The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

by Marco Ocram

  It came to me at last. I had left a sample from the book with Barney. It must have been he who leaked it to the press—Herbert’s own agent! How could he have breached the agent’s code of ethics, the code he would have taken an oath to uphold? I was as outraged as I was bewildered by his treacherous and unprincipled behavior. In a rage, I threw my Cartland into the fire and watched as the flames blackened its edges. I’m kidding—the fire was just an image on a screen. What idiot would think they’d allow naked flames on a plane? I picked up my Cartland from where it had bounced off the fake fire and I traipsed back to my cabin.

  At Terminal Eight of New York International Airport—the one reserved for TV personalities and the like—I had to fight my way through a press of press men and women, all yelling for an exclusive.

  “Mister Ocram, what can you tell us about the pedophile writer Herbert Quarry?”

  “Mister Ocram, did he really slice Lola Kellogg into pieces?”

  “Mister Ocram, was she really only fifteen?”

  I answered all their questions with the comment “no comment,” wondering if any of the headless hacks would have the literary sensitivity to appreciate the irony of it. I supposed I should be thankful the chapters I shared with Barney didn’t include the bits about Chief McGee’s indiscretions in the woods, otherwise there’d be no end to their impertinent questions.

  I spotted a chauffeuse bearing a placard that read ‘Soon-to-be publishing legend Marco Ocram’ and sat in the rear of her limo while she loaded my trunks into her trunk. As we headed for the Bronx along the Van Gogh expressway, I answered her question about the background to the sensational book I was writing, strewing here and there the impressive new literary terms I’d heard in my so-called interview with the New York Times. By the time we reached Derrida Boulevard, I had completed a masterful critique of the conventions of the western literary tradition. By 109th Avenue, I had explained to my driver that Barthes’s scriptable/lisible dichotomy was a false one. Those waiting for the lights at Calvino Avenue might have seen me gesticulate on the back seat as I urged the cultivation of a new literary zeitgeist. Between Eggers Square and Camus Park, I delivered an impassioned attack on the debilitating effect of thought on the creative powers of the author. As we reached the Bronx my explanation culminated with a sentence containing no fewer than four French adjectives too esoteric to repeat on these pages.

  When I had finished, she said:

  “Did he really cut her up?”

  After my luggage had been transferred to my black Range Rover, which miraculously had spent a night on the street without having its tinted windows smashed or its wheels stolen, I went straight to Barney’s Seventh Avenue office for a showdown.

  “Hey Markie! Twice in two days. Great to see you, Kid.”

  Barney was getting up from his massive desk, probably to offer me champagne. I stopped him in his tracks.

  “Don’t you hey Markie me, you conniving bastard.”

  “Hey Markie, wassamatter? “

  “You know precisely wassamatter, so don’t pretend you don’t. You leaked a sample of my new bestseller to the world’s media, and now every newspaper in the country has me saying Herbert slew Lola.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it great! That’s what you pay a good agent for, Markie. Your book’s gonna break all records. The whole world wants to read it now.”

  “You don’t understand. Herbert thinks I’ve stabbed him in the back. He thinks I wrote those headlines, Barney. He said our friendship was over. Oh-verrr.”

  “Markie. Markie baby. Listen. You gotta learn something about publishing from your uncle Barney. You say you wanna break the mold of literature, right?”

  I nodded, being too emotional to speak.

  “So, suppose you break it with your book. What happens if nobody reads it? What happens if nobody sees the mold you broke? Is that what you want, Markie, to break the mold without no one knowin’? The world’s full of great books nobody reads—you wanna write another like that? C’mon, Markie, see sense.” Barney had his arm over my shoulder and walked me to the window where we could look out across New York. “Look at all those people down there. They all want to read your book. They’re gagging for it. We can’t deny them what they need, Markie. And when the book hits the stores, everyone will see how you smashed the mold.”

  As I looked across New York, I thought about the abiding bond of loyalty between fellow writers, the bond that had drawn tighter as Herbert had coached me to the pinnacles of so many spheres of sport. I thought too of that other loyalty, the loyalty of an artist to their art, the unbending commitment to an artistic principle. Where did my ultimate duty lie—defending Herbert or nurturing the sales of the radical book he himself had urged me to publish to a startled literary world? For a moment I dithered atop the fence dividing my loyalties, like Blondin on a slender wire high above Niagara, until Barney marshalled a new argument to topple me onto the side of my artistic mission...

  “Besides, the royalties will make the five-mil advance look like peanuts.”

  With reluctance and a shrug, I capitulated to the force of his logic. He walked me back to his desk to pop a bottle of Krug.

  “Cheers, Kid.” We clinked glasses. “Here’s to all that lovely dough. And to breaking that mold too,” he added to allay the doubt on my face. “Don’t worry about pissing off Herbert, Markie. He’s made a living out of pissing people off. He’s a tough guy; he can take it.”

  After we’d polished off the bottle and signed some paperwork, I made an excuse and left Barney to whatever it is agents do. I needed time to think, so I left my car and went for a walk, raising the hood of my anorak so I could wander without being pestered by hot actresses and kids wanting answers to their gnawing questions about tau muons. Barney had missed the point: Herbert probably was tough enough to cope with my apparent disloyalty, but I wasn’t. I strolled towards the park where the chess players sat. From a distance, I watched my dad with some of his old friends. It was funny, I’d never got into chess, although my Bronx mom said I was bound to have a natural genius for it. I’d played a couple of games with myself, which were interesting enough at the start, but always ending with two kings seemed kind of boring, and I couldn’t see what others found so interesting in it.

  As I watched my dad, I realized how lucky he was. He didn’t have millions, but he could pass his days with his chess-playing chums, with nothing to worry about other than living with my Bronx mom. He didn’t have the continual conflict of emotions a great writer wrestles with every day. I mooched back to my car. Everyone I passed seemed to be reading or talking about my involvement in the Herbert Quarry affair. It was already causing a huge stir, and none of the really outrageous twists had happened yet.

  LESSON THIRTY-ONE

  ‘Marco, what is that book you are reading?’

  ‘It is ‘Virus’, Herbert, the latest bestseller by Dan Brown. It’s about a deadly virus that is allowed to spread globally because the response of governments everywhere is so slow and inadequate. I’ve just reached the bit where the President of the United States says the virus can be stopped by injecting people with disinfectant and shining bright lights on them.’

  ‘Marco, it will not help your writing if you fill your head with unbelievable nonsense.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  In which too much happens to summarize here.

  Back in Clarkesville, I sat in Herbert’s study, allowing the atmosphere of great literary endeavor to pervade my being. I extracted from my satchel the book I carry everywhere—a first edition of the novel that made Herbert famous. Its title was Hjumən Raɪts, a phonetic spelling that could mean Human Rights, Human Writes or Human Rites. Or even Human Wrights, now I think about it. I once asked Herbert which meaning he intended; he said my question was unanswerable, as it was based on the false assumption that an author intends meaning. I had no idea what he meant, but I assumed it was very clever.

  I looked through the book. Re-
reading the glittering prose reinforced my conviction that the author of such a humanistic work could never have committed the crimes of which Herbert was now accused. I replaced my bookmark and closed the book. I smelled smoke. I sniffed a couple of times. Something was on fire.

  Before I could decide where to say the smell was coming from, a rock smashed through the window, a message attached.

  We warned you, snooper.

  I rushed to the smashed window. My black Range Rover was engulfed in flame. Even as I watched in disbelief, its tinted windows exploded into a million fragments in the intense heat. I fumbled for my phone and dialed the emergency number.

  A paragraph later, as the fire fighters were rolling away their hoses, Como arrived. He put his arm over my shoulder as we watched the steaming remains of my car.

  “Never mind, Writer. The insurance will pay. Anyway, to judge by this, you’ll be able to afford any car you like soon.”

  When he said ‘this’ Como threw a newspaper onto the garden table beside us. The headlines were about my five mil’ advance.

  “Nice work if you can get it,” he added, cynically. “For cracking the case, I don’t even get five thou’ a month. You get five mil’ as a down-payment.”

  At first Como’s comment seemed like a punch below the belt, but I saw the truth behind his words. What was celebrity after all? Why did I deserve to earn thousands of times more than he, a hard-working lieutenant? Barney would have something to say about that, but I didn’t have the answers myself. I looked Como in the eye.

  “Como, if we crack this case, I promise you that every single cent of the royalties from the book will go the Clarkesville County Police Benevolent Fund.”

  To underline the emotional intensity of the moment, we had a big man-hug, or, rather, I did. Como stood there with my arms hardly reaching round his sides, and then patted me on the head.

  “Let’s get to work, Writer.”

  Energized by the excitement of the fire, we leaped into the Gran Torino. Como gunned the engine.

  “Where to now?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask me—you’re the writer.”

  “Let’s go to Elijah Bow’s. He’s got some questions to answer.”

  “We’re on our way.” Como kicked down through the auto-box, the siren and blue lights clearing our path ahead.

  On the drive to Bow’s ranch, we speculated about who might have been behind the arson attack on my car. Como thought motive was unlikely to be a helpful factor in singling-out suspects, since everyone in Clarkesville hated my guts.

  “And not just in Clarkesville,” he added.

  Piqued by his hurtful comments, I changed the subject to our forthcoming interview with Bow. I suggested we adopt the good-cop bad-cop routine, with me as the bad-cop.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Como.

  “What?”

  “You ain’t a cop—you’re a writer.”

  “OK, then let’s do the good-cop bad-writer routine, with me as the bad-writer.”

  “That should work.”

  At Bow’s ranch, Como dry-skidded the Gran Torino to the house. He killed the engine but left the siren shrieking. As a helpful gesture, I reached to switch it off.

  “Ow!” He’d slapped my hand. “What was that for?”

  He didn’t answer, so I reached again.

  “Ow!” He’d slapped me even harder.

  “We’ll keep the siren on for a couple of minutes—it’ll soften-up the people in the house. Don’t you know anything about police psychology?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “But try and switch it off again if you like—I’m enjoying a chance to slap you. Should have done it when we first met.”

  I sat in glum silence until the two minutes were up and we walked over to the house. We didn’t need to ring the bell—most of Bow’s staff were already at the door to see what the drama was about. Como showed his badge and said he wanted to see Bow. We were asked to wait, then shown in by one of the maids. As we neared the vast bronze statue of Lola, I nudged Como. He nodded to confirm he’d clocked the likeness.

  When we were shown to Bow’s study, the billionaire was far from pleased. He rose from his desk like a missile from a submarine.

  “What is the meaning of this disgraceful intrusion?”

  “I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you, Sir,” said Como, “but we are here on official police business.”

  “You may be here on official police business, Lieutenant, but your snooper friend cannot be.”

  I wondered if the readers would be smart enough to notice Bow’s use of the derogatory title snooper, a distinctive word which appeared in all the menacing messages I’d received.

  “On the contrary,” corrected Como, “Mister Ocram has been made an honorary member of my investigative team, so his presence is as legitimate as my own.”

  Bow shifted his gaze uneasily between the two of us.

  “Then what exactly do you want? I am a busy man, Lieutenant.”

  “We’d like to speak to your manservant, Bluther Cale,” said Como.

  “You are welcome to talk to Bluther any time you wish, if you can find him.”

  “He’s not here?”

  “He has not been here, Lieutenant, for almost two weeks.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Bluther comes and goes as he pleases. He is often away for weeks at a stretch.”

  “Does he have a car?”

  “Not of his own, but he has free use of any in my fleet. And if I can anticipate your next question, Lieutenant, he has taken a black Lancia Monte Carlo.”

  I decided it was time to give Como’s good-cop a break and for me to step in as the bad-writer.

  “Isn’t that a funny way for a manservant to behave? Are you telling me you let him get away with that sort of lack of reliability and punctuality?”

  “He is not a normal manservant. My relationship to him is not that of an employer to an employee.”

  “What exactly is your relationship?” I pounced.

  Bow hesitated, reluctant, I imagined, to find himself on the receiving end of any more of my bad writing. Como came in with his good-cop.

  “Mister Bow, you can either tell us now, here, or I can drive all the way to police HQ to get a subpoena and drive all the way back and force you to tell us later, and do you know how much gas a ’74 Gran Torino guzzles, especially when you floor it? That just isn’t sustainable, so for the sake of the planet, Mister Bow, which is the only one we’ve got, why don’t you just tell us the truth?”

  “Alright. But this will take some time, so you had better be seated.”

  We pulled up a couple of chairs and sat attentively in a semicircle around Bow’s desk—if two chairs can form a semicircle. Maybe we were more like a chord of a segment or whatever. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, so can we please not get hung up about geometrical trivia. Bow began…

  “Go back thirty-five years, gentlemen, to a less sophisticated Clarkesville, in the days when social mores were more rigid than they are today. At that time there was a young man living in Clarkesville, an extraordinary young man. Extraordinary in three ways. One was that he had a genius for every form of artistic expression. He could paint, draw, mold, sculpt, write prose and verse, compose music, choreograph ballet, crochet, play every type of musical instrument, and do all that as if touched with the gift of the angels. The second was that he was extremely shy and diffident, no doubt because of the third of his extraordinary qualities—his cleft palate.

  “Yes, I am talking about Bluther Cale, who has lived near Clarkesville for all of his extraordinary and sad life. As you can imagine, Bluther suffered as a consequence of his three extraordinary qualities. Jealous of his artistic talents, the other boys at school picked on him mercilessly for his strange manner of speech. Bluther suffered their taunts and bullying, and, in spite of the encouragement of sympathetic teachers, he grew ever more wit
hdrawn. But one fateful day in his late teens, he was advised by a well-meaning but foolish person that he should overcome his shyness and approach the prom queen to ask if he could be her date for the prom.

  “You may readily imagine, gentlemen, the courage Bluther needed to summon in order to overcome the oppressive social forces he had felt every day of his life, in order to realize his dream of taking the prom queen to the school prom. But approach her he did. One June night, more than thirty years ago, he took his courage and a bunch of roses into his hands and knocked tentatively on her door. When she answered he could barely speak, but managed at last to find his voice.

  “‘Theve are for you,’ he said, offering the roses. ‘Vould you like to go to the prom wiv me?’ She laughed in his face. She took the roses and flung them away in the darkening gloom. ‘Go to the prom with you?’ she cackled. ‘With you??? Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw, haw, haw…’ She slammed the door in his face and went inside to call her friends and tell them what had happened.

  “To the echoes of her laughter, he retrieved the roses and he slunk away. But before he had walked two blocks, he found himself in the path of a gang of boys from the high school, privileged boys from elite backgrounds, boys jealous of Bluther’s artistic abilities, boys frequently cruel about his cleft palate. They started to tease and goad him. ‘Weave me alone,’ he pleaded, but his strange manner of speech fueled their mischief, and they set about him, beating and kicking him mercilessly, until in the end, their hatred spent, they ran laughing, leaving him a disabled and disfigured wreck, barely able to crawl. He was found prostrate and bleeding by a police patrol, and taken to the local emergency room. After six months of treatment he regained the use of his limbs, albeit in a terribly deformed way. But he never recovered from the psychological wounds inflicted by the prom queen.”

  I saw where this was going. I barely believed Bow could indulge in such corniness.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You were one of the privileged kids who left him disfigured, and you took him on as your manservant out of pity.”