Obediently he remained for a few minutes, until the sniping between Woods and Arthur became too much to bear. He excused himself.
“Jack Holly! Elk pointed you out. Hank Stratton.”
A stubby corded paw seized his hand, masticating the bones. Its knuckles were blistered with old scar-tissue.
The author of the Lash Logan, private eye series bore a not-by-a-longshot-accidental resemblance to his creation, albeit shorter and flabbier. He wore a gray fedora that looked as if it had been distressed mechanically, the way car doors were opened and shut thousands of times by a robotic arm at the factory, and an open trench coat (indoors, on a June day that turned asphalt into blackberry jam) over a rumpled brown suit and a black necktie. He had charnel-house breath and gin blossoms on his cheeks.
“Congratulations on your success.” Jacob traded his glass for a fresh chilled one from the passing young man and transferred it to his right hand as a poultice against the throbbing. “I hear they’re filming Kill ’em All.”
“Balls. They’re shooting the title and using some studio hack’s script. It was gonna be in Technicolor and 3D; then the Catholic Decency League put up a stink, so they’re shooting it on the cheap on a rented back lot with a nancy TV actor and a Commie director that works cheap ’cause he’s blacklisted and using a phony name. They changed Logan to Dugan. Now I hear they want a new title. I’ll be lucky if they pay me at all, as why should they? There’s nothing left of the book. Say, I read The Fence.”
“You did?”
“Well, the first chapter. Elk wanted me to give it a blurb.”
“Blurb?” It sounded like something in science fiction.
“Puff. Gas. You know, ‘I couldn’t put it down,’ like it was the opposite of a hand grenade. Only I got busy, and then it was too late. I liked what I read. Did the dame shoot him in the end? That’s how I’d do it.”
“I blew him up. It—”
“Sorry, kid, gotta go. My dame’s hungry, and them shrimp don’t cut it. Like eating roaches.” He gave Jacob a slap on the back that spilled his drink and boated off, the tails of his trench coat flapping.
In a corner languished a young platinum-haired woman in a black sheath and heels that made her tower over Stratton, who hooked her arm and pulled her out the door.
“Beautiful girl. Say what you like about Stratton—and I’ll lay odds it’s already been said, except ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’—he knows where to shop for whores.”
Jacob hadn’t noticed the speaker, even though he was suddenly aware he’d been standing near for some time. The striking thing about Cliff Cutter, whom he’d met in that same office, was there was nothing striking about him at all. He was a smallish, slight man in his sixties, with close-cut silver hair and a brush moustache only slightly darker. He wore an unobtrusive black suit and held a tumbler filled with an effervescent liquid Jacob suspected was club soda. Nothing about him, including his quiet, almost inaudible speech, indicated he was the author of more than forty rip-roaring western novels. Elk had lured him over from an established hardcover house, beginning with Death and Texas, under a deal he was prohibited by his contract with Blue Devil to discuss with anyone.
Which meant it was so lucrative the publisher was afraid all his other writers would demand the same if they knew the figure. Not a bad nest egg for a man who had started out herding cattle in Arizona Territory when Geronimo was still at large. He looked like a shoe clerk.
What Cutter had said sank in. “His date’s a private escort?”
Muscles tugged at the corners of the old man’s grim mouth.
“That’s what I like about the East. There’s ten names for everything, each one tamer than the last. That’s a ten-dollar-a-throw chippie or I’m Sioux City Sue. Only knowing what a dumb cluck Stratton is, she’s getting fifty. Man’s not a man don’t know the value of a dollar or a woman.”
“I guess he has it to spend.”
“Can’t spend it and have it too. I struck pay dirt in ’92, went bust, ought-one, went bust, again in 1920, and fell harder that time than all the others. Now I’m rich again, but if there’s a God I won’t live long enough to turn out my pockets this round. Every time it gets harder to pick yourself back up, and when you do and you’re rolling in butter it ain’t as much fun as it was.”
“Robin says Pistols West went back to press twice, and it isn’t even officially out yet. That’s impressive.”
“Would be, if there was a lick of truth in the book. Ever been in a shoot-out?”
“Not if you don’t count the war.”
“I was, just once. We potted at each other forty-five minutes, counting reloads and ducking around shithouses. Then we both ran out of ammo and all we managed to kill was an afternoon. Ain’t had an easy bowel movement since.”
“Well, you can’t write a western without violence.”
“Sure you can. Ever read Paso Por Aqui?”
“I can’t say I have.”
“Jasper named Rhodes wrote it in ’25. A hundred and thirty pages without a shot fired or a drop of blood spilt. Dame fine work, and authentic. Didn’t sell five hundred copies.”
“What was the gunfight about?”
“A mix-up. It wasn’t the guy I thought it was.”
The small jazz combo Elk had hired for an hour arrived, set up on the landing, and started tuning up. Jacob shook Cutter’s hand and passed through another door into a small employee lounge, with cupboards and a counter holding up a huge copper-and-brass coffee urn and a toaster. At a laminated table sat a plump, pleasant-looking brunette of forty or so in a polka-dot sundress, and a man ten or fifteen years younger in a green suit that shrieked Salvation Army. His hair had been cut by an amateur and his moustache was a smear of ginger.
Jacob never caught their names. The brunette was a chatterbox, the direct opposite of her companion, who never opened his mouth except to insert a pewter flask. The torrent of words from the woman pounded Jacob’s ears like a jackhammer. He stole out under the cover of a fresh crowd.
He almost collided with Scarpetti in the hallway. The artist was holding a full glass. His eyes now were red.
“How’d you get on with Brock?” he said.
“Who?”
“Hugh Brock. You were just with him.”
“Green Suit? He never introduced himself. Invisible Aliens Brock? I heard he was in Hollywood.”
“The studio shelved his book. Science fiction hasn’t sold a ticket since Flash Gordon. But he’s under contract. Thousand a week.”
“He can afford better clothes.”
“Brock’s a queer duck. A buddy that paints sets for Cardinal Pictures told me Brock lives at the Burbank Y, where the silverfish have a standing reservation.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“His wife, and he married well. She’s got the heft to sit on him when he goes off the deep end.”
“Drunk?”
“No, that’s just his medicine. Every time he shakes his head you can hear screws rattling.”
“Veteran?”
“Be a good excuse, but no again. Scuttlebutt is all three military branches rejected him as a schizo. I’m surprised they didn’t make him an officer.”
“Damnedest party I ever saw.” Jacob sipped from his flute, but the champagne had gone flat.
“All it needs is a rabbit with a pocket watch.”
“Am I normal?”
“Not in this crowd.”
He went back to the publisher’s office. Ellen sat with The Fence shut in her lap, smoking and looking into the middle distance between her and an unknown couple smooching in a dim corner. When she saw him, she put the cigarette out in a large onyx tray filled with butts in her brand, stained with her color of lipstick.
“Marcy Elliott,” she said. “Tall, square-shouldered redhead. Why didn’t you just use my name?”
He was doubly glad he’d changed it. “You think she’s you?”
“Not because of the ‘firm ripeness of her breasts.’ Jake, there are whole snatches of dialogue that came straight from my mouth.”
He glanced nervously toward the couple in the corner.
“Ignore them,” she said. “They wouldn’t notice if Orson Welles landed with the Martians.”
“I borrow from everywhere, Ell. Even I don’t remember where I got it all.”
“Then why haven’t I read it before? You’re a great writer and a lousy liar. When you said you don’t like making things up, I never thought you’d do something like this.”
He lowered his voice. “Can we go for a walk? This place is a gossip factory.”
“There you are!”
He jumped three feet. It was Alice with her camera. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You promised to stay put. Smile!”
They were startled into smiling. The flash filled his vision with purple and green spots.
“I’m not letting you rush off this time,” said the secretary, changing bulbs. “Robin wants all the writers in his office for a group photo.”
“Can it wait? We’d like to get some fresh air.”
“It’ll just take a minute.”
He leaned over the desk and touched Ellen’s wrist. “Promise you won’t leave.”
She lit another cigarette. “I’ll be here. I’m only halfway through the book.” She sat back, opening The Fence.
The writers crowded into Elk’s office. Jacob found himself standing between Hugh Brock and Phoebe Sternwalter. There was a delay while Alice went to fetch Hank Stratton, who as it turned out had taken his statuesque escort to a drugstore down the street for hamburgers; he came in ruddy-faced and smelling of the common cologne (in that company) of alcohol. As they squeezed in for the shot, Jacob felt Brock flinch. Human contact wasn’t his strong suit.
“All together, now, lady and gentlemen,” said Robin Elk, leaning on his cane behind the photographer. “Say ‘Cheese!’ One big happy family.”
They obeyed—all except Brock and Cliff Cutter, looking grim as pallbearers—with the blue devil beaming down at them from the banner on the wall.