Sugartown (13 page)

“I’m not leaving until it’s finished.” He emptied the last of the wine into his glass, shaking loose the drops. “It takes me a month to get settled into a place before I can even think about writing, and I’m just reaching my stride now. I’ll not delay my work one day for a bauble merchant with Stalinesque delusions.”

Mrs. Starr looked at me, raising and dropping her slim shoulders. “That being the case, and since Rynearson is an amateur and an old man who is likely susceptible to a — how shall I put it?”

“Threat,” I said.

She considered it. “A warning, let’s say. Given all this, my firm is prepared to engage you to deliver that warning and, if necessary, and within the bounds of ethics and legality, carry it out. We are prepared to pay you a thousand dollars for delivery, with an additional amount to be negotiated should it become necessary to follow through.”

“In other words I sweat him.”

She nodded.

“What part of the budget does that go under?”

“Promotional expenses, I should think. For the book. Do you accept the assignment, Mr. Walker?”

“He’ll think the Kremlin fell on him.” I drained my glass.

I
T HAD STARTED TO RAIN
, big drops the size of glass beads flattening out like women’s breasts against the big window and melting down, streaking the cityscape of Windsor. It couldn’t last. Louise Starr made out a check for a thousand plus my day rate for coming down, signed it, and handed it to me.

“This one’s on my personal account,” she said. “I’ll put in a voucher for it later. Probably get it back by Christmas.”

“Things that bad?” I folded the check and put it away in my wallet. It felt good against my heart, like a woman’s head. I remembered I was supposed to call Karen.

“You only see the tip of the iceberg. Americans have more leisure time than ever before, but are they reading? They’re fooling with computers and videogames and colored puzzles designed for bored executives. Until recently the line in publishing was to put out best sellers in order to subsidize more important works that didn’t sell so well but added to the industry’s prestige. Exxon and the other conglomerates have changed all that by gobbling up most of the good publishers. Now every book has to pay for itself and preferably be a best seller or the author and his editor go down the road muttering to themselves. They think you can sell literature like toothpaste and motor oil. So editors are afraid to touch anything not tested and won’t tamper with a word written by the few good old masters left for fear of losing them to another publisher and their jobs with them. As a result, even the good writers don’t write as well as they did. Yes,” she said, “things are that bad.”

Fedor Alanov applauded silently, fluttering the fingers of his right hand gently against the palm of the one holding his glass to keep from spilling what remained of his wine.

Mrs. Starr flushed slightly. We were standing next to the table where she had made out the check. “Of course, Fedor needn’t worry. There will always be a place for his titles in our line.”

“Ha!” He inhaled some of the red liquid.

“You ought to save that for the ladies’ Sunday afternoon tea and book socials,” I told her. “They’ll lap it up.”

“And I’ll be out hunting for a job in a typing pool somewhere. The current line is to push this as the most literate generation ever.” She made a little shuddering movement and gave me a smile I could feel in my shoes. “We’re having lunch sent up. Won’t you join us, Mr. Walker?”

“Thanks, I better get on this. I’ll want a look at Rynearson before I make my approach. What’s the address of his place on Jefferson?”

She gave me the number. I wrote it in my notebook. “When can we expect a report?” she asked.

“In a day or so. Keep an eye on Mr. Alanov meanwhile. You might hire security, but like I said, bodyguards just finish what someone else starts. Can I reach you here?”

“I have a room on the next floor down. Fourteen-oh-six.”

“Just a room?”

“Suites are for Russian expatriates. I’m just the help.”

I grinned and she lent me her hand. I shook Andrei Sigourney’s firm one and said good-bye to Alanov, who grunted back and sipped his wine. Mrs. Starr saw me through the other room to the door and handed me my hat.

“I’m afraid you weren’t my first choice,” she admitted. We were out of the others’ earshot.

“I hardly ever am, Mrs. Starr. I come at the end of a long line of better alternatives.”

“The police offered protection, but I could see they didn’t believe Andrei’s story and it would be casual at best. Also Mr. Alanov has an understandable distrust of authorities.”

“Is he that good, or just money in the bank?”

“He writes powerfully, if a bit mannered. It’s hard to tell in translation and I don’t read Russian. And yes, he’s one of our biggest-selling authors. The front office has made it clear that if we lose him, the firm can get along quite well without me.”

“I can’t get a handle on Sigourney. Except for his name and looks he comes off about as Russian as one of the Beach Boys.”

“He wrote a marvelous novel based on his experiences as a professional fisherman and sailor, but because he doesn’t have a name I couldn’t swing it with the editorial board. That will change. I went to the wall to get them to agree to have him translate
The Window on the Baltic
for us and Mr. Alanov was so pleased with the result that Andrei was the first person he asked to meet when he arrived in this country. They’ve been close ever since. He has an apartment here in town.”

“I think that’d be bad all around,” I said. “If you got fired, I mean. I have an idea you’re a good editor.”

“Thank you. But you can’t know that. You haven’t seen me edit.”

“These days beautiful women don’t get where you are unless they have something to go with their looks. The apprentice letches are all running scared.”

Her eyes glittered when she crinkled them. “Well, I’ve seen your satin side. I don’t suppose it’s the one you plan to show Eric Rynearson.”

I leaned against the door and tapped a Winston on the back of my left hand. “It wouldn’t be Mrs. on the way back to Miss, would it? Just for future reference.”

“No, I’m happily married.” Her expression didn’t change.

“Just asking.” I straightened up and got the door open. She hadn’t moved. The current from the hall drew her jasmine scent or whatever it was my way.

“Of course,” she said, “we’re in Detroit and my husband is in New York. The geographical situation has possibilities.”

Backing out into the hall, I made a try for my right eyebrow with the tip of the unlit cigarette in my lips. She laughed and closed the door on me. Her laugh had music in it, like a climbing chord on a harp. It stayed with me all the way down to the lobby.

The rain was over by the time I made the sidewalk. There had been just enough to darken the pavement and raise the smell of concrete dust. It was cool enough to turn on the car heater to get the damp out of the seats. For all of that it was a fine day. One week you’re thinking of boiling the wallpaper to get the flour from the paste and the next everyone’s standing in line waiting to throw a thousand dollars at you. I looked around for a decent restaurant, but in the end I had lunch at the same diner down the street from my building. Overdue bills came off the top. I didn’t care. It was spring and the world was full of beautiful women.

Before going upstairs I went back to the car and got out the raincoat. The temperature was sliding down the way it does only in Michigan in the spring when it’s rained.

The office had a stuffy smell. No one was using the waiting room. My private tank had mail in it but it was the throwing-away kind. I did that and tossed my coat and hat onto the customer’s chair and got the window open for a minute. Then I parked a hip on the corner of the desk and dialed the number Karen had given me for her place. There was no answer. I hung up and shut the window and sat down behind the desk and found the number of Eric Rynearson’s Eastern Imports shop in the city directory. A recording came in on the second ring to tell me the place didn’t open until four. The tape sounded almost as old as the man’s voice.

I pegged the receiver and had my hand on it to try Karen again when it rang. It was herself.

“You didn’t call.”

“You didn’t answer the first time,” I said. “Hi.”

“Hi. I’m on duty at the hospital, paying for last night. Which was worth it.”

“I can get next to that.” I sat back and rolled a cigarette around in my fingers. Muted thumps and shuffles and a tiny intercom voice floated over the line from her end.

“I told Martha about Michael,” she said.

“How’d she take it?”

“She didn’t tear her hair or run around the room. You’d have to know her to see how hard it hit home. But she’s stronger than she looks. She wants to see you.”

“Tell her I’ll be around to her place after they release her.”

“No, she wants to see you at the hospital. Can you make it today?”

“Sure. I’m not exactly swamped.”

“Ask for me at the desk.”

“Maybe we can check into a room or something.”

“Don’t be lewd.” She hung up on me, not hard.

The air outside had a wet-metal edge to it. I belted the raincoat and ground the starter a couple of times before it turned over. I took the Edsel Ford Freeway through neighborhoods like slick gray stone to Moross and parked in the St. John’s lot. It was a hospital. They paint the walls in Baskin-Robbins colors now and don’t wash them down with carbolic anymore, but the halls are still full of whispering rubber soles and they still boil burlap and call it breakfast.

The nurse in charge at the circular desk in the main lobby had artificially black hair skinned back and knotted behind her head and her face had an unnaturally shiny look without wrinkles. Any she might have had would have wound up in some cosmetic surgeon’s scrap bucket. She used a microphone to page Karen McBride. While I was waiting I smiled at a younger nurse thumbing through cards in a long gray metal box on a shelf in front of her swivel chair. She smiled back. She had a face like a horse but it was a nice smile and she wore an engagement ring on her left hand. Both nurses had on mannish-looking uniforms of one of those pastel shades that have just about replaced hospital whites everywhere.

“Hi. Shopping around?”

I turned. I hadn’t heard her coming. She looked fresh and efficient and anything but old-fashioned in her crisp whites. I thought there was a flush to her cheeks I hadn’t seen before, but it could have been just the light in the lobby. Her eyes were tawny.

“For shame,” I said. “You talk like a nurse in a burlesque sketch.”

“The stories I could tell would curl your toes. Well, maybe not yours. Her room’s two floors up; the elevator’s this way.”

We walked away from the two goggling nurses at the desk. She held my hand in the elevator, but aside from that she might have been taking any visitor to any room. She smelled very clean in the enclosed space. She didn’t wear a cap but her hair was pinned up and the light gleamed softly on the chestnut waves. The elevator stopped on the next floor. She let go of my hand just as the doors slid open and a young doctor or intern in a white lab coat entered. They nodded at each other. We all got off at the next stop.

“That was nice last night,” she said, after the young man had passed us, walking swiftly.

“We aim to please.”

She smiled monkey-fashion. We walked. Banks of tall windows broke up the pastel walls at intervals, looking out on a sweep of green lawn two floors down.

She said, “Martha’s out of danger, but she tires easily. You’ll have to be gentle.”

“I left my gun home and everything.”

“What’s that, your thirteen-hundred face?”

“Sometimes it slips into gear without warning. This it?” We were slowing down near a corner room. The hall took a sharp turn ten feet up and we were alone in our stretch.

“This is her room. I won’t be going in. She wants to talk to you alone. I might not see you before you leave.”

“Then we’ll say good-bye right here.” I gathered her up.

She struggled a little. “Someone might come around that corner any second.”

“We’ll say you were trying to resuscitate me.”

“Standing up?”

“We could lie down.”

“Never mind.”

We kissed. When we came up I said, “I met a blonde today who makes you look like a boy.”

“So go to her. Who’s stopping you?”

“She’d swallow me whole. It was that kind of blonde.”

“Not you.”

“Thanks — I think. This guy you’re sort of involved with; is he a doctor?”

“He’s studying to be. He’s two years younger than I am.”

“Horrors. What do you do with your cane when you’re necking?”

She nodded. “I guess I deserved that. I was daring you to object.”

“Uh-huh.”

We were still entangled. She put a hand against my chest and tilted her head back to get a better look at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just uh-huh. It’s something I say when I can’t think of anything to say.”

“His name’s Tim.”

“Nice name. I don’t like him.”

“Nobody asked you to.” She got loose and straightened her uniform. Just then a white-haired male patient in a robe and pajamas turned the corner and passed us trailing an odor of pipe smoke. We kept silent until he was out of range.

I said, “Funny how you have to hide this sort of thing.”

“It’s called being civilized.”

She had cooled about two degrees below professional. But the flush was still there, in different light this time.

“Busy tonight?” I asked.

“Double shift, remember?”

“You get off when, four
A.M.
? We could have a cup of coffee.”

“I need my sleep. Tim doesn’t have classes tomorrow. He’s taking me sailing on St. Clair.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh.”

We said good-bye. I watched her walk back down the hall and press the button for the elevator and wait. When the doors opened she went through them without looking back. I scratched my right ear. Then I changed faces and stepped through the open door into Martha Evancek’s hospital room.