Killed in Paradise Page 3

  “Wit,” Jan remarked, just to show she recognized it when she heard it. “What I meant was, she wrote that book about the airline stewardess who takes over the plane and crashes it into St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Was that a mystery story?”

  “Don’t get DeGrave started on that one. His theory is that publishers believe a book ceases to be a mystery story after it sells a certain number of copies. Or maybe you should get him started—he can be fun to watch. And he’s persuasive, too. The first time I heard his spiel, I got wildly indignant over something I didn’t give a damn about.”

  A lot of people were smoking, and the lounge was rapidly becoming a little bit of Los Angeles. Jan peered through the haze. “They appear to be hitting it off. The woman is giving Kenni her address or something.”

  “Kenni is writing a mystery story,” I suggested. “Nicola adopts unpublished writers the way some people adopt puppies. She’s given a lot of people their first break.”

  Jan rolled her eyes. It was the biggest reaction I’d seen from her yet. “Oh, God, Kenni’s written four of them, and that’s only in the three years I’ve known her.”

  “Rejections? Nicola has rejection stories. I bet every writer in the place except for Schaeffer has rejection stories.”

  Jan gave me a look. “Schaeffer? Lee H. Schaeffer? I’ve heard of him, too.”

  “Of course you have.” Lee H. Schaeffer was the current Big Thing in Mystery. They come along every few years. You can tell, because either Time or Newsweek does a big article about how they’ve reinvented the mystery story. This (according to DeGrave, who has a veritable menagerie of pet peeves) proves two things—that just being a mystery writer is not intellectual enough for guys who write for newsmagazines, and that guys who write for newsmagazines don’t know much about mystery stories.

  Anyway, Schaeffer was an especially big Big Thing. He’d made the cover. He wrote a series of books about a private eye named Stephen Shears, who lived in Aspen, Colorado, was a Nordic skiing and marathon fanatic, made his own beer, bread, and cheese, and thought deep, half-tough, half-sensitive thoughts about the Meaning of It All. Especially the Emptiness of Money, and his Code of Manly Ethics.

  I hadn’t met Schaeffer yet, but there was a week ahead of us. Kenni, it seemed, would be able to introduce us, since Schaeffer had horned in and was resting a meaty hand on Kenni’s arm as he carefully edged his broad back in front of Phil and Nicola. Phil was going to say something, then thought better of it, probably because of an elbow in the ribs delivered by his wife. I caught his eye, and they came over to join us.

  “Congratulations,” Phil said. He sat down heavily and asked me how the club soda was. He doesn’t drink. I do, but not before sundown.

  “We were talking to your friend,” Nicola said to Jan. “What does she expect to find on St. David’s Island, gold?” Nicola has been everywhere—Cambodia, just before it fell, Afghanistan, just before it fell. She’s been investigated by the State Department, but it’s merely a thirst for adventure, not subversion. Phil has managed to slow her down a little. It occurred to me that I ought to introduce her to the Sloans.

  “What do you mean?” Jan asked.

  “She’s so excited,” Nicola said.

  Jan smiled that slow smile again. “I think it’s meeting you people, really. She’s the mystery fan around here. She reads all your books for the library, and she writes her own, but won’t let anybody read them—”

  “Nicola will fix that,” Phil said around a mouthful of Goldfish.

  “We’re just writers,” Nicola said.

  “Who bruised her jaw on the table when she met Stephen King?” Phil asked.

  Nicola made a face. “That was different. I mean, Stephen King.”

  “And I keep telling you. You’re Nicola Andrews. If the italics aren’t there yet, they will be soon. The only thing that can keep it from happening is excess modesty on your part. Now you change the subject.”

  Nicola patted his hand. “Yes, dear.” She turned to Jan. “What do you do, Miss Cullen?”

  They started talking about woolen goods. Phil got tired of waiting for a tray, and volunteered to take a run up to the bar. I waved to people. Mike Ryerson, a big, rumpled bear of a guy, had written an even fifty novels as we set sail, under five different names, one of them his own. His talk (according to more of the literature I had read in the cabin) was going to be on the topic “Five Writers for the Price of One.” He was talking to Althea Nell Furst, author of best-selling romantic suspense, a woman who could give lessons in how to look like a librarian if Kenni ever happened to need any. Even now, she was wearing a tweed suit.

  Kenni had changed from the beachcomber outfit before we’d come up here, but she still didn’t look like a librarian. She was wearing a shirtwaist in dark blue silk, a string of pearls and pearl earrings, and looked, not to put too fine a point on it, great. Lee H. Schaeffer had closed the distance on her. He was tall and bony—broad—not especially muscular, but not likely to be mistaken for a concentration camp survivor the way some runners are. When he turned his head, I could see Kenni’s eyes dart back and forth, as if looking for help. I sighed, offered excuses to Nicola and Jan, who were talking about something called merino, and couldn’t care less if I left, and headed over.

  Billy and Karen bustled into the lounge carrying a ton of papers just as I passed by the exit.

  Billy said, “Matthew!” and Karen asked me how things were going.

  “Nice party,” I said. “How’s it going on your end?”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “Half our contestants signed up for first seating! Including your contest winner! All the group meetings are during the first seating! I told the cruise line not to let any of our people sign up for first seating. I’ve got it in writing!” She started unzipping a leather folder.

  I put out a hand to stop her. “I believe you, Karen.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course.”

  “I was just heading over there.” I pointed at about waist level in the right direction. “Your big guest star is coming on a little strong to one of the Network’s contest winners.”

  “Oh, the contest winner. The tall blonde. Janice Cullen?”

  “Ms. Kenni Clayton,” I said. “Actually the guest, but still.”

  “Can’t say as I blame him.” Billy made a Groucho Marx face, something he’s very good at.

  “Very funny I’m sure,” Karen said. “I was afraid something like this would happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mindy left him.”

  “Mindy? The one he dedicates all his books to? ‘The wind at my back, the sun in my eyes, the flame in my heart’? That Mindy?”

  “Don’t make jokes,” Karen said. “This is serious.” I figured it must be serious. She got the name right and everything. “It happened the other night at the restaurant. She called him a conceited old fart and walked out on him.”

  I looked at Schaeffer. He couldn’t have been much more than forty-five. “He’s not that old.”

  “Compared to Mindy he is,” Billy said. “She was a student in his writing course when they took up with each other. A sophomore. What was it, five years ago?”

  “Ah,” I said. I had forgotten that before he became the Big Thing, Schaeffer had been a professor of American Literature at NYU. A de facto Greenwich Village intellectual. A certain type of coed considers her education incomplete until she’s had an affair with one of these guys. You meet them in New York all the time; they’d just as soon tell you about their youthful indiscretions as not. Usually they roll their eyes and say, oh, God.

  Mindy had lasted about twenty times longer than most, but had in the end walked out just like the rest of them.

  “So Schaeffer’s like a man who just fell off a horse.”

  Karen made a face. “He’s what?”

  “Can’t wait to get back in the saddle,” Billy explained.

  “Only this filly don’t look like she wants to be broke. Look, go tell Schaeffer
you’ve got some books you need him to autograph, and I’ll see to my charge.”

  We went over. It was a more complicated operation than I’d hoped—Schaeffer was boring in for the kill, and wasn’t about to be distracted by mere autograph seekers. Kenni was starting to panic.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” I said suavely. “Kenni, Network publicity has a man here; they want to get some pictures of you and Jan on deck before the ship sails. It’s getting close, and I don’t want to haul a photographer all the way to the Caribbean, so if you’ll just come with me...?”

  “I’d think you’d want some pictures of these lovely young ladies with the celebrities. Shall we go?”

  I looked at him. It’s okay to be a celebrity. It’s even okay to think of yourself as one. It is a mistake to announce it in tones utterly devoid of irony. It makes you look—well, it makes you look like a conceited old fart.

  I smiled at him. “We’ve got a whole layout planned for the Island,” I said. “Palm trees, celebrities, contest winners, mystery under the sun, like that.”

  Marvelous, I thought, now I’ll have to spend thirty bucks of the Network’s money to send a cablegram back to Marv Bachman and get him to set this up.

  “Well, I’d like to take a stroll on deck, myself.”

  Billy came to the rescue. “Gee, I’m sorry. Karen is just about to introduce you to the crowd.” The fact that the crowd consisted exclusively (at this point) of “celebrities,” people here to see them off, and officials of the cruise line, all of whom presumably knew who everybody else was, momentarily escaped him. I don’t think it’s a good idea for people to leave New York and move to Colorado. Brains used to working on dust and exhaust fumes have a tough time adjusting to thin mountain air.

  Then Billy made a mistake. He introduced us formally, adding, “You and Matt can have a long talk later. He’s solved some real-life murders.”

  Schaeffer’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, really.”

  “Not really,” I began, but Billy cut me off.

  “He’s being modest. The Lenny Green murder—Matt figured that out. And there was one upstate—”

  Schaeffer’s habitually bluff tone became positively deadly. I think it would probably be safe to say that by now, he hated my guts. Not only was I about to snatch a lovely young woman away from him, I was a man (as far as he could see) who took the macho trips in reality he had become a “celebrity” only fantasizing.

  I thought of shrugging it off, of saying I got into these things by an accident of my job, I hated it when it happened, and only saw them through with a combination of panic and good luck. This would have the virtue of being the absolute truth, but somehow, I didn’t think Schaeffer would see it that way. He’d see it as the kind of phony-humble macho bullshit posturing he would have done, and he’d hate me worse for it.

  I shrugged apologetically. “That photographer really is going to have to swim back, if we don’t hurry.” I gestured Kenni toward the exit. I didn’t want to touch her. Men touch women, uninvited, altogether too much, and I was supposed to be rescuing Kenni from that.

  When we got out on deck, Kenni let out a big sigh. It was hot, but we were away from the cigarette smoke. It was fun to breathe again.

  “Where’s Jan?” Kenni asked.

  “Billy will send her out to us in a second. I hope he will. If only to make it look good.”

  “Make what look good?”

  “There’s no photographer.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It was the only way I could think of to get you out of there without pissing off the Palmers’ main drawing card. You looked like you wanted to get out of there. If I read the signals wrong, no harm done. You can go back in. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

  Kenni hooted with laughter. “I couldent have stood another minute. I would have slapped him minutes ago, but he’s so strong. He was grabbing my arm through my sleeve all the time he was telling me how he was going to make mystery stories into real literature. I wouldent be surprised if he gave me a bruise.”

  “He’s a desperate man.” I told her about Mindy.

  “You men really stick together, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Making excuses for him.” She pouted. “I really like his books, too.”

  “There’s a difference between an explanation and an excuse.” I looked at her. “Look, lots of people take these cruises to get lucky. I don’t care if Schaeffer does or not. He probably will, there are probably enough mystery groupies on this ship to make him forget Mindy, at least for a week. But my job is to see that you and Jan have a good time. You can get lucky, too.”

  She threw her head back, and the wind blew her hair, and pressed the blue silk against her, and she tried to be haughty. “Thank you very much for your kind permission, Mr. Cobb.” The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that she was blushing red as a box of Valentine candy.

  I was exasperated. “My only point is, it’s up to you. It’s not up to Schaeffer or anybody else. I’m sorry if I—”

  The ship’s whistle gave a warning blast. Ten minutes. The deck started to crowd with people who wanted to see the dock recede. Kenni smiled and mouthed (though she could have been screaming it, for all I could hear), “It’s okay.”

  The whistle died away. “Here’s Jan,” I said, pointing through the crowd.

  Kenni didn’t follow my finger. Instead, she looked up at me (not too far; she was a tall woman) and said, “I diddent know you solved real-life murders.”

  5

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I think.”

  —Ron Palillo

  “Welcome Back, Kotter” (ABC)

  ONE THING I HADN’T reckoned on when I brought Spot on this trip was the inadequacy of the ship’s newspapers for canine sanitation. I discussed the problem with Kim, and he brought me a supply of plastic sheets from the ship’s laundry. They were thick and strong, a lot better than the ones you get from land laundries. I brought a sheet and the dog on deck, he made use of them (although there are damned few acceptable things on the deck of a ship for a dog to pee on), and I threw the stuff over the side, expecting that a Coast Guard cutter would come along at any second and haul me off to jail for polluting the Hudson River, which we had not yet left. A loyal New Yorker to the end, however, I had made sure to throw it off the Jersey side.

  I walked Spot around for a while, then I went back to my cabin. I had to smile as I put the key in the lock. Just after the captain’s party broke up, Karen came up to me and apologized for my cabin location.

  “Why?” I asked. “It’s above the waterline. It’s got a bathroom. A head, I mean. The steward and I get along fine.”

  “Well, we’ve got the writers and Billy and me up on A deck. We would have put you there, too, but we couldn’t get a cabin for your contest winners, and we figured you’d want to be close to them, so we put you down on C deck. That’s where most of our people are. They’re really perfectly nice accommodations.”

  “I just said that.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You mean I could have had a cabin on A deck? Right under the disco floor? So I could hear loud thumping rock music and screams of drunken revelry all through the night? I’m crushed.”

  “A deck is right under the disco floor?” She looked slightly sick.

  “Check out the plan of the ship they gave you. That’s how it looks to me.”

  “Oh, God. I’d better do something about this.”

  “Such as what? Your paying customers will sleep better, if sleeping is what they want to do. The freeloaders have to stick toilet paper in their ears. Sounds fair to me.”

  “You’re a free—you’re our guest, too.”

  “I got lucky for once. Also, I’m traveling with a very sensitive dog.”

  She looked at her watch. “I can’t even worry about this, now. The organizational meeting is set for five o’clock.”

  My contestants had gone exp
loring the ship’s shops. They would soon be able to explore the stores of an entire country, but God forbid they should miss an opportunity to see a store window on shipboard.

  I let myself into my cabin. Spot lay down on the rug and went to sleep. It sounded like a good idea to me, but before reforming from my life of crime, I wanted to do one more forbidden thing—I went to the porthole, unscrewed all the stays, and opened the thing up. They didn’t want you to do that because it wasted air-conditioning. I am probably America’s foremost fan of air-conditioning, but I like the occasional bit of fresh air, too. I didn’t intend to abuse the privilege, but it was nice to know I could get some if I really needed it. Besides, I wasn’t ever about to open the thing all the way. Spot could fit through the hole on one jump and muss nothing but his fur. I could see it now. “But Matt, where’s my doggie?” “Sorry, Jane, lost at sea. We held a service.” No thanks.

  I screwed the window shut again, decided not to wipe my fingerprints off it, stripped down to my underwear, and lay down on the bunk away from the sunlight.

  I think my upper and lower eyelids touched before the alarm went off. To say it was a bell was to say Dolly Parton is a girl. This was a loud, insistent, merciless, and unending din. I jumped up screaming (though I couldn’t hear myself) and saw Spot on the other bunk, trying to dig a hole in the mattress to hide in.

  Eventually, the bell stopped, and my brain could start working again. This was undoubtedly the mandatory boat drill. It didn’t have to be that mandatory. All they’d have to do would be threaten to ring that goddam bell again, and I’d do anything they wanted.

  I made my way up several flights of ladder (or however the hell they say it on a ship) to the boat deck, which on this particular vessel was above A deck. I met Jan and Kenni on the way. Kenni was carrying a small bag with the ship’s logo on it.

  “How do we find it?” Kenni asked.

  “Just go where you hear the person calling the range of numbers that includes your cabin.”

  We did. We wound up standing in front of boat Number 21, which was my old basketball number, and seemed somehow comforting. We stood there for ten minutes, holding life jackets under a Plexiglas-covered arcade, the greenhouse effect of which made the Starlight Room look like an igloo. People were still straggling in. “How long does it take a ship to sink, anyway?” I wondered, and a stewardess rewarded me with the dirtiest look I have ever gotten from a woman whose name I didn’t know.