“Your appearance is good,” she said. “That’s a nice suit, and it’s well tailored. Are you dressed up for the occasion or do you always look good?”
“I’m dressed up for the occasion. Normally I wear a light-blue body stocking with a big red S on the front.” It was dim in the bar, but her lipstick was bright, and I thought for a moment she smiled, or nearly smiled, or one corner of her mouth itched.
“I want you presentable,” she said.
“I’ll be presentable, but if you want me appropriate, you’ll have to let me know your plans ahead of time.”
She said, “Certainly.”
I said thank you. I tried to think of things other than the peanuts. One bowl was enough.
“I’ve had my say, now it is your turn. You must have some rules or questions, or whatever. Speak your mind.”
I drank beer. “As I said to Mr. Ticknor when he and I first talked, I cannot guarantee your safety. What I can do is increase the odds against an assassin. But someone dedicated or crazy can get you.”
“I understand that,” she said.
“I don’t care about your sex life. I don’t care if you elope with Anita Bryant. But I do need to be around when it happens. If you make it with strangers, you might be inviting your murderer to bed.”
“Are you suggesting I’m promiscuous?”
“You suggested it a little while ago. If you’re not, it’s not a problem. I don’t assume your friends will kill you.”
“I think we’ll not discuss my sex life further. John, for God’s sake order another drink. You look so uncomfortable, I’m afraid you’ll discorporate.”
He smiled and signaled the waiter.
“Do you have any other statements to make?” she said to me.
“Maybe one more,” I said. “I hire on to guard your body, that’s what I’ll do. I will work at it. Part of working at it will include telling you things you can do and things you can’t do. I know my way around this kind of work a lot better than you do. Keep that in mind before you tell me to stick it. I’ll stay out of your way when I can, but I can’t always.”
She put her hand out across the table, and I took it. “We’ll try it, Spenser,” she said. “Maybe it won’t work, but it could. We’ll try.”
3
“Okay,” I said, “tell me about the death threats.”
“I’ve always gotten hate mail. But recently I have gotten some phonecalls.”
“How recently?”
“As soon as the bound galleys went out.”
“What are bound galleys? And who do they go out to?”
Ticknor spoke. “Once a manuscript is set in type, a few copies are run off to be proofread by both author and copy editor. These are called galley proofs.”
“I know that part,” I said. “What about the bound ones going out?”
“Galleys normally come in long sheets, three pages or so to the sheet. For reviewers and people from whom we might wish to get a favorable quote for promotional purposes, we cut the galleys and bind them in cheap cardboard covers and send them out.” Ticknor seemed more at ease now, with the third martini half inside him. I was still fighting off the peanuts.
“You have a list of people to whom you send these?”
Ticknor nodded. “I can get it to you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Now, after the galleys went out, came the phone-calls. Tell me about them.”
She was eating her martini olive. Her teeth were small and even and looked well cared-for. “A man’s voice,” she said. “He called me a dyke, ‘a fucking dyke,’ as I recall. And told me if that book was published, I’d be dead the day it hit the streets.”
“Books don’t hit the streets,” I said. “Newspapers do. The idiot can’t get his cliches straight.”
“There has been a call like that every day for the last week.”
“Always say the same thing?”
“Not word for word, but approximately. The substance is always that I’ll die if the book is published.”
“Same voice all the time?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad.”
Ticknor said, “Why?”
“Makes it seem less like a single cuckoo getting his rocks off on the phone,” I said. “I assume you’ve rejected the idea of withdrawing the book.”
Rachel Wallace said, “Absolutely.”
Ticknor said, “We suggested that. We said we’d not hold her to the contract.”
“You also mentioned returning the advance,” Rachel Wallace said.
“We run a business, Rachel.”
“So do I,” she said. “My business is with women’s rights and with gay liberation and with writing.” She looked at me. “I cannot let them frighten me. I cannot let them stifle me. Do you understand that?”
I said yes.
“That’s your job,” she said. “To see that I’m allowed to speak.”
“What is there in the new book,” I said, “that would cause people to kill you?”
“It began as a book about sexual prejudice. Discrimination in the job market against women, gay people, and specifically gay women. But it has expanded. Sexual prejudice goes hand in hand with other forms of corruption. Violation of the equal employment laws is often accompanied by violation of other laws. Bribery, kickbacks, racket tie-ins. I have named names as I found them. A lot of people will be hurt by my book. All of them deserve it.”
“Corporations,” Ticknor said, “local government agencies, politicians, city hall, the Roman Catholic Church. She has taken on a lot of the local power structure.”
“Is it all Greater Boston?”
“Yes,” she said. “I use it as a microcosm. Rather than trying to generalize about the nation, I study one large city very closely. Synecdoche, the rhetoricians would call it.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I bet they would.”
“So,” Ticknor said, “you see there are plenty of potential villains.”
“May I have a copy of the book to read?”
“I brought one along,” Ticknor said. He took his briefcase off the floor, opened it, and took out a book with a green dust jacket. The title, in salmon letters, took up most of the front. Rachel Wallace’s picture took up most of the back. “Just out,” Ticknor said.
“I’ll read it tonight,” I said. “When do I report for work?”
“Right now,” Rachel Wallace said. “You are here. You are armed. And quite frankly I have been frightened. I won’t be deflected. But I am frightened.”
“What are your plans for today?” I said.
“We shall have perhaps three more drinks here, then you and I shall go to dinner. After dinner I shall go to my room and work until midnight. At midnight I shall go to bed. Once I am in my room with the door locked, I should think you could leave. The security here is quite good, I’m sure. At the slightest rustle outside my door I will call the hotel security number without a qualm.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you should meet me at my room at eight o’clock. I have a speech in the morning and an autographing in the afternoon.”
“I have a date for dinner tonight,” I said. “May I ask her to join us?”
“You’re not married,” she said.
“That’s true,” I said.
“Is this a casual date or is this your person?”
“It’s my person,” I said.
Ticknor said, “We can’t cover her expenses, you know.”
“Oh, damn,” I said.
“Yes, of course, bring her along. I hope that you don’t plan to cart her everywhere, however. Business and pleasure, you know.”
“She isn’t someone you cart,” I said. “If she joins us, it will be your good fortune.”
“I don’t care for your tone, buster,” Rachel Wallace said. “I have a perfectly legitimate concern that you will not be distracted by your lady friend from doing what we pay you to do. If there’s danger, would you look after her first or me.”
“Her,” I said.
“Then certainly I can suggest that she not always be with us.”
“She won’t be,” I said. “I doubt that she could stand it.”