Where the Truth Lies (19 page)

4. Had the late Maureen O’Flaherty been invited to await Vince and Lanny in New Jersey while they were on TV in Florida, or did she go there planning to surprise—

I looked up at Beejay’s Felix the Cat clock and realized I’d have no time for the very good coffee at the Pantheon Diner across the street from my publisher if I didn’t get ready for my meeting now. It wasn’t, after all, as if I felt on the verge of answering any of the questions I’d just posed to myself.

I opted for the same outfit I’d worn when I took my walk around the Burbank Studios with Vince. It was more summery than I’d normally wear to a business meeting, but after that I was going to join Lanny.

At that time, Neuman and Newberry had its offices on the top three floors of the Flatiron Building. I took a taxi there without even considering the Twenty-third Street crosstown bus; what I was saving by staying at Beejay’s instead of at a hotel allowed me to indulge myself in such lesser luxuries without a second thought.

My meeting was with the three people most immediately overseeing my project: Connie Wechsler, Greg Gavin, and Neuman and Newberry’s editor in chief, Lil Walker. Some N&N attorneys might be on hand as well.

Connie was my editor. She was about fifteen years older than I, half a foot shorter, with hair that was dark and frizzy with hard, natural waves. She was the essence of frumpy, and comfortable with that. She knew my work and understood me, even gave the impression that she liked me.

Lil Walker was the person to whom Connie reported. When Lil talked about the writers she’d edited in her twenties, one had the distinct feeling that much of the male contingent of the Lost Generation could have been found in her bedroom on any given weekend. She referred to Hemingway as “Ernie” without pretension and once made a comment about Steinbeck being at Gertrude Stein’s beck and call that had the ring of firsthand information to it. She clearly didn’t know my work very well, but she knew Connie and tended to reflexively back her up whenever she needed support, so that worked out just fine for me.

Greg Gavin was that anomaly that is (paradoxically) common within most large companies: the mystery man whom everyone believes was hired by someone else. His arrival at Neuman and Newberry was apparently never formally announced or explained. I had first noticed him when I’d inked my deal with N&N at an impromptu signing party (meaning Yago sangria in paper cups in the reception area). He was sitting alone on the receptionist’s desktop, sniffing at the bowl of his empty pipe. He smiled vaguely across the room at Connie and gave the pipe a few hard spanks on the flat of his left hand. I asked Connie as a matter of course who he was, because he looked like he owned the place, or was at least leasing with an option to buy.

Connie murmured, “His name’s Greg Gavin. Everybody’s a little scared of him and no one knows why. One day he just suddenly appeared at a meeting of the editorial board, very nicely outfitted, sucking at an unlit briar pipe. I thought he was working with Harv Prescott because he kept smiling these smiles at Harv, so I asked Harv and Harv said he’d assumed Greg and I were working together because he’d kept smirking atme. ”

A consensus had gradually formed within N&N that Gavin was in charge of special marketing. No one was very sure what that was, either. He had asked the senior secretary of each department to carbon all interoffice memos to him, and after that, he seemed to simply pick and choose which meetings he attended according to an agenda he kept entirely to himself.

The Flatiron’s elevator rose to my floor in approximately the same amount of time as it took Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to ascend to the throne. The doors opened. There was no receptionist, and security was nonexistent. After all, this was a publishing house, not a bank or a radio station. What was someone going to do—break in and demand that their manifesto be published in hardcover by the late fall of next year or hostages would die?

I stepped down the old-fashioned hall, each of the corridor’s tightly spaced doors highlighted by a yellowing translucent glass panel that bore the office’s number and the name of its current resident. I half-expected to see one labeledSAM SPADE AND MILES ARCHER —PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

I let myself into Connie’s office. She always seemed out of place there, since Connie was neither a published book nor a manuscript, which happened to be the only other things visible in the room. Her desk, the top of which had long ago been rendered inaccessible by a glacier of accumulated reading matter, now served solely as a beam bridge creating a tunnel where her lap could go amid all the books that filled the little room. She smiled. “Hey, you got here. How’s tricks?”

I told her tricks were fine. She tossed a thick manuscript she was reading onto a heap. “Peeee-yew! Another Kennedy conspiracy book. Should have been written in crayon. According to this one, the mysterious third bullet came fromwithin the limousine. The author claims Jackie did it. Derringer hidden in the pillbox hat, which served as a—as a pillbox.”

I nodded at the pile onto which she had tossed the manuscript. “For the scrap heap?”

“What scrap heap? It’s going straight to the original-paperback department downstairs. Something has to pay for this book you’re writing.” She got up, adjusting her sweater so the various bulges were where they were meant to be. “C’mon, we have to explain to business affairs why we should give Vince Collins, who has lots of money, a lot of money.”

Their best conference room had been renovated out of several small offices and a storage closet in the narrow prow of the landmark building, creating a pizza slice of a room, with a curved glass window at the building’s prow. The overall effect was of being in abateau-mouche that was anchored gracefully high above the river of Broadway, looking north toward Herald Square—and I promise not to mention George M. yet again.

Lil was late because she could be anything she wanted, but Greg Gavin was already there, as was the head of business affairs, the likable Bernard Besser (who pronounced his first nameBurr -nurd), and a much younger attorney with severe acne named Jay Drelitch. After niceties about my trip (from which I excluded any mention of Lanny), we sat down at a long triangular conference table that would have been laughable anywhere except in this three-sided room. As if he were in charge of the meeting, Greg dealt six slim binders, one to each of us around the table. I stifled the urge to say“Suivi,” as if he were a baccarat dealer, and took a quick look at the first page.

Its heading read: “Suggested Questions for Vince Collins.” The questions appeared to easily outnumber those in the memo I’d written to myself back in Beejay’s apartment.

I closed the binder, feeling rage rising within me.

Bernard, a nice enough fellow in his late fifties whose light-gray suit and cream-colored tie were his version of going casual, asked me to review for everyone at the table what I had verbally agreed to with Vince. Understandably, he wanted to know what I had stuck him with (and what he might have to renege upon) in terms of translating my proffers into a legally binding document.

I repeated for Bernard and Jay what I had already told them on the phone. I omitted the highly personal compact I had made with Mr. Collins in L.A., as I viewed our sexual covenant to be more of a personal side bet than a formal wager against the house. With some assistance from Connie, I helped elucidate what I had and hadn’t guaranteed, and it was my perception that Bernard was both surprised and relieved that I hadn’t painted him into more of a corner. I had certainly built into my offer various safeguards for Neuman and Newberry should Vince be less than forthcoming with information or less than cooperative in terms of his schedule.

Bernard said he was grateful that I had been watching out for N&N’s interests, but of course I had also been watching out for myself. He concluded, “Well, I think Jay and I can hammer out something resembling a contract we can all live or litigate with. The only thing I don’t quite understand is why Mr. Collins is willing to allow what could end up being an exposé of himself.”

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” I offered. “Vince is a realist. The days of his box-office drawing power are drawing to a close, and his record label just dropped every artist on their roster over the age of thirty except him and Mahalia Jackson, and the only reason they haven’t let her go is they’re afraid God will make locusts fly into the vinyl at their pressing plant. For Vince, this is an easy way of getting some fast ‘fuck you’ money that he can afford to lose.” I offered, by way of apology, “The phrase isn’t mine. I think it’s credited to Humphrey Bogart.”

A low, bronze female voice sounded: “Sorry I’m late, all.” It was Lil, who walked with a cane that she clearly enjoyed smacking down onto the conference table as she took a seat across from me. “Miss O’Connor. Bernard.” She looked at Greg Gavin and gave him a nod that clearly indicated she didn’t remember his name.

Greg erroneously took this nod to be his cue. “Well. Since the investment in Mr. Collins is quite sizable, and since Miss O’Connor has indicated that her book will be largely in the form of a transcript, I’ve compiled a list of questions I’m sure we as the publisher would want to see addressed. Turning to the first page …”

My hands trembled from anger mixed with the shame of asserting myself as I said in a voice I borrowed from somewhere else, “Um, I’d rather not turn to the first page, if you don’t mind. Frankly, I’d prefer not to read any of these questions at all. Once I see them, my tendency will be to avoid asking any of them like the plague. God forbid that among them would be some questions I would have asked anyway, in my own words and manner, when I thought the moment was right. That’s part of what you’re paying me to do.” I pushed the binder aside to make my point. “I already landlocked myself creatively when I volunteered that the interviews would be published in transcript form. I hope and assume I’ll be able to cheat around this somewhere, maybe in a preface to each chapter, making my points as a biographer and journalist like the narrator of a documentary.Playboy does transcript interviews, but the interviewer leads with almost a full page of editorial comment.”

Greg Gavin made sucking noises on his empty pipe. “We’re not paying a million for what you have to say about Vince Collins, we’re paying for whathe has to say.”

“Tome. What he has to say tome. If you start telling me what you want me to say and when, you’ll throw me off my game. Pretty soon, I’ll have as much to do with the creative process of this book as a French interpreter at the U.N. has of solving the problem of world famine.” I took a breath. “Whoare you, anyway?”

“Okay now,” murmured Connie to me.

“No reason to cop an attitude,” said Greg, showing he’d known people who smoked dope in the sixties.

Lil rapped the head of her cane against the table. “Now, let’s quit this.” She indicated the binder in front of her. “Connie, are these your questions?”

Connie shook her head. “All news to me.”

Lil gave Greg a smile combining immense reasonability and loathing. “Well, as I’ve always understood this company’s policy, while the book is being written or rewritten, the relationship between author and editor is sacrosanct. Miss O’Connor is a wonderful writer—” Lil looked at Connie and inquired, “She’s okay, isn’t she?” Connie nodded with a smile and Lil continued, “So until we actually have a book, I think we’ll let Miss Wechsler, in whom I have the utmost confidence … I do, don’t I, Connie?” Connie nodded again. “Good. Then let’s let these two women do what we’ve hired them to do, assuming business affairs is okay with the structure of the deal with Vince Collins… . Are you all right with the deal, Bernard and Mr… . ?” She wafted a look at Bernard Besser that included the pimply Jay Drelitch.

Bernard nodded. “I think we’ll be fine, Lil.”

“With all due respect,” piped up Greg with no respect intended, “this isn’t your typical book deal. We’re really just leasing an oil well named Vince Collins and granting Miss O’Connor here the right to tap it, and I think we should have some say in monitoring the drilling.” He opened the list of questions, which everyone else had closed and which everyone else left closed.

Connie clearly decided she’d better speak before I did. “It’s not as easy as it looks, Greg. If you go to Vince Collins and ask him your questions, you’ll come back here with a three-hundred-page press handout and puff piece. There’s an art to building trust over the long term with your subject, a way to judge what to press them on and when. You have to know more about the person than they do, be historian, shrink, lover, father confessor, mother superior. When the police need to get a confession from someone, they don’t just send any cop into the room. The job takes more than just a solid writer, it takes—”

I stood up. “Here’s what I’ll do. You can put it in writing.” I looked over at Bernard. “As a matter of fact, I prefer it in writing, and if you draft a rider to my existing agreement to the following effect, I’ll sign it before I leave town.” Bernard gave Jay Drelitch a look and suddenly Jay’s Bic pen was scribbling on a legal pad everything I was saying.

“Greg, you’ll pay for a typing service on the West Coast to transcribe the tapes of my interviews with Vince. As each transcript gets typed up, I’ll send it to you, edited and pruned as I see fit. This way you can review my work as I go along. But I will not talk to you about the transcripts, read any memos, or take any phone calls from you about them. If after reading the transcripts you think I’m really screwing up in a big way, fire me. No explanation will be necessary. But other than to give me my pink slip, you will have no further communication with me. That’s the deal. But do keep in mind that if you let me go, this company will then have to find someone Vince Collins is equally willing to open up to, and good luck with that.”

What on earth was I doing playing brinksmanship with Greg Gavin? Never would I have dreamed of doing this had I not been feeling my oats from my burgeoning relationship (and agreement) with Vince and my budding relationship with his ex-buddy. I felt connected to the guys in a way that these civilians didn’t know about and couldn’t understand. Perhaps Lil might. Yes, Lil and I could have a good old talk over boilermakers at the Old Town Bar some night, she with her Ernie and Gertie, me with my Vinny and Lanny. For the moment, I had the swagger of success (seefleeting andillusory ), buoyed solely by the merest moment outside Vince’s trailer and a date I’d made with Lanny Morris to … do what? I had no idea.