The Way of All Fish: A Novel (5 page)

“Oh, right.” Karl smiled broadly.

L. Bass Hess’s receptionist raised a gentle hand, letting them know they needn’t inconvenience themselves with a response. She pressed a button. A staticky reply came through, and she answered, “Mr. Hale and Mr. Reeves are here.” More static.

Karl saw the nameplate as they passed her desk, which told them she was cutely called Stephie, although she was well into her sixties.

The office was leather, glass, and books, much the same as the reception room. It was inhabited by a couple of leather sofas face-to-face across another magazine-toting coffee table; a couple of chairs pulled up to Hess’s desk; and the desk itself, holding neat stacks of books and folders and writing tablets.

And inhabited by Hess himself, a man with insanely red hair that looped and whirled around his head, untamable. His eyes were such a watery light brown that they looked washed away, and his face was haggard and hawklike. He wore a wide-striped shirt and a bow tie, and the jacket hitched on the back of his chair was a dark Donegal tweed that did not go with the tie, the shirt, or the hair. A man of many parts, and none of them fit.

He stood behind the desk as if he couldn’t bear to waste a minute of his time by sitting down. Instead of greeting them with a handshake and hello, Hess darted a look from Candy to Karl and back. “Who’s Hale and who’s Reeves?”

Candy and Karl looked at each other, Candy making a gesture that said “you first.” Karl said, “I’m Hale.” Candy said with a wide smile, “That makes me Reeves, then.”

Hess didn’t wait for confirmation, nor did he invite them to have a seat. He bent over a folder on his desk, slowly fingering its pages. He wet his forefinger to help with this task.

Candy thought that was kind of cute—that is, for Hess being otherwise a perfect jerk. No manners at all, probably treated everybody but his high-flying clients like scumbags.

“I’m adding this to the complaint. She should certainly want to settle.”

Since they had no idea what he was talking about, they simply looked thoughtfully at different fixtures in the room. They shrugged, then muttered versions of “yes,” “maybe,” and “who knows?”

Candy wondered where the Bass came from. On the wall beside the window that looked out over Broadway, there was a big stuffed fish that could have been a bass. Interesting name, wasted on this guy. And what did the L. stand for?

“Right. Now, about this complaint—”

Hess’s eyes narrowed. “Duke Borax told you, didn’t he?”

Duke Borax. Candy mentally sorted through the names of Joey G-C’s outfit, but he didn’t come up with anybody as insecure as a guy who would call himself Duke.

“Of course, of course,” said Karl. “Only, you know, Borax, he ain—he isn’t always a stickler for details.”

“He’s one of the partners at your law firm, for God’s sake. Of
course
he’s a stickler for details. Just what don’t you understand?” The eyes narrowed to even thinner slits.

Candy heard the suspicion in his voice and said, “We understand. It’s just that Mr. Hale here likes things straight from the horse’s mouth.” He smiled.

The horse’s mouth didn’t exactly smile back. It was more of a crumple of the lips, up and down in a wavy line, as if the mouth couldn’t decide on a course of action. It was a Charlie Brown mouth without the Charlie Brown charm. Bass Hess hovered over the file, leaning on it as if it were about to come alive beneath his hands. “Let’s be clear about one thing: I’ve got the papers on her. You should be urging her to settle.”

As two circles flushed in Hess’s cheeks, Karl said, “Understood.” He reached out for the folder that Hess had clamped to his chest like a mother reluctant to give up her child to the baby minder. Then he unclenched and handed the folder over. “Otherwise, her career will be in ruins.”

Candy was used to snakes, but the hiss actually made him retreat a step.

With a few more assurances of confidentiality, they left.

Just as they set foot outside the Hess Agency door, they glanced down the hall to see the elevator doors open and two guys in suits emerge. The suits looked as if they shopped together to make sure their clothes complemented one another. Both in pinstripes, one gray, one navy, they stood for a moment conferring. The taller and handsomer of the two reminded Candy of somebody, but he couldn’t place him.

“If that’s the three o’clock appointment, we better hit that exit.” Karl nodded toward the red sign on their side of the elevators. “Hess is going to go bananas. He’ll call security.”

The two who had just exited the elevator were walking slowly, turned toward each other, hands moving. To Candy they looked, in their synchronized movements, like a couple of tap dancers. Then he realized who the tall one reminded him of: Richard Gere in
Chicago
.

They reached the exit before Hale and Reeves (if that was who they were) passed them. It was only four flights, and they were used to running down stairs. They reached the lobby in two minutes flat and left the building.

A
rent-a-cop was on his cell and beginning to move out from around the counter as they exited through the glass doors. He hadn’t seen them. They stopped right in front of a coffee shop two doors down and pretended to be pondering the menu. Candy watched the guard out of the corner of his eye look left and right, then across at the park, probably thinking the two men had made a dash for it through the trees. He went back into the building.

“What the hell is this shit?” Candy was trying to read what was in the folder as Karl hailed a cab.

They went back to their East Houston warehouse, where they lived on the second and third levels. The first level was dead space. They wanted it that way. That empty floor was probably worth $2 million, but they didn’t care; they liked the look of a warehouse. They believed in a low profile. And nobody who had a beef with them would be looking for them in Manhattan. Probably thought they were in South America, Venezuela or Guadalajara, or on some island off the map. Not that it made much difference, because anyone with a beef would rather give up the beef than go up against Candy and Karl.

Anyway, they didn’t want anyone else living in their building. Despite their many superficial differences, they were much alike. They had no families; they bought their clothes in Façonnable; they mourned the passing of
The Sopranos
(and thought the weird ending heralded a return someday); they ate at good restaurants; they liked women but not too many and not too often; they killed people; they were solid.

They entered the building on Houston through its thick metal door
and took the old cage elevator that ratcheted up to the second level and Candy’s flat. He wanted to check on his fish.

Karl rolled his eyes as they went in through the bulletproof walnut door to cool white comfort. Except it was getting less and less cool, since Candy had been out all morning buying new stuff more “in synch” with a fish’s environment.

Where before had stood a wooden butler who held out a small tray for keys and cards was now a sculpture of a boy on a shark or whale or dolphin, Karl couldn’t say. Its head was flattened to serve as a tray. Candy had bought it at a secondhand place on Broome.

There was nice white butter-leather furniture all over and clean glass tables, including a dining table surrounded by Louis Ghost chairs. Now there were shell candlesticks on the handsome white fireplace mantel. On one wall was a hammered metal school of fish, all looking determined.

Candy said C.F. looked content.

Karl said he damned well ought to, look at the size of the tank he was hanging out in. “You know, that’s what it mostly does: hang. I never saw any fish just hang there like that one. And that tank’d hold a fuckin’ great white shark.”

The tank was really big; it took up half a wall. And it was filled with the aquarium stuff Candy had gotten from their friend the night of the café incident. Candy had added what looked like a whole coral reef. “Fish ought to have room to swim in,” said Candy. “And privacy. His own space.” The clown fish had plenty of personal space. Candy had put a structure in the tank that Karl said looked like a W Hotel.

Karl went to the glass table on wheels where the whiskey and gin and Scotch sat and unstoppered the whiskey.

Candy sat down with the folder and an
omph!
as if he’d been on his Bruno Magli–loafered feet all day. He opened the folder again to the first page. “What is this shit, K?”

Karl was fizzing soda into two glasses. “How should I know?” He carried the drinks over to the fireplace where two leather chairs faced each other and handed one to Candy. He took a swig of his own while looking over Candy’s shoulder. “It’s some legal shit.”

“Yeah, I know that. You know who the plaintiff and defendants are?”

Their legal vocabulary was stunted except when it came to matters with which they had grown familiar.

“Hess is the plaintiff, and the defendant’s Cindy Sella.”

“The only one in those photos in his waiting room who looks like she’s got a life.”

“He’s suing her publisher, too. Some outfit called Harbor Books—Whoa! Listen to this: Harbor Books is part of Mackenzie-Haack.” Candy slapped down the folder and stared at Karl.

“Our old buddy Bobby Mackenzie, the friggin’ son of a bitch! Is he back from— Where’d we get him a ticket to?”

“Africa? Who knows. No, it was Australia, I think. Clive called me last month.” Clive Esterhaus was the unfortunate senior editor at Mackenzie-Haack whom Bobby had assigned the dirty job of finding a hit man. Candy went for his glasses. The print seemed to be deteriorating before his eyes.

Karl was up and firing the soda from the syphon into his glass. It was more that he wanted exercise than soda water. “So what about Clive?”

“Clive’s okay. Bobby gave him some reward, like his own book thing. What d’ya call it? Imprint? Like that.”

“Good. Clive deserved it. I’m surprised Bobby Mackenzie can make a generous gesture. Maybe we taught him something.” Since their foray into the shadowy halls of the publishing world the year before, Karl had become well acquainted with its language, some of it extremely peculiar. It was almost as bad as legal.

“Bobby really treated him like shit.”

“Bobby treats everybody like shit. Except he’s cool.” Karl chuckled.

“So how does Bobby keep ’em in line?”

Karl snuffled a laugh. “Breaks legs. Y’know, if Bobby Mackenzie wasn’t such a self-centered SOB, I think he coulda made a name for himself in our line of work.”

“No, he ain’t got our scruples, K.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s so. Come on, what else’s in those papers?” Karl picked up his glass from the cocktail napkin that stuck to it. It had red coral printed against a turquoise background.

Candy said, turning a page, “As far as I can make out, Cindy Sella—defendant—is guilty of breach of contract and the tacit—tacit?”

Karl said, “It means unspoken but understood.”

Candy nodded. “Okay. Tacit understanding of the irrevocability of the agency clause—”

“What the hell’s that?”

Candy raised his hands in an “I surrender” gesture. “Don’t ask me.”

“Okay, so the bottom line here is what?”

“Can’t find one.”

“It’s got to be money, maybe love. How many bottom lines are there? There’s ‘I love you dot dot dot’; or ‘I owe you dot dot dot.’ How much is he claiming she owes him?”

“I don’t see it.” Candy leafed through the sheaf of papers. “I can’t read this stuff. I bet his own lawyers never read it. This looks like some sleight-of-hand guy at one of Trump’s casinos did the writing. It’s definitely in the ‘now you see it now you don’t’ category.” Candy got up and went over to the fish tank and tapped in a few flakes of something.

Shaved truffles, probably, thought Karl, who was staring up at the ceiling, thinking.

They were silent for some minutes. Candy contemplated renaming his fish.

“You know what?” said Karl.

“What?” Malcolm, maybe. Or Oscar.

“Is her address in there?”

“Yeah. West Village, on Grove. Why?”

“I think maybe we ought to pay a visit to our girl Cindy.”

Already she was their girl.

Lucky Cindy.

C
indy was looking out of her Grub Street window at what she could see of midtown Manhattan. Not much. She wished it were dark and the Empire State Building would light up, because a corner of it was visible if she stretched her neck a little. The rest of what she saw was the building across the alley and up on the corner, Ray’s coffee shop, where she spent a large part of her time. There was even a booth at the rear that they kind of kept for her, “kind of” meaning if somebody else got to the booth first, that was okay with them. New York, she had found almost immediately upon getting there, was a world of everyday small betrayals.

She thought she might have gotten along extremely well, albeit in her extremely minor key, with Dr. Johnson and Addison and Steele and the others (the “others,” Cindy?), not in any way because of her writing (as if that fact needed saying even to herself) but because she loved coffee shops. When she imagined eighteenth-century London, it was so easy to insert herself into a chair at White’s or the St. James or the Turk’s Head, and there to sip coffee and smoke . . . did women smoke pipes? That was a really nice touch.

She had lived in this same apartment for nearly seven years, and she was happy knowing it wouldn’t be turned into condos or a co-op, because then she’d have to buy the apartment or move. She’d remind herself she’d written three books in this place, and it might be ungrateful to kick it aside like an old shoe.

For God’s sake. It was bad enough assigning feelings to every cat dog mouse roach that crossed her path, did she have to anthropomorphize the inanimate?

She pressed down a key on her typewriter. She still used her old IBM Selectric. She smiled at the stir it had created when her dad’s secretary got one, her fulminating over the machine. Miss Duckworth (the secretary) liked to draw comparisons between the Selectric and her elderly Royal or Remington. Why she liked to discuss the IBM with the child, who was four or five, Cindy couldn’t imagine. But she had the impression that she had known back then. How queer. She’d made her father promise that he would give her the typewriter.