A Dangerous Fiction

by Barbara Rogan

“OK. There’ll be plainclothes police all around you. Don’t look for them. Chances are this skell won’t show, but if he does, try to engage him in conversation. Don’t interrogate him, but if he’s inclined to boast, encourage it. Whatever happens, you do not get into a carriage or any other vehicle with him. If he tries to force you, if he shows a weapon, we will take him down. If he walks away from you, we will take him down. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  “You have to act normal. Let’s see a smile.”

  I flashed one. A corner of his mouth twitched in response. “Atta girl. I heard tape of the phone call. You’ll do fine.”

  “I’m sweating like a pig.”

  He came toward me, took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, and dabbed my brow. When he finished, he didn’t step away. My back was to the desk. I couldn’t have backed up if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I held his eyes and raised my face.

  He kissed me.

  He was a great kisser, always was. How could I have forgotten? All his nature was in his kiss, the sweet and the hard of it. What started as a question ended as a statement. My body recognized the smell and feel of his body pressed against mine, and I responded. For a moment all the fear and sorrow were gone, and I thought, If this isn’t great, what is?

  It was Tommy who pulled away. We stared at each other, both of us breathing hard.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was totally inappropriate.”

  “But nice.”

  “Nice?” he said, pretending outrage—or was he pretending?

  “Timing’s a bit iffy,” I said.

  “There’s always something. Are you ready?”

  “Give me a moment, will you?”

  After he left, I took the Moroccan dagger from my desk and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

  • • •

  I was the tethered goat in Jurassic Park. For months I’d been living in purdah, unapproachable. Now, sitting alone on a bench just inside Central Park, I felt as exposed as if I were naked. I knew there were police around but couldn’t identify them. That canoodling couple on the bench across from me? His hand kneaded her thigh; would cops do that? Those tourists studying a city map? The chestnut seller? The maintenance man? The girl in horn-rimmed glasses reading a book and munching an apple?

  I’d arrived alone by taxi, fifteen minutes early, and taken possession of an empty bench just inside the park entrance, beside the horse carriages. The air smelled of horse sweat and roasted chestnuts. I spread out my bag and book carrier beside me to discourage casual loiterers and waited. Normally I’d have brought a book or manuscript to pass the time, but to an egomaniac like Sam Spade, that would be like arriving for a date with another man in tow. Just as I was the only agent for him, so must he be the only writer in my life. I’d been tempted, though, to bring along the book I was currently rereading: The Wolves Among Us, by a client of mine, Dr. Avery Broome. Sam Spade, I’d concluded, fit squarely into Avery’s definition of a psychopath. He was utterly self-centered, shallow, and manipulative; lacked empathy and shame; and was willing to mow down anyone who stood between him and his goal. For Spade, I was an object to be cajoled, terrorized, and coerced into playing the role he’d determined for me.

  There was logic in this concept of my tormenter, but no possible satisfaction. According to Avery, psychopaths are human in appearance and intelligence only. Their physiological responses are different from those of normal people, and their social orientation is that of a solitary predator, a lone wolf or grizzly bear; so labeling Spade a psychopath took human causality out of the picture and rendered my most pressing question—Why?—as irrelevant as if my friends had died in a tsunami.

  Six o’clock came and went. The streetlights came on. A brisk breeze cycloned leaves through the park; the carriage horses tossed their plumed heads and clanked their bits. I shivered. A young man in a trench coat strode in under the park arches and looked around him, smiling with anticipation. I froze, but his eyes slid past me and fastened on the girl in the horn-rimmed glasses. She snapped her book shut and flew into his arms. Young love, I thought, and it was only then I remembered that I, too, had once waited there for a man. In my case, though, it hadn’t been to run to him, but to break up with him.

  The rising wind seemed to penetrate my pores and swirl around inside me. Another coincidence? I heard Max ask. But what else could it be? Sam Spade was real, corporeal. I’d whacked him with an umbrella, I’d spoken to him on the phone, and any moment now he was going to appear. This had nothing to do with me and Tommy.

  I wished Mingus were with me.

  Hand in hand, the young couple strode off into the park. I turned to watch them go. When I turned back, a man was standing in front of me. He smiled hopefully, but I knew at a glance that this was just some random doofus trying his luck. He was too old, too ordinary—a nebbish, Molly would have called him. His thin hair was the color of dirty dishwater, and his features were so indeterminate, so inconsequential, that I forgot his face even as I looked at it, which I did for just a moment before turning away.

  “Hello, Jo,” he said.

  “You?” Outraged, I whipped my head around. “You’re Sam Spade?”

  “In the flesh. May I?”

  I cleared a space for him to my left, keeping my bags between us. Could this really be the man who had ripped my life apart, this little sad sack of a man? He wore what he no doubt imagined was a writer’s uniform: a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and corduroy slacks that swished when he moved.

  “You’re a hard woman to reach, Jo,” he said.

  “So I’m told. Didn’t stop you, though, did it?”

  “I can be very persistent. Good thing for both of us.”

  “Not so good for my friends.”

  His colorless eyes blinked at the unscripted line. “What’s that?”

  Slow down, I told myself. Draw him out; make him confess. “You attended that writers’ conference in Santa Fe, didn’t you?”

  He beamed. “You remember.”

  “I remember you gave me a plot summary, but you never showed up to discuss it.”

  “Wasn’t the right time. All those wannabes. You wouldn’t have seen me in the right light.”

  “It would have saved a lot of trouble if you’d spoken to me then.”

  “It would have saved even more,” he said, with a touch of asperity, “if you hadn’t rejected me in the first place. Not that I blame you, Jo. I blame the people around you who kept us apart.” He leaned toward me, and I thought he was going to touch me. Go ahead, I thought at him. My right hand was in my jacket pocket. Give me an excuse.

  He kept his hands on his thighs. “All I wanted was for you to read my book.”

  “You don’t feel you went too far?”

  “No, why would I? Artists are meant to push the boundaries. We’re outliers; the usual rules don’t apply. You know that, surely. You couldn’t have been married to Hugo Donovan without knowing it.”

  It didn’t escape me that this was the very argument I’d made on Hugo’s behalf. It sounded specious, coming from him. It sounded foul.

  “Writing’s a job like any other,” I said. “It doesn’t convey absolution.”

  “It did for him,” he said serenely. “It will for me.”

  “Seriously, man, you dare compare yourself to Hugo?”

  “I know he was a better writer. But he’s gone, and I’m just coming into my powers. There’s greatness in me, Jo, I’ve always known that. All I needed was the right muse to bring it out, and now I’ve found her.”

  He smiled. His breath stank of tuna fish and mints. It made me sick. Beyond loathing, though, I felt a jarring dissonance, like the feeling you get when a novel you’re enjoying suddenly lurches off track. How could it be, how was it possible that this puffed-up nothing, this waste of skin, co
uld bring down two great women who towered head and shoulders above him?

  “You promised,” I said, “that when we met you’d answer my questions.”

  He lowered his watery eyes and whispered, “Stanley.”

  “What?”

  “Stanley Drucklehoff. You can see why I’d need a nom de plume.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what your name is. I want to know why you did it.”

  “Did what?” he said.

  I have read Hannah Arendt; I know all about the banality of evil. But “banal” was too banal a word. This was murderous vapidity, lethal stupidity. The question came to me again, more insistently this time. How could this nebbish have tricked two of the world’s smartest women into letting him in?

  A cold draft ruffled the hair on the back of my neck, and suddenly I felt the presence of Rowena and Molly hovering behind me. Back in Hoyer’s Creek, people used to say that a murder victim never rested until the blood of his killer was sprinkled on his grave. I’d rejected that superstition along with all the rest, but it came back to me now with the force of conviction. Something was owed these ghosts, and it had fallen to me. I closed my hand on the dagger’s hasp. Its blade was sharp enough to slice envelopes, but too dull and short to kill. It would do damage, though, and damage needed to be done.

  “Why Molly?” I said. “Why Rowena?”

  “Why ask me? I’m not God, though I may write like him.” He tittered. His laugh, surprisingly high-pitched, sounded like a neighing horse.

  “You promised me answers.”

  “I thought you meant my real name, not the meaning of life. But since you ask, sure, I’ll take a shot. Why do bad things happen to good people? I believe there’s always a reason. Maybe old relationships have to die to make room for new ones. Death is nature’s way of opening our eyes to what else is out there.”

  “Which makes you what, a force of nature?”

  “Me? I’m just a writer.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He blinked, puzzled but still smiling, like a man waiting for the punch line to a joke. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have zero talent. You can’t write. Not even a vanity publisher would touch that so-called novel of yours. It was the worst drivel I’ve ever read.”

  He looked like Dracula in the moment the stake enters his heart. “No, that’s . . . What do you mean? How can you look me in the face and say that? You love my work. You said so yourself.”

  “I lied.”

  “You’re lying now.”

  I leaned in close. “All the talent in the world wouldn’t justify what you’ve done, but you have none. No talent, no taste, and nothing to say. You did it all for nothing.”

  I might as well have used the dagger. He was bleeding out in front of me. Never in my life had I spoken such words to a writer; wouldn’t have thought myself capable of it. I’ve always respected the effort, if not the result, for a writer can pour as much of his heart’s blood into a bad novel as a good one. Now I felt like one of those perverts who gets off on crushing small animals underfoot. But he murdered Rowena, I told myself. He murdered Molly.

  Sam Spade stumbled to his feet. He reeled away from me, and without thinking I flew after him. Suddenly the entire park seemed to explode into motion. Two men appeared out of nowhere to grab Spade and hurl him to the ground. A pair of arms caught me around the waist and swung me away. “Put it away, you idiot,” a voice said, close to my ear. Tommy Cullen’s voice. I had no idea what he meant until I glanced down and noticed the dagger in my hand. I shoved it into my pocket, and Tommy let go.

  Sam Spade writhed on the ground, hands cuffed behind him, surrounded by a knot of men. After a moment, one of them separated himself from the group and trotted over. I recognized Suarez, who’d led the investigation into Rowena’s murder.

  “You did good, Mrs. Donovan,” he said. “You’re a gutsy lady.”

  “He didn’t confess.”

  “This ain’t Columbo. You did good.” Suarez hesitated. He looked like he had something more to say and it was giving him agita. “One of my guys saw a knife.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Tommy said before I could answer.

  “He’s pretty sure.”

  “He’s mistaken.”

  They stared at each other. Behind them I saw Sam Spade being hoisted to his feet. Dead leaves and bits of gravel clung to his face. The murderer lunged at me, but his captors held him back. “You bitch, you fucking bitch! You’ll pay for this!”

  Suarez looked at Spade, then back at Tommy, and finally at me.

  “Tricky thing, lamplight,” he said.

  Chapter 27

  “Ladies, gentlemen, and writers,” I began, to the accompaniment of much laughter and the clinking of forks against glass. Being for the most part unseated, my guests could not rise; but they quieted and turned toward me. Standing on a platform at the end of the room, I continued. “As you know, the police have arrested the man we believe responsible for the murders of Rowena Blair and Molly Hamish. Although this man has not yet been charged with the murders, he is being held on related charges, and I fully expect that once the police finish their investigation, he will be held to account for all his crimes.”

  A burst of applause greeted this announcement. I beamed at the crowd, which consisted of the people who’d sustained me over the past months: the editors who’d made a point of signing my books, the clients who’d stood by me despite their own victimization, friends, fellow agents, and, above all, my faithful staff. At the margins of the room, the sleek, black-clad waiters held their trays and waited for me to finish.

  “No arrest or conviction can restore what was taken from us. But I have learned—you have shown me—how much remains. Without the love and support of the people in this room, plus a few who couldn’t be here tonight, I never would have made it through. To you, my friends.” I raised my glass.

  Another round of applause, then the waiters plunged back into the fray, holding high their trays. Renting Maison D’être for the evening, even a Monday evening, had been a great extravagance, but my gratitude demanded expression, and there could not have been a more fitting venue than the restaurant where Molly, Rowena, and I had last been together, the night Rowena made her entrance on a litter carried by four half-naked men.

  I stepped off the platform and made my way around the room, greeting my guests. Keyshawn Grimes, looking every inch the up-and-coming writer in a suit jacket and jeans, broke off a conversation with his editor to kiss me on both cheeks. We exchanged a few words and I moved on through the crowded room. Most of the writers victimized by Sam Spade had come, along with other clients who’d gone out of their way to express their concern and support during the whole ordeal. Jean-Paul and Lorna were tasked with making sure none were left standing alone, a duty Jean-Paul performed with his usual social fluency and Lorna with a grim doggedness that normally would have annoyed the hell out of me but today seemed a welcome sign of normality. Their ministrations left Chloe free to make the rounds of editors, and I could tell by the swath of smiles and handshakes that she was introducing herself as Hamish and Donovan’s newest full-fledged agent. I looked about for Harriet but couldn’t spot her in the mass of people, nearly all taller than me.

  Near the bar, my client and lawyer, Sean Mallory, was chatting with Leigh Pfeffer, whose painting he’d seen at my place and admired. Beside him, Teddy Pendragon held forth to a group of people including Larry Sharpe, publisher of Pellucid, and a couple of agents. Teddy was the only person in the room I was not happy to see, but I had no one but myself to blame for his presence.

  The arrest of Sam Spade (as I continued to think of him, though his real name was in fact Stanley Drucklehoff) had affected me in strange ways. Terror, it seemed, had iced over a number of other emotions that came welling to the surface once the threat was removed. I still missed Molly every day, but
my mourning was punctuated by odd eruptions, like patches of melting ice on a frozen pond: euphoria at having my life back, gratitude for those who’d helped, inchoate longings for something more . . . even a sense that more was possible. It was during one of those soft spots that I’d picked up my home phone without checking caller ID and found myself talking to Teddy Pendragon. Ever since I’d refused his shiva call, Teddy had besieged me with flowers and notes apologizing for whatever he’d done to offend me. Now he begged my forgiveness again; and this time, feeling churlish for having turned him away, I granted it freely and threw in for good measure an invitation to tonight’s soiree. Regretted it at once, of course, but the invitation could not be rescinded, and so there he was, working the room as only Teddy could.

  As I approached the bar I heard him saying, “. . . the same sort of obsession. Mark David Chapman thought he was Holden Caulfield. This guy thinks he’s the second coming of Hugo—” He broke off when he noticed me and assumed a bedside sort of voice. “Dear Jo, what a time you’ve had.”

  “Got it all figured out, have we, Teddy? Neat and tidy and wrapped in a bow?”

  “It’s human nature to try, don’t you think? Although in this case, the mind boggles.”

  “Not yours, surely.”

  He laughed. “Now there’s the old Jo. Warm and fuzzy doesn’t last long with you, does it?” Then, in an aside to the others, “I’m afraid our hostess subscribes to the novelist’s view of literary biography; that is, she hates it.”

  “I don’t hate it,” I said. “My husband used to say that biography’s goal was to cut great men down to their biographer’s size . . . but Hugo could be harsh. It’s true that biography satisfies a certain voyeuristic curiosity we all share, but the important thing about an artist is surely his work, not his life.”

  “Ah,” said Teddy, raising a pudgy finger, “but where does that work come from?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it does. For as long as art has existed, people have wondered about its source: hence the ancients’ invention of muses. If you rule out supernatural inspiration, which we tend to do these days, what’s left but the artist’s life and times?”