Camino Island, Page 23

  emotionally. And so young. Another tragedy.”

  “That was his last one, the one he didn’t finish?”

  “That’s what they say. Such a waste of talent.”

  “Is this homework for the novel?”

  “Perhaps. I’m still not sure. What are you reading?”

  “It’s called My Favorite Tsunami, a first novel by a guy who can’t write very well.”

  “What an awful title.”

  “Yes, and it doesn’t get any better. I’m fifty pages in with six hundred to go and I’m struggling. There should be a rule in publishing that debut novels are limited to three hundred pages, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose. Mine was only 280.”

  “Yours was perfect.”

  “Thanks. So will you finish that?”

  “I doubt it. I’ll give any book a hundred pages, and if by then the writer can’t hold my attention I’ll put it away. There are too many good books I want to read to waste time with a bad one.”

  “Same here, but my limit is fifty pages. I’ve never understood people who grind through a book they don’t really like, determined to finish it for some unknown reason. Tessa was like that. She would toss a book after the first chapter, then pick it up and grumble and growl for four hundred pages until the bitter end. Never understood that.”

  “I don’t get it.” He took a sip of wine, gazed across the backyard, and picked up the novel. She waited until he had turned a page and asked, “Got any other rules?”

  He smiled and laid down the novel. “Oh, Mercer, dear, I have my list. It’s called ‘Cable’s Top Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,’ a brilliant how-to guide put together by an expert who’s read over four thousand books.”

  “Do you share this?”

  “Occasionally. I’ll e-mail it over, but you really don’t need it.”

  “Maybe I do. I need something. Give me a hint or two.”

  “Okay, I hate prologues. I just finished a novel by a guy who’s touring and will stop by next week. He always starts every book with the typical prologue, something dramatic like a killer stalking a woman or a dead body, then will leave the reader hanging, go to chapter 1, which, of course, has nothing to do with the prologue, then to chapter 2, which, of course, has nothing to do with either chapter 1 or the prologue, then after about thirty pages slam the reader back to the action in the prologue, which by then has been forgotten.”

  “I like this. Keep going.”

  “Another rookie mistake is to introduce twenty characters in the first chapter. Five’s enough and won’t confuse your reader. Next, if you feel the need to go to the thesaurus, look for a word with three syllables or fewer. I have a nice vocabulary and nothing ticks me off more than a writer showing off with big words I’ve never seen before. Next, please, please use quotation marks with dialogue; otherwise it’s bewildering. Rule Number Five: Most writers say too much, so always look for things to cut, like throwaway sentences and unnecessary scenes. I could go on.”

  “Please do. I should be taking notes.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. You don’t need advice. You’re a beautiful writer, Mercer, you just need a story.”

  “Thank you, Bruce. I need the encouragement.”

  “I’m dead serious, and I’m not flattering you because we’re in the midst of a little weekend orgy.”

  “Is that what it’s called? Thought it was a fling.”

  They laughed and took a sip of wine. The rain had stopped and a heavy mist was rolling in. She asked, “Have you ever written?”

  He shrugged and looked away. “I’ve tried, several times, but never finished. It’s not my thing. That’s why I respect writers, the good ones anyway. I welcome them all and I love to promote all books, but there’s a lot of crap on the market. And I’m frustrated with people like Andy Adam who have the talent but squander it with bad habits.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Not yet. He’s locked away with no contact. He’ll probably call in a week or so. This is either his third or fourth rehab, and I think the odds are against him. Deep inside he really doesn’t want to quit.”

  “It’s so sad.”

  “You look sleepy.”

  “Must be the wine.”

  “Let’s take a nap.”

  With some effort, they managed to climb into a hammock and wedge themselves into a tight cuddle. As it rocked gently, they grew still. “Any plans for tonight?” she asked.

  “I was thinking more of the same.”

  “That too, but I’m getting tired of this place.”

  “Well, dinner is a must.”

  “But you’re a married man, Bruce, and I’m just your weekend girl. What if someone sees us?”

  “I don’t care, Mercer, and Noelle doesn’t care. Why should you?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems weird having dinner at a nice place on a Saturday night with a married man.”

  “Who said it was a nice place? It’s a dump, a crab shack down by the river, great food, and I assure you no one there buys books.”

  She kissed him and laid her head on his chest.

  12.

  Sunday began in much the same fashion as Saturday, without the hangovers. Bruce served breakfast in bed, pancakes and sausage, and they spent two hours scanning the New York Times. As noon approached, Mercer needed a break. She was about to begin her farewell when Bruce said, “Look, I’m shorthanded at the store this afternoon and the place will be crawling. I need to go to work.”

  “Good idea. Now that I know the rules for writing fiction, I need to jot down a few things.”

  “Always happy to be of service,” he said with a smile and pecked her on the cheek. They carried the trays to the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. Bruce disappeared into the master suite on the second floor, and Mercer returned to the tower, where she dressed quickly and left without another good-bye.

  If she had accomplished anything over the weekend, it wasn’t obvious. The bedroom antics were certainly enjoyable, and she knew him much better than before, but she wasn’t there for sex and she wasn’t there to write his novel. She was being paid a lot of money to gather clues and perhaps solve a crime. In that regard, she felt as though she had indeed accomplished little.

  In her suite, she changed into a bikini, admired herself in the mirror, and tried to remember all the marvelous things he’d said about her body. It was lean and tanned and she was rather proud she had finally used it. She put on a white cotton shirt, grabbed her sandals, and went for a long walk on the beach.

  13.

  Bruce called at seven Sunday evening, said he missed her terribly, couldn’t imagine getting through the night without her, and could she stop by the store for a drink when he closed?

  Sure. What else did she have to do? The walls of her awful little suite were closing in and she had written fewer than a hundred words.

  She entered the store a few minutes before nine. Bruce was checking out the last customer and appeared to be working alone. As the customer left, he quickly locked the door and turned off the lights. “Follow me,” he said, and he led her up the stairs and through the café, turning off lights as he went. He unlocked a door she had never noticed and they entered his apartment.

  “My man cave,” he said as he turned on the lights. “I lived here for the first ten years I owned the store. Back then it covered the entire second floor, but then the café came along. Have a seat.” He waved at a bulky leather sofa that ran along an entire wall and was covered with pillows and quilts. Opposite the sofa, a large flat-screen TV was mounted on a squat table, and around it were, of course, shelves lined with books.

  “Champagne?” he asked as he stepped behind a snack bar and opened the refrigerator.

  “Of course.”

  He removed a bottle, quickly popped the cork, filled two flutes, and said, “Cheers.”

  They clinked glasses and he gulped most of his. “I really needed a drink,” he said as he wiped his mouth with the back
of a hand.

  “Evidently. You okay?”

  “Rough day. One of my clerks called in sick so I worked the floor. It’s hard to find good help.” He drained his flute and refilled it. He removed his jacket, untied his bow tie, yanked out his shirttail, kicked off his dirty buckskins. They moved to the sofa and fell into it.

  “How was your day?” he asked, gulping again.

  “The usual. I walked on the beach, got some sun, tried to write, went back to the beach, tried to write some more, took a nap.”

  “Ah, the writing life. I’m envious.”

  “I did manage to ditch my prologue, add quotation marks to my dialogue, take out the big words, and I would have cut some more but there’s not enough to cut.”

  Bruce laughed and took another drink. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

  “And you’re such a con man, Bruce. You seduced me yesterday morning and . . .”

  “Actually it was morning, noon, and night.”

  “And here we go again. Have you always been such a ladies’ man?”

  “Oh yes. Always. I told you, Mercer, I have a fatal weakness for women. When I see a pretty one, I have one thought. It’s been that way since college. When I got to Auburn and was suddenly surrounded by thousands of cute girls, I went wild.”

  “That’s not healthy. Have you thought about therapy?”

  “What? Who needs it? This is a game for me, and you have to admit I play it rather well.”

  She nodded and took a sip, her third. His glass was empty so he refilled it again. “Easy, boy,” she said but he ignored her. When he was back on the sofa she asked, “Have you ever been in love?”

  “I love Noelle. She loves me. We’re both very happy.”

  “But love is about trust and commitment and sharing every aspect of your lives.”

  “Oh, we’re into sharing big-time, believe me.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “Don’t be such a sap, Mercer. We’re not talking about love; we’re talking about sex. Pure physical pleasure. You’re not about to get involved with a married man and I don’t do relationships. We’ll get it on whenever you want or we can stop right now. We’ll be friends with no strings attached.”

  “Friends? How many female friends do you have?”

  “None really. A few nice acquaintances, maybe. Look, if I had known you planned to analyze me I wouldn’t have called.”

  “Why did you call?”

  “I figured you were missing me.”

  They managed to laugh. Suddenly Bruce set down his flute, took hers and placed it next to his, grabbed her hand, and said, “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “A surprise. Come on. It’s downstairs.”

  Still barefoot, he led her out of the apartment, through the café, down to the first floor, and to the door to the basement. He unlocked it, flipped a light switch, and they eased down the wooden steps to the basement. He turned on another light and punched the code that unlocked the vault.

  “This better be good,” she said, almost under her breath.

  “You will not believe it.” He pulled open the thick metal door to the vault, stepped inside, and turned on another light. He walked to the safe, entered another pass code, and waited a second for the five hydraulic bolts to release. With a loud clicking sound, the door was free and he gently pulled it open. Mercer watched everything as closely as possible, knowing she would be expected to write down every detail for Elaine and the team. The inside of the vault and the interior of the safe appeared the same as the last time she saw them. Bruce tugged on one of the four lower drawers and slid it open. There were two identical wooden boxes; she would later estimate them to be fourteen inches square and made of what she guessed to be cedar. He removed one and stepped to the small table in the center of the vault. He gave her a smile, as if revealing a rare treasure.

  The top of the box was attached by three small hinges, and he gently raised it. Inside was what appeared to be a cardboard box, gray in color. Carefully, he lifted it out and placed it on the table. “This is called an archival storage box, made of acid- and lignin-free board and used by most libraries and serious collectors. This came from Princeton.” He opened the box, and announced proudly, “The original manuscript of The Last Tycoon.”

  Mercer’s jaw dropped as she stared in disbelief and eased closer. She tried to speak but couldn’t find the words.

  Inside the box was a stack of faded letter-sized sheets of paper, perhaps four inches thick, obviously well aged and a relic from another time. There was no title page; indeed, it appeared as though Fitzgerald had simply plunged into chapter 1 with the thought of tidying things up later. His cursive was not pretty and hard to read, and he had begun making notes in the margins from the very beginning. Bruce touched the edges of the manuscript and went on, “When he died suddenly in 1940, the novel was far from finished, but he worked from an outline and left behind a considerable amount of notes and summaries. He had a close friend named Edmund Wilson, who was an editor and a critic, and Wilson cobbled the story together and the book was published a year later. Many critics consider it to be Fitzgerald’s finest work, which, as you said, is remarkable given his health.”

  “You are kidding, right?” she managed to say.

  “Kidding about what?”

  “This manuscript. Is this the one that was stolen?”

  “Oh yes, but not by me.”

  “Okay. What’s it doing here?”

  “It’s a very long story and I won’t bore you with the details, many of which I know nothing about. All five were stolen last fall from the Firestone Library at Princeton. There was a gang of thieves and they got spooked when the FBI grabbed two of them almost immediately. The others unloaded their loot and disappeared. The manuscripts quietly entered the black market. From there they were sold off separately. I don’t know where the other four are but I suspect they’ve left the country.”

  “Why are you involved, Bruce?”

  “It’s complicated, but I’m really not that involved. You want to touch the pages?”

  “No. I don’t like being here. This makes me nervous.”

  “Relax. I’m just hiding this for a friend.”

  “Must be a helluva friend.”

  “He is. We’ve been trading for a long time and I trust him implicitly. He’s in the process of brokering a deal with a collector in London.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “Not much. I’ll get a few bucks down the road.”

  Mercer stepped away and moved to the other side of the table. “For a few bucks it seems like you’re assuming a rather significant risk. You’re in possession of major stolen property. That’s a felony that could get you sent away for a long time.”

  “It’s a felony only if you get caught.”

  “And now you’ve made me complicit in this scheme, Bruce. I’d like to leave now.”

  “Come on, Mercer, you’re too uptight. No risk, no reward. And you’re not complicit in anything, because no one will ever know. How can anyone possibly prove you ever saw this manuscript?”

  “I don’t know. Who else has seen this?”

  “Only the two of us.”

  “Noelle doesn’t know.”

  “Of course not. She doesn’t care. She runs her business and I run mine.”

  “And part of your business is trafficking in stolen books and manuscripts?”

  “Occasionally.” He closed the archival storage box and placed it back in the wooden one. Carefully, he replaced it in the drawer and shoved it closed.

  “I really want to go,” she said.

  “Okay, okay. I didn’t think you’d freak out. You said you’ve just finished The Last Tycoon and I thought you’d be impressed.”

  “Impressed? I might be overwhelmed, bewildered, scared to death, a lot of things right now, but I’m not impressed, Bruce. This is crazy stuff.”

  He locked the safe, then the vault,
and as they started up the stairs he flipped off the lights. On the ground floor, Mercer headed for the front door. “Where are you going?” he asked.