Final Edit (7 page)

When the police finally packed up their gear, and Parker had been trundled off in a body bag strapped to a gurney (as though
he might have wanted to get up and move around), I got up myself and left the office.

Outside, a coroner’s vehicle waited, roof light flashing, and several police cars, drawing a few curious bystanders with their
bright red beacons. A slam of the ambulance back door, and Parker was gone, whisked off to an inhospitable morgue I had visited
once and dreaded entering ever again.

A line of Donne’s came into my mind: “Any man’s
death
diminishes
me,
because I am involved in
Mankind.”
That was rather how I felt at this moment: smaller somehow, and more vulnerable.
It could have happened to me.
And Parker Foxcroft was surely not just
any
man; in his own way, at what he did best, he was a genius. But what kind of
man
was he? It occurred to me that although I had worked with Parker for almost three years, I knew him hardly at all. We did
not socialize, Parker and I. I had never set foot in his apartment, nor had he ever been in my house. He was not a Player,
so I never ran into him at 16 Gramercy Park. He was, like so many of the people we work with, a stranger.

* * *

I did not feel quite like going home to bed, although it was getting late, so I strolled back to The Players, breathing deeply
of the flower-steeped air when I passed by Gramercy Park.

I was not surprised to find Frederick Drew in the Grill Room, leaning on the bar and in earnest conversation with Juan, the
barman. When he saw me, his face brightened into what was for him almost a smile. I did not expect to find him any more sober
than when I had seen him last, nor was he.

“Nick,” he murmured. “Well met by distilled waters.”

“Arsenic and Old Lace,”
I said. Drew nodded. Howard Lindsay, who had more than a hand in that particular play, was president of the Club back in
the fifties, and often concluded his master of ceremonies role at a Players Pipe Night—these are formal Club entertainments
of one kind or another—with the same line: “Let me lead you beside distilled waters,” as he directed the audience to quit
the dining room and descend to the Grill.

“Fred,” I said, “I’m glad to see you.” A lie, but I was curious about one thing. “When we were talking earlier this evening…”

“Yes?”

“Excuse me a moment, Fred. I turned to the barman. “Juan—please. A Rémy Martin.”

When I had the brandy snifter well in hand, and had inhaled deeply of the glorious smoky aroma of Rémy, I said: “You were
about to tell me how you lost your teaching job when I was called to the phone. By the time I got back you were gone.”

“Yeah,” he said. “ ‘Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.’” I recognized the Shakespearean line
inscribed over the urinals in the Club’s men’s room. “Piss call.”

“What happened, Fred? Tell me.”

He drew himself up, leaned toward me, coming so close I thought for a moment he was going to seize me by the lapels. When
he spoke, his face turned a choleric red, and his voice could have been heard all through the room. Even the barman stiffened.
As for me, I shrank back from the full force of his anger.

“That
fucking
Parker
fucking
Foxcroft
fucked
me but good!”

It was hard for me to know what to say. “Parker? How?” A lame response, but the only one I could come up with.

“You know I was teaching creative writing—and what a crock of shit that is, as though anybody could teach anybody else how
to write creatively—at the Hamilton Institute, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, your man Foxcroft is apparently a bosom buddy—asshole buddy, I should say—of the head of the English Department at
Hamilton, a guy named Larry Peterson. What did Foxcroft do? He persuaded Peterson to drop me from the faculty and give my
courses to a young protégé of Foxcroft’s.” He shook his head as though to clear it; I could see tears forming in his eyes.
He named a short-story writer who had been published widely and was enjoying a vogue.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Fred—damned sorry, in fact.”

“Dead in the water,” he said, his voice now so soft I could barely hear him. “Killed by a cocksucker named Parker god
damned
Foxcroft.”

I wondered if I ought to tell him that he was speaking of the
late
Parker Foxcroft. Perhaps it would cheer him up, even if it wouldn’t get him his job back. For some reason even I didn’t understand,
I remained silent.

“Nick,” said Drew, tears now streaming down his cheeks, “I depended on that job to put food on my table. And I’ve got two
other mouths to feed. My wife can’t work… and… well,
shit,
man, what am I supposed to do?”

Few things, I think, are harder to bear than the sight of a grown man weeping—and if that man is less than a friend, the experience
is more painful still. I had every reason to sympathize with Frederick Drew and none to mourn Parker Foxcroft, but the men
of my generation and class—if that word doesn’t sound too pompous—were raised as young Stoics. To muffle the sobs, suppress
the tears, take the agony inside oneself, quite as a Spartan warrior, it is said, was expected to let a fox gnaw at his entrails
without showing any evidence of pain.

Drew pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his eyes. “Someday—somehow—Foxcroft will get his,” he said.

Amen,
I said to myself.
Selah
—
whatever that means.

“Other sins only speak,” wrote John Webster in
The Duchess of Malfi,
“murder shrieks out.”

I would have to agree. When one of my mystery authors delivers a book in which there
is
no murder, I begin to worry at once. Readers expect murders in their mysteries; no other crime is quite as popular or as
intriguing. In short, murder sells books.

But when the murder is in my own backyard, in effect, I could do with less shrieking all the way round.

The morning after Parker’s body was discovered, the first problem I had to deal with was the press. Ordinarily I welcome publicity,
as long as it is favorable, or at least not invidious. In this instance, I decided to shut my office door to the reporters
and the television cameramen who milled around the Barlow & Company anteroom, hoping for an interview. I declined. Hannah
Stein, my secretary, was instructed to tell everyone who asked that I had no comment. I somehow could not summon up the crocodile
tears that were probably called for in the circumstances. Though I did
not care much for Parker, really, I cared for hypocrisy even less. Let them think his death had left me speechless.

Of course the police were also present, and I’m sure the reporters converged on them, and like good public servants, they
were happy to oblige the television people as well. For myself, as soon as I could, I sent for Sidney Leopold. He popped in
through the private entrance to my office, bright-eyed as always, his frizzy brown curls even more tousled than usual.

“Nick,” he said, raising one hand and waving it in a kind of greeting, “what’s guh-going on around here? Puh-people all over
the place… cameras… puh-police?”

I gave him the bad news. “Oh, my Guh-God,” he said, slumping into the visitor’s chair. “Oh, my
God.”

“Don’t worry, Sidney, I’m sure you can account for your whereabouts last evening.”

He turned a shade paler. “Actually I was at huh-home alone at the time.”

“Then you
don’t
have an alibi.”

“Hey, Nick, sh-surely you don’t think that I—that I—”

“Certainly not, Sidney. You had no reason to wish Parker dead, had you?”

“I th-thought he was a son of a buh-bitch, but if I started kuh-killing every SOB I know, I’d have to buh-be a serial killer.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

The buzzer on my desk rang softly. I picked up the phone. “Yes, Hannah?”

“Lieutenant Hatcher would like to see you, Nick.”

“Not as presentable as Joe Scanlon, is he?” Scanlon was an NYPD detective, now on leave to write a book for Barlow & Company.

“Really, Nick! I’d rather not say.”

“Send him in, by all means.”

Hatcher came in briskly, all business, and got to the point at once. Hannah was right behind him. She turned to go, but I
motioned her to stay.

“I’m going to need to talk to the members of your staff, Mr. Barlow. Could you—?”

“There’s a conference room down the hall, Lieutenant. Hannah, will you show Lieutenant Hatcher where it is? He may also want
to ask you a few questions.”

“Right,” said Hatcher. “Then I’ll want to see the others, one by one.”

“Hannah will bring them to you.” I turned to Sidney. “You don’t mind leading the pack, do you?”

He shrugged.

I had a feeling little work was going to be done in the office this day. I flipped open the pages of my desk calendar to Wednesday,
June 2. “2:00 BANK,” it read. I groaned silently, impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Lifting the phone, I dialed Mort Mandelbaum’s
extension.

“The bank date, Morty,” I said.

“Two o’clock, right, Nick?”

“You’ll have to reschedule that appointment.”

“What? But—it’s an emergency.”

“I realize that. However, there’s the matter of Parker Foxcroft’s murder. I think the police ought to have first call on our
attention. And, Morty?”

“Yes?”

“How’s your alibi?”

A shocked silence, a bit of sputtering, and the phone went dead.

My turn with the inquisitors came just after lunch.

“The lieutenant would like to see you now, Nick,” Hannah informed me. I cursed under my breath, straightened
my tie, and headed for the conference room. Hatcher, appearing quite morose, was sitting at the head of the conference table,
his chin resting on one hand, in the other a pencil poised over his notebook. He squinted up at me.

“Mr. Barlow.”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“You sure you’ve been completely candid with me?”

“I certainly thought so.”

“Isn’t it true that you were involved in a heated discussion with the deceased at”—he glanced at his notebook—“the ABA… the
American Booksellers Association?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And isn’t it also true that you were… well,
unhappy
about Mr. Foxcroft’s situation at your firm?”

“Yes, I suppose I was.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

Hatcher rose from his chair and took a turn around the room. When he returned, he did not resume his chair, but positioned
himself on the edge of the conference table. Moments passed.

“Mr. Barlow,” he said at last, “what was your business arrangement with Foxcroft? Your financial arrangement, I mean.”

“As an imprint publisher, he was under contract to me. Perhaps I ought to explain what an imprint publisher is…”

“Yeah,” said Hatcher. “Do.
If
you please.”

I gave him beady-eyed stare for beady-eyed stare. “I’ll do my best. An imprint publisher, as the name implies, has his own
imprint—his own name on the books he brings in. Arrangements vary from house to house, of course.”

“I’m only interested in
your
house, and in
his
imprint.”

“Parker Foxcroft acquired and signed up his own authors and his own books. I financed his operation, provided the money he
paid his authors in advances, and paid for the costs of manufacturing and marketing his books. In turn I gave him a drawing
account—a salary, in effect—and performance bonuses when his books did well.”

Hatcher closed his notebook and rose from his chair. “Wait a
minute,”
he said. “Hold it there. It looks to me like you took all the risks and Foxcroft made out like a bandit.”

“Not quite,” I said. “There was no distribution of earnings on his books until his drawing account had been earned out. In
effect, he was still an employee of my company, despite his imprint. He was not a partner, and he had no equity. If his books
didn’t make money, neither did he. If his books lost money, well…”

“But you said he had a contract.” Hatcher was a bulldog, all right, and with a bone he wasn’t going to let go of. “And you
couldn’t exactly fire him if his books didn’t earn money.”

I admitted it would be difficult.

“How long did his contract have to run?”

I hesitated, remembering how queasy I had felt about the possibility of having to buy Parker out. Hatcher waited me out, impassive,
to me inscrutable. I only wished I could say the same for myself.

“A year and a half, Lieutenant.”

“A year and a half. Getting rid of him could have been costly, right?”

“Right.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

“Just
how
costly?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Hatcher’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

“That’s privileged information,” I said.

Hatcher squared his shoulders and tucked his notebook in his inside jacket pocket. Apparently my interview was over.

“Lieutenant…”

“What, Mr. Barlow?”

“Did you learn anything from questioning the other members of my staff? If you don’t mind telling me, that is.”

“Sure, I learned a few things.”

“Like?”

“You were right, nobody cared much for the victim. The question is…”

“Yes?”

“Who didn’t care for him to go on publishing books?”

Having no answer to this, I fell back on the typical Irish response to a question: another question. “Is that all, Lieutenant?”

“Not quite. I’ve been fingerprinting all the members of your staff. I’d also appreciate yours.”

“Mine? Is that necessary? My prints are on file with the FBI.” Again the raised-eyebrows response. “I was in Air Force Intelligence
in Washington a number of years ago, and I needed a security clearance.”

“That’s fine—but it would be more convenient if we could get them again now.”

“Oh, very well—if I must, I must.” I made sure that Hatcher took careful note of my displeasure. As it turned out, it was
Sergeant Falco who did the dirty work of taking my prints. Once I’d cleaned up, I returned to the conference room and said
to Hatcher:
“Now
is that all?”