Dead Men Don't Blog: A John Ray Mystery - Chapter 5

The jangling telephone on the bedside table woke me. It was far too early for anyone to be placing a friendly call. I answered it anyway.

"Good morning, Mr. Ray. I trust I did not wake you?"

It was a voice that I hadn't heard in quite a long time, and I didn't realize how pleasurable an interlude that was until just that moment. Max Vox.

For the two people out there in the English speaking world who don't know who Max Vox is, I'll endeavor to fill you in. I met Max Vox when I was in college. Back then his name was Menachem Vogelstein. He owned a little "book stall" on Fifth Avenue, wedged between a watch repair shop and a Burger King. I worked for him, for a year or so, stocking shelves and pushing authors that Max felt were deserving. There were no megachain bookstores back then, just the occasional Walden's or Dalton's in the shopping malls—glorified newsstands. Max had some big ideas. He ran a respectable joint: no celebrity biographies, no New York Times best-seller list titles unless they had some ass to them. Max was a canny businessman, and he parlayed his meager profits into clever investments that yielded some fat scratch. He used his windfalls to open other book stalls, and soon he was the premiere book seller in the city, the region. Authors courted him; publishers called him. If Max displayed your book in his window, you'd make some sales.

It was a short leap then for him to go national. No one was using this formula elsewhere yet. That's when he became "Max Vox." And that's also when he began contacting publishers and telling them that he would give their titles prominent placement, full displays, conspicuous locations on the "new arrivals" tables and the "employees' favorites" shelves… for a "small fee."

Most of the big ones ignored him at first. At their peril, as it turned out. When North Point Press and Gibbs Smith titles started outperforming Knopf and Random House offerings, the big boys finally decided to pony up. Pretty soon, all of them were courting Max, and that standalone display right inside the double-doors was going to the highest bidder.

Pretty soon after that, they weren't just bidding for prominent placement of their titles. They were coming to Max to find out what kind of books he was looking for, what he'd favor, what he thought the public wanted, what subject was hot. Publishers were acquiring books based on Max's direction. Max Vox had become the single most influential figure in contemporary literature. Or, contemporary publishing, I should say. Without Max, there is no David Eggers, no David Foster Wallace, no David Mitchell (Max likes the name David). He blessed them, and that's why we read them. No other reason.

And Max Vox choked the life out of yours truly. When the tempest broke in my modest teapot of a novel, Max—who had been very generous with my small press offering, because I worked for him back in the day—banished me from his stores. My name was even removed from the Vox databases. I became a non-entity. Not just a has-been, but a never-was. You may as well try to stop a bandersnatch as find a John Ray novel these days. Even the remainder houses wouldn't touch me.

 "It's been a long time, Max. And I was rather enjoying it. To what do I owe this foreshortening of my pleasure?"

"Tart and quick as ever, Mr. Ray. Just as Kirkus said about your last novel, if I recall correctly. 'Tart and quick.' I like that, sir."

"Laurels fade, Max."

"Indeed they do, sir! Indeed they do. And yet even the brief life of laurels is superior to such states as 'notoriety.' The cause célèbre. Something that so many of our young writers fail to grasp these days, I regret to say. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Max, I can't believe you called me at the crack of dawn after all these years to discuss the state of American letters." I lit a Red Apple and thought about waking up the bourbon.

"Ho! Your succinctness has been sharpened by the years! I like that, sir. I have a business proposition, Mr. Ray, that I should like to discuss with you."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Max, but I was under the impression that we had concluded all the business we were going to transact some time ago."

"By any chance, have you had any recent contact with a young woman named Elinor Dashwood?" He spit out her name in that pseudo-British way he affected, even though old Vogelstein hailed from Red Bank.

His question didn't surprise me. I knew this name was coming from the moment I heard his voice on the other end of the phone, and I wondered how long it would take before he dropped it.

"Depends on what you mean by recent," I said.

"Ho! I thought so. Mr. Ray, I strongly advise you to take a breakfast meeting with me this morning. I think you will be interested in what I have to say, sir. 9 a.m. The Café Denouement."

"I'm pretty busy today, Max. What's this about?"

"Not over the phone, sir."

Then he hung up.

Coming up next: Chapter 6 - Breakfast with Max