“The ’42 Chardonnay, I think, Jeffrey. It’s chilled?” Robin Elk lifted his eyebrows at the Jamaican waiter in scarlet cutaway and white shirt, waistcoat, and breeches, reminiscent—not entirely by accident, thought Jacob—of an eighteenth-century British Army uniform.
A white-gloved hand took the menu Elk had filled out. “Since seven this morning, sir; before we opened.”
“Splendid.”
The publisher and his guest were seated in the dining room of the Staghunters Club, whose membership was made up chiefly of British subjects of a certain class living in New York. Elk had translated the Latin motto that accompanied the coat-of-arms in the foyer, a caricature of a swollen John Bull standing with one foot on the throat of a rat-faced minuteman: “Even in exile, we are victorious.”
“A gesture of colossal insecurity,” he added in an apologetic tone. “The drawing is after Cruikshank, trumpeting the burning of Washington during the 1812 war. Supply lines are long, and Yankee pot roast is far superior to beef Wellington. Some chaps can’t get past that.”
“I’m glad you said that. I was thinking of getting together with my buddies from the service to kick your butts for the third time.” He constructed his most charming smile, to draw the fangs from the remark.
He wasn’t entirely successful. Elk’s smile was wintry.
“Indeed. Well, thank God recent events have put an end to all that. Someone’s always crying to take down that monstrosity; but I’m afraid we’re stuck with it as long as a founding member yet breathes who remembers the Boer War.”
The building was a relic of old New York: Four stories of pink sandstone with corners rounded by the elements and windows with blown-glass panes offering a bulbous view of Lower Manhattan like a picture taken with a fish-eye lens. They’d passed through a reading room redolent of old leather and tobacco, books on walls and newspapers strewn on tables, the publisher leaning slightly on his cane, his feet shod in shapeless moccasins, and sat down at a small square table draped in crisp linen. This room contained a dozen others under a high coffered ceiling inside walls of English walnut. The moth-eaten head of a stag with mythic antlers glared glassily at Jacob. A monocle would not have seemed out of place.
“Suffocatingly English, Yes? Yes.” For a senior executive, Elk was unusually sensitive to the internal musings of companions. “And absurdly spot-on, like your American murder mystery films set in England, with a gun room in every house and the daily fox hunt. We use tea bags now—marvelous invention, and sure evidence of the rise of the Columbian Empire—and we can’t get enough of John Wayne. Had he been at Munich in ’38, we’d have had no need for Churchill. No reflection on Winston. My father hopes to publish his memoirs now he has time on his hands.”
“I can’t think why he was voted out of office.”
“It’s the old case of the working mastiff versus the fighting bull terrier, like your man Patton. There simply was no place for him in peacetime. But we’re talking about the war once again. Here is Jeffrey, come to our rescue.”
The waiter, all articulated bone beneath café au lait skin, balanced his tray on one hand and set out their food and wine. Jacob studied his shellfish, fanned out in thin shingled slices on a bed of pink horseradish sauce: Uncle Haiyam, forgive me; I don’t keep kosher.
Elk, for once, misinterpreted his reaction. “A tough fish, as some might persuade you. Here, however, the chef’s burly assistants beat it with mallets and whatnot until it runs up the white flag like”—he glanced around and dropped his voice to a whisper—“General Cornwallis. It’s silken to the palate.”
He nodded—appreciatively, he hoped. Five years of Spam and powdered eggs had left him indifferent to food.
Still, the abalone was everything his host said it was and the greens and dessert worthy of the surroundings.
The incomparable Jeffrey brought a selection of cigars banded in red and gold foil. Jacob declined. Elk chose one carefully, after passing the first two below his nostrils and rustling them next to an ear. The waiter ignited it with a gold lighter and withdrew.
It all seemed so well rehearsed it left the observer with an inflated sense of his own importance, as if it had been performed for him alone. Come off it, Jake, m’boy; you’re just another horse in the stable.
“I asked you here,” Elk said at last, “outside the formal confines of the office, because I sense you’re troubled. I’ve yet to see pages, and I know from your history you’re no laggard. Is it the dreaded Block?”
“I wish everyone wouldn’t use that word as if it were capitalized, like the Plague. It gives it a gravity it doesn’t deserve. I’ve never heard of a plumber’s block. It’s just a fancy phrase for laziness.”
“I fail to see the comparison. A plumber looks at a leaky pipe or a stopped drain, identifies the source of the problem, and attends to it. Artists require inspiration.”
“Inspiration’s cheap. Any child can tell an elaborate lie and get out of a spanking.”
“What motivates you?”
“Rent.”
Elk’s smile was almost broad. “Capital answer! I was prepared to sit through a lecture on art and significance. More than ever I’m convinced I was right in selecting you to lead our line. Which is why I’m concerned.”
“I’m stuck, that’s all. It’s not psychological. My research source has been uncooperative.”
“If it’s a question of money, I may be able to shake something loose from the discretionary fund.”
“That’s arranged. Anyway, he’s not poor, just wary. He has reasons not to trust me that I won’t go into.”
“You’re certain you need him?”
“Yes.”
“How can I help?”
“You can’t; unless you have connections to the underworld.”
Jeffrey came to clear the table. When they were alone, Elk produced a crocodile notebook and a fat green fountain pen. He began writing. Jacob stared.
“This is the address of our best illustrator, Phil Scarpetti.” Elk tore off the sheet and gave it to him. “He lives and works in a loft in the lowest part of the Village—and you thought I was a cliché. He’s doing the cover for The Fence; we hope. He’s in the way of being a genius, but we overlook that because he’s never missed a deadline and his covers sell more books than the bylines. We’d sack the rest of the staff and use him exclusively, except he’s temperamental. He accepts only those assignments that appeal to him. He’s turned down Saroyan and Aldous Huxley; ‘derivative,’ he called them. Yes, he actually reads the books we send him. I think you’ll benefit from his acquaintance.”
Jacob looked at the sheet. It was just a name, a number, and a street. “‘Temperamental’ usually means pain-in-the-neck.”
“Oh, he is. Our first art director resigned rather than work with him again. Went into the seminary.”
“I told you I’m not looking for inspiration. If I were, do you think I’d find it in some artist’s idea of what I’m going to write before it’s written? Most of the time they don’t get it right even after.”
“I’m not suggesting a pep talk.” Elk broke a half-inch of cigar ash into a heavy silver tray. “Scarpetti’s an ex-convict, on parole from a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. He may be in a position to put you onto the people you seek.”