Dead Men Don't Blog: A John Ray Mystery - Chapter 10

I told the second Elinor Dashwood that I would give some serious thought to our conversation. She seemed satisfied with that, smiling that creamy little self-congratulatory smile of hers, her teeth whiter than a John Updike character. I escorted her through the communicating door into the outer office where Lana was typing and chewing gum and doing both vigorously. She didn't look up.

After Miss Dashwood left, I waited with the office door open a crack until I heard Jimmy's bright "Going down, Miss?" Someone is, I thought, and it ain't gonna be me. I heard the accordion cage door closing and the soft whine and clatter of the lift making its descent. I shut the door and went back into my office. Lana followed me and sat down across from my desk. The beginning of a storm announced itself with a low rumble dopplering through the city's canyons, and raindrops clicked against my office window.

"What's the eephus, boss?"

"I need you to do me a couple big favors this morning, Kitten," I said, rummaging through a desk drawer.

"You bet."

"That package locked in your desk, I need you to take it down the street to old man Noodleman the notary."

"With any luck he won't be drunk yet," she snapped her gum.

"Have him notarize the cover page, the one with my copyright on it, and the first page of every chapter."

"Jack? You wrote a new novel?"

"An old novel, Precious. Just never published."

"Can I read it?"

"Maybe later," I said, "when some of this stuff blows over."

"What's going on, Jack?"

"I'm not exactly sure yet. May be just a couple of ghouls settling a score and sifting through a pile of dry old bones, trying to find one big enough to hit each other over the head with. Or it may just be a big fat grift."

"Who's the mark?"

"You're lookin' at him," I said, finding the old address book I was looking for and flipping it open. I pulled a Post-It from a pad and wrote down an address.

"If Noodleman's already half-smoked from too much eel juice, just notarize things yourself, Cupcake. You know where he keeps the seal. I'll make things jakeloo with him later."

"Is that it?"

"No," I said. "Then I need you to take the notarized copy across the street to the Kinko's and have them make a copy. Just one. Stay with them while they do it, don't leave it."

"Okay."

I told her to rewrap the original, take it downtown, and mail it to the P.O. box that we use for the business. I gave her the Post-It.

"This is the address of a transcriptionist," I said. "Her name is Bootsie Stencil, she's over in the Dubinsky Building. I wrote this thing on a typewriter, and we need to get an electronic copy of it. Give her the photocopy to key in. She's racehorse fast and won't peach. Tell her who it's for, tell her I'll pay her rush charge if she does it immediately and then suffers a case of amnesia once she's done. If she balks or says she can't do it, tell her I'll give her an extra two cents a word. Tell her when she's finished to burn the files to a CD, mail the CD to our P.O. box, and then hand-deliver the photocopy she worked from to the basement incinerator. Make sure she understands, I don't want it shredded, I want it turned to ash."

"I don't need to wait around for all that to get done, do I?"

"No, Angel, because I need you to get back here and do some research for me."

I filled her in a bit on some of the things that had transpired over the last two days, and gave her some instruction about what I needed her to do when she got back.

"I'd do this notarizing and printing business myself, Muffin, but someone would likely tail me, for one thing, and I've also got this conference call this morning which I'm going to have to do from my cell phone as it is. Unless you'd like to do that for me instead?" I grinned at her.

"A Red Team proposal review? Ug. No thanks. I'd rather be forced to read White Fang again."

"That's what I figured."

The storm outside had become a force now, throwing gouts of rain against my window hard enough to almost clean it.

"I suppose I need to do all this lickety split, huh?" she frowned.

"Sorry, Dollface. Wear your slicker. And you can take my umbrella."

"No, it's not that." She pushed the chair back, lifted a leg, and propped her left foot on my desk, showing me an open-toed pump with a 3-1/2-inch heel, fire-engine red and gleaming like a showroom Porsche.

"Nice," I said. "Stuart Weitzman?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "Just got 'em, too."

"Aw, nuts," I said. Sometimes I really hated this rummy business.

*

After assuring Lana that John Ray Industries would bear responsibility for any material damage to those new skates of hers, I took the stairs double-time and exited through the fire door. I didn't feel like jawing with Jimmy at the moment, plus I didn't want him knowing that I'd left the building, in case someone dropped by and quizzed him. I'd told Lana to give me a ten minute head start before she set out on the errands I'd given her.

I snapped up the collar of my raincoat. The rain was angling down in sharp sheets, and I zigzagged a few blocks, trying to avoid walking into the teeth of it. The taxicabs must be made of sugar in this city because every time there's a hard rain like this there are none to be found. I ended up splashing the entire seven blocks down to the Gazette. Despite the weather, I was rather looking forward to the even darker shadow that I expected to pass over Page Reid's face when he saw me again.

He was at his desk in the Arts & Entertainment bullpen, chin in his hand, his face not more than a few inches from his computer screen, tapping his mouse button every few seconds. For some reason that made me feel bad for him, briefly. Made me feel bad for the whole lot of us. God knows I'd spent my share of time in that posture just to make a buck.

He didn't see me right away because things were busy at this time of day, full staff working against deadline on tomorrow's Weekender insert. I slumped down in the chair next to his desk but he didn't look up. Then I took off my hat and gave it a shake.

"Hey, what the— oh, hell. You again. What's the big idea, Jack? You got water all over my keyboard."

"Sorry about that, Page. I didn't realize it was raining and that I'd gotten wet."

"I thought we were square."

"We are, Page, I told you we were. I just have a couple more questions about this Dashwood dame you set onto me."

"I didn't set her on to you, Jack. She brought up you. She already knew who you were, for some reason." I didn't like that "for some reason" business but I let it pass.

"Exactly. Why in the world should she know about a nobody and loser like me? Didn't that raise your reporter's red flag? Oh, wait, that's right. You're not a reporter." Well, I guess I didn't let it pass at that.

"Up yours, Jack. I make an honest living. Why do you have such a bee in your bonnet about what I do?"

"It's not what you do, Page, it's who you do it about. Ten thousand books published in this country every year; you've got space for one, maybe two reviews a day and you use for it for what? Courtney Thorne-Smith's book about her dog? How Valerie Bertinelli got fat and then got unfat?"

"It's a newspaper, Jack, not a platform for my personal crusade to improve the standards of the reading public. Even the New York Times had Grisham's new novel on the cover of the Sunday book review. It's just business."

"So I keep hearing."

"Well, maybe someday it'll finally sink in," he said tightly.

"Maybe," I said. "Look, I didn't swim all the way down here on this beautiful morning to pick a fight with you, Page. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions."

"What's in it for me?" he said.

"What do you want, Page? Cabbage?"

While Page was pretending to think about that, the cell phone in my jacket pocket began to buzz. I figured it was the alarm I'd set to let me know I had about twenty minutes before I had to dial in to the conference bridge for the call I had to attend. I let it go.

"I don't need your dough, Jack." He pulled open the desk drawer between us. It was filled with books.

"I'm backlogged on novels here," he said. "I can't get anyone to review fiction. I need someone to freelance these. The paper will pay, of course."

"You want me review books?"

"You asked me what I wanted."

"Sorry, Page. I can't review fiction for you. It's a conflict of interest."

"What are you talking about? How's it a conflict of interest?"

"Well, I have no interest. Hence the conflict."

He slammed the drawer shut.

"Okay, then, take the air. Dust."

I thought about it for a minute.

"Okay," I said. "I'll see to it that these get reviewed for you."

"What does that mean? I need someone legit."

"Don't worry, it'll be show quality. How much?"

"A century for about 800 words. Gazette standard."

"You need to tell your keepers that reviewing books is a lot more work than reviewing a movie that takes 90 minutes to sit through. Make it two."

Page frowned, like it would be money out of his own pocket. Company man.

"Okay, sure, two hundred. Better be good stuff."

"Better than I can do, trust me," I said.

My cell phone began to buzz again. I looked at my watch. Something didn't jive. I took the phone from my pocket. It was Lana.

"Sorry, Page, give me a couple ticks. Gotta take this."

"Hello, Angel," I said.

"Jack, where are you, I've been trying to reach you on your cell and at the office."

"What's wrong?"

"Jack. The manuscript. It's not here."

"It's not where?" I said.

"This package. These pages are blank. It's just a stack of blank printer paper."

I took a breath and slowly, deliberately forced a fake smile, hoping that I hadn't reacted noticeably. I glanced over at Page. We has staring into his computer screen again, expressionless, the reflection from his monitor making his eyes look pale and blank.