Ranulf Richter had the appearance of a savage even in church. In warmer weather, he famously wore a navy blue blazer jacket with no shirt and shorts and sneakers with no socks—to all occasions. It was reported in frequent newspaper coverage that he disdained underwear. Though his body seemed to grow a sufficient mat of red-black hair to keep him warm in cool weather, he did alter his wardrobe in winter to a Harris tweed to replace the blazer and a pair of corduroy pants, but still avoided shirts. He was known to strip naked at parties and swim in whatever pool of water was near at hand. Though he was a professed vegetarian, he had established a reputation for biting photographers, reporters, and presumed girlfriends. Additionally, he was known to have some expertise in martial arts. This was probably useful in his frequent encounters with the enraged boyfriends of his artfully bitten women.
Ranulf, as he was known to all, was the son of a Norwegian diplomat who had served the interests of his government during World War Two, and, as a quisling, been unable to return home. The boy had been raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, sent to private schools, and for an uncertain period of time attended the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ranulf had entered the literary world through the New York party scene, on a public challenge, after he had loudly criticized the work of one established New York writer after another, and then written a novel in one month, while not missing a single evening of social events. That book, now justly forgotten by everyone but book collectors of first novels, concerned a famous-for-being-famous social buffoon who could find neither true love nor a good cup of coffee. The critics hailed it as social satire. Some critics said it was infused with Swiftian genius. It sold poorly, so the authorities felt their judgment confirmed.
Ranulf had found his real success with his second book, in a character named Bent. The orphaned son of a Nazi father and a Jewish whore, Bent is an out-of-work circus clown and proto-performance artist whose creative expression is displayed in flamboyant dress and impromptu street theatrics. Bent dwells in the twilight of a New York perpetually shadowed by skyscrapers, supporting himself by taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and sleeping in whatever bed is offered. Bent steals a Steinway grand piano from the penthouse apartment of a famous concert pianist who had been saved as a boy from the Holocaust but would now only play for exorbitant fees, and leaves it in the plaza fountain at Lincoln Center. Bent robs a bank vault of a hundred million dollars in venture-capital bonds only days before a new computer company goes public with a software device stolen from a young inventor and then drops the paper from a World War I-era biwing over the length of Wall Street during lunch hour. When the mob uses its knowledge of a key player's sexual proclivities, Bent stops play by throwing pink basketballs onto the court at Madison Square Garden during a fixed New York Knicks game. Bent releases helium-filled party balloons decorated with dollar signs from beneath manhole covers during mayoral campaign speeches.
Ranulf's conceit is that the poor are always demanding more of his character, and the rich give away their money too readily, to assuage their sins. Bent is never prosecuted for his crimes, no matter how outrageous, simply because his intentions are good. But it is his hyperbolic comment on errant political programs which caused a new concern among the intelligentsia who cannot bear to have their motives questioned. Over time, Bent falls from favor. Bent's final punishment arrives when he goes virtually unnoticed in a city which has adopted his theatrics into its daily life. His stunts pale beside the reality that has become the norm. On the last page he is drinking a fifty-cent cup of bitter coffee in a greasy spoon in Chelsea, unrecognized, and accepts a card from a Salvation Army worker for a warm place to sleep that night.
This book had sold over a million copies in hardcover and been made into a disastrous movie which badly miscast the character of Bent. The enigmatic thief of the original was now the flesh and blood of a well-known Hollywood actor who lacked even the flare of Bent's author—and all mystery lost in the detail of how the pranks are executed.
Two other less successful satires followed, a Hollywood roman à clef rejoicing in the disdain of film makers toward the written word, and then a gynecologic examination of the feminist art world. Ranulf's fifth novel—a sequel to the second—wherein his hero, Bent, is finally eaten alive by a roving band of starving musicians unable to find an audience willing to pay for the privilege of sitting still for a silent concert of performers refusing to play their instruments—all in protest against world hunger—had failed with critics as well as the public. The resulting stacks of remainders had created a lack of interest in Ranulf's sixth book, for which Heber Johnson was unable to find the right publisher.
This was the man who sat in the second pew on the right, visibly positioned by the center aisle, black silk scarf tied around his neck, thankfully wearing pants and not shorts, as the minister addressed them.
In front of Ranulf were family members Henry had never seen before, and from their advanced ages, and appearance, he assumed they were Heber's blood relatives. Morgan's son, Arthur, sat in the first row on the left, where Henry could barely see him behind the taller heads. The middle pews on both sides were only half-full, but the faces were familiar. These were the three-dimensional-but-aged representations of dozens of photographs he had seen many times on the dust jackets of countless books.
Henry sat in the last row on the left, just in from the center, alone except for a tall, thin man with an abundance of uncut blond hair. Directly across the center aisle from Henry, Detective O'Connor sat with another man who also looked very much like a cop.
The interior of the church was a single long chamber darkened by the shadowed aisles at the sides behind the arching piers and by the blackened wood of the pews and the soiled stone and stained glass left uncleaned. The echo of voices and the shuffle of feet mimicked the sound of an empty stage, as if a hollow space lay just beneath the marble floor. The small electric lights suspended candle-like in tarnished metal fixtures from above were harsh to look at in the amber of the room.
This was not Morgan's church. It had undoubtedly been chosen for the memorial service because it was close by, and probably selected by her son. Henry knew that Morgan was Episcopalian only because her parents had been. This minister had never known her. The minister's words were spoken with the flat resonance and mechanical modulation appropriate to a classroom reading of chosen boilerplate, obviously taken from a book filled with such words for all occasions. The service had been requested by her brother, Aaron, and Henry assumed it might be a smaller occasion meant only for family and friends. The faces of so many authors Heber Johnson had once represented made it clear again to Henry the influence of Morgan in that relationship.
Her brother, Aaron, spoke next. He had little to say that was not commonly felt. However, he told a small story from their childhood which appeared to evoke more of his own sense of life than Morgan's. She had camped in the little woods behind their home all night to catalog the nocturnal sounds for a classroom project. Aaron, younger and jealous of his sister's adventure, had gone out repeatedly to check on her, causing an argument about his scaring the night creatures into silence. In her final project she had included Aaron's whispers as one of the catalogued sounds.
After Aaron, several childhood friends spoke, recalling another time and the society of military families trying with difficulty to live normal, everyday lives in extraordinary places marked by incidents of little consequence except to themselves.
Then George Duggan arose, walking with clear reluctance to the pulpit, seeming unsure of his purpose. Henry knew that Heber had been Duggan's agent since his very first book sale in 1982. Duggan's large figure folded over the lectern for support as he spoke, as if the weight of the words were difficult to bear. He was not yet sixty years old, but he had grown a full beard since the photo on his last book jacket, and the gray of it, rather than the short cut of the receding hair on his head, made him appear older.
He took a breath, squinted at the assembled, perhaps trying to find a face in the crowd, and then spoke.
"I was remembering just now my first meeting with Morgan. I had already met Heber. He had asked me to come by to sign something. We were sitting in that windowless room in their apartment that he used as his office—some of you know the one—with the books surrounding us on all four walls. Heber was keen on having me understand the rights I was giving up. It involved a great deal of money, more than I thought I would ever see in a lifetime. I was giddy. I was simply ecstatic about finally selling something to a major publisher. The real amount of the money had not dawned on me."
Duggan hesitated with the memory, his eyes turned downward. “As we were sitting down, Morgan asked how long I had been writing, and I told them that I had started when I was nine and never stopped, like a spigot with the handle busted, and that I really never wanted to do anything else but write stories till the day I died. Heber then began to go over each point of the contract, when abruptly Morgan interrupted. I did not know at the time that she was more than Heber's wife. But at that moment, her face was the face of a mother."
Duggan paused again, the silence suddenly magnified. He cleared his throat. “She said, ‘Wait! You must think about this. I can see that you still don't understand. This is not just a matter of serial rights, paperback rights, or movie rights. It's your human rights that are being sold here. Your life will never be the same again. You will be indentured. You will be a slave, owned only in part by George Duggan. Your talent, which makes you feel so powerful and free, will be your chain. You will be writing for the rest of your life just to support a plantation that includes editors and proofreaders, printers and binders, publicists and lawyers, distributors and booksellers—and your agent. And your agent's wife. That spigot you were telling us about will now become a word factory. And if ever you falter or fail, the collapse will be a kind of unforgiving bankruptcy you will never be able to overcome, and it will leave you with debts you'll never be able to repay. Publishing is cruel. Success is a burden. This book will sell. We both think it will sell like crazy, but you will have to write another. And another ... We believe in you. We think you can carry that weight. Even though most authors are one-book wonders, we think you are the one to make it beyond. That's why so much money is involved. But is that what you want? You can keep your job as a waiter and write your stories for the rest of your life without any other cause than your own love of it—find a quiet happiness and never fail yourself. You can continue to publish in the little magazines. I can give you the name of a small press that would gladly publish your book.... Are you aware that your soul is involved in this? You will never be happy simply being a waiter again. You think the choice is obvious, but it's not. In a year you will be famous. I predict you will be very famous. And that will mean you are a freak. A sideshow. Your life will be as publicly owned as any corporation."
Duggan took a breath, more than a pause, as if to gather the memory before his eyes and be sure he had told enough.
"I was dumbfounded, of course. I looked at Heber. He smiled and looked at Morgan and shook his head. I said to them, ‘Is it my soul I'm selling? Is this man the devil?’ But she didn't laugh. She said, ‘No, but Faust is within you, like a common virus we all live with. It will rise when you are weak—if you don't take care. I'm only warning you of the danger.’”
Duggan took another and longer breath. In the short silence, there was no shuffling of feet against the marble floor.
"'Faust is within you.’ The reverend just said the Lord was within us and it made me think of Morgan's warning to me. It is so difficult to imagine the Lord is within us. We are such small and frail and smelly creatures. Where would the Lord find a place to hide? But Faust! That I easily saw. That I understood .... She was right, of course, this woman who was never famous but known so well by all of us. I have made many mistakes in my life since, but I have always been aware of the Faust within me. That caution has, I hope, kept me from the devil, and I thank Morgan for it."
The words sounded so much like something Morgan might say, Henry could distinctly hear her voice in them. Still, it was an odd memorial to give. But it was not as odd as what came next.
Ranulf Richter had taken Duggan's place, passing the taller man with a touch of his hand on Duggan's shoulder.
Richter sniffed and wiped his sleeve on the stubble of beard that covered his face. His black scarf barely covered the chest hair that peeked from beneath it.
"Morgan was a dear and lovely friend to most of us. And we do not need a service like this to remind us of what we have lost.... I do not need to be reminded. I will think of it each morning when I awake. With due respect to Aaron, she was my sister. We had long since passed that threshold of friendship when the beat of her heart made my blood rush.... And she was killed. She was murdered. She was strangled. The dear, warm life in her was wasted. And my own life has been damaged beyond all repair. Someone is a killer. Someone is a murderer.... Someone here, with us, now .... My God—” He choked, cleared his throat and raised his voice. “My God is a vengeful God, and I am his servant."
The heavy silence of the great room broke into whispers only after Ranulf Richter sat down again. Henry turned to the eyes of Detective O'Connor, who was looking in Henry's direction but beyond him. Henry turned around. The tall, thin blond fellow who had been at the other end of the pew had disappeared.