The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (17 page)

She seemed to be breathing a little easier when I dried her off. I assured her she was a brave little girl and gave her an anchovy.

Skitsy made the front page of all three morning papers. The
Times
used a file photo of her standing at a cocktail party with her great discovery, Cam Noyes. The Port had a picture of her tarp-covered body on the bloody sidewalk in front of her building. If you looked real carefully, you could see me standing there in the background, looking tall and dapper and somewhat nauseous.

I read the stories as I cabbed down to Gramercy Park. They played her death as an apparent suicide. None of the suspicions that Lt. Romaine Very had raised in my apartment were included — no mention of her missing clothes, no hint that he felt somebody may have pushed her. He was being careful until he had something more to go on. After all, there were some important people involved here. There was her ex-husband, noted critic and scholar Tanner Marsh, who was quoted as calling her “the most brilliant editor since Maxwell Perkins.” There was that prominent literary agent and gent Boyd Samuels, who called her “a colleague and a friend and a great lady.” There was Cam Noyes, who was not available for comment.

Where was he?

Vic was pulling a fresh-baked cranberry bread out of the toaster-oven when I got there. “I checked Delilah’s place this morning at seven,” he reported. “Again at eight. No sign of either of them. Her mail’s still in the box. She never came home last night.” He reached into his apron and produced a white envelope. “When I got back, this was under the door. For you.”

My heartbeat quickened at the sight of the press-on letters spelling out my name on the outside of the envelope. I ripped it open. Inside it said:
Go to Farmington
. Nothing more. I stared at it, wondering what it meant. Wondering who’d left it.

“Charlie’s upstairs packing, Hoag,” Vic droned as he poured us coffee. “She sat down here all night waiting for him to come home. He’s a real bastard, you know that?”

I couldn’t disagree with him, so I didn’t.

Vic had moved a white wrought-iron table and a couple of the pastel garden chairs out onto the still-unfinished patio. We took the cranberry bread and our coffee out there and sat in the warm sun.

“Still no sign of that darned contractor,” Vic said. “Charlie keeps calling him and calling him. I’m half tempted to go out to Brooklyn and throttle the guy.”

“He’ll show up when he feels like it and not a moment sooner,” I explained. “All a part of the joy of renovating.”

I was just starting to fill him in on Very’s visit and Merilee’s brush with battery acid when Cam Noyes walked in the front door.

(T
APE #6 WITH CAM
Noyes recorded May 13 in his garden. Appearance is disheveled
,
eyes bloodshot. Vic brings him coffee
,
disappears inside
,
glowering
.
)

Noyes
: Big Vic doesn’t seem particularly happy to see me.

Hoag:
He’s disappointed in you — you broke training. Also wounded his professional pride somewhat. Where were you last night, Cameron?
(no response)
You have heard about Skitsy, haven’t you?

Noyes:
Saw it in this morning’s paper. Couldn’t … can’t believe she did this to me.

Hoag:
Did what to you?

Noyes:
First mother, then father, now Skitsy. … Anybody who matters to me bails out on me. I just … I can’t handle it anymore, you know? I mean, why does this keep
happening
to me?

Hoag:
For what it’s worth, Cameron, Skitsy didn’t do anything to you. Someone did it to her — she was murdered.

Noyes:
But the newspapers said —

Hoag:
Forget what the newspapers said.

Noyes:
W-Who … ?

Hoag:
Offhand, I’d have to consider you the top suspect right now.

Noyes: Me?

Hoag:
I’ve done my best to shield you from the police, but I can’t shield you for much longer.

Noyes:
Damned decent of you, coach, but there’s no need for you to get involved.

Hoag:
Goddamn it, I
am
involved! Don’t pull this shit on me! Where were you last night?!

Noyes:
You don’t actually think
I
killed her, do you?

Hoag:
I think you refused to tell me yesterday what Skitsy had on you. I think before I could ask her, someone made sure she couldn’t tell me. I think you can draw your own conclusion.

Noyes: (silence)
I went somewhere with Delilah, okay?

Hoag:
Where?

Noyes:
She gets off on sleaze. It’s her thing, you know? We drove out to this adults-only motel in Ozone Park she wanted to go to, the Galaxy. It’s got porn movies on the TV and round water beds and mirrors on the ceiling and complimentary champagne that tastes like carbonated monkey piss. We fucked all night, okay? She has that early-morning gig on
Good Morning America
. Before dawn we drove back and I dropped her at the studio. Then I stopped at an all-night diner on Eleventh Avenue and had steak and eggs and bought the newspapers. That’s when I found out about Skitsy. I called Boyd right off. He’s totally blown out.
(pause)
I’ve just been walking and thinking for the past couple of hours. I cried a little. She was kind of a second mother to me, you know?

Hoag:
Let’s not get too oedipal.

Noyes:
Okay, maybe we had a sick relationship. But it was a relationship. I haven’t had many.

Hoag:
She was killed a little before seven last night. Where were you?

Noyes:
On our way to the motel. We got there at about a quarter to eight.

Hoag:
Stop anywhere on the way?

Noyes:
For hamburgers at a White Castle on Ridgewood Avenue.

Hoag:
Kind of an all-around classy evening.

Noyes:
Coach, I have no idea what happened to Skitsy, or why it happened. That’s the truth. I may be scum, but I’m not a killer. Christ, no. Where’s Charlie?

Hoag:
Upstairs packing.

Noyes:
Good. I’m glad she’s over me.

Hoag:
I wouldn’t say she’s over you, but she is leaving you.

Noyes:
Any idea for where?

Hoag:
She can stay at my place for now, if she wishes.

Noyes:
Well, well.

Hoag:
It’s not like that. I won’t be around. Going away for a couple of days on personal business. Strictly an aboveboard offer.

Noyes:
It needn’t be. On my account, I mean.

Hoag:
Duly noted. Why would you want Skitsy dead?

Noyes:
I wouldn’t. I didn’t.

Hoag:
Cameron, if I’m going to stick my neck out for you I have to know the whole story. I’ll ask you again — What did Skitsy have on you?

Noyes:
I already told you, you needn’t stick —

Hoag:
What was it, goddamnit!

Noyes:
Stop yelling at me!

Hoag:
I’ll stop yelling when you start answering! Why didn’t you break it off with Skitsy?! Tell me!

Noyes: (long silence)
That’s what I’ve been thinking about all morning, actually. Telling you. It’s … It’s been slowly killing me inside. The horror if it. The guilt. Wanting to get it off my chest. I-I can’t stand it anymore. I really can’t. And now that she’s dead … Shit, I didn’t kill her. You have to believe me. Do you?
(no response)
She can’t tell on me anymore. Can’t hurt me. That’s a tremendous … it’s a
relief
. My secret is safe now. I’m safe. Except for you, damn it. You think I’m some kind of liar or killer, and I can’t handle that. I want you to know the truth, coach. I’m going to tell you the truth. But only if you promise to leave it out of the book. This is just between you and me. It’s personal, understand?

Hoag:
Off the record?

Noyes:
Yes, off the record.

Hoag:
Go ahead.

Noyes: (silence)
Do you remember how I told you that Boyd peddled fake driver’s licenses at Deerfield?

Hoag:
Yes.

Noyes:
And that he had to shut down when some kid got loaded and smashed into a busload of kids and —

Hoag:
Killed two of them and himself. Yes, yes. Go on.

Noyes:
I lied to you about that. He wasn’t killed. Didn’t get a scratch on him, in fact. Got away clean. None of the survivors saw him. It was early morning, and dark, and he had bailed out of that stolen car a good fifty feet before it slammed into the bus. He chickened out. No guts. He was attempting suicide, you see, and was simply too fucked up to realize that the other people would … that the bus would explode when the car hit it. That he would sit there in the ditch hearing their screams. That two of them would die. That he … that
I
killed them.

Hoag:
Let’s try it from the beginning, shall we?

Noyes:
Very well … Boyd had gone home for the weekend — his mother was ill. He left me some acid. Saturday night I dropped it and went to this dance we had with Stoneleigh-Burnham, thinking it would be a trip. It wasn’t. All of those smug, status-conscious people. All of that role playing. Pissed me off. Made me feel caged, like I just had to get out of the place, you know? So I split. Trolled the village for a car with its keys in it. I didn’t find one, but as I was walking past the Inn, a guy in a BMW pulled up there to drop some people off. He went inside with them to say good-night, and left his engine running. People do that up there in the winter, to keep the heater going. I just hopped in and took off. Got on I-91 and pointed it south toward Springfield — away. Got it up over a hundred, flying, tripping my brains out. Felt like I was living in some kind of arcade game. I bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s somewhere and stretched out in a farmer’s field, just lay there in the snow and drank it and stared up at the stars and the moon. I lay there for hours, wondering if I was doomed like Mother and Father had been. Wondering if life was as awful as it appeared to be. Lying there, I realized that I had no control over my life. Not any of it. That it was simply going to unfold before me, and then it would be over. And that the only real, meaningful control I could ever have was to choose when and how I would die. I felt tremendous power at this realization.
Calm
.

Hoag:
Your character in
Bang
felt that calm. You wrote so well about it I felt you must have contemplated suicide at some point.

Noyes:
I did more than contemplate it. I got back in the Beemer toward dawn and looked around for how to do it. I was sure it was the right thing to do. … I saw that bus sitting there at the intersection. And I said to myself, there it is. Perfect. Just go right into it. Go for it. I didn’t know it was full of kids on their way to a ski outing. I didn’t know anything. I was still tripping. The bottle was empty … I went for it. Picked up speed. Made straight for it. Got closer. Closer still. And then, suddenly, this
force
took over me, this force that yanked me out of the car. I landed in the ditch. I heard the crash, the explosion. Saw the flames. The flames were … beautiful. I didn’t do the decent thing. I didn’t help those kids. I heard them screaming, but I didn’t help them. I ran. For miles and miles, until I was near the highway. A trucker gave me a ride north toward Deerfield. I was back in my room early enough Sunday morning that no one even noticed I’d been gone. As the acid wore off that day, I started to pull out of my suicidal depression. And began to realize the enormity, the sheer
horror
, of what I’d done. I’d killed two people! … I told Boyd when he came back. I had to tell someone. He shrugged it off. Told me I was lucky to be alive, and a free man, and that I should just forget about it. I couldn’t. I thought about turning myself in, of course. But I realized how meaningless that would be, because there was nothing that prison could do to me that would rival the torment I would have to live with — that I
have
lived with ever since. It wouldn’t wipe out the screams I hear in my dreams. … From time to time, I’ve thought again about suicide. But the clarity, the
calm
, have never returned. That was a onetime thing. So I suppose you could say I’m doing myself in slowly. I drink, I snort, I do whatever. To forget. But I don’t forget. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it. It’s my black pit. Some days, I’m hanging on by my fingertips, trying not to get sucked down into it. Other days, I’m sitting on the edge, dangling my feet into it. I can never, ever walk away from it. It’s always there between me and other people, particularly women, who are always so anxious to peer inside of me. … One night, when Skitsy and I were drunk and fucked out, I told her about it. She’s the only woman I’ve ever told. This was before
Bang
came out, and she kept wanting to hear all about how wild I was. I guess I was just trying to impress her, I don’t know. After the book came out, I started getting bored with her. I’m used to seeing a lot of women, none of them for very long. When I told her I didn’t think it was going to work out between us any longer, she said, “Fine. Go off and lay anyone you want. But you’re mine twice a week or I call the law on you.” She would have, too. She was that tough. So I’ve been her boy every since. Stuck with her. That’s the truth, coach. The whole, ugly truth.

Hoag:
I see. Tell me, why didn’t she hold this over you when you broke your contract with her?

Noyes:
That was something between her and Boyd. That was business. This was personal. She … she loved me. I never loved her back, but I didn’t kill her. I swear to you I didn’t …
(silence)
Say something.
Please
.

Hoag:
You won’t like it.

Noyes:
You think that I should turn myself in, don’t you? Take my medicine. Am I right?

Hoag:
That isn’t what I was going to say, though I think a good case could be made for it. You said it yourself — you’re killing yourself slowly. You’re still young and strong, but soon you won’t be. The process will speed up quite dramatically, and that will be the end of you. And what a waste it will be.