Leonard Zagami had moved up as well. He was now the CEO and president, the crcme de la cheese, and the new house brought out two hundred books a year.
Like their competition, the bulk of RW's list either lost money or broke even, but three authors – and I wasn't one of them – brought in more revenue than the other 197 combined.
Leonard Zagami didn't see me as a moneymaker anymore, but he liked me and it cost him nothing to keep me on board. I hoped that after our meeting he'd see me another way, that he'd hear cash registers ringing from Bangor to Yakima.
And that Henri would remove his death threat.
I had my pitch ready when I arrived in RW's spiffy modern waiting room at nine. At noon, Leonard's assistant came across the jaguar-print carpet to say that Mr. Zagami had fifteen minutes for me, to please follow her.
When I crossed his threshold, Leonard got to his feet, shook my hand, patted my back, and told me it was good to see me but that I looked like crap.
I thanked him, told him I'd aged a couple of years while waiting for our nine o'clock meeting.
Len laughed, apologized, said he'd done his best to squeeze me in, and offered me a chair across from his desk. At five feet six, almost child-sized behind the huge desk, Leonard Zagami still radiated power and a no-bullshit canniness.
I took my seat.
“What's this book about, Ben? When last we spoke, you had nothing cooking.”
“Have you been following the Kim McDaniels case?”
“The Sporting Life model? Sure. She and some other people were killed in Hawaii a few? Hey. You were covering that story? Oh. I see.”
“I was very close to some of the victims -”
“Look, Ben,” Zagami interrupted me. “Until the killer is caught, this is still tabloid fodder. It's not a book, not yet.”
“It's not what you're thinking, Len. This is a first-person tell-all.”
“Who's the first person? You?”
I made my pitch like my life depended on it.
“The killer approached me incognito,” I said. “He's a very cool and clever maniac who wants to do a book about the murders, and he wants me to write it. He won't reveal his identity, but he'll tell how he did the killings and why.”
I expected Zagami to say something, but his expression was flat. I crossed my arms over his leather-topped desk, made sure my old friend was looking me in the eyes.
“Len, did you hear me? This guy could be the most-wanted man in America. He's smart. He's at liberty. And he kills with his hands. He says he wants me to write about what he's done because he wants the money and the notoriety. Yeah. He wants some kind of credit for a job well done. And if I won't write the book, he'll kill me. Might kill Amanda, too.
“So I need a simple yes or no, Len. Are you interested or not?”
Chapter 72
Leonard Zagami leaned back in his chair, rocked a couple of times, smoothed back what remained of his white hair, then turned to face me. When he spoke, it was with heartbreaking sincerity, and that's what really hurt.
“You know how much I like you, Ben. We've been together for what, twelve years?”
“Almost fifteen.”
“Fifteen good years. So, as your friend, I'm not going to bullshit you. You deserve the truth.”
“Agreed,” I said, but my pulse was booming so loudly that I could hardly hear what Len said.
“I'm verbalizing what any good businessman would be thinking, so don't take this wrong, Ben. You've had a promising but quiet career. So now you think you've got a breakout book that'll raise your profile here at RW and in the industry. Am I right?”
“You think this is a stunt? You think I'm that desperate? Are you kidding?”
“Let me finish. You know what happened when Fritz Keller brought out Randolph Graham's so-called true story.”
“It blew up, yeah.”
“First the 'startling reviews,' then Matt Lauer and Larry King. Oprah puts Graham in her book club – and then the truth starts leaking out. Graham wasn't a killer. He was a petty thug and a pretty good writer who embellished the hell out of his life story. And when it exploded, it exploded all over Fritz Keller.”
Zagami went on to say that Keller got late-night threats at home, TV producers calling his cell phone. His company's stock went down the toilet, and Keller had a heart attack.
My own heart was starting to fibrillate. Leonard thought that either Henri was lying or I was stretching a newspaper article beyond reality.
Either way, he was turning me down.
Hadn't Leonard heard what I said? Henri had threatened to kill me and Amanda. Len took a breath, so I seized the moment.
“Len, I'm going to say something very important.”
“Go ahead, because unfortunately, I only have five more minutes.”
“I questioned it, too. Wondered if Henri was really a killer, or if he's a talented con man, seeing in me the grift of a lifetime.”
“Exactly,” Len said.
“Well, Henri is for real. And I can prove it to you.”
I put the media card on the desk.
“What's that?”
“Everything you need to know and more. I want you to meet Henri for yourself.”
Len inserted the flash drive, and his computer screen went from black to a shot of a dusky yellow room, candles burning, a bed centered on a wall. The camera zoomed in on a slender young woman lying belly-down on the bed. She had long, pale blond hair, wore a red bikini and black shoes with red soles. She was hog-tied with intricately knotted ropes. She seemed drugged or sleeping, but when the man entered the frame she began crying.
The man was naked except for a plastic mask and blue latex gloves.
I didn't want to see the video again. I walked to the glass wall that looked straight down the well of the atrium, from the forty-third floor to the tiny people who crossed the plaza on the ground floor below.
I heard the voices coming from the computer, heard Leonard gag. I turned to see him make a run for the door. When he returned a few minutes later, Leonard was as pale as a sheet of paper, and he was changed.
Chapter 73
Leonard dropped back into the seat behind his desk, yanked out the flash drive, stared at it like it was the snake in the Garden of Eden.
“Take this back,” he said. “Let's agree that I never saw it. I don't want to be any kind of accessory after the fact or God knows what. Have you told the police? The FBI?”
“Henri said that if I did, he'd kill me, kill Amanda, too. I can't take that chance.”
“I understand now. You're sure that the girl in that video is Kim McDaniels?”
“Yeah. That's Kim.”
Len picked up the phone, canceled his twelve-thirty meeting, and cleared the rest of his afternoon. He ordered sandwiches from the kitchen, and we moved to the seating area at the far side of his office.
Len said, “Okay, start at the beginning. Don't leave out a bloody period or comma.”
So I did. I told Len about the last-minute Hawaiian boondoggle that had turned out to be a murder mystery times five. I told him about becoming friends with Barbara and Levon McDaniels and about being deceived by Henri's alter egos, Marco Benevenuto and Charlie Rollins.
Emotion jammed up my voice box when I talked about the dead bodies, and also when I told Len how Henri had forced me into my apartment at gunpoint, then showed me the pictures he'd taken of Amanda.
“How much does Henri want for his story? Did he give you a number?”
I told Len that Henri was talking about multimillions, and my editor didn't flinch. In the past half hour, he had gone from skeptic to inside bidder. From the light in his eyes, I thought he'd sized up the market for this book and saw his budget gap being overwhelmed by a mountain of cash.