A Dangerous Fiction

by Barbara Rogan

  More people came. Leigh Pfeffer, queenly in purple, cried when she hugged me and again when she saw her painting above my mantel, a bittersweet reminder of our last day together. Molly used to joke that in this city you can’t tell a funeral from a wedding, because New Yorkers wear black to everything. Today, though, there would have been no mistaking the occasion. I’d never seen a sadder room.

  The doorman called up to say the limos had arrived. The mourners made their way out to the hall and into the elevator, which had to make several trips. The last to leave were Barry, Max, Harriet, and me. While the men waited in the hall, Harriet approached me with a glass of water. She took my hand and pressed a small white pill in my palm. “Take it.”

  I looked at her.

  “It’s just a Valium, to take the edge off.” When I hesitated, she laughed awkwardly. “Don’t you trust me?”

  Molly trusted you, and look where she is now. A vile thought, totally unwarranted. I was ashamed of myself. Molly and Rowena were murdered by a stranger, a twisted wannabe writer who styled himself Sam Spade. I knew that.

  But I didn’t take the pill. I slipped it in my pocket.

  “I don’t want the edge off,” I said.

  Jean-Paul and Keyshawn were waiting in the lobby when we descended. Together with Max and Barry, they formed a wedge that funneled me and Harriet from the building into the waiting limo. Lights flashed. I heard people shouting my name and caught a glimpse of overcast sky before I was bundled inside. Barry and Max followed, and Max slammed the door shut. The limo slipped into the stream of traffic and bore us away.

  • • •

  Harriet and I sat in the front row of the chapel, for Molly had no living relatives. The service was short, and much of it was in Hebrew. I stood when told to stand, sat when told to sit.

  Harriet spoke. It should have been me, but I couldn’t. There were, by arrangement, no other eulogies; those would come in the memorial service, whenever I had the heart to arrange one. Behind me I heard weeping and snuffling, but I kept my eyes on the coffin, which lay atop a bier in the front of the chapel. It looked too short for Molly, and I conceived the notion that the undertakers had folded her into it, knowing the casket would be closed. I worried, too, that she wouldn’t have enough air. Though I realized these concerns were stupid and absurd, they ran though my head in an endless loop.

  There was a rabbi and a cantor. The casket was bare of flowers. There was no incense, no organ, no music except the cantor’s deep, mournful chanting. Unlike most funerals I’d been to, not a word was spoken about joyous reunions in the afterlife. “Jews don’t sugarcoat death,” Molly once told me, “and they sure as hell don’t celebrate it. They just look it in the face.” Not my forte, looking things in the face. It would have been nice to imagine Molly meeting up with Hugo and Rowena in some book-lined version of paradise, but I didn’t believe in that any more than they had.

  Molly was gone. I would never see her again. I would never hear her voice again.

  After the service, Harriet and I stood in the front of the room greeting people as they filed out to the parking lot. Many were crying. I clung to my threadbare composure and did my best for Molly’s sake. I thanked the mourners for coming, comforted the weepers, and assured everyone who asked that I was fine. I endured their inadequate praise of Molly and hackneyed phrases of consolation, willing myself to see past the banalities to the sorrow underneath.

  The line inched forward. Suddenly Charlie Malvino stood before me in a somber black suit and tie. “I hope you don’t mind my coming,” he said. “I was very fond of the old girl.”

  “She was fond of you, too,” I said, which was true. Charlie had come to her straight out of college; she’d made him an agent. We shook hands. Less restrained with Harriet, he gave her a hug and whispered something in her ear. Harriet shook her head reprovingly and turned to the next person on line.

  • • •

  Molly was buried beside her husband, whose headstone, commissioned from an artist, was engraved with wildflowers that encircled the inscription. We huddled together beneath a gray sky before the open grave. Harriet stood beside me, her arm linked in mine, tears and mascara streaming down her face, stiff upper lip quivering. I could feel her body shaking, but my own felt as heavy and immobile as the stones around us. Max was on my other side, his arm around my shoulders. Someone had handed out leaflets with the Hebrew prayers transliterated. When the rabbi led the Kaddish, I read the words aloud. “Yis’gadal v’yis’kadash, shmei rabba.” I didn’t know what they meant, but for once it didn’t matter. They were the right words, the necessary words.

  Then something happened that I should have foreseen but hadn’t. The rabbi pulled a shovel from a pile of dirt beside the grave and handed it to me.

  Harriet released my arm. Max stepped back. Unmoving, I stared at the rabbi.

  “It’s the last service we perform for our loved ones,” he said gently.

  It seemed a poor return for the woman who had given me my life, my mother in all but birth. But it was the way of her people, and I had to honor that.

  I forced myself forward, scooped dirt from the pile, and pivoted toward the grave. As I looked down at the coffin, it hit me full on that my Molly was in there. For a moment my knees buckled; but I recovered, stood up straight, and turned the shovel over. Gravel and dirt rained down, striking the coffin with a sound like hail.

  Chapter 24

  Shiva, Max had explained, was the Jewish equivalent of the wake, except that it came after instead of before the funeral. We sat shiva for Molly from Thursday through Sunday. During this period, the television was unplugged, and copies of the New York Times in their blue cellophane wrappers piled up on a side table, untouched. It didn’t bother me to be cut off. It actually felt soothing, as if I’d entered a sort of temporal cocoon. I knew I’d be told if the police made an arrest. Short of that, there was no news I cared to hear.

  Once again my home was full of people, food, and drink. Max and Barry came every day with baby Molly. The jealousy I’d suffered when Max first told me they were expecting had long since dissipated, and so I took my greatest comfort in holding the baby and looking into those wise, dark eyes, which reminded me of her namesake’s. Lorna, Chloe, and Jean-Paul took it in turns to man the lobby, screening out reporters but letting all other visitors up; and there were so many that gradually these gatherings took on the aspect of an endless publishing salon with me as hostess, Nora Charles sans her Nick. I felt Hugo’s absence these days as acutely as I did Molly’s, as if the new loss had exacerbated the older.

  Most of the shiva calls were kindly meant and gratefully received. Many came from clients, Molly’s and my own. On Friday, Gordon Hayes drove down from Saratoga Springs, and the reunion between him and Mingus had me smiling for the first time in days. Our colleagues, too, came in droves, agents and editors, movie agents and producers, publishers and reviewers. With me they shared stories about Molly, reminisced about her toughness in defense of her clients and all the matches she had made, and not only between writers and publishers: Molly had been a natural matchmaker, with half a dozen marriages to her credit, not counting mine and Hugo’s, which she’d opposed right down to the wire. My gaze drifted toward the framed wedding portrait on the table beside the couch. Even as she was buying my wedding dress, Molly had inveighed against the marriage, a contradiction so perfectly her that the memory of it made me smile.

  Other callers were less welcome. Teddy Pendragon stopped by, but I’d anticipated this and left orders. Jean-Paul intercepted him in the lobby and told him I was not receiving visitors, even as a group of editors emerged from the elevator. There were others whose expressions of sympathy could not disguise their avid curiosity. Though they dared not question me, they didn’t hesitate to buttonhole members of my staff. I caught wisps of conversation. “Did Jo really find the body? How is she holding up? What do the police say?” I could e
xcuse it, barely, in the writers. Waving a half-told story under their noses was like teasing a chained dog with a marrow bone. But I found it harder to forgive in the publishing colleagues who gathered every afternoon and evening in my living room. The constant flow of liquor didn’t help, loosening lips that ought better have stayed tight.

  The fate of the agency was another hot topic. There were rumors that I would not return. I was silent on the subject, for I’d not yet decided what to do. Even though Molly had been retired for two years, she’d remained my closest ally and adviser. It was hard to imagine diving back in the water when I felt there was no ground beneath my feet. And it wasn’t just about me. As long as Molly and Rowena’s killer was on the loose, the safety of others was at stake. Chloe’s parents, I knew, were frantic. They’d called me on Friday morning and begged me to fire their daughter, because Chloe had refused their entreaties to quit. “We’re so sorry for your trouble,” her mother said, wringing her hands, “but she’s our only child, and we are frightened for her.” I promised to talk to her. That afternoon I took Chloe into Hugo’s study—mine now—and offered her an indefinite leave of absence, with a guaranteed job when she was ready to return, assuming there was an agency to return to.

  Chloe’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked at me the way I used to look at Molly. “I’m not going anywhere, Jo. If you want me out you’ll have to fire me, and if you fire me, I’ll, I’ll . . . sue you for wrongful termination!”

  I spoke to each of the others separately, made the same offer, and received the same reply. A person would have to be made of harder stuff than I was not to be moved by such loyalty. Yet it didn’t solve my problem. The killer was still out there; and instead of summoning up the balls to come at me directly, he seemed intent on killing the people close to me. I was a danger, not only to my staff but to my clients as well. The only way I could think of to protect them was to close down the agency, or sell it to Harriet . . . just as that phony press release had claimed.

  But how could I quit the agency? The very thought was treacherous, for it meant the killer would have succeeded not only in destroying Molly but also her life’s work, and my own. And what would I do with myself, if I couldn’t do what I do best?

  Because I could not address the rumors, Harriet once again stepped in to fill the breach. “Of course we’ll soldier on,” she said stoutly, every time the subject arose. “Molly would have it no other way.”

  It was the right thing to say. Sorrow having rendered me neither blind nor deaf, I’d noticed other agents cozying up to my writers. None would be so crass as to openly solicit a client of mine, but that didn’t stop them from maneuvering to reap the spoils if I should drop out. Our clients needed to know we’re still there for them, and the industry needed reminding that we’re still a force to be reckoned with, so Harriet did well to take the line she did. But I couldn’t help wondering what she really thought. Did she see herself as my heir presumptive? I certainly didn’t see her that way. Harriet was an excellent agent for certain writers, but she was too conservative, too wedded to the traditions of our industry: a dangerous trait when those norms were in flux. If she took over, the agency would gradually dwindle into the ranks of all the hundreds of midlist players with no particular clout. The thought of it curdled my heart, what was left of it. But Harriet had to be hoping, and perhaps she had some moral right to her expectations. Once I heard her talking to Martha Gale from Random House. They were in the kitchen, washing and drying wineglasses, and didn’t notice me entering with a tray. “The agency will absolutely go on,” Harriet was saying, with more than her usual emphasis, “whatever she personally decides to do.”

  I delayed my decision, hoping the police would finally do their job and catch the killer. But no arrest came; and according to my lawyer, the police were wasting precious time investigating me instead of searching for Sam Spade. I don’t know where Sean got his information, but he clearly had sources inside the investigation. Forensic tests had borne out the tie between the two murders, the same gun having been used in both. Despite the different jurisdictions, the two investigations had merged into one. The police were pursuing two different theories of the crimes; the fact that they were contradictory showed, I supposed, a certain greatness of mind in the constabulary—that or total idiocy. The first theory was that I had killed both my friends, alone or with a confederate. The second was that I was the indirect target of both murders.

  Even without Sean’s information, I would have known which way the wind was blowing. My building’s doormen were questioned, along with every member of the agency, past and present. Even Max was interviewed, his alibis checked. The police examined surveillance cameras in the building and my garage, E-ZPass records, and my phone records. All of this, along with the negative results of the gunshot residue test, must have confirmed my innocence; and yet it took three precious days for the police to reach that conclusion, and another to convince Sean that they’d reached it.

  He still wasn’t taking any chances. “We’ve worked out parameters for this interview,” he said, as we sat in the back of his chauffeured Lincoln. It was three o’clock Saturday afternoon; shiva was suspended until sunset, the end of the Jewish Sabbath. “But they may test the boundaries. If I tell you not to answer a question, you don’t answer; capisce?”

  “Got it,” I said. We were driving north on the West Side Highway. Rain sluiced across the windshield, and the wipers flashed hypnotically. I stretched out my legs. For the first time in days, I’d given some thought to my attire. What does the well-dressed murder suspect wear to an interview with the police? I remembered Sharon Stone’s ploy, but I was in no mood to flash my legs or anything else at these idiots. Instead I went the other way, covering up from head to toe in a black cashmere sweater over jeans, with the same black raincoat I’d worn to the funeral.

  The silver-haired detective from the murder scene was waiting when we reached the station. He led us into a small interview room with a mirror on one wall. The only furniture was a table with three chairs, two on the side facing the mirror and the other on the opposite side. It looked a lot like the interview rooms in the city precinct houses: familiar territory these days.

  The detective shook our hands and handed me a card with his name on it: Lt. Steven Rosenbaum. “You look better,” he said.

  “I’m fine.” I’d said those words so often they’d worn a groove down my tongue.

  “I appreciate you coming in.”

  “We have agreed,” Sean said, in a for-the-record sort of voice, “that this conversation will not be recorded. I will decide what questions my client will or will not answer. Are these conditions accepted?”

  “Of course,” Rosenbaum said genially, as if they were of little account. He took a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. “Sit down, won’t you? Coffee? No? Then let’s begin. I’d like to start with the day Molly died. You and she spent the day together?”

  I described our day: the drive upstate, the picnic with Leigh, and the return home.

  “Did anything happen out of the usual?”

  “We almost hit a deer. But that’s not so unusual up there.”

  “Did you notice any cars following you?”

  “No.”

  “What time did you get to Molly’s house?”

  “Around nine, maybe a bit after.”

  “What did you see as you approached her house?”

  “Nothing much. A man walking a dog; Halloween decorations on the lawn next door.”

  “Any other pedestrians?”

  “No.”

  “Any cars parked or standing on the street?”

  “If there’d been a car right in front of Molly’s house, I’d have noticed. Other than that, I wasn’t looking.”

  “Did you go in with her?”

  “No. I wish . . .” I bit off the words, because they were empty now. If I’d gone in, if I’d stayed
the night, it might never have happened. But what’s the use of wishing? You either do something or you don’t. I hadn’t.

  “Was she expecting anyone?”

  “No, I’m sure she wasn’t.”

  “Did you see her enter the house?”

  “I waited till the door closed behind her, then I left.”

  “We found the guy with the dog,” the lieutenant said. “He remembers seeing Molly get out of your car. He said she was carrying something.”

  “Her cane, her purse, and a bag of apples,” I said, and I saw it again: Molly on the floor, bloody apples strewn around her. Don’t take any poison apples, someone had said, but I couldn’t remember who. “Did he see me leave?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  I glared at him. “So your theory, which you spent the better part of a week pursuing, was that I dropped Molly off, drove away, remembered that I’d meant to kill her, and came back?”

  Rosenbaum appeared unscathed. “It’s nothing personal. In a murder investigation, everyone’s a suspect till proven innocent.”

  “I don’t care about the insult. It’s the wasted time that kills me.” I could hardly believe the words gushing from my mouth, the propulsive anger behind them. Sean put his hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off. This was the Peter Principle in action, I thought, people rising to their level of incompetence. Molly deserved better than a bunch of Keystone Kops.

  “The next morning,” the lieutenant continued, as if I hadn’t spoken a word, “you called her number half a dozen times. Why is that?”

  “At first just to make sure she was OK. Then I got worried because I couldn’t reach her.”

  “But why did you feel the need to check on her?”

  I stared at him. “She was sick. I thought you did an autopsy. Molly had stage-four cancer.”