressed. “Dogs can’t go everywhere,” he said, and a strange thought came to me then, like a wisp of a dream that dissipates even as you reach for it: where I grew up, dogs were welcome in places black men were not.