Publish and Perish Page 9

  “… for you to be working for me. You’re recently out of law school with great credentials. You worked for a prestige law firm. It’s crazy that I’d be ordering you around. No, what you can do is go buy a desk and chair, some filing cabinets, and move into the extra office and we’ll work together. We can share Belinda. You’re going to have to put a little skin into this game—pay half the rent and half her salary. So, is that something you think you might want to do?”

  Nobody bossing me around. Assigning me cases. Peering over my shoulder. It would all be on me. I was terrified and elated.

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  * * *

  Back out on the street I went into overdrive. First up—find an office furniture store. A perusal of the net garnered me something even better. A used office furniture store. I headed over there and picked out a desk, three chairs, filing cabinets, and a bookcase. The cute salesmen told me they were from a startup internet company that went belly-up. There was a moment of suspicious dread that failure could seep into wood or fabric, but I shook it off, handed over my credit card, and arranged to have the furniture delivered.

  I stopped at a FedEx and quickly had business cards designed and printed. The cards with IMG’s elegant logo were pulled out of my card case. I held them over a trash can and wavered. Gritting my teeth, I forced my fingers to relax and let the cards flutter into the trash.

  By now it was past one and I was starving. I found a deli and went in for a sandwich. While I munched on egg salad on a bagel I thought back over the number of subways I’d had to ride to get from my apartment at the far north end of Manhattan Island to Queens. It was an ugly commute. It had ended up cheaper to buy the fake florist van I had used in the John rescue then to repair it, so I now owned a car, but driving in New York was nightmarish, street parking was worse, and I really couldn’t afford to pay for a space in a parking garage on my now much reduced (as in no) salary. I needed to sell the van and find an apartment in Queens.

  I sipped at my ginger beer and considered if I really wanted to add a move on top of a new job where I had to hustle for clients? There was also John’s warning that I ought to clear out of my place. So, who did I know who might let me couch surf for a few days or a week?

  I thought about John’s apartment in Greenwich Village, and my heart lifted briefly at the thought of seeing him over the breakfast dishes. There was also the lure of a cat. I missed Gadzooks’s warm, purring presence, but John only had one bedroom and, given our past history, and his present situation, it only took a moment of reflection to decide that was a terrible idea.

  I ran through the women I worked with … used to work with … at IMG. Caroline would probably take me in, but did I really need that constant reminder of what I’d given up? And if David found out, he’d be able to keep tabs on me through Caroline, and I wanted to be as far out of his orbit as possible.

  Finally, I thought about Queens in relation to Ray and Gregory’s apartment. It would only require two subway rides and a quick hop on a bus to get to Syd’s. They had a guest room, and there was also the lure of Gregory’s great cooking. A committed, engaged gay couple so no sexual pressure. No career rivalry with a former associate. It was perfect, and I was sure they would say yes.

  It was also, if I was honest with myself, a fear of totally upending my life. Buying the furniture for my office had felt more like play-acting. If I also gave up my apartment all the sudden and wrenching changes became very real and very permanent. So I’d punted.

  “The Scarlett O’Hara solution,” I muttered at the surface of the table. “Tomorrow. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

  A phone call later I had an enthusiastic assent from Ray and Gregory to my plan, and I began the long trek back to my apartment to pack up enough clothes for a couple of weeks. By then I thought—hoped—I’d have a better handle on my life.

  * * *

  By four o’clock I was ensconced in the guest room. Ray went off to take class, Gregory was hunched over his computer doing something with bonds or derivatives or something on various Asian stock markets. At loose ends, I decided to check in with John. A quick check on Google revealed that he already had a new office on the edge of Times Square. Given the rents in that area I figured he’d gotten a hefty bonus from IMG since he’d been kidnapped while helping with a case that ultimately netted them several million dollars in fees.

  The previous office had been in an old brownstone with a frosted door and his name stenciled on the glass. Inside there had been a sagging old couch, a battered desk, and even a hat rack—all very Sam Spade. This building was newer, and when I walked into the office, accompanied by a loud and very unpleasant buzzer, I was startled by the sparse modern look, lots of chrome and black leather with a metal desk that looked like a twisted jungle gym. The walls were completely bare.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place,” I said dryly.

  “It requires nothing from me,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t demand any kind of emotional reaction.”

  “I’m sorry you’re so damaged,” I said before I thought better of it. “Wow, that was rude. I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. It is what it is. You can’t change it so don’t feel guilty about it. Now why are you here?”

  “Wondering if you had anything on Jolly yet?”

  He didn’t answer, just turned and walked to the desk. I hesitated. “Uh, do you want me to sit down or are you blowing me off?”

  He looked back with that flat stare. “Of course I want you to sit down. I’ve got things to tell you.”

  He settled behind the desk. I took one of the tubular chrome chairs. It was as uncomfortable as it looked. John spun around in his chair and pulled out a drawer on the dull gray filing cabinet behind him. He spun back and tossed a cell phone at me.

  Taken by surprise, I fumbled my dexterity and the phone hit the floor. I snatched it up to find the cheap plastic cover had cracked. I flipped it open. It was what I had suspected, a burner phone.

  “Okay. I’ll bite.” I raised my eyebrows in interrogation and gave a perplexed shrug.

  “This is prepaid for thirty days. The minutes are in my name, so no one will know you’re using it and they won’t be able to trace you. Leave it on at all times so I can trace you. Don’t call anybody but me on this phone. I’ll put your phone in a safety deposit box at a bank across town. They can trace the damn things even when they’re turned off. So they can trace it to a bank.”

  “And how am I supposed to call other people, my clients?”

  “There isn’t a landline?”

  “Well, there is at Syd’s office. He’s sort of old-fashioned that way, but Gregory and Ray don’t have a phone.”

  “Tell them to get one. Or find a pay phone.”

  “And why are we playing spy games?” I asked.

  John didn’t answer, just riffled through some papers and skimmed one sheet across to me. I stared down at the names printed out on the page.

  Sheldon Brashton

  Charles Beachamp

  Martin Bevis

  I looked up and gave another puzzled shrug. “Meet all of the other Jolyon Bryce identities.” A hollow appeared where I used to have a stomach. John went on. “We can be sure of one thing. His real last name probably begins with a B. He was Bevis in Australia, and Brashton when he lived in Rome and Beachamp when he was in Cairo. Each identity seems to run for five to seven years, then the new person appears. He’s got money, but I haven’t been able to trace where it comes from. Whoever is funding him has a shitload of money because each new identity appears very well-heeled.”

  I thought about the prepaid credit card. “Then what the hell is he doing managing a riding stable in Brooklyn?” I broke in. “And what was he doing…” I glanced back at the page. “In Australia and Italy and Egypt?”

  “Brashton was doing research for a history of the Vatican. He had access to some of the archives. Beachamp was funding archeological digs, and Bevis … well, I’m not sure,
but it was during his stint in Australia that he was crippled. Happened deep in the Outback.”

  “He said it was a car accident,” I murmured past lips stiff with shock and anger.

  I remembered the warm expression in Jolly … or Martin or Charles or Sheldon’s … eyes. The way he smiled and applauded when I put Vento through his dressage paces, the serious note in his voice when I had called him from LA to demand how he knew that I was on the verge of being murdered. He seemed so decent and caring. And it had all been a lie.

  “I haven’t told the police any of this,” John said. “I was waiting to talk to you.”

  “Do you think they’ll find it?”

  The hands with their long, tapered fingers lifted, straightened, and aligned the papers on the desk. “No, the cops in Brooklyn are faced with a break-in and assault. They’re not going to assume that person is anything other than what he seems to be.”

  “So why did you dig deeper?”

  “Because he took such an abnormal interest in you, and you’re weird.”

  A shiver fluttered down my back. “You’re a very strange human, Linnet.”

  “Be careful, Linnet, it feels like there’s a lot of moving parts here, and a lot of unknown players all moving in the shadows.”

  9

  Three days later I sat in my new office putting the final touches on Ray and Gregory’s inter vivos trust. Now that they were getting married I could clear away the thicket of documents that had been in place to make certain they could care for each other in sickness and inherit each other’s assets in death. My furniture had arrived the same day I ordered it, and Syd hadn’t let me ease into the job. He had shoved a couple of small cases my way on my first full day. He had worked the cases and all that remained were the court appearances, so I found myself racing between courthouses to make the final arguments.

  I was one for one on my scorecard. I had successfully gotten a family’s money returned when a breeder had sold them a sick and dying puppy. I’d lost the hearing for the deadbeat dad who hadn’t been paying his child support. Not one of my finest moments, but such was the life of a sole practitioner. I needed more cases, but Ray and Gregory had promised to ask among their friends, and Ray would see if any of his fellow dancers, stagehands, etc., needed legal help.

  Whatever the shortcomings of the building, my new office was great. I had a big window that looked out across the street toward a postage-stamp-size park. I could watch mothers playing with children in that speck of greenery, an older couple walking arm-in-arm, folks walking their dogs. Not professional dog walkers like in Manhattan, but the actual owners of said dogs spending time with their pets. At IMG I’d had a tiny window, but from the seventieth floor you couldn’t really see anything except a bit of sky and the occasional cloud. Here, life was parading past.

  My evenings were quiet because Ray was not only dancing, he had a small speaking role in a show that was in tryouts up in Boston, and Gregory had gone up to watch. There was now a landline in the apartment. I had offered to pay for it, but Gregory had waved off the offer. I now had a way to communicate that couldn’t be easily traced, but I hadn’t availed myself of that option. I felt very cut off from friends and family alike, but that was self-inflicted. I couldn’t bring myself to call Caroline or any of the other women from Ismael, McGillary and Gold and tell them where I was working. Syd was a great guy, but it really was a huge step down, and I was embarrassed. Which proved that I was not a very good person. I had several times reached for the phone to call my father, but when I remembered our last conversation I got angry and hurt all over again and couldn’t bring myself to do it. I hoped he was worried sick about me, and I took perverse pleasure in picturing my cell phone, now locked in a safety deposit box, filling up with increasingly frantic messages from my dad.

  I sighed and banged my forehead lightly on the edge of my desk. Yeah, I really was a terrible human being. I needed to get it over with and just call him. I reached for the phone, but before I could lift the handset out of its cradle Belinda came into my office.

  “Hey, you got a client looking for you.”

  I frowned at the calendar on my laptop. “I don’t have it on my schedule.”

  “He’s a walk-in, but asking for you specifically.”

  “Cool,” I said as I came around from behind my desk and followed her back into the waiting room.

  There was a young Asian man, slender and handsome. He wore his jet-black hair in a ponytail, and his eyes were a tawny brown behind heavy black-rimmed glasses. He was looking around with a puzzled frown. He seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him. I walked over and extended my hand.

  “Hello, I’m Linnet Ellery. What can I do for you?”

  We shook as he said, “I’m Dr. Kenneth Zhèng. Jolyon Bryce told me I should hire you.” Memory clicked in. This was the scientist who had been on that silly television show. The show that Jolyon had recorded. Zhèng continued. “I went first to your old firm, but they told me you had quit. I figured one lawyer was pretty much like another, and it seemed like a big firm so I hired somebody there.” A frown darkened his brow. “Then I get a call today that they won’t represent me after all. Just dropped me flat without any explanation.”

  “Who did you retain over there?” I asked.

  “Doug McCallister,” he said.

  That killed any chance of finding out why the good doctor’s case had been dropped. Doug was not a member of my fan club. Well, his loss my gain. I had just been thinking how I needed more clients.

  “I tried to call Mr. Bryce to see if he knew where you went, but he’s not answering.”

  “I’m sorry to tell you that Mr. Bryce is in the hospital.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Please come into my office.”

  He preceded me into the office and I closed the door as I indicated a chair and took my place behind my desk. I folded my hands on a stack of pleadings and gave him an inquiring look. “So, how did you track me down? I’ve only been in the office three days.”

  “I went over to the office to get a refund on my retainer, and this Álfar guy caught me in the lobby and told me where to find you.”

  My lack of a poker face was a real trial to me. I wondered what Zhèng was reading off me because what I was feeling was a complex stew of emotions. Gratitude that John had sent a client in my direction. Unease that he appeared to be keeping tabs on me. A sense of comfort that he was keeping tabs on me. I pushed all that aside and tried to focus.

  “So, how can I help you?” For a long moment there was silence.

  People in lawyers’ offices come in two varieties. The ones who are so outraged over what is happening to them that they can’t wait to pour out their problems, and the ones who seem embarrassed to find themselves in a lawyer’s office. It looked like Zhèng was falling into the latter category. I waited. My almost one year as a practicing attorney had taught me that leading questions were never good, no matter the setting.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose and finally mumbled, “I’m … I’m an assistant professor at NYU.” He lapsed once more into silence.

  I nudged. “What do you teach?”

  “Parasitology.”

  I was surprised and very disappointed by our institutions of higher learning. “They teach that at universities?”

  The professor looked exasperated. “Not parapsychology … paraSITology.” This time he really enunciated the T so I heard it correctly.

  “Ah, okay, got it. Parasites. That sounds … interesting,” I lied. It actually sounded sort of gross.

  It was like I had opened a floodgate. The words came tumbling out. “It is. It’s fascinating. I study how parasites interact with their hosts, their life cycles, and how to break those cycles since parasites can cause so much suffering. I’m a biologist by training but parasitology is very interdisciplinary. I only teach one class. Mostly I do research. Write grants to fund my research.”

  “And the problem that has you seekin
g legal help is what?”

  The frown was back. “The administration is blocking publication of my research paper. A paper I’ve been working on for the past three years, and if it doesn’t get published I won’t get promoted to associate and get tenure. And also, this needs to be out in the scientific community.” Now the outrage had arrived and his voice had risen.

  I pulled out a yellow legal pad, grabbed a pen, and began making notes. “Have they given you any reason for blocking publication?”

  “About ten different reasons. Everybody I talk to has another excuse and none of them make any sense. Nobody has challenged my methodology or the foundational aspects of the paper. Personally, I think one of the big donors is leaning on them.”

  I looked up at that. “Usually donors are only interested in a university’s football team—”

  Zhèng interrupted. “NYU doesn’t have a football team.”

  “Oh, okay, point is, they put money in what interests them, if not football then a medical school working on a cure for cancer. They don’t usually go for esoteric scientific work.”

  The frown was back. “That’s so true.”

  “So, what are you researching?”

  “The Hunters and their relationship to the predator, though it should more properly be referred to as a parasite. I think the Hunters were designed to break the life cycle of that parasite.”

  Stunned didn’t begin to cover it. I sat for a few seconds thinking back over all I knew about these creatures that had given rise to the legends of zombies. Hunters were grotesque, shambling creatures with pale white skin and no discernible features on their pale oval faces aside from a red wet O of a mouth out of which a long, mucus-covered tongue would emerge. The fingers on their elongated hands were like worms, but it was said they could stiffen into blades capable of stabbing through a person’s chest or cutting off a vampire’s head. It was said they stank like rotting meat, which was one reason even vampires didn’t want them around even though vampires had created them. The legend was that the Hunters were created to locate a mysterious predator that if released would destroy all the vampires and werewolves in the world. But here was a seemingly sane scientist, hired by a major university, who was telling me the predator was real.