I don’t know what to say about that part of the night before. As I said, it began with a hug, but it quickly got out of hand. I have been with a few women in my time, but never have these encounters had so much violence and passion and so little personal feeling. Vanessa was good in bed, but scary. When the gun came out from under the pillow, it did nothing for my ability to concentrate. After she had pressed the muzzle into my groin, I tried to get it away from her, tossing the bedclothes around, and she fought, biting and kicking, until I’d thrown it across the room. She tried to retrieve it, but I held on to her. I’ve got scratches on my back to show that she didn’t like being handled this way.
When I’d showered and dressed, I found that she’d thrown a blanket and pillow on a couch for me. The bedroom door was closed.
At one point in the afternoon, the producer Eric Carter joined us just long enough to gloat over the fact that his Christmas show was in the can, on time and less than fifty thousand dollars over budget, which was almost like being under budget, judging from his grin. Vanessa took the news soberly and sent him off with some scripts for series pilots to look at over the weekend. Was that a way to say thanks in television land? I wasn’t sure.
While Vanessa dictated a string of letters to Sally, I went digging in the kitchen for something to eat. I found a brownish orange and half a lemon, nearly turned to stone. I tried these with boiling water and some sugar cubes and promised to treat myself better next week.
“Oh, Mr. Cooperman!” The voice came as a surprise as I strolled the corridor away from the Men’s. I looked behind me. At first the hall looked empty of all but the usual traffic on the blue broadloom-people with letters to photocopy, coffee mugs to return and reports to rewrite-then I saw an arm waving from an open doorway. As I walked back towards it, I tried to recall the fruity voice that hailed me. The answer came a moment before my eyes confirmed my guess. It was Philip Rankin, Music Department. Puffy face, like a fish drowning in air. One of the people trying to get Vanessa to leave NTC. I nearly laughed out loud as I tried to imagine him holding a shotgun.
“You’ve had a merry thought,” he said, waving me into the darkish room. I was surprised that my face was so legible.
“Just surprised that you remembered my name, that’s all.” Rankin’s office was one of the larger kind, with a door leading to a receptionist or secretary, the usual way of gaining entrance to this holy of holies. But Rankin kept his private door open from time to time to catch the traffic coming and going. I couldn’t make myself believe that he was on the lookout for me particularly.
“Take it as a compliment, dear boy. They don’t come around that often that you can ignore them. Accept them, grapple them to your heart and cherish them. But, be on your guard, my dear fellow. These corridors are crowded with spies and deceivers. Take care.” He placed a canny finger alongside his nose.
“I thought a ‘merry thought’ was a wishbone.”
“I’m serious, Mr. Cooperman. This place is as packed with false friends as a piñata.”
“Why would anyone bother? In the short time I’ve been here I’ve learned that the executive assistant is the lowest form of life.”
“Nevertheless. You are close to a hotly contested area.”
“Entertainment?”
“Exactly! The world revolves. Things are happening.”
“I haven’t heard that Vanessa Moss has been eclipsed. When was that announced? Her name was still on her door ten minutes ago.”
“While you are right to question the accuracy of what I’ve just said, I fear that the truth-that she’s not been sacked yet-is a mere quibble. But that doesn’t mean the blades are not being sharpened, my boy. The wagons have been circled, and the wagonmaster has a bee in his bonnet about that woman. Well, it’s only a matter of time.”
“I like your openness. It’s good to know where we stand.”
“You see, it’s only the commercial interests that have saved her this week. The CEO is trying to gauge the reception of our unloading that baggage with the murder thing still unresolved.”
“Are you saying that the advertisers are calling the shots? That NTC is run by snake-oil salesmen?”
“Oh dear! What a low opinion you must have of the medium, Mr. Cooperman. What I meant to say is that they are still trying to see if she fits their definition of a liability. If she’s not a liability-and that has to include all of the publicity she’s garnered both for herself and the network-can she be described as an asset? I think not.”
He must have read an uncomplimentary expression on my face.
“You know, Mr. Cooperman, we have a book of advertising standards that spells out the rules for acceptable commercials. Toilet tissue, for instance, must stress absorbency and softness, but without showing the product near anything made of porcelain. I think snake oil is banned no matter what the approach. We have recently gone in for brand-name companies taking a high-toned institutional approach. ‘The following concert by the late Dermot Keogh was recorded in Madrid with the support of the Morgan Armstrong Corporation and Bix-a-bix Cereal Products.’”
“You knew Dermot Keogh well. I’d forgotten that. I know people in Grantham who have all of his recordings.”
“Yes, dear boy. And he keeps on selling. Luckily, we have a great deal of him on tape and on compact discs. His reputation will not stop growing for another ten years.”
“I remember one summer, up at Dittrick Lake, I was staying with friends and he was giving a radio concert. Warm night. Stars. We turned the radio up loud inside the cottage and listened to the music on the patio where we could look out over the lake. The house became a kind of sounding board for his cello, so that we felt that we were right there at the concert. I’ll never forget that.” It hadn’t actually been Keogh I’d heard, but the adapted anecdote fit the situation.
“That would have been the summer before last. There were no concerts last summer, of course.”
“You said that there are half a dozen biographies about him in the works. Why aren’t you writing one of them? You knew him better than anybody.”
“Too sadly true. I don’t think I’m ready to ride his coattails into the New York Times best-seller list, thank you very much. I’ll not repay his friendship in that way. Why, during his lifetime, someone approached his father-old Michael was still alive then-asking him all sorts of questions about Dermot’s childhood. When he heard about it, Dermot was fit to be tied. ‘If you want to know about me,’ he said, ‘ask me!’ Oh, that wasn’t a good day to be close to him. No, indeed!”
“Was he unforgiving?”
“He was generosity itself in most things. I’ve never known a more liberal spirit. But, on the subject of his own life, especially of his past, he demanded and insisted on holding a tight rein on all the options.”
“A control freak?”
“Something of that. The real mystery is why would he bother. His life was as ordinary as could be. His father was a streetcar conductor and his mother was a kindergarten assistant in a private school. They were neither rich nor poor. Apart from his genius, he was a nobody. I think it was a matter of control for control’s sake. Ray should have known that.”
“Ray?”
“Oh, a friend of his. He went too far.” Rankin wet his lips with the end of his tongue before going on. I made a guess and I was right. He did change the subject. “Mr. Cooperman, it has come to my attention that your work here is at least partly a matter of security. Am I misinformed?”
“I’ve been trying to keep a low profile,” I said.