Chapter 12 - Where the Truth Lies

I WAS DEAD, or at least dead tired, even as I awoke. I felt like a battery that had spent the night in a recharging device that no one had plugged in. The oxygen-rich air on my plane ride with Lanny had inspired me to drink well past my usual limit, and each burst of giddiness I’d felt yesterday was now memorialized by a burst capillary in my brain.

A Princess phone was ringing somewhere below me. To evade its miserable chirp, I tried to incorporate the sound into my dream, in which I was the pilot of the world’s first commercial hang glider (seating eighty in the folding chairs my family used to bring out each Thanksgiving). I was, of course, naked in the cockpit and there was a Princess phone on the instrument panel of the plane just above the eight-track player. The phone kept ringing so I asked my father, who was copiloting, to take over the controls while I awoke in order to determine who was calling.

I sat up in bed and cracked my forehead hard against the ceiling above me as if I were in the opening scene of a bad sitcom. My hand reached up to feel a smooth solid surface over my head, like the lid of a coffin. Panic genuinely overtook me, and I rolled to my left to determine if I was boxed in on all sides; I realized in the same instant that I was not buried alive but merely in that damn loft bed in Beejay’s apartment, perched just below her ceiling—and with that comforting thought came the accompanying realization that rolling to my left meant I was no longer on that damn loft bed but falling off its edge and dropping to the floor, which I now hit. Why is there never a laugh track around when you really need it? Worse, a heavy metal bar landed on my shoulder; another sitcom moment. It was a steel bar “police lock” meant to be braced against the front door at a forty-five-degree angle to prevent intruders, but Beejay said she preferred having the steel bar in bed with her, where she could use it on the intruder after he’d broken in. Such was Beejay’s logic.

Luckily, I hadn’t broken anything, though I’d banged my left shin quite painfully against the metal ladder that led from the floor up to the bed. The phone had stopped ringing on the fifth ring, after which all calls were automatically relayed to Beejay’s answering service, so my injuries were for naught.

What time was it? I had no idea. The chirping noise started again, and I scuttled under the roof of Beejay’s bed and found the Princess phone.

“Hello?”

“Bonnie.”

“Who? Shit!” Straightening up, I’d hit my head on the underside of the loft.

The voice of Lanny Morris said, “I’m sorry, I’m trying to reach a Bonnie Trout.”

And I remembered I had a new name. God, how I loathed beginning the day by verifying this immense lie of mine, particularly before I’d had coffee. I’d hitherto thought I possessed some halfway decent ethics as a journalist, certainly more than rock writers of the period, who had no qualms about sampling a rock band’s cocaine while interviewing them in the men’s room at the launch party for their new album.

“Bonnie, you there?” Until such time as I could admit my deception to Lanny (and how I was already looking forward to that little chat!), perhaps I could at least reply to him without overtly perpetuating or progressing the already-scummy falsehood I’d conjured so glibly on the plane. From this moment on, I vowed to do my best not to actually confirm or embroider the lie. So instead of replying “Yes” to his “Bonnie, you there?” I neutrally responded, “Lanny? Is that you?”

“No, it’s the Four Seasons featuring the sound of Frankie Valli. How’d you like the show?”

The show. “What show?”

“The Today show. You did watch, didn’t you?” He sounded almost shaken. “You didn’t watch. Wow, that’s scary.”

I stumbled, “I’m sorry, I had more than I usually drink—I didn’t know I was supposed to watch. I’ve offended you.”

“No, you don’t understand, I’m not offended, just scared. When you’re a star, you live in terror, wondering if it’s all over yet. You find yourself looking for signs. You’re shooting a scene for a movie on a New York street and a crowd doesn’t form. You show up at Lutèce without a reservation and the maître d’ seats the couple ahead of you first. You meet a girl on a plane and tell her you’ll be on the Today show the next morning and she doesn’t wake up early to watch. Very scary. You know, I mentioned you on TV. On the Today show.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I proposed to you on the air and everything. My guess is your apartment building is surrounded by photographers at this very moment.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Yeah, sure I’m kidding. But look, help me out here. After I left you last night, you did call someone and tell them you’d met me and I went up with you in your elevator, saw you to your door, we kissed, we’re supposed to see each other today?”

“Yes, I told a girl I know, my best friend.”

“Okay, that’s okay then.” He sounded very relieved. “By the way, when you told her I kissed you, she said, ‘Lanny Morris, oh, he’s such a geek,’ didn’t she?”

I hesitated. “No.”

“Sure she did. So when do you want to have lunch?”

I told him truthfully that I had a business appointment in midtown at eleven-thirty and that I wasn’t sure when it might end. He was surprised that a teacher would have a business appointment during summer vacation, but I explained I was exploring the possibility of a different kind of job, something in publishing, a copywriter or editor or proofreader, anything along those lines. I was trying to work my way toward the day when I would tell him I was in fact already in publishing and that I’d recently had occasion to review a portion of his own writing.

He sighed. “Okay, I’ll see if I can take a morning nap—I only got a few hours’ sleep last night. Why don’t you just come here to the Plaza when your meeting is done? Suite 2302. Mr. Merwin, remember? If I’m napping, Reuben will let you in. You remember Reuben.” I told him I remembered. He ventured, “You have anything else to do after your business meeting, or can I have you for the whole day?”

I said in so many words that he could, without knowing exactly what “have you for the whole day” might entail. I told myself it was what Neuman and Newberry would have wanted me to say. We hung up cordially, if not cooingly, and I reached for the cigarettes I’d been eyeing the entire time I’d been on the phone with him.

I always smoke when I’m uneasy and now, awake and sober, I needed very much to smoke. Of course I had every reason to feel anxious, with a veil of my sheer deception now hanging between me and Lanny, a scrim that could be rendered transparent with the merest change in backlighting. I was also a smidge uneasy about my approaching business appointment at eleven-thirty. But I was certain my wariness came primarily from something disquieting in what Beejay had read to me the night before. And for the life of me, I didn’t know what it was.

It certainly wasn’t the identification of the Girl in New Jersey as sad Maureen O’Flaherty, the redheaded room-service girl from Miami inexplicably found dead in the tub of Vince and Lanny’s suite in New Jersey. I had already researched what there was to learn about her, until I likely knew more about the Girl in New Jersey than anyone, outside of what the police (or the boys) were keeping to themselves.

Maureen was so absurdly Irish that simply stating her family background made it sound like you were starting up a joke. Her father was an Irish bartender, the son of an Irish cop whose brother was an Irish-Catholic priest, and her mother was either a niece or cousin to the great George M. Cohan himself. And like that Yankee Doodle Dandy, Maureen had lived in New Rochelle (a town in Westchester that is only “forty-five minutes from Broadway,” as goes the title of one of Cohan’s songs), and yes, of course, her mother’s name was Mary. Maureen had reportedly been a “good” girl throughout her adolescence and had talked about being an English teacher, possibly at a parochial school. During her senior year at Hunter College, she took a spring vacation in Miami for a week, which turned into a month, which turned into a few years, which turned into forever in a bathtub in Palisades Park, New Jersey.

All this I already knew, so hearing Beejay report the discovery of Maureen’s corpse couldn’t be the cause of my uneasiness. No, it was something else lurking in or about the text I’d heard that was giving me low-lying jitters, and unlike a caffeine or nicotine fix, I didn’t know exactly where to find its remedy.

In times of inner panic, I find it comforting to make lists. The very useless act of setting down information in a numbered column with check boxes to the left of each item can infuse a sense of peace and purpose to my day.

So I spent the next hour making up just such a list. In the drawer of Beejay’s little desk I found a ream of paper obviously filched from P.S. 29 on Orchard Street. It’d been a long time since I’d seen unholed, blue-lined notepaper with a red-lined left margin, the kind teachers handed out when a test included essay questions. I could hear the groans of old classmates as I wrote:

1. The deep-abiding puzzlement I first felt during my time with Lanny’s manuscript at Hillman’s office has only increased. Why is he sending me these chapters? At the time, his lawyer’s explanation had placated me: Lanny wanted to discourage me from continuing further work on my book by showing me that he was writing one of his own, one that would easily trump my own efforts by virtue of its authenticity. Fine. But with that established, why now send me another chapter?
2. Why is the Lanny I’ve met so different from the Lanny in the pages I’ve read and heard? Admittedly, nearly fifteen years have elapsed since the described events, but am I really thinking these pages were written back when these events occurred? No, there are several comparisons to the present that indicate Lanny has written this fairly recently. Which Lanny is the real one?
3. Most unsettling: Within the course of this new chapter, it’s obvious that something has changed in the working relationship of Lanny and Vince. There’s a sense of resentment and distrust, but I can’t immediately tell who is the more offended party.
4. Had the late Maureen O’Flaherty been invited to await Vince and Lanny in New Jersey while they were on TV in Florida, or did she go there planning to surprise—

I looked up at Beejay’s Felix the Cat clock and realized I’d have no time for the very good coffee at the Pantheon Diner across the street from my publisher if I didn’t get ready for my meeting now. After all, it wasn’t as if I felt on the verge of answering any of the questions I’d just posed to myself.

I opted for the same outfit I’d worn when I took my walk around the Burbank Studios with Vince. It was more summery than I’d normally wear to a business meeting, but I intended to join Lanny immediately thereafter.

At that time, Neuman and Newberry had its offices on the top three floors of the Flatiron Building. I took a taxi without even considering the Twenty-Third Street crosstown bus; staying at Beejay’s instead of at a hotel allowed me to indulge myself in such lesser luxuries without a second thought.

My meeting was with the three people most immediately overseeing my project: Connie Wechsler, Greg Gavin, and Neuman and Newberry’s editor in chief, Lil Walker. Some N&N attorneys might be on hand as well.

Connie was my editor. She was about fifteen years older than I and half a foot shorter, with hair that was dark and frizzy in hard, natural waves. She knew my work and understood me, even gave the impression that she liked me.

Lil Walker was the person to whom Connie reported. When Lil talked about the writers she’d edited in her twenties, one had the distinct feeling that much of the male contingent of the Lost Generation could have been found in her bedroom on any given weekend. She referred to Hemingway as “Ernie” without even thinking about it. (And it was rumored Lil’s pet name for Thomas Wolfe was “Longfellow.”) Although she clearly didn’t know my work very well, she knew Connie and reflexively backed her up whenever she needed support, so that worked out just fine for me.

Greg Gavin was the anomaly that is (ironically) common within most large companies: the mystery man whom everyone believes was hired by someone else. I had first noticed him when I’d inked my deal with N&N at an impromptu signing party (meaning Yago sangria in paper cups in the reception area). He was sitting alone on the receptionist’s desktop, sniffing at the bowl of his empty pipe. He smiled vaguely across the room at Connie and gave the pipe a few hard spanks on the flat of his left hand. I asked Connie who he was, because he looked like he owned the place, or was at least leasing with an option to buy.

Connie murmured, “His name’s Greg Gavin. Everybody’s a little scared of him and no one knows why. One day he just suddenly appeared at a meeting of the editorial board, very nicely outfitted, sucking an unlit briar pipe. I thought he was working with Harv Prescott because he kept smiling these smiles at Harv, so I asked Harv and Harv said he’d assumed Greg and I were working together because he’d kept smirking at me.”

Eventually, a consensus formed within N&N that Gavin was in charge of special marketing. No one was sure what that was either. He’d asked the senior secretary of each department to carbon all inter-office memos to him, and after that, he seemed to simply pick and choose which meetings he attended according to an agenda he kept entirely to himself.

The Flatiron’s elevator rose to my floor in about the same amount of time it took Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to ascend to the throne. The doors opened. There was no receptionist, and security was nonexistent. After all, this was a publishing house, not a bank or a radio station. What was someone going to do—break in and demand their manifesto be published in hardcover by the late fall of next year or hostages would die?

I stepped down the old-fashioned hall, each of the corridor’s tightly spaced doors highlighted by a yellowing translucent glass panel that bore the office’s number and the name of its current resident. I half-expected to see one labeled SAM SPADE AND MILES ARCHER—PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

I let myself into Connie’s office. She always seemed out of place there, since Connie was neither a book nor a manuscript, which happened to be the only other things visible in the room. Her desk, the top of which had long ago been rendered inaccessible by a glacier of accumulated reading matter, now served solely as a beam bridge creating a tunnel where her lap could go amid all the books that filled the little room. She smiled. “Hey, you got here. How’s tricks?”

I told her tricks were fine. She tossed a thick manuscript she was reading onto a heap. “Peeee-yew! Another Kennedy conspiracy book. Should have been written in crayon. According to this one, the mysterious third bullet came from within the limousine. The author claims Jackie did it. Derringer hidden in the pillbox hat, which served as a—as a pillbox, if you think about it.”

I nodded at the pile onto which she had tossed the manuscript. “For the scrap heap?”

“What scrap heap? It’s going straight to the original-paperback department downstairs. Something has to pay for this book you’re writing.” She got up, adjusting her sweater so the various bulges were where they were meant to be. “C’mon, we have to explain to business affairs why we should give Vince Collins, who has lots of money, a lot of money.”

N&N’s impressive conference suite was located in the narrow prow of the landmark building, its copper-clad windows wrapping around the apex of its northward edge. The effect was of being in a bateau-mouche anchored gracefully above the river of Broadway, looking north toward Herald Square—and I promise not to mention George M. yet again.

Lil was late because she could be anything she wanted, but Greg Gavin was already there, as was the head of business affairs, the likable Bernard Besser (who pronounced his first name Burr-nurd), and a skittish-looking young attorney named Jay Drelitch. After niceties about my trip (from which I excluded any mention of Lanny), we sat down at a long triangular conference table that would have seemed a bit impractical anywhere but in this three-sided room. As if he were in charge of the meeting, Greg dealt six slim binders, one to each of us around the table. I stifled the urge to say “Suivi,” as if he were a baccarat dealer, and took a quick look at the first page.

Its heading read: “Suggested Questions for Vince Collins.” The questions appeared to easily outnumber those in the memo I’d written to myself back in Beejay’s apartment.

I closed the binder, feeling rage rising within me.

Bernard, a nice enough fellow in his late fifties whose light-gray suit and cream-colored tie were his version of going casual, asked me to review for everyone at the table what I had verbally agreed to with Vince. Understandably, he wanted to know what I had stuck him with (and what he might have to renege upon) in terms of translating my proffers into a legally binding document.

I repeated for Bernard and Jay what I had already told them on the phone. I omitted the highly personal compact I had made with Mr. Collins in L.A., as I viewed our sexual covenant to be more of a personal side bet than a formal wager against the house. With some assistance from Connie, I helped elucidate what I had and hadn’t guaranteed, and it was my perception that Bernard was both surprised and relieved that I hadn’t painted him into more of a corner. I had certainly built into my offer various safeguards for Neuman and Newberry should Vince be less than forthcoming with information or less than cooperative in terms of his schedule.

Bernard said he was grateful that I had been watching out for N&N’s interests, but of course I had also been watching out for myself. He concluded, “Well, I think Jay and I can hammer out something resembling a contract we can all live or litigate with. The only thing I don’t quite understand is why Mr. Collins is willing to allow what could end up being an exposé of himself.”

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” I offered. “Vince is a realist. The days of his box-office drawing power are drawing to a close, and his record label just dropped every artist on their roster over the age of thirty except him and Mahalia Jackson, and the only reason they haven’t let her go is they’re afraid God will make locusts fly into the vinyl at their pressing plant. For Vince, this is an easy way of getting some fast ‘fuck you’ money that he can afford to lose.” I offered, by way of apology, “The phrase isn’t mine. I think it’s credited to Humphrey Bogart.”

A low, bronze female voice sounded: “Sorry I’m late, all.” It was Lil, who walked with a cane that she clearly enjoyed smacking down onto the conference table as she took a seat across from me. “Miss O’Connor. Bernard.” She looked at Greg Gavin and gave him a nod that clearly indicated she didn’t remember his name.

Greg erroneously took this nod to be his cue. “Well. Since the investment in Mr. Collins is quite sizable, and since Miss O’Connor has indicated that her book will be largely in the form of a transcript, I’ve compiled a list of questions I’m sure we as the publisher would want to see addressed. Turning to the first page…”

My hands trembled both from anger and the shame of asserting myself as I said in a voice that was barely my own, “Um, I’d rather not turn to the first page, if you don’t mind. Frankly, I’d prefer not to read any of these questions at all. Once I see them, my tendency will be to avoid like the plague asking any of them. God forbid among them would be some questions I would have asked anyway, in my own words and manner, when I thought the moment was right. That’s part of what you’re paying me to do.” I pushed the binder aside to make my point. “I already landlocked myself creatively when I volunteered that the interviews would be published in transcript form. I hope and assume I’ll be able to cheat around this somewhere, maybe in a preface to each chapter, making my points as a biographer and journalist like the narrator of a documentary. Playboy does transcript interviews, but the interviewer leads with almost a full page of editorial comment.”

Greg Gavin made sucking noises on his empty pipe. “We’re not paying a million for what you have to say about Vince Collins, we’re paying for what he has to say.”

“To me. What he has to say to me. If you start telling me what you want me to say, and when, you’ll throw me off my game. Pretty soon, I’ll have as much to do with creating this book as an interpreter at the U.N. has with creating world peace.” I took a breath. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Okay now,” murmured Connie to me.

“No reason to cop an attitude,” said Greg, showing he’d known people who smoked dope in the sixties.

Lil rapped the head of her cane against the table. “Now, let’s quit this.” She indicated the binder in front of her. “Connie, are these your questions?”

Connie shook her head. “All news to me.”

Lil gave Greg a smile combining immense reasonability and loathing. “Well, as I’ve always understood this company’s policy, while the book is being written or rewritten, the relationship between author and editor is sacrosanct. Miss O’Connor is a wonderful writer—” Lil looked at Connie and inquired, “She’s okay, isn’t she?” Connie nodded with a smile and Lil continued, “So until we actually have a book, I think we’ll let Miss Wechsler, in whom I have the utmost confidence… I do, don’t I, Connie?” Connie nodded again. “Good. Then let’s let these two women do what we’ve hired them to do, assuming business affairs is okay with the structure of the deal with Vince Collins… Are you all right with the deal, Bernard and Mr….?” She wafted a look at Bernard Besser that included the jittery Jay Drelitch.

Bernard nodded. “I think we’ll be fine, Lil.”

“With all due respect,” piped up Greg with no respect intended, “this isn’t your typical book deal. We’re leasing an oil well named Vince Collins and granting Miss O’Connor here the right to tap it, and I think we get to monitor the drilling.” He opened the list of questions, which everyone else had closed.

Connie clearly decided she’d better speak before I did. “It’s not as easy as it looks, Greg. If you go to Vince Collins and ask him your questions, you’ll come back here with a three-hundred-page press handout. There’s an art to building trust over the long term with a subject, a way to judge what to press them on and when. You have to know more about them than they do, be historian, shrink, lover, father confessor, mother superior. When the police need to get a confession from someone, they don’t just send any cop into the room. The job takes more than just a solid writer, it takes—”

I stood up. “Here’s what I’ll do. You can put it in writing.” I looked over at Bernard. “As a matter of fact, I prefer it in writing, and if you draft a rider to my existing agreement to the following effect, I’ll sign it before I leave town.” Bernard gave Jay Drelitch a look and suddenly Jay’s Bic pen was taking down my every word.

“Greg, you’ll pay for a typing service on the West Coast to transcribe the tapes of my interviews with Vince. As each transcript gets typed up, I’ll send it to you, edited and pruned as I see fit. This way you can review my work as I go along. But I will not talk to you about the transcripts, read any memos, or take any phone calls from you about them. If after reading the transcripts you think I’m really screwing up in a big way, fire me. No explanation will be necessary. But other than to give me my pink slip, you will have no further communication with me. That’s the deal. But do keep in mind that if you let me go, this company will then have to find someone Vince Collins is equally willing to open up to, and good luck with that.”

What on earth was I doing playing brinksmanship with this man? Never would I have dreamed of doing so had I not been feeling my oats from my burgeoning relationship with Vince and budding relationship with his ex-buddy. I felt connected to them both in ways these civilians mustn’t know about and couldn’t understand. Perhaps Lil might. Yes, Lil and I could have a good old talk over boilermakers at the Old Town Bar some night, she with her Ernie and Wolfie, me with my Vinny and Lanny. For the moment, I had the swagger of success (see fleeting and illusory), buoyed solely by the merest moment outside Vince’s trailer and a date I’d made with Lanny Morris to… do what? I had no idea.

But then I began to feel like my high school boyfriend’s erection after I’d innocently asked him, “Is that as big as it’s going to get?” Like “it,” I was beginning to shrink perceptibly with each pulse of my heart.

Luckily, my bluff had deflated Gavin first. “There’s no need to put it in writing,” he mumbled, closing his binder sulkily. “I’m sure your word is good enough for all of us.”

The three men left us, as if they were heading for brandy and cigars in the billiard room and we three women were now free to discuss childbirth and the crocheting of antimacassars.

After an appropriate silence, giving the men time to get down the hall, Lil asked Connie in a modulated tone, “Who the hell is he?”

Connie shrugged and looked at me. “I was secretly kvelling when you asked him straight out. No one else ever has.” She looked wistful. “But we still don’t know.”

She offered Lil an assisting arm to help her to her feet. As Lil fumbled a bit with her cane, she advised me, “Look, forgetting—what’s his name, Gavin?—forgetting that he’s clearly an idiot, there is something I feel I should pass along to you. There are unique concerns with a book where a large sum of money is being paid in the hope that a large number of copies will be sold. You must try to come up with something that the newspapers will consider a story all on its own. Not for the gossip columns or book-review section or arts supplement. Something they could run on the front page, as news. Quoting the book. Quoting you. No price can be put on that kind of publicity.”

She leaned on the cane for support and put her right hand on my arm. “Where you put yourself in all this requires careful judgment. I’m assuming Connie here will help you with that. You can’t underestimate your readers’ interest in Mr. Collins, nor overestimate their interest in you. On the other hand, you’re standing in for the reader, who is in the company of this famous person courtesy of you. So although it goes against all my principles of what reportage should be, I tell you that, in this instance, it will be acceptable, even desirable, to let your presence be felt in a very small way—to let yourself be tasted, if only so much as a dash of nutmeg floating on a punch bowl of well-spiked eggnog.” She looked at Connie. “I think in this case, it would be all right.” Connie nodded and Lil looked back at me, issuing final dispensation. “It’s all right to make yourself a part of the story.”

I smiled thankfully, and I really did respect her, but the truth is, I wasn’t paying much attention. For the last five minutes, I had been far more concerned with whether I should have the taxi go uptown on Sixth or via Madison to get me to the Plaza Hotel, where I had a date with Vince Collins’ ex-partner, Lanny Morris, who was apparently going to have me for the whole day.