What he learned from them was that any book with more than half a dozen characters in it, or more than a single plot line, was too confusing to be understood by some hick down there in Green Beans, Georgia, or out there in Saddle Sores, Texas. The answer was simplicity. Keep it simple. If simpletons were out there reading mystery fiction or detective fiction or crime fiction or thrillers or whatever anyone chose to call these so-called stories, then anybody actually writing the stuff had better learn how to keep it simple. Simplicity for the simpletons.
Simple.
So what he’d done was to scrap the literary approach he’d formerly been striving for inBad Money.For example, in the original version of his book, there had been high-flown language like:
The sound of music came from somewhere inside the apartment. Its noisome beat filled the hallway tremblingly.
In the next version, Ollie changed this to:
Loud music hammered the halls.
Period.
Simple.
He thought he had found his voice.
There was no sense trying to explain “voice” to anyone who wasn’t a writer. He had once tried to define it for his jackass sister Isabelle, and she had immediately said, “Oh, are you gonna be a singer now?” To a writer, voice had nothing to do with singing. Voice was as intangible as mist on an Irish bog. Voice was something that came from the very heart and soul. Voice was the essential essence of any novel, its perfume, so to speak. Try explaining that to a jackass like Isabelle.
And then, all at once, he had a truly brilliant idea.
In the first version of the book, he had called his lead character Detective/First Grade Oswald Wesley Watts. He had, in fact, described him like this:
Tall and handsome, broad of shoulder and wide of chest, slender of waist and fleet of foot, Detective “Big Ozzie” Watts, pistol in hand (a nine-millimeter semi-automatic Glock, by the way) climbed the steps to the fourth floor of the reeking tenement and knocked on the door to apartment 4C.
But after realizing that most of the mysteries on the bestseller list were written byladies,Ollie took an entirely different approach. The revised version of his book started like this:
I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds, and I just got a run in my pantyhose.
He had found a voice at last.
• • •
IT DID NOT TAKEEmilio Herrera long to realize that he had stumbled upon something very large indeed. He was not talking about the dispatch case itself. He had already sold that for five dollars. He was talking about what was inside the case. What he had just finished reading was a private report to the Police Commissioner from one of his female detectives:
What he was just about to start reading again, more carefully this time, was an intensely personal account of a massive diamond deal that had gone awry. What he was hoping to discover—if he was smart enough to crack the code—was the location of millions of dollars in so-called conflict diamonds.
Emilio was a fast reader. One of his best subjects in school, before he dropped out to become a dope addict, was English Literature. It took only a matter of minutes for him to realize that the detective writing the report was using a sort of code known only to herself and the Police Commissioner. For example, when the detective used the word “Rubytown,” Emilio knew right off she was talking about Diamondback, right here where he lived. And no matterwhatshe called the city in her report, Emilio knew that Detective Olivia Wesley Watts was talking about this city right here, this big bad city where Emilio was born and raised and corrupted.
Emilio knew he had been corrupted. That is to say, he knew he was a drug addict. Lots of junkies told you they were not addicted, they could walk away from it anytime they chose, they could take it or leave it alone. But Emilio preferred not lying to himself; he knew he was hooked clear through the bag and back again. He did not start out life planning to become a drug addict. He had not told his mother, “Hey,jefita,you know what I wish to become when I grow up? A drug addict!”
As a matter of fact, what he wished to become was a baseball player. A second baseman. Instead, he had become a drug addict. That was one of the things you had to watch out for in this city. You could start out wanting to be President of the United States but there were people who had other ideas for you, and all of a sudden you were sniffing your life up your nose. Just like that. One day you were playing ball on the diamond under the bridge near the drive, and the next day you were breaking a car window because you saw a brown leather dispatch case on the back seat and you figured maybe there was dope inside it.
But, you know…
It all worked out in the long run, didn’t it?
Here in Emilio’s hands was the key to millions of dollars. In a way, this was better than winning the lottery. All he had to do was read Detective Watts’s report again and again, backwards and forwards, decipher which code names in the book stood for which real place names in the city, and he would know where the gang in the book had stashed what amounted to $2,700,000 in diamonds before they locked poor Olivia in the basement with a run in her pantyhose, which to tell the truth excited Emilio to read about a girl’s underwear so honestly.
THE ELECTRICAL GUY’Sname was Peter Handel.
The rain had stopped and he was playing chess in the park outside Ramsey U downtown when Ollie found him. Both Handel and his chess partner were people who, in Ollie’s estimation, could have stood losing a few pounds. Like giant pandas, the two men hunched over the stone-topped table, pondering their next moves. Not wishing to break their hugely intense concentration, Ollie waited a moment before flashing the tin and introducing himself.
“I’d like to talk to you privately, Mr. Handel,” he said. “If your friend here doesn’t mind.”
“I’m three moves away from checkmate,” his friend said.
Ollie wondered how chess players knew such things.
“Take a walk around the block,” he suggested. “It’s turning into a nice day.”
“He’ll figure out my game plan,” the man complained, and waddled off grudgingly.
Ollie took his place at the chess table. He and Handel sat in dappled sunshine. Women strolled by pushing baby carriages. Across the street, young dealers were selling dope to college students. Ollie wondered where the hell all the cops were in this city.
“I understand you were in the booth up there when Henderson got shot,” Ollie said.
“Yeah,” Handel said.
Over a plaid sports shirt, Handel was wearing a brown woolen cardigan with darker brown buttons, what Ollie’s sister called a “candy-store sweater.” Combined with wide-waled brown corduroy trousers, the ill-fitting sweater made him look exceptionally stout. Ollie wondered why such people didn’t go on diets.
“Tell me what you saw,” he said.
“I was following him from stage left, the spot on him all the way. Somebody shot him just as he reached the podium.”
“Where’d the shots come from, do you know?”
“Stage right.”
“What does that mean, stage right, stage left?”
“The person’s right or left. The person standing on stage.Hisright or left. Looking out at the audience.”
“So, if he was approaching the podium from the left…”