The Agency (28 page)

I’M A PRACTICAL PERSON
when it comes to the theater. I get an aisle seat in a back row, because by the time intermission comes around, I’m dying to pee, and if you don’t sprint for the ladies’ toilet as the orchestra plays the last trumpet fanfare, you wind up in a queue of ninety women crossing their legs and dancing in place. Theaters are obviously designed by men, who think this is all very funny.

I exited the loo after conducting my business and strolled out to the sidewalk, where the smokers were gathered. The Garrick is not air-conditioned, so I decided that smoky air outside was better than hot air inside. They say that secondhand smoke will kill you, but as an ex-smoker myself I like to take the occasional whiff to remind me of what I’m missing.

Taxis whizzed up and down Charing Cross. Teenagers with punk-spiked hair spilled out of Leicester Square. I was only a block or so from the Bardwright offices, and I thought about bailing on the rest of the musical and heading to the building to get
some work done. Maybe pack a box or two. If I did want to resign, there were things inside I’d like to remove before Cosima had a chance to lock me out. But I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

Nearby, someone lit up. Smoke greeted my nostrils. God, I want a cigarette. I drifted in the direction of the Benson & Hedges aroma and realized that the smoke trail led to Guy Droste-Chambers, looking like a swollen wine barrel in his tuxedo. His plump cheeks were two rosy spiderwebs of blood vessels, flushed by several ounces of gin. There were crumbs in his beard, and his thinning hair had been mussed by the wind. He stood alone, leaning against the theater’s stone wall as if propping it up. When you catch someone like that, before he knows anyone is watching him, you can take a little peek into his soul. Guy looked like a man whom life was passing by too quickly, and he wasn’t happy with the course of the river.

“Hello, Guy,” I said.

He took the cigarette out of his mouth. His smile bloomed with a sinister delight when he saw me. He made the requisite review of my breasts, to make sure they had accompanied me to the theater.

“Ah, Filippa, darling, what a delight.”

“Nice tux,” I said.

Guy patted his stomach where the cummerbund labored to cover it. “Thank you for saying so. And you’re a vision, as always.”

He checked again. My breasts were still there.

“Enjoying the play?” I asked.

Guy shrugged, and his jowls quivered. “You know me. I was probably the only person on the planet who laughed at the end of
Les Miz
. The only damn musical I ever liked was
The Producers
. That ‘Springtime for Hitler’ number? What a hoot.”

“Yes, I loved that.”

Guy threw his cigarette on the ground. I thought about picking it up to get a puff or two, but I restrained myself.

“I understand you were in New York,” Guy told me.

“Dorothy called you?”

He nodded. “That was why I left a message on your voice mail.
I thought we should talk. She told me all about this con artist and the scam he’s trying to run on her.”

I needed to tell Dorothy to be more discreet. The more people who knew, the more likely this would wind up in the papers. Guy was a sieve when it came to gossip.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” I told him.

“No? It sounded bad.”

“I’m sure the manuscript is a fake. We just need to prove it.”

Guy stroked his beard. “No doubt, but it is a tad inconvenient. The timing and all, I mean. Not just for Dorothy but for you, too. Perhaps we should talk about making it go away.”

“You mean pay him off?” I asked. “No way.”

First my father, now Guy. Everyone thought I was backing a losing horse.

“Well, you know best, but Dorothy is a wreck. The sooner we get past this, the sooner she can forget this nonsense and get back to her books. Sending a few dollars toward this Milton character wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

“A few dollars? If he had a legitimate claim, Milton would want millions.”

“Not exactly a dent in Dorothy’s net worth,” Guy said.

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe, but this is bad for both of you, darling. You can’t exactly waltz away from Cosima if Dorothy’s next deal is tied up in court. And, speaking for myself, I don’t want to delay our next bestseller any longer than necessary.”

“Dorothy would never agree to a settlement,” I told him. “You know that. It would be like admitting she’s a thief. And if it ever got out, the whole industry would think she stole the idea for the panda books.”

“Are you one hundred percent sure she didn’t?” Guy asked.

“That’s nice, Guy. Very nice. Shall I tell Dorothy you said that?”

“Oh, come now—do you mean to tell me you don’t have any doubts? We live in the real world, Filippa. Have you seen the manuscript?”

“Parts of it.”

“Well?”

“It’s convincing,” I acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean a thing.”

“If it’s convincing to you, what would a jury say? You know as well as I do that proof is a slippery thing in this kind of case. Which is why it might be better for all of us to make this unfortunate allegation disappear as quickly as it came.”

Something in Guy’s manner made me suspicious. Fat men sweat, but he was sweating more than usual. I thought about seeing him and Saleema together at the restaurant in Mayfair, shortly before David Milton made his move on Dorothy.

Could Guy be a part of the conspiracy?

Who better to coach a writer on imitating Dorothy’s style than the man who had been her editor for ten years?

“Have you seen the manuscript?” I asked.

“Me? No.”

“So why would you be talking about a settlement without even seeing it?”

“I’m just thinking about the proper strategy,” Guy said. “This has to be a legal and business decision, nothing more. Sometimes emotions cloud our judgment in these matters.”

In front of the theater, people started to flow back into the lobby. The second act of the musical would be starting soon. Passion and betrayal in the midst of religious strife. My lover is dead—I think I’ll sing about it.

“The manuscript is fake,” I told Guy.

“And two years from now, maybe a jury will agree with you. Or maybe not. Either way, it’s likely to ruin Dorothy, and you’ll still be sitting in your little cubicle at Bardwright.”

I thought about telling Guy what I suspected—that there was a connection between David Milton and Saleema Azah. If Guy was part of the plot, however, I didn’t want to tip them off and give Saleema a way to cover her tracks. Except Guy was right. So was my father. I couldn’t let this linger in the hands of dueling lawyers for years. Dorothy wouldn’t write a word with this hanging over
her head. If someone wanted to target her Achilles’ heel, they had found the perfect spot.

Which was something Guy would know better than anyone.

“This is in your hands, Filippa,” Guy continued. “You need to do what’s right for Dorothy, which is to make this go away as swiftly as possible. If you can prove the manuscript is a fake, so be it. If you can’t, then you need to help Dorothy understand the realities of the situation.”

There was a smugness in how he said it. As if he knew I would never prove it was a fake. It made me more convinced than ever that Guy’s hand was in this. He had his eyes on a retirement home in the Lake District, and this was a way to get the assets he wanted. Maybe it was ego, too. To prove that he could mastermind a literary fraud, like an artist who does a painting that could pass for a van Gogh.

Great, now all I can think about is one-eared pandas.

“Tell me something, Guy. How do you think I should go about exposing this bastard?” I asked. “What should I do?”

Guy picked at his beard. “If the manuscript is as good as you say, then I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Maybe I should send it to you and let you take a look.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I have Dorothy’s old notes. From her first agent. This all goes back more than ten years. I figure maybe there will be something in there.”

Guy offered me a sad smile. “Except if I understand the time line, the original idea goes back well before Dorothy’s first scribblings, right? This man, this Tom Milton, would have written his book years before Dorothy did. So it doesn’t really prove anything to look at her early drafts, does it?”

“Probably not,” I agreed.

“There you go. Take my advice, Filippa. Make him an offer, and make this go away. If it’s a fake, as you say, then he won’t be anxious to take it all the way to court and risk exposure. A modest sum will probably send him back into the closet where he belongs.”

“How modest?” I asked.

“Oh, I have no idea. That’s for the solicitors to work out.”

“I’m surprised you’re pushing so hard about this, Guy.”

“Like I said, my only interest is in selling more books. The sooner this is all behind us, the sooner we can wrap up that new contract for Dorothy that you want so badly. The first contract for your new agency.”

It was tempting, I admit. Tempting to cross David Milton off my list. If I talked to Dorothy, if I explained everything to her, I could make her see the wisdom of settling early. Guy knew it. Hell, I could even argue that it might save her money in the long run, given the legal expenses of a drawn-out investigation and trial. Regardless of whether the book was a fake, there was also no guarantee that we would win in the end.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“You do that. Believe me, I want to see you and Dorothy both out from under Cosima’s thumb.”

“I’m trying to be patient,” I said.

“You?”

“There’s always a first time.”

“Well, timing is everything, Filippa. I gather the street is way ahead of you in talking about your plans.”

“Oh?”

Guy nodded. “Haven’t you heard the gossip tonight? I assumed you were the source of it.”

“What gossip? About my leaving the agency?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Guy said. “Word is that something huge is going be announced at Bardwright next week. An earthquake of some sort. I figured you must know what that is.”

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I don’t.

AFTER THE MUSICAL
was
OVER
, I tried to catch up with Sally in the crowd of glammed-up socialites heading for the exits. If anyone had the dirt about big changes coming at Bardwright, it was she. Sally knows everything. When I finally spotted her from afar, however, she had already been cornered in the Garrick lobby by Cosima, who flashed a barracuda smile and clutched Sally’s shoulder with a death grip of red nails. The noble thing would have been to rescue my friend, but I didn’t want a rerun with Cosima. That could wait until Monday.

I wasn’t feeling particularly sleepy. My body clock was off. Two transatlantic flights in two days, followed by a late-night visit with a suicidal friend, will do that to you. As far as my brain was concerned, it may as well have been noon in the midst of a solar eclipse.

I strolled into Leicester Square, which on Saturday nights is like an outdoor showing of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. Hair the color of Easter eggs. Pierced noses, lips, eyebrows, belly buttons, and nipples. Leather and mascara. Black boots with six-inch
heels. Gangs of young people swarmed around the Odeon, which is where most of the London movie premieres take place. I had traipsed the red carpet myself a few times, which was when the popzees usually changed the batteries in their cameras. But that was before my Julien Macdonald.

I smelled Chinese food and Lebanese kebabs. I was in the mood for something sweet, so I bought a scoop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream in a cup and ate it slowly as I wandered past the gift shops on the west end of the square. Boys eyed me in my silver dress, and I knew what they were thinking. Hot older chick, mates, bet she could teach us a thing or two. Snotty bastards. Just yesterday I was seventeen, hanging out with bad boys like them on the weekend, inhaling the occasional joint in nightclub doorways. Then the magician waves his magic wand, and I’m thirty-six.

I wandered past the entrance to Chinatown and into the craziness of Piccadilly Circus. Traffic hurtled by in every direction. Laughing young people went up and down the stairs to the Tube. Neon reflected on my glittery dress. I leaned on the railing and stared at the status of Eros across the street and thought about life and love whipping by me as fast as the taxis. Guy probably felt the same way. More often than not, we are spectators at our own lives. I didn’t want to end up like him or Cosima or even Sally. I had other plans in mind.

Life in the fast lane was fine. Bring it on. Plane rides and sleepless nights. Good days and bad. Geniuses, fools, and shallow egos. A high-wire act without a net. That was okay. Win or lose, it was okay.

I knew Guy was right. So was my father. Better to settle with David Milton. Better to get it off the table and move on. Better for Dorothy, better for me. The lawyer would tell me the same thing. Except there was no way I was going to give David Milton the satisfaction. Or Saleema. No way I was going to allow myself to be beaten. No way I would roll over and let Dorothy hand her money to blackmailers. My dad calls it pitching a Winnie: when you get the steel in your back like Churchill and choose to fight a battle that everyone tells you you’re going to lose.