Nicholas Barlow, an erudite, successful book publisher, dislikes editor Parker Foxcroft--an arrogant, ruthless womanizer and literary snob, but whose authors bring in prestige and literary prizes--until somebody kills him and Barlow has to do something besides applaud silently.
Release date:
November 29, 2009
Publisher:
Mysterious Press
Print pages:
287
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If ever a man was cut out to be a murder victim, it was certainly Parker Foxcroft. Arrogant, ruthless, manipulative, a womanizer
and a rampant literary snob, he was notoriously devious, vicious at times—even for the book business.
I ought to know; he worked for me. As the president and publisher of Barlow & Company, I hired Parker as a senior editor and
gave him his own imprint three years ago. I was within a nanominute of firing him, too, when someone with a stronger motive
than I iced him, as the mobsters put it in the crime novels I so happily and successfully publish. Or is the word now whacked? Offed, perhaps? At any rate, there may soon be almost as many synonyms for “killed” as there are for “drunk” (357 at last count,
beginning with “bagged” and ending with “zonked”).
I can’t say I was surprised when Parker turned up dead, but I was certainly inconvenienced, in more ways than one. You see,
I was the one who found his body, not long after we had a violent shouting match.
* * *
It was at the ABA Convention that I realized something would have to be done about Parker.
Like the Trobriand Islanders or the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, we book publishers have our peculiar and arcane
tribal rites. One is the Frankfurt Book Fair; another is the American Booksellers Association Convention. Frankfurt, however,
is a global affair, an Oktoberfest held in four cavernous convention halls a third of a mile west of the Bahnhof, Frankfurt’s rail station, while the ABA—it is never referred to formally—is a moveable feast, convened each year in a different
locale. There are only a handful of cities in America with convention centers large enough to hold it, for it is a mighty
gathering of the clans: some 25,000 to 30,000 people attending—5,000 or 6,000 of whom are actually booksellers—and there are
1,200 or more exhibitors, most of them book publishers. At the ABA, publishers launch their new lists and push their established
titles; booksellers come to see, to buy, to attend seminars, and to meet old friends.
All of which explains why I found myself in Washington, D.C., on Friday, May 28, the Memorial Day weekend. The choice of this
holiday for the ABA is also part of the ritual. It is one of the cruelest bits of scheduling I know: to keep the publishers
away from the beaches, the tennis courts, and the golf links, so that the booksellers—who would normally close their shops
on this weekend—can enjoy their moment in the sun.
And sun was what hit me when I got off the shuttle at Washington National, collected my bag, and stepped out of the terminal.
Hit me with tropical force. Here it was, only the tag end of May, and already ninety in the shade.
I turned to Sidney Leopold, the editor in chief of my
publishing house, who had accompanied me on the flight down.
“God, Sidney, the heat. ‘Summer is icumen in,’ no? ‘Lhude sing cuccu!’
“Ice-cream weather all right, Nuh-Nick,” he said.
“I was thinking vodka and tonic myself.”
“Do you know, Nick,” said Sidney, “that Hä-HäagenDazs has come out with a new line called ‘Exträas’—wuwith an umlaut, of course.”
“Oh?”
“A thousand cuh-calories more than their regular—flavors.”
It was enough to turn me ashen. I must explain that ice cream, all kinds and varieties of it, is Sidney’s ruling passion.
Were I to consume as much of it as he packs away in an ordinary month, I would probably weigh in at 50 pounds over my fighting
weight, which is 225 or 230, give or take a few pounds. Nicholas Barlow, Homo giganticus. No thank you. As it is, I can hardly open a menu these days, or pass by a bakery, without gaining weight—or so it would seem.
Sidney, meanwhile, remains slim and flat-bellied through it all.
A cab, mercifully air-conditioned, pulled up just then and rescued us from the heat. And the humidity. Washington is world-famous
for both.
Fond as I am of our nation’s capital, I’ve always appreciated John F. Kennedy’s quip at its expense. “Washington,” JFK said,
“is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.” Still, you must agree that a city that will not allow any building
to rise higher than ninety feet—so as not to block anyone’s view of the Capitol, I believe—certainly has its architectural
priorities straight.
We checked in at the Shoreham Hotel shortly after noon.
I know there are more luxurious hotels in town; the Shoreham is a trifle shabby-genteel, but I like it, and there is a great
deal of nostalgia connected with the place, for me at least. When I was still an undergraduate at Princeton, I attended a
couple of ABAs with my father. In those days, the convention was held every year in Washington—I suspect because the association
had some kind of sweetheart deal with the hotel—and the exhibits were all set up in the basement garage of the Shoreham. People
usually stayed either at the Shoreham or at the Park-Sheraton, now the Sheraton Washington, across the street.
And what memories I have…
Wandering the halls of the hotel in the small hours of the morning, looking for parties. We found them by following the roars
of laughter and boisterous conversation coming from the open doors of hospitality suites, or the sound of a guitar and someone
singing a folk song… The nights then seemed to be one long, continuous party… and the mornings one long hangover. Vodka stingers
and brandy Alexanders were high on our list of preferred drinks. So, like the chain-smokers of long ago who were unwittingly
writing their death certificates every day that passed, we were heedless in our haste to wreak a similar havoc on our livers…
Lest you think I’m some kind of Mrs. Grundy, I hasten to add that I still smoke an occasional cigar, if it’s a good one, and
feel quite comfortable with a glass in my hand, if that glass is filled with the precise mixture of Absolut and Noilly Prat.
I drink, frankly, whenever the spirit moves me.
Diving into the pool one morning, I spotted something white and shining at the bottom. It was a convention badge, of all things.
When I fished it out, I discovered that it was my badge, though I hadn’t the faintest idea how it got there…
There was always at least one poker game, a dollar and five dollars, in one hotel room or another, blue with smoke and reeking
of malt. It was a democratic game: publishers sat facing their sales reps, and the reps went head-to-head with booksellers.
The game was stag, of course…
Pleasant memories, to be sure. The year has never quite been complete for me without an ABA. And as much as they grouse about
the expense of it, and claim that it’s really not worth it (”Nobody does any business there” is the common refrain), I suspect
that most of my fellow publishers feel the same way, even if they go because it would be imprudent to stay away. If it’s an
orgy, at least it’s our very own orgy.
As soon as we had unpacked, Sidney and I headed for the Convention Center, this time in an unair-conditioned cab.
We found our booth quickly enough, and in it Mary Sunday, our sales manager, wearing the most woeful expression I had seen
on her face since our star sales rep defected to Simon & Schuster.
“Oh, Nick,” she wailed, “the books haven’t come. That buggerall exhibitor’s service has fucked us up for fair.” Not for Mary the ladylike euphemisms.
I made an effort to cheer her up. “Well, at least the posters are here.”
Some of the exhibitors at the ABA still make it a practice to show off actual books; others display only oversize posters
or the jackets of their forthcoming titles. Barlow & Company does both, though the books somehow seem superfluous, since almost
no one takes the time to browse through them. I once calculated that if a person were to visit every booth at the ABA at least
once in the three and a half days of the convention, each booth would receive exactly forty-five seconds of one’s attention.
No, the best we could hope for
is that passersby would be attracted by the posters and stop in so we could talk up our forthcoming list. The whole point
of the exercise is to show our new stuff—best foot forward, and all that.
“But the catalogs haven’t shown up, either,” said Mary Sunday. “And our location is terrible. Terrible. It sucks.”
“I duh-don’t know,” said Sidney. “We’re not too fuh-far from the cuh-concession stands. Could be worse.” I knew that Sidney,
once again, was thinking ice cream.
But Mary was inconsolable. “I wish they’d let us pick our own space the way they used to, instead of assigning booths by lottery,”
she said. “Here we are with a greeting-card company on one side of us and a university press on the other.”
Two of our sales reps were with us in the booth (actually we had splurged and taken three booths, and at considerable expense. Though small, we’re a proud company, in my humble opinion the best publisher of mysteries
and thrillers in the business, among our other achievements). The reps were stacking up order forms in the hope that when
the booksellers did come around tomorrow, they would really want to place orders. One of the reps, Chezna Newman, a comely
young woman with a distinctive New York accent, chimed in with: “What’s wrong”—the word came out “wrong-uh”—“with a univoisity
press?” Chezna also had a distressing habit of chewing gum with her mouth open. Those two imperfections aside, she was damned
good at pushing books out into the marketplace.
“I don’t know, the proximity of all that high-toned scholarship might give us even more class than we already have.”
This came from the other sales rep in the booth, Toby Finn, a veteran of more than twenty years in the business.
Small, shrewd, and glib, Toby had been flown into D.C. from Chicago as a reward for an especially good year.
“Outside of no books and no catalogs, are we ready to go?” I put the question to Mary, who sighed and nodded. Chezna grinned,
and Toby Finn gave me the thumbs-up sign.
Things were heating up on the exhibition floor by now. Forklifts moving down the aisles with huge cartons, crates, and skids
of books. Carpets were being laid and nailed into place; banners were being strung; electric wires and spotlights put up.
It was bedlam, din, and confusion throughout the hall, and quite incredible to think that by tomorrow morning it would all
be ready.
“In that case,” I said, “I think I’ll hit the pool. Coming, Sidney?”
“Shuh-shuh-sure. “
“I’ll see you all later in the hospitality suite.” The suite was another extravagance, but useful for entertaining booksellers,
foreign publishers, and sundry media people. It boasted a bar, always open, and the bedroom was shared by Mary Sunday and
Chezna Newman, which made the extra expense bearable.
“The suite is ready, I take it?”
“Fully stocked,” said Sunday. “Plenty of booze, beer, soda, nibbles, and ice.”
“Good show.” And with that, Sidney and I headed for the Shoreham, leaving Mary and company to finish the work.
When I got back to the hotel, I found a message in my box: “Call M. Mandelbaum ASAP.” Up in my room, I dialed the office and
asked for my controller.
“Mort? It’s Nick.”
“Oh, Nick, good, thanks for calling back. How’s the weather in Washington?”
I knew Mort Mandelbaum hadn’t called me long-distance just for a weather report, so I cut him short. “What’s up?”
“Bad news, Nick. The bank is threatening to reduce our line of credit. Just when we’re facing heavy print bills for the fall
list.”
“Serious cuts?”
“Serious enough. Any reduction right now will hurt.”
“Do you think I ought to go to the bank and remind them of auld lang syne?” We had been banking with Federal Trust ever since
my parents had started Barlow & Company. It had been an altogether satisfactory union, if a relationship based entirely on
money can be compared to a marriage. Why, then, were they giving us a problem now?
“That might be a good idea, Nick,” said Mandelbaum. “As soon as you can? Please?”
“Or we might ask the printers to extend us more credit.”
“What? Surely you joke.”
“That’s right. Joke.”
“And maybe you could arrange to come back from the ABA with a best-seller under your arm. To pay for all those money-losers
Parker Foxcroft brings in? Please?”
“Parker’s books give us prestige, Mort. They give us great visibility in the trade.”
A sigh. “Who can pay the printers with prestige? Not Mortimer Mandelbaum.”
“I’ll be back in the office on Tuesday morning. We’ll deal with the bank then.”
“Okay, Nick.” He still sounded miserable, so I added:
“Cheer up, Morty. Remember my motto.”
“How could I forget? It’s in a frame on your desk. ‘Something will turn up.’ The picture of the guy with the noose around
his neck? Right?”
“Right. Dr. Samuel Johnson. Also Mr. Micawber.” And we rang off.
I spent the balance of the afternoon floundering in the hotel pool and basking in the shade, a cold vodka and tonic in hand,
while admiring the bathing beauties reclining around the pool. Not for me the drudgery of setting up an exhibit. Rank, after
all, does have its privileges.
When the cocktail hour rolled around, I showered, changed into what I thought was the right outfit for the occasion: dove-gray
cotton slacks, lightweight navy-blue blazer, white shirt, and my favorite club tie—a number from The Players on Gramercy Park:
silver masks of comedy and tragedy on a maroon field—and Gucci loafers. Summer is as summer does.
At the hospitality suite, I found Mary Sunday and Toby Finn tending bar, and Chezna Newman chatting with a bookseller. Sidney
Leopold was sipping a soda in a corner of the room, looking intently into the eyes of one of his authors.
“Nick,” Mary sang out. “Good news!”
“Let me guess. The books came.”
“Yeah, finally! Also the catalogs.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. All was now well at the Barlow & Company booth. I had learned at ABAs past that nothing can demoralize
an exhibitor more than missing the crucial elements of the exhibit. I remember one year coming on a friend of mine sitting
in a folding chair in the midst of… nothing, absolutely nothing—except a hand-lettered sign giving the name of his company
and the number of his booth. When he saw me, he smiled wanly, and when I put the question to him, he raised his hands in mute
supplication. “Shoulda stayed home, Nick,” he said with a sigh. I
was tempted to offer him part of our booth—we had too many books out, anyway—but thought he might feel I was making fun of
him. The poor devil’s booth never did show up, so after waiting a day he returned home, a loser however you look at it.
Just then Parker Foxcroft entered the suite. He proceeded to the bar, where he accepted a drink from Mary. Leaning over, he
whispered something in her ear. She giggled, and Parker joined in with his distinctive whoop of laughter. Parker’s laugh is
more a bray, which I have always thought he affects. When he is really amused, it comes out as a snort: huah… huah… HUAH!
Spotting me, he approached, all six feet three of him. Parker is the only member of my staff who can look me straight in the
eye. Lanky frame; you’d call him slim if you fancied the look, skinny if you did not. (No, I am not at all envious.) His hair
is rather thin, too, long strands combed from the side of his head across his pate to cover the bald spot—the kind of coiffure
I think would be perilous in a high wind. I was reminded of something my father told me years ago, when I had commented on
an actor whose toupee I thought was rather improbable. “Just remember,” said my father, “that not everyone in this world is
as well feathered as we are.” That was long before my father’s golden fleece, too, became only a distant memory.
When Parker laughs, his ordinarily pale complexion reddens as though exposed too long in the sun. By the time he reached me,
his guffaws had subsided to a stray chuckle or two, though his cheeks remained a bright red. I could not understand why so
many women apparently found him irresistible; yet he was seldom seen without one beauty or another on his arm, and his social
life was spoken of in the office with genuine awe. But then, there is no mystery so
insoluble as human sexuality. Perhaps it is better to leave it unsolved. As Mae West said of the Kinsey report: it takes all
the fun out of sex.
“Nick,” said Parker in a near shout. “I love the booth.” The look on his face was infuriatingly complacent, however—a smirk, in fact.
I braced myself.
“But where is the poster for A Wind from the South?”
This was Parker’s lead title on the fall list. He had refused to concede, after any amount of opposition from the reps at
our sales conference, that there might not be great enthusiasm for a historical novel set in Philadelphia in 1790 during a
yellow fever epidemic—except perhaps in Philadelphia. “It has Pulitzer Prize written all over it,” he protested. I could imagine
that award, literally written in Parker’s own hand on the jacket. And when Parker said, as he often did, that one of his books
would “get a good press,” I visualized the book clamped tightly in a vise, oozing printer’s ink.
“Mary is in charge of the exhibit,” I said. “Did you ask her?”
“She said you had the final say.”
“Only if there is a deadlock of some kind.”
“Nevertheless,” he said, pointing his index finger in the general direction of my chest, and staring at me with those pinkish
eyes of his, “the buck stops here.”
I shrugged. “We can’t feature every book on the list.” A lame excuse, but the best I could come up with on the spur of the
moment.
“You seem to have gone all out for that private-dick novel,” said Parker, putting a good deal of weight on the word “dick.”
I do not allow anyone to make light of Barlow & Company mysteries; they’re not only my bread and butter, they’re also my champagne
and caviar.
“Say It with Bullets,” I said, “will probably pay both your salary and mine this year.” Set in Buffalo, my lead fall mystery starred P.I. Homer
Blank, plodding through the snowdrifts in search of a computer hack who had broken the entry codes of a local bank and was
robbing it silly. To kick off the promotion for the book, we had brought not only a poster to the ABA but also a special convention
edition in paperback, with a personal message on the back cover from yours truly—a gesture I make only once a year, so as
not to water my own stock.
“Perhaps I ought to think of acquiring a mystery,” said Foxcroft.
“Stick to your last, Parker,” I said.
If it seems odd that I put up with such impertinence from one of my own employees, which I suppose no one in the cloak-and-suit
or tool-and-dye business would do, look at it this way: Parker Foxcroft has the touch. Authors come to him eagerly, hoping to be anointed. Critics for the New Statesman, The Times Literary Supplement, and other high-toned journals turn cartwheels to praise the books he edits, season after se. . .
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