Potboiler (13 page)

50.

The book tour for
Blood Night
was bigger and fancier than that for
Blood Eyes
. He went to more cities. He flew first class. He stayed in swanky hotels, one of which celebrated his arrival with flowers, fruit, and a quarter-scale replica of the novel rendered in chocolate and icing. He used his cell phone to take a picture.

One thing that had not changed from the first tour was the roster of media escorts who met him along the way. These were amiable, attractive women between the ages of thirty-five and sixty who loved to read. At each airport one would be waiting outside the baggage claim, holding a copy of his book. She would smile and say how nice it was to see him again. She would spend the morning shuttling him around to local bookstores to sign stock. Over lunch she would make a fuss over photos of Pfefferkorn’s daughter in her wedding gown. More stock signings were followed by a two-hour break at the hotel so Pfefferkorn could shower and shave. In the evening the media escort would pick him up and drive him to his reading. The next morning she would show up before dawn to get him to his next flight. These women made an otherwise dreary routine more humane, and Pfefferkorn was grateful for them all.

It helped matters that they could be genuinely optimistic: every event was packed. Publishers bemoaned the fact that fewer and fewer people read fiction, while those who did got older and older. Within a few years, they predicted, there would be no market left. Seeing his various and sundry fans, Pfefferkorn decided things couldn’t possibly be as bad as all that.

He took questions.

“What inspired this book?”

Pfefferkorn said it had just come to him one day.

“Do you do a lot of research?”

As little as he could get away with, he answered.

“What’s next for Harry Shagreen?”

Pfefferkorn said he didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Every night he returned to his suite drained. He ordered room service, changed into a bathrobe, and girded himself for the most harrowing part of his day: reading the newspaper.

Boston, Providence, Miami, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Albuquerque passed without incident. He began to wonder if he had made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t Zlabia he was in charge of. He flew to Denver. His daughter called to say they were getting their dining room set delivered. She thanked him and mentioned that the pillows she had custom-ordered for the den ended up costing more than expected. He invited her to put the difference on his credit card. She thanked him again and told him to keep out of trouble. “That’s me,” he said, running his finger down the column headed
International News in Brief
. “Mr. Trouble.” He flew to Phoenix. The owner of the mystery and thriller specialty store was a delightfully wry woman who took him to a Polynesian restaurant. He remained morose throughout the meal, glancing over her shoulder whenever she took a sip of her mai tai. Above the bar was a television tuned to a cable news channel. He was waiting for a graphic that said
BREAKING NEWS
. He flew to Houston. The manager of the independent bookstore presented him with a logo mug and what he called “the sickest but best book of the year.” It was a how-to called
Kid-A-Gami: 99 Fun Shapes to Fold Your Infant Into.
Pfefferkorn put it in his carry-on for on his flight to Seattle but did not take it out. Instead he scoured three different papers. He had stopped looking exclusively for articles about Zlabia. Every piece of bad news made for a potential indictment. A dam burst in India, leaving sixty thousand people homeless. His doing? The Middle East convulsed and sparked. Him? The rebel forces closing in on a South American capital, the millions of anonymous Africans dying by the hour—any of it could be him. It then occurred to him that he was delegating an unjustified degree of authority (and responsibility) to himself. He wasn’t “in charge of” squat. He was no Dick Stapp. He was no Harry Shagreen. He was a flunky, a pawn—making his complicity even more debasing. He flew to Portland. His media escort took him for the best donuts in town. In nineteen days of travel he had yet to hear about a catastrophe he did not feel culpable for. But he would never know. Whatever the event was, it might have already taken place. It might also take place in a month, a year, two years, ten. He flew to San Francisco. The bookstore owner was a kindly older man with a fondness for opera. It was raining, warm summer rain, and the inside of the store smelled like shoe leather. A slovenly fellow with a beard like a mop asked him to address the presence of Marxist themes in his writing. He returned to his hotel. He dined alone. He went upstairs, put on a bathrobe, and stretched out on the bed. He scanned the laminated channel guide. There were multiple news stations. He turned on the television and watched baseball until he fell asleep.

51.

Dragomir Zhulk, the prime minister of West Zlabia, was dead. He had been killed by a sniper’s bullet while walking to work. While most security analysts presumed that his death was retaliation for the attempted assassination of Kliment Thithyich, others believed that the killers belonged to a splinter group within Zhulk’s own party. The splinter group itself had released a statement blaming the Americans. The secretary of state refused to dignify this accusation with a response, reiterating instead his country’s support for East Zlabia (“our longtime and historical ally”) and cautioning that the use of force by either side could be considered cause for intervention. The Russians had released a statement denouncing “these acts of terroristic aggression.” The Swedes had convened a fact-finding committee. The Chinese had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to execute a jailed dissident. A prominent French intellectual had written that the situation “inarguably supplied a manifest example of the shortcomings of reactionary identity politics as applied to the realpolitik of statecraft during a post-structural epoch.” It was front-page news.

Pfefferkorn felt frayed. He was having a hard time keeping track of all the players. Worst of all—or best, he couldn’t decide—nobody had discerned the truth, which was that Dragomir Zhulk had been killed by a thriller that had just that morning hit number one on the best-seller list.

“Morning,” his media escort said. “Coffee?”

Pfefferkorn gratefully accepted the proffered cup and climbed into the waiting car.

An hour later he was sitting in the first-class lounge with the obituaries spread out before him, staring at the grainy image of the man he had murdered. Dragomir Ilyiukh Zhulk was wiry and bald, with small black eyes set behind efficient-looking steel-rimmed glasses. An engineer by training, he had studied in Moscow, returning to his homeland to help build West Zlabia’s nuclear power plant, for many years the world’s smallest working reactor, until an accident forced it to close. He had climbed the Party ladder, becoming first minister of atomic research, then minister of science, then deputy prime minister, and finally prime minister, a title he had held for eleven years. He was widely regarded as an unrepentant ideologue, a man for whom the fall of the Berlin Wall had proven only that the Russians were not fit to inherit the Marxist-Leninist mantle, and whose greatest vice, if it could be called that, was a passion for Zlabian poetry. He lived monkishly, shunning the large security force favored by his East Zlabian counterpart, a decision that had proven costly. His first marriage, to a schoolteacher, had ended with her death. Five years ago he had remarried, this time to his housekeeper. He left no children.

The flight to Los Angeles was called. Pfefferkorn walked to the jetway, discarding the paper in the trash.

52.

His Los Angeles reading was on the small side—a blessing in disguise, as Pfefferkorn wanted to get it over with as fast as humanly possible. Afterward, his media escort drove him to the restaurant Carlotta had picked out. He went straight to the bar to order a stiff drink. The television was tuned to images from the Zlabian front. Troops marched. Mini-tanks rolled. A commentator in a corner box was explaining that no fence separated East and West Zlabia, only an eight-inch-high concrete median strip running down the middle of Gyeznyuiy Boulevard. “You have to remember,” he said eagerly, “this is a conflict that has been raging in one form or another for four-hundred-plus years. Ethnically speaking, they’re one people.” The byline identified him as G. Stanley Hurwitz, Ph.D., author of
A Brief History of the Zlabian Conflict.
He appeared exhilarated by the carnage, as though he had been waiting all his life for his moment to shine. The anchor kept trying to cut him off but he went right on talking, citing lengthy passages of some little-known Zlabian poem that was apparently the source of all the fighting. Pfefferkorn asked the bartender to change the channel. The bartender found a baseball game. At the end of the inning, Pfefferkorn checked his watch. Even for Carlotta, thirty minutes was unusually late. He draped his jacket over the bar stool and stepped outside. Her home phone rang and rang. Her cell phone went straight to voicemail. He returned to the bar and asked for a third drink. He nursed it as long as he could bear before trying Carlotta again. There was still no answer. By this time he had been waiting for more than an hour. He paid his tab, apologized to the maître d’, and asked him to call a cab.

53.

Pfefferkorn stood at the mouth of the driveway to the de Vallée mansion. The gate was open. In all his visits he had never once seen it left that way. He leaned forward, his hands on his hips, and started to hike up. The driveway was steep. He began to pant and sweat. Why had he told the cabbie he would walk the rest of the way? Perhaps it was his mind’s way of slowing him down. Perhaps he already knew he did not want to know what awaited him. As he climbed higher, the thrum of the boulevard died away. All those trees and hedges and gates and heavy clay walls were there to maintain privacy and quiet. But they had another consequence. They ensured that nobody on the outside would hear you scream.

The second gate was also open.

He ran the last hundred yards, cresting the hill and sprinting for the open front door. He barged inside, calling Carlotta’s name. From a distant room came the dog’s crazed howls. Pfefferkorn ran, slipping on the polished floors. He made wrong turns. He backtracked. He stopped calling Carlotta’s name and called for the dog instead, hoping it would appear to lead him to the right place. The howling grew more urgent but no closer, and he ran from room to room, at last skidding to a halt in front of the ballroom. Frantic scrabbling, nails on wood. He threw open the double doors. The dog shot past, yelping. Pfefferkorn froze on the threshold, staring at the dance floor, at the glazy lake of blood and the human form heaped at its center.

THREE
A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE

54.

“How did you know the victim?”

“He was Carlotta’s dance partner.”

“What kind of dance?”

“It matters?”

“We’ll decide what matters, Pfefferkorn.”

“Answer the question, Pfefferkorn.”

“Tango.”

“That’s a pretty sexy dance, huh, Pfefferkorn?”

“I suppose.”

“How long have you known Mrs. de Vallée?”

“We’re old friends.”

“‘Friends.’”

“Recently it’s become more than that.”

“Now there’s an image I didn’t need.”

“TMI, Pfefferkorn. TMI.”

“You asked.”

“What do you think of the victim?”

“What do you mean what do I think?”

“Were you close with him?”

“We didn’t fraternize.”

“That’s a big word, Pfefferkorn.”

“Don’t play games, Pfefferkorn.”

“I’m not playing games.”

“So you didn’t ‘fraternize.’”

“No.”

“Did you like him?”

“He was fine, I guess.”

“You guess.”

“What am I supposed to say? He worked for Carlotta.”

“Don’t lie to us, Pfefferkorn.”

“We’ll know if you do.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Someone’s doing sexy dances with my more-than-friend, I have an opinion.”

“Well I don’t.”

“You been drinking, Pfefferkorn?”

“I had a few drinks at the bar.”

“What kind of drinks?”

“Bourbon.”

“What kind of bourbon?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You like bourbon but not any specific brand.”

“I’m not a drinker. I asked for bourbon.”

“If you’re not a drinker how come you asked for bourbon?”

“I was in the mood for a drink.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Something bothering you?”

“Something you’re nervous about?”

“Something you feel guilty about?”

“Something you want to tell us?”

“You can tell us, Pfefferkorn. We’re on your side.”

“We’re here to help you. You can trust us.”

Silence.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?”

“I’m doing my best to answer your questions.”

“We haven’t asked a question.”

“Which is why I’m not answering.”

“You always this sassy, Pfefferkorn?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Being sassy.”

“Anything else you’re sorry for, Pfefferkorn?”

“Anything else on your mind?”

“On your conscience?”

“Anything else you’d like to share?”

“I’ll tell you whatever you’d like to know.”

“Let’s cut the baloney, Pfefferkorn. Where’s Carlotta de Vallée?”

“I told you. I don’t know. I came to look for her and I found . . . that.”

“You don’t want to tell us what you found?”

“. . . it was horrible.”

“You think so?”

“Of course I do.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“What?
No.
”

“There’s no need to get touchy, Pfefferkorn. It’s just a question.”

“Do I look like the kind of person who could do that?”

“What kind of person do you think does that?”

“Someone obviously very disturbed.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re telling me you don’t find it disturbing?”

“Where’s Carlotta de Vallée?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you take a break and think about it.”

Alone in the interrogation room, Pfefferkorn shut his eyes tightly against the image of Jesús María de Lunchbox’s mutilated corpse. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to eat rigatoni again. Just as he was starting to feel better, the door swung open and the detectives reentered. Canola was a smiling black man with large, feminine sunglasses. Sockdolager was white and unshaven. His shirt wasn’t rumpled, but only because his paunch was straining it so hard.

“Okey-dokey,” Canola said. “Let’s try this again.”

Pfefferkorn surmised that the purpose of asking the same questions over and over was to trip him up. For a fifth time he narrated the events of the evening. He described his concern upon finding the gates open. He described the dog shrieking to be let out.

“You tell a good story,” Canola said. “No wonder you’re a writer.”

“It’s not a story,” Pfefferkorn said.

“He didn’t say it was untrue,” Sockdolager said.

“I was just complimenting you on your fine grasp of narrative structure,” Canola said.

He allowed himself to be questioned for several more hours before asking for an attorney.

“Why do you need an attorney?”

“Am I under arrest?”

The detectives looked at each other.

“Because if not,” Pfefferkorn said, “I’d like to go.”

“All right,” Canola said agreeably.

He stood up.

Sockdolager stood up.

Pfefferkorn stood up.

“Arthur Pfefferkorn,” Sockdolager said, “you’re under arrest.”