“I TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE. If my friend Laura hadn’t broken in, I wouldn’t be here today. I woke up in the hospital.”

The speaker was a bony, freckled man in his late thirties. “She thought I owed her something for saving me. Like I was in her debt. But I didn’t. That’s why she got sore. Nobody owes anybody a fucking thing in this business, you’re on your own.”

His voice was thick with anger. The rest of us – five men and two women – sat quietly, listening. It was my first group therapy session at an organization specializing in PWAs – People with AIDS. We were meeting in a church basement. I hadn’t liked what I’d heard so far.

“That’s not true, Charlie.” A pleasant, dark-haired young man next to me spoke up. His name was Seth. “You can’t do without help. Support. And you have to be grateful for it.”

Charlie’s face twisted – a handsome man turned hideous with anger.

“Fuck that. You’re on your own, whether you got AIDS or not, and if you don’t see that you’re just kidding yourself. I didn’t ask her to save me. And just because she did she got no claim on me.”

I wondered what traumas lay behind Charlie’s negation of human payback. A few minutes before, when I had first spoken, I had mentioned some old friends who had dropped me when they heard about my health. Charlie had broken into my recital. “What’s wrong with dropping you? They got no obligation to look after you.”

I could feel my brain heating up. “I don’t want them to look after me. I’ve known a couple of them for fifteen or twenty years. We’ve been through a lot together. When I was in trouble they weren’t there.”

He glared at me. “Why should they be?” he asked.

I thought it might be time for Dorothy, our group leader, a maternal, sweet-faced lady and a professional therapist, to break in. But she was smiling benignly at Charlie and me. I could almost read her mind: They’re getting their feelings out. The only trouble was, I didn’t want to hear Charlie’s feelings. Nor, quite honestly, was I keen to hear the other feelings in the room expressed. We were all in various stages of illness, weakened physically and psychologically. How could an hour and a half each week, trapped in a room together, alter those facts? More likely, we would turn our despair and rage on each other.

I couldn’t help comparing this situation with the ease and openness of the AIDS floor at St. Vincent’s. But of course there we were all down to the barest, meanest stratum of existence. We were dressed alike, treated alike, living alike. Social discrepancies had washed away, making us one. But here, in this church basement, with our individual attire, our solo histories, our burdens of selfhood, we had drawn apart.

Somebody else spoke up. He was a teacher at Parsons, not far from here.

“The dean, he says to me, ‘We’re going to keep you on, Joe, if you don’t publicize your condition. That’s the way it is, take it or leave it.’”

Joe looked around. “What do you think I should do?”

Advice was offered. None of it seemed very useful to me. Joe’s dilemma had no easy solution. I glanced at my watch. Another half hour to go. Angela had persuaded me to sign up for these sessions, but Angela was into groups. She adored them.

I had been at school part-time this last week, the third after my release from the hospital. Everything had seemed extra-hard, though people were very considerate. There had been a loosening of ties, an unbinding. I didn’t connect in the old way. I fought this, aware of my responsibilities, trying to re-inhabit my routines, but nothing quite worked. Detachment, perhaps a self-protective device, had built new walls between me and the school. I tried to explain this to Angela one evening, and of course she had the remedy.

“You have to join a support group,” she announced, her round face glowing, “you’ve got everything bottled up.”

“What am I supposed to tell a support group?”

“Everything you feel, naturally. You’re not in this alone, you know.”

Funny, I had the impression that alone was precisely where I was – alone with my lungs, my fatigue, my feverish nights, my long reviews of my life – but I let myself be persuaded. A group it would be. Angela made a couple of phone calls on the spot – we were in my apartment – and this Saturday afternoon was the immediate result.

“I haven’t let this stop me one bit.” The voice, from a tall man with prematurely grey hair, brought me out of my reverie. He hadn’t spoken before. “Sixteen months ago they said I only had a few months to live. PML with all kinds of complications. I said to the doctor, ‘I’ve got too much to do, I can’t quit now.’” His voice was mild and pleasant.

He was an attorney, he said, practicing civil rights law. Some of his cases involved AIDS discrimination. “I moved my computer home and hooked up a modem, so I have access to my database at the office,” he went on. “I can still make life miserable for some of those bureaucrats. They wheeled me into appellate session last week, a case I initiated two years ago, and I argued it even though I couldn’t stand up to address the court.”

A tremor swept around the room. Everyone waited.

“My eyes are affected but I bought myself a magnifying glass this big.” He made a circle with his hands. “I can read anything, even the case law in my old books, which gave me headaches for years.” He chuckled. I noticed that his eyes were unfocused, staring straight ahead. They were grey, like his mane. “I won that case last week.” He chuckled again.

Suddenly everybody wanted to talk. Dorothy called for order, for one-at-a-time, but the enthusiasm was unstoppable. This defiance is what we came to hear, I thought, exactly this. Only Charlie was still grim. At last everyone had spoken and the session was over.

His name was Patrick Delaney. I went over to him when we broke up. He was a good six-three standing up. “I can take you home, Patrick,” I said.

He turned his dim eyes on me. “That would be nice. What’s your name again?”

“Bruce.”

“I live in the Village, Bruce.”

“So do I.”

He held onto my arm as we left. He lived on Bank Street, just a few blocks away from me, but four flights up. It took us a long time but he didn’t complain. Upstairs, he showed me some of his things – not only the computer and printer but a FAX machine, a portable phone, a Canon copier. Everything was set up for independent living. I left my phone number and promised to pick him up next Saturday.

I walked home thinking I would call Angela and tell her what had happened. Not that she’d be surprised in the least.

 

§  §  §

 

Polly Alvarado called that evening. It had been a week since my trip to Old Saybrook and I had more or less given up on her. But she had spoken to her friend Betty Jean after all.

“It wasn’t easy, Bruce. I’m rarely at a loss for words but this time I was.” She paused. “She said every single one of her plots came from Lightning Books. That’s their name, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“They’re developed in detail by the staff. Chapter by chapter. All she does is write it.” Polly made a sound between a sigh and a laugh. “Of course, that’s the hardest part.”

“Did you tell her about Miles?”

“Just as we discussed. She was very surprised that the Rue story might have come from an outside source. Then she said she didn’t care where it originated. It was a marvelous tale.”

She paused. “It seems to me that even if there was some plagiarism going on, it’s not a cause for murder. I mean, publishers don’t kill for plots, do they? Even in these decadent times?”

“It depends on the publisher, Polly.”

She wished me luck, expressed the hope that she hadn’t harmed Betty Jean’s career, and our conversation came to an end. I had the feeling it wouldn’t be renewed. In fact, I had the feeling that a lot of things would be coming to an end if I persevered with my theory.

I went to the piano and tried to search out some answers in the harmonic certitudes of Mozart. Nothing there. Mozart had handled his demons in ways that were of no help to me.

 

§  §  §

 

Clay suggested we meet at the Oak Room at the Plaza on Wednesday evening. Not a convenient place for me, but I agreed. He sounded cheerful about our getting together, which didn’t make things any easier for me.

My new cane earned me some extra deference from the maître d’ at the Oak Room. I had bought the old-fashioned kind, all wood, with a curved handle and diamond carvings going down one side. No tacky aluminum prosthesis for me.

When I lowered myself into the seat by the window, facing Clay, I was sweating but I felt mildly triumphant. I’d gotten this far. I’d be able to go all the way. David would be off the hook for good, no matter what the temporary cost.

He was halfway through a Scotch and I had my usual Perrier. The waiter, taking our order, addressed him by name.

After the opening amenities, I said, “David probably couldn’t have gotten through the last few weeks without your help – the lawyer, the bond hearing, the general support.”

“I wish he’d start playing the piano again,” Clay observed, “it would make me feel a whole lot better.”

I made some banal remarks about concentration and spiritual wholeness. The words slid off the table and bounced on the floor. We were both trapped in a third-rate script.

“I’m sure there’ll be a break in the case soon,” Clay went on. “Jim Slade is talking to one of the Human Rights Commissioners. If we can get it classified as a bias crime there might be more interest in solving it.”

“My impression is that there wasn’t much enthusiasm at the beginning and there’s even less now. They just came down on David because he was nearby and appeared powerless.”

Clay chuckled. “He didn’t turn out to be so powerless.”

“By the way, have you met the detective on the case? Kerrison?”

He nodded. “I saw him at the bail hearing. Big guy, freckles, looks like a side of corned beef?”

“That’s the guy.” I grinned.

It was time to switch the subject to Puerto Rico. I began to tell him about my trip, stressing the comic aspects. None of it seemed to surprise him. “We thought you were wasting your time, Bruce, but you were all fired up. Nothing could have stopped you.”

I didn’t recall that anyone but Luddie had tried to dissuade me at the time, but I didn’t say so. “Anyway, it landed me back in the hospital, so I probably should have skipped it.”

He nodded slightly. He was a man, I thought, who liked to be proved right.

“Except that I did find a couple of interesting things at Miles’s apartment in the Condado.”

“His paintings, I expect. David said he had walls full of them.”

“That, of course. I even found a gallery that keeps a full inventory of his stuff. But the most interesting thing I found were more of his famous shoe boxes. The ones he keeps his story ideas in.”

“Is that right?” Clay barely stirred, but I saw a nerve quiver in his right cheek.

“He used to stash his plots in them in New York too. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Filing cabinets might never have been invented, let alone the computer. Anyway, he kept up his bad habits in Puerto Rico. Right next to his bed, in his new apartment in the Condado, I found one of the boxes, chock-full of 3X5 cards.” I paused. “It’s a pity there’s no market for them.”

“Did you bring them back with you?”

“Oh, I put a rubber band around them – there were only about a hundred cards – and stuck them in my bag. I guess I’ll keep them as a memorial to Miles. You know, he used to tell me some of his stories. I always loved them.”

Clay shifted position. “Yes, he liked to spin tales.”

“On the other hand, I might junk them. My apartment is up to eye-level with memorabilia.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Bruce.”

“Why not?”

“Well … you never know. They might be worth a little something. One of the writer magazines might buy them. Some of those plot book companies might buy them. There are always writers with no ideas looking for material.”

“Yes, I suppose there are.”

A pause inserted itself. We looked out the window. The after-work crowds on Central Park South were hurrying home.

“Of course,” he went on, “there are other markets for well-developed story lines. The film studios buy treatments. At least they used to. I could check it out for you.”

“If I want to sell.”

“Of course.”

“Did you ever think that some of them might make good plots for video romances?”

“That market is pretty well saturated.” His mouth turned down. “We should know.”

“Don’t tell me Shadows of Desire isn’t doing well?”

“Not as well as we hoped.” He chewed his lower lip. “But we’ve got some new marketing ideas that may help. A tie-in with a day-time soap for one thing.”

“These things take time, don’t they? I saw one of your tapes. The Ghost Dancers of Rue. Glinda Collins autographed it for me.”

“How’d you like it?”

“I thought it was extremely well done.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “We spared no expense. Sent a crew to the south of France, the whole works.”

I waited for him to bring up Miles and the trove in Puerto Rico, wondering how he’d do it. It didn’t take long. “Miles had some good ideas. He just didn’t know how to execute them. Rita and I tried to teach him, even went in for line editing his novels, but it took too much time. We couldn’t salvage his stuff. And of course he resisted our changes every inch of the way.”

“Poor Miles. Even his paintings didn’t sell well. Still, he must-have done well at something because he bought a fabulous place on the beach two years ago.

“So I heard. But wasn’t he mixed up with some shady people down there?”

No shadier than the people here, I thought, but I held my tongue. Clay glanced out the window again. When he turned back his face was smooth and mask-like. “I might be able to arrange for a purchase of some of Miles’s stories. Assuming, of course, that they’re halfway decent.”

“What would you do with them?”

“I can think of several writers who might be interested.”

“Not one of your stars?”

“I couldn’t say. I might try them. If there’s some interest, we could talk about terms.” He waited a moment. “I assume Miles left no will.”

“He arranged for his apartment on the beach to be used as a hospice, but aside from that I don’t think there were enough assets to matter.”

“Then there’d be no need to list these story ideas as part of his estate.”

“You mean I could profit from Miles’s work? Posthumously? From some material I swiped?”

“You can do whatever will ease your conscience, Bruce.” His voice was deeper, authoritative. “Give the proceeds, if any, to charity. Donate it to AIDS work. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

He looked at me, his eyes dark and compelling. Now that the moment was here, that the trap had sprung, I found myself feeling guilty. I was embarrassed for Clay. I didn’t really want to live in a world in which people could betray themselves so easily. It was as if an old promise to myself had been broken.

“You’d want to examine the material before you decide, Clay.”

“Of course. You could bring it to my office. I’d like Rita to look at it too.”

“I’d … I’d rather do it at my place. Just the two of us.”

Maybe he smelled trouble, because his nostrils quivered. I could see wariness contending with greed. “When?”

“At your convenience.”

“This is a pretty busy week for me.”

At last we set a date for next Monday evening. He had never been to my place. I gave instructions. After that, we spoke of other things. He didn’t want to dawdle, though. Soon he steered me through the maze of tables and slipped the doorman a bill to find me a cab.

Inside the vehicle, I settled back feeling polluted again. What had I proven except that Miles, in his cynical view of the world, was probably closer to the facts than I would ever be?

 

§  §  §

 

The following Monday went extremely slowly. My nerves were on edge. That morning, waking at six, I had had a shock: I was dead. The realization occurred not in my mind, which was still registering impressions, but in the absolute abdication of my limbs. They were beyond command, beyond direction.

But the moment, scary as it was, was not without its compensation. I could rest. I could stop. And then, somehow, a button got pushed and the electricity started flowing again. But the body-memory stayed with me all day.

My last lesson was at three o’clock, an aspiring young songwriter named Martin Citrane who had decided classical harmony would be good for his pop career. His true interest was programming drum computers, but somebody had talked him into investigating melodic lines. Probably a mistake – he had a genuine talent for the speech of rhythm.

“What’s this augmented sixth?” he asked today for the fourth time.

“Augmented sixth with a leading tone in the bass. Gives a nice resolution. Nice and fresh.” I demonstrated. “Different from a V-I progression or a IV-I.”

He diddled around for a while. “Art Tatum used that,” he said.

“All the great stylists did. You have to make it your own.”

But even as we worked, my mind was elsewhere. Clay would be at my place by six tonight. Everything had to be ready. We’d only have one chance.

I had brought Detective Kerrison aboard, for lack of better back-up material. I needed someone to run the audio lines, to tape the proceedings, and I didn’t want to involve Luddie or Angela or Erica.

When I got home a little after five, Kerrison and his two sidekicks were busy. I found audio lines snaking from my living room to the back bedroom, and a couple of tiny mikes lying on the coffee table.

“Don’t worry, Bruce,” Kerrison informed me, “these’ll be out of sight. We were a little late getting set up.”

The two assistants – silent young men in denims with tool pouches clipped to either hip – taped the lines together, slid them under the rug connecting front room to back, and proceeded to tape the microphones in inconspicuous places. Shades of Abscam, I thought, looking around for the Camcorder. But they had decided against it. Sound would be enough.

The folder which I was to present to Clay sat on the coffee table. It was full of blank 3X5 cards. Nobody had bothered to fill them in.

“He’s gonna want to examine this material before he makes a decision,” I said to Kerrison.

“Stall him.”

“Stall him? The whole idea was to …”

“I know, pal, but nobody had time to write out a hundred complete episodes of L.A. Law, you know? Better if the folder is out of sight anyway. All we want is a statement that he wants to buy it. Oh yeah, make sure he’s on that end of the couch when he talks.”

I felt panic rising. Now that the time was here, the idiocy of the plan was getting to me. Clay would be way ahead of me, from the very beginning. What could I do but accuse him directly, tape his responses, and hope for something incriminating?

I watched Kerrison move smoothly around my apartment. He was a man at peace with his work, with himself. He had chosen intimidation and mendacity as a way of life, but it was new to me.

When, I wondered, had I started on that downward slope? When David gave his prime allegiance to Clay? When he was falsely accused? Did it go further back, to hopelessness over my health? Had I lost my bearings, my place in the world, when I accepted that sentence?

I thought back twenty years, to my time with Hector and Tim. Every morning, like clockwork, I headed downtown to teach at the Orchard Street Settlement School. A dead-end job that fulfilled me completely. What more could I ask than to waken those kids to music, give them a chance to make another world? The lousy pay, the long hours, the occasional frustration – none of that mattered. I was doing my work. There were no questions, only answers. I had finally solved the awful riddles of my childhood.

“I think we’re all set.” Kerrison, with his two sidekicks, came into the living room. “Joe and Kevin here can take off. I’ll be in the back.”

That was the way we had arranged it but a last doubt hit me. “Suppose he sees you back there?”

Kerrison shook his head. “He won’t. Not if you do your job.”

My job. Once it had been teaching beautiful kids how to play The Happy Farmer. I stuck the folder with the 3X5 cards in a drawer.

It was exactly six o’clock when the bell rang. Kerrison disappeared into the bedroom, pulling the door closed – almost. I touched the buzzer. The mikes and audio lines were invisible.

Clay was wearing a grey suit and carrying an attaché case. He looked around the living room carefully. “I’d say you’re involved in music in some way;” He grinned. He was in a good mood.

I maneuvered him to the proper end of the couch. One of the little mikes was taped to the underside of the arm. “How about a drink?”

He peered at me. “You okay?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not. Scotch?”

“That’ll be fine.”

I went into the kitchen, walking nervously, keeping an eye out. In the kitchen a coughing spasm hit me. I had to lean against the wall until it passed. Clay called out something helpful but I couldn’t answer.

I came back with the drink. “You know, Bruce, if this is too stressful for you, why don’t we just … pass on it? It’s not worth more health problems for you.”

I nodded. It was a kind thought, but it came too late. I was locked into my downward slope. Nothing except total destruction would satisfy me. And I wasn’t even sure why.

“Well,” he settled back with his drink, “if you want to go ahead with this, let’s have a look.”

“The cards?”

He looked at me sharply. “That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it, Miles’s cards?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t move. “But there’s something else. I want to tell you first. It’s a story, actually. One of Miles’s.”

He squirmed a little but didn’t stop me.

“He told it to me in the hospital, a visit on the afternoon he died. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s quite interesting. It concerns a man who was going to be murdered for his plots. He was a writer, very prolific, very successful. I can’t remember his name but he lived in Hasbrouck Heights – a ridiculous place – and had a neighbor who wanted to get hold of his story files. The neighbor had mob connections and there was going to be some mayhem involved.”

Clay stared at me, unblinking. “I was too full of Valium, too miserable, that afternoon, to make anything of it. But now I wonder if Miles wasn’t hinting at something. Maybe even his own death.”

Clay smiled easily. “You’ll never get anywhere by trying to psych out Miles. He lived in a world that had almost no relation to the real one.”

“I still think …”

He raised one hand. “I’d like to get on with our discussion, Bruce.”

The force of his will was like a blank wall. There were no cracks, no hand-holds. At last, giving in, I said, “I still have some ethical objections to selling Miles’s stuff, Clay.”

“I know you do.” He made an impatient gesture. “You can ease your conscience in a thousand ways.”

“You haven’t set a figure yet.”

“I told you, I have to see the material.” He was getting antsy. He looked around the apartment, noticing the door to the bedroom for the first time. “Are we alone?” he asked.

“Can you give me any general idea of what you’d be willing to pay?”

He stared at me, irritated. “A few thousand. That would depend.”

I let his words decay in the lamplight. “That’s interesting,” I said at last, my voice casual, “because I believe you’ve been using Miles’s plots for years. Plots like the one he developed for The Ghost Dancers of Rue. He told me that story long before either of us ever heard of Glinda Collins. And she’s confirmed that you fed her the details.”

“What’s going on here, Bruce?” I had to admire him. He was in perfect control.

“Just what I told you. I have evidence that Miles’s ideas have been plagiarized for years. Your willingness to buy more of them confirms that. I might add that there are no more. I made up that story just to see what you’d do.”

Clay sat quietly. “What a fool you are, Bruce.”

“Now the question is, were Miles’s plots worth killing him for? Did the story files in his New York apartment add up to a motive for murder? As in the story he told me in the hospital? A search has been made and it looks like some of them, or most of them, are missing.”

He looked at me ironically. “Is that what you’re accusing me of? Coming back to Miles’s apartment and hacking him to death?”

“Not you necessarily. Someone in your employ.”

He guffawed. “One of my proofreaders maybe? What about Rita?” He sat forward, suddenly furious. ’“You’ve made a mess of things, Bruce. First in Puerto Rico, now here. What about the death threats? Have you got those figured out too?”

“Yes. You wrote them to cover your tracks, using bad English. By a screw-up, Miles gave one of them to David, which got him in trouble. That was the last thing you wanted to happen.”

He laughed again. Just then the bedroom door opened and Kerrison stepped along the hallway. When he saw him Clay stood up. “So it’s a set-up,” he hissed. “I might have known.”

Kerrison started to speak but Clay held up his hand. “Don’t say a word. Don’t read me my rights. I’ll tell you exactly what happened.” He sat down again.

Kerrison glanced at me then sank into a chair. Clay addressed both of us. “Miles was in deep trouble toward the end of his life, and someone killed him, but it wasn’t me. He asked me to come that last night to help him. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to get involved. But David was coming for dinner and he persuaded me to drop by. When we were there, Miles showed us the two threatening letters he’d received. David foolishly took one home to study. The other stayed on that table.”

“What kind of trouble was he in?” I asked.

“That’s the ironic part. Ironic and typical. He wouldn’t tell us. Just said he was in hot water and needed to disappear. He wanted my help to cover for him. Supply some income.”

“And you agreed?”

“Not at first. The whole thing was too crazy. Like one of his gothic plots. Then he … well, he made an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Clay turned toward me. “Rita had been buying story ideas from Miles for years. That’s how we got The Ghost Dancers. Also a half dozen others. There was no theft, no plagiarism, but we didn’t tell anyone. Not even our writers. It was all done by contract. And we paid him well.” Clay paused. “But this time he offered his entire repertory, the whole kit and caboodle, all the stories he’d been cooking up since he was an adolescent. Most of them would be unusable, of course, but I figured … well, I made a deal. Yes, I’d help him go underground, evade whoever was after him, feed him monies at stated intervals, in return for his files. He went in the backroom and got his cards, hundreds of them, and dumped them in a plastic sack. He said that tomorrow morning he was moving to the Langwell Hotel on 46th Street under an assumed name – Nigel Cameron – and I was to contact him there. His place would be vacated for good.”

Clay set down his drink. The glass was empty.

“After the Langwell, he would move around the world. He preferred that kind of life anyway. He would set up some kind of itinerary for contacting him. But of course, he never made it out of his apartment. It was one last fantasy of his.”

Clay turned to me. “I assure you he was alive when David and I left his apartment. We’ve been telling the truth to the police right along. And now,” he nodded at Kerrison, “you’ve added a whole new element to the equation because you decided to play Miss Marple.”

My stomach clenched like a vise. “Why didn’t you go to the police yourself and tell them about Miles’s plan to disappear? About the deal you struck?”

“Believe me, I wish I had. We’d done nothing wrong. But David persuaded me not to. He said admitting we’d walked out of here with some of Miles’s intellectual property would lead to complications. It would be better to keep quiet. And the publicity, for our firm, if it got out, would be terrible.”

I slumped back on the couch.

“That’s the whole story?” Kerrison asked.

“That’s the whole story.”

He reached around and removed the little microphone from under the sofa arm. “I don’t believe we’ve got any problem,” he said. “Your pal David can back you up.”

Clay’s eyes went from the mike to me. “If you weren’t so sick I’d smash your face,” he said.

My mind went blank. I had reached the end of my own fantasies. I was so removed I hardly heard my front door open.

“Thank God you’re still here.” It was David, speaking to Clay, barely noticing Kerrison. “My apartment’s been broken into,” he said. “The door was jimmied open, the alarm disconnected.”

Kerrison jumped up. “What was taken?”

“That’s the funny thing. Nothing. Or almost nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just the stuff I was still holding for Miles. Stuff I was on the verge of throwing away.”

Something came to life in me. “The masks, David?”

“Yeah. Those stupid plaster masks he imported from Puerto Rico. The carton he gave me not long before he died.”