The waiter put my orange juice down in front of me. I sipped it, then said, “Then the combination of Tim’s movie sale and Curt’s favorable Chronicler reviews not only got Tim and his brother Curt back on speaking terms, but—”
“But helped Tim overcome his career jealousy of me, as well, yes,” she said. “Thanks to that little weasel Rath.”
Her praise for the critic surprised me, even if it was lefthanded. “I sensed Thursday night there was no love lost between Rath and Tim,” I said. “Tim seemed about an inch away from pounding Rath into jelly, for getting rude with you.”
“Tim despises Rath,” Cynthia said, lightly.
“But I saw two major articles on Tim in the Chronicler, and even an interview...”
“Yes,” Cynthia said, “but remember — Tim’s never been lacking for critical praise. That’s typical of Rath, the little dilettante, giving favorable reviews to someone who’s safely singled out already by other, more astute, critics.”
“Still,” Jill said, “why dislike somebody who praises your work, whatever the reason? It seems like plenty of people have been burned by Rath. Shouldn’t your fiancé be relieved, at least, that Rath’s never attacked him?”
“Fiancé,” Cynthia said, rolling it around. “That has a nice sound, doesn’t it?”
She was ducking the issue.
“Weren’t Rath and Tim rather close, at one time?” I asked.
“Yes we were, Mr. Mallory,” Tim Culver said.
He had come up behind us. Like his brother, whom he resembled just enough to make it spooky, he was a big, lean man; he was wearing another lumberjack plaid shirt and jeans. He was polishing his wire-rim glasses with a napkin from a nearby table and his expression was solemn and not particularly friendly.
I stood. “Please call me Mal, if you would. And I apologize for prying.”
“No problem,” he said, though it clearly was. He sat next to his fiancée, in the chair I’d warmed, and I moved to the other side of Jill.
Who rushed in where Mallory feared to tread, saying, “We were just wondering why you would dislike somebody who gave you so much favorable press. Rath, that is.”
Culver sighed; pressed his lips together. Turned inward even more, to consider whether or not to address this subject.
Then he called a waiter over and said, “Breakfast?”
“Certainly, sir,” the waiter said, and Culver put his glasses back on and quickly marked a menu and handed it along.
Then Culver looked past his fiancée and Jill, toward me, and said, “I blame myself.”
Culver intimidated me a little, so I said nothing.
Jill doesn’t intimidate worth a damn, and said, “Blame yourself for what?”
Another heavy sigh. “For being... seduced.” The latter was spoken with quiet but distinct sarcasm.
“How so?” Jill asked.
“Rath’s praise was so effusive, it took me in.”
“Was it?” Jill said, continuing to prompt him. Culver spoke in telegrams.
“I’d never had that kind of praise before.”
I finally got the nerve to get in the act. “Tim — if you don’t mind my calling you that — you’ve had nothing but praise from critics since the day you published your first novel...”
Culver shook his head slowly, twice. “Not that kind of praise.”
“Oh,” I said. “You mean, the mystery-fandom-goes-to-graduate-school sort of praise you got in the Chronicler. Highfalutin’, pretentious, toney-type praise. You and Hemingway and Faulkner and Hammett all in the same sentence.”
“Yeah,” Culver said, disgusted with himself.
“So,” Cynthia said, being cautious not to step on her lover’s reticent toes, “Tim agreed to be interviewed.”
“I never give interviews,” Culver said, sneering faintly. “I’m like Garbo: leave me the hell alone.”
“But you gave Rath an interview,” Jill said.
“Yes,” Culver said.
“Why?” Jill asked.
He pounded the table with one fist; silverware jumped. “I said why. The little bastard flattered me into it.”
Silence.
The waiter brought Jill her poached eggs and me my corned beef hash and Culver some coffee, refilling Cynthia’s cup as well.
Then Culver said, “I’d been drinking. They flattered me, and we began drinking, moved from bar to hotel room like so many seductions and then I said, ‘Sure. I’ll do an interview.’ ”
Cynthia smiled nervously. “Tim does loosen up a bit when he drinks. Christ, I wish you could smoke in here.”
Tim said, “I talked too much. I said things I shouldn’t have.”
“Such as?”
Tim drank some coffee. “I said insulting things about another writer.”
I leaned forward, squinting at him, as if that would make me see inside him better. “You’re not involved in one of Rath’s libel suits, are you...?”
“No! I wish to God I were.” He leaned an elbow on the table and covered his eyes with the thumb and third finger of his right hand.
When he took the hand away, his eyes were red and a little wet. He said, “I said awful things about C.J. Beaufort.”
“Oh,” I said. Pete Christian’s friend and mentor, the one who’d committed suicide not long ago, after several years of ridicule in the Chronicler.
“I had nothing against Beaufort or his work,” he said. “I’ve probably not read more than a short story or two of his, over the years. But we were drinking, and Rath and his crony started laughing about the ‘King of the Hacks...’ ”
Cynthia, one of whose hands rested on Culver’s nearest one, said quietly, “It grew out of a discussion of Tim’s working methods — out of the fact that Tim publishes only one book a year, a finely polished piece of work, unlike many others in the business — like your friend Sardini, say, who fairly churns them out.”
“You have to make a living,” I said, in defense of those writers. “And some, like Tom, write very well.”
“I know,” Culver said. “Perhaps I resent the likes of Sardini... and Beaufort. I had to supplement my writing career with a teaching job. They make a living from their words alone. But, hell — I had nothing against Beaufort. If I’d been given the opportunity to edit my interview, as I’d been promised, the references to Beaufort would’ve been deleted. I’d have been sober, then. Goddamn — I never even met Beaufort.” He shook his head, his mouth tight with self-disgust. “And the poor son of a bitch blew his brains out over a copy of the Chronicler. Opened to my interview.”
The only sound in the high-ceilinged hall was the clink of a dish and the wind-rattle of the windows.
I said, “You can hardly hold yourself responsible...”
Culver looked at me with eyes like glowing coals and thumped his chest with a thick forefinger. “I hold myself responsible for every thing I do, every word I speak. And I have no respect for any man who doesn’t.”
I swallowed. “That’s a pretty charitable outlook.”
Culver scowled at me, and then looked away, and raised his coffee cup to his lips and drank.
Jill, not knowing when to leave bad enough alone, said, “Why in God’s name did you agree to come here, then? If Rath was going to be here?”
Culver put the coffee cup down. “Because my brother asked me.”
Jill still didn’t get it. “If your brother knew about the bitterness between you and Rath, then why would he impose on you so?”
If I’d asked him that, he might have smacked me; but his Hammett-like code included a certain surface chivalry toward the ladies.