The Way of All Fish: A Novel (10 page)

“Anyway, we need someone who’s good at getting information out of people.”

“Danny can.”

“So could Cheney’s favorite people. I’m talking more like the PI line of work.”

“A detective?” Candy made a face. “I dunno.” It was his turn to get up and pace. He did so by the fish tank, with Oscar swimming slowly back and forth, in what Candy decided was fish pacing. “Listen, listen to this idea: Paul Giverney. Remember?”

“I’d have to be dead to forget. We told him, right? Told him to stop fucking up other people’s lives.”

“So he owes Ned Isaly—”

“What the hell’s Ned Isaly got to do with this?”

“Nothing. I’m saying Paul Giverney owes writers, owes authors . . . you know, owes them something. So he should maybe pay that debt off to Cindy.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. That fish is gettin’ to you, C.”

“Yeah, yeah. Listen. One, we gotta get this someone inside the law offices of Dickheads, Esquires. And number two”—Candy held up two fingers to make his point—“we want to get someone inside the Hess Agency.” He tapped the tank, making tiny waves that Oscar breasted and breached before dropping down to the Hotel W and hiding.

“So what the fuck you saying?”

“Paul Giverney.” Candy smiled broadly and fleshed out the picture a bit more.

Karl sniggered. “I like it.”

P
aul Giverney had just about decided never to write another word when the intercom buzzer made its annoying insectlike sound.

“Who’s that?” he called out to his wife from his study/office.

She called back: “Not being able to see through three floors below us to Clarence at the desk, I honestly don’t know.” She had begun saying this in the kitchen and finished up in the study doorway.

The intercom buzzed again. “Are you going to answer?”

She turned away, and her place was taken by his daughter, Hannah, who was holding another page from her book called
The Hunted Gardens.
In the last chapter, she had said, “the Draggonier will figure out what’s going on.” There were dragons in the garden. Hannah had come up with a Draggonier to do battle with them. But Hannah’s crinkled brow, when Paul had questioned this development, seemed to imply there was a great deal of uncertainty.

Hannah said, “Why don’t we live in the Dakota?”

“Why should we?” he said. He heard Molly’s voice, apparently talking to Clarence on the phone. He wished people would go away.

“Well, this is a rent-controlled apartment, and we’re taking up what a poor person could live in.”

She was seven. When had she developed this humane view of things?

“Well, believe me, this apartment is not all that cheap, and we’re not all that rich.”

“Yes, we are. My friend James at school told me you were a billionaire and we could live in the Dakota.”

Actually, James wasn’t far off. Multimillionaire was closer. “Are you sure James didn’t say Dakota-s, plural? Meaning North and South
Dakota? Maybe he said, ‘You should live in the Dakotas.’ ” Paul smiled at that bit of cleverness. Chew on that, sweetheart.

She looked suspicious. “That would be a long way away from here, and you wouldn’t be able to see your publisher.”

In mock joy, Paul sat up. “What a great idea! I’ll give the landlord notice tomorrow!” He drew a hand across his forehead, dramatically wiping away imaginary sweat. Then he returned to his former tone. “You mean you don’t like this apartment?”

No reason why she should. No reason why anyone should like it or dislike it, for that matter. It was a two-largish-bedroom-plus-study with a big eat-in kitchen and a small dining room they seldom used. He himself loved it. It was so wonderfully ordinary. Molly liked it for the Dean and Deluca a short distance away. “If you want to move, I’ll look into the Dakota and also the Carlyle. That’s got a few really exclusive apartments. Neither one of those buildings is here in the East Village, they’re more Central Park, and you might have to change schools . . .” That should stop her cold.

It didn’t. After a short think, Hannah said, “It would be closer to the zoo. That would be good.”

At that moment, Molly appeared behind Hannah. She smiled. “Your future is here, Paulie.”

Paulie? What the hell did that mean? “What does that—”

She had turned away and said something to the visitor or visitors (for there seemed to be several voices). Candy and Karl appeared behind Hannah. “Hi!” “Hey, Paulie!”

“Hello,” said Hannah. She turned away, too, but did not leave. Her head was covered with very fine pale brown hair, mostly curly. She was wearing a pale pink dress. Hannah loved dresses. Bloomie’s should have snagged her ages ago as a model for their catalogs.

“Hey, kiddo. Wow! You are really cute from the back. Are you that pretty from the front?” said Karl.

Hannah actually giggled. These goons had a rapport with children? Paul couldn’t believe it. Hannah wasn’t a giggler. She turned around and presented herself.

“Hmm. Well . . .” said Candy, hand at chin, feigning concentration.

“I’m not?” Hannah sounded quite alarmed.

“Yeah, you are.” Karl landed a pretend punch on Candy’s shoulder. “Absolutely first-rate, four-star pretty.”

That satisfied her. She drifted off like a petal.

“So, Paulie!” said Candy.

“What’s this Paulie crap, you guys? Why are you here? What have I done now?” Paul checked out their jackets for telltale bulges. Nothing, but maybe they were wearing shoulder holsters.

“Mind if we sit?” said Karl, who then sat.

Candy took the third chair. There were two others, in addition to Paul’s own creaky wooden desk chair.

“Nice suits,” said Paul, noting that this would be his single foray into small talk. “I’m guessing Bruno Magli.”

“You’d be guessing wrong. But we appreciate your attempt to be social, especially as you didn’t expect us.”

“You got that right.” Paul leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head as if he felt all relaxed and loose. Which he didn’t. “What do you guys want?”

“A favor.” Candy smiled and folded a stick of gum so dry in his mouth it felt splintered.

Paul raised his eyebrows. “I hope you don’t think I owe you one.”

Karl took out a dented silver cigarette case.

“That’s nice,” said Paul. “Antique?”

“No, just messed up. A couple bullets.” Karl offered the cigarettes.

Paul shook his head. “Quit.”

“Tough, man.”

Candy held out his fresh pack of Doublemint.

Paul smiled and shook his head.

“Good choice,” said Candy. “This stuff is dry as a bone.”

“The favor?” Paul wasn’t eager to hear it.

“We was just thinking: You might want to help out a fellow writer.”

“Can’t imagine why. But go on.”

“You know Cindy Sella?”

Paul studied the ceiling molding for a moment. “Yeah. I mean, we have the same agent: Jimmy McKinney.”

“We know. Do you know about Cindy’s legal hassle with her ex-agent?”

“I heard something. Who is it?”

“L. Bass Hess. He’s trying to hold her up for a commission on the last book she published, even though she fired him two years before. He thinks she owes him money for a book he never worked on.”

“That’s absurd.” Paul frowned. “So what do you two have to do with it?”

“It’s just we got sucked into it by accident.”

“So now that you’re into it, what’s up?”

They told him: Karl, speaking of the identity mix-up; Candy, about the visit to the Spurling Building.

Paul laughed. He could not help but like the story about the cyanide fishing. “So you want someone to ooze into the law offices of these sleazeballs by posing as a fish importer?” Paul was as fascinated as a deer caught in a Hummer’s headlights.

“Yeah. To see what information we can get about what in the hell they’re doing playing footsie with Bass Hess.”

“Where do I come in?”

“You and her are both published by Mackenzie-Haack.”

“Me and her are?”

They both nodded.

Karl said, “All of this hugger-mugger with the agent and the lawyers trying to take down Cindy Sella almost sounds like what you did to Ned Isaly.”

“It does not in any way, shape, or form resemble what I did.” Paul was getting angry. “I had no intention of ruining Ned Isaly’s life.”

“But you almost did.”

“Correction. Bobby Mackenzie ‘almost did.’ Could I help it if Mackenzie got the bright idea of hiring you, uh, guys?” He almost said “goons” but caught himself. “You’re not going to suggest I be the fish importer?” Paul was slightly alarmed that, yes, that’s what they were going to say.

“Nah. You’re too well known. I mean, your face is plastered on the back of all your books.”

Paul sighed, relieved.

“What we want is for you to take on Bass Hess as an agent.”

The relief quickly dissipated. “Wait.” Paul shot both arms out in front of
him, waving this idea away. “I have an agent. You know that. Jimmy McKinney.”

Candy said, “Oh, he’d be good with this. I mean, obviously, you’re not firing the guy. We’re talking about something temporary.”

“How temporary?” Forgoing the larger question of “Why?”

Candy pursed his lips. “Not sure. However long it takes to get the job done.”

Paul sighed. “What job?”

Candy shook his head slowly. “Not exactly sure about that, either.”

Paul stared. It was like his books, trying to figure out what the characters were doing.

Karl said, “What we are sure about is we’ll need someone who can make Hess do what we’re going to want him to do, even though we don’t know just what that is yet. And the someone, Paul, is most definitely you.”

Paul looked from one to the other. He thought he knew just how the Draggonier felt, forced to wander indefinitely through the hunted gardens until Hannah figured things out.

I
’ve seen a python eyeing a pig in a greater spirit of cooperation than you’re getting from your publisher.” This was Sam Walsh, the attorney Jimmy had recommended Cindy to. He was flipping over the papers she had brought the next morning in a folder. He went on, “No invoices, no explanations. You don’t actually know what the billable hours reflect. Your attorney requested invoices. Mackenzie-Haack’s lead attorney said he would take the request into consideration. That might be a client confidentiality issue.”

Cindy clapped her hand to her head. “But I’m the client. I must be, if I’m the one paying.”

“Not exactly. Hess is suing both you and Mackenzie-Haack—”

“He’s suing us for exactly the same thing.”

“Right.”

“They build up all of these legal fees without telling me, without giving me a chance to settle. No one ever told me what firm Mackenzie was going to hire or what their billing rate was or said at the beginning, ‘Look, this could get very costly, Cindy. Do you want to think about settling?’ And now they won’t let me see how all of these hours have been used; they won’t let me see what I have to pay for.” Cindy let her voice trail off. “Good-bye, Sam.”

Sam dropped his feet from his desk and sat up. “Jesus, don’t sound so final, girl.”

“I’ve got to feed my cat. Then go back to Kafka, Sartre, and Celine for comfort. I wish David Foster Wallace were alive. He’d have this nailed.”

There was more cooperation being displayed between Gus and her two clown fish. Her mind felt so friable, she couldn’t come up with names for them.

She let a few specks of food drift across the water’s surface. The first clown fish went on lying on his leaf; the ghost clown fish made a slow swim upward and snagged a bit of food. The fish tank looked so complete, so together, she almost wished she could dive in. She did a standing meditation for a minute. She emptied her mind and then let a few images drift in: waves, light, leaves. Whatever came, she labeled. If you labeled thoughts, you helped distance yourself from them. Gus had gone into the kitchen and was impatiently knocking his bowl about. Gus knocking bowl.

She tried saying her mantra, but it kept slipping away, and her life intruded. Maybe it was because it wasn’t, strictly speaking, “her” mantra. She had bought it from her friend Benny Bennet for twenty dollars. He’d paid to take a course in Transcendental Meditation, and in the little ceremony at the end with the handkerchief and the flower, he had been assigned this mantra. “Nobody else has it; it’s strictly yours,” Benny had told her as he pocketed the cash. He’d stopped meditating because he said he’d rather spend his time drinking, smoking, doing lines of coke. What bothered her was that Benny knew the mantra. He could go back to meditating and using it, and that might throw everything off. What “everything” might be, she had no idea. Astral bodies. The Om community. She did not know the slightest thing about Transcendental Meditation except that David Lynch was really into it, and she thought anybody who could come up with
Mulholland Drive
was a man worth listening to.

She finished her standing meditation, thinking she hadn’t meditated at all. All she had been doing was thinking the same things she’d be thinking if she were sitting down or walking along Grub Street. Gus was sitting at her feet, staring at her, trying to throw her off again. She gave up and followed him into the kitchen, giving him a little push with her foot, which he took the time to resent before he marched on as if he were a contractor bent on a complete renovation with easy access to his special food.