By Blood Written

That was the last Audrey Carlisle heard of Michael Schiftmann for several years. She vaguely remembered seeing more paperbacks come across her desk, but in the avalanche of paper that gushed in and out of her office on an annual basis-enough to stretch from Manhattan to Tokyo every year-she couldn’t be completely sure.

Audrey continued to eye Michael as he took the last step off the spiral staircase and was immediately sandwiched between two young women in tight sheath dresses, martini glasses in hand. The pouty-lipped brunette to his right leaned in close as she talked to him, wrapping a curl of hair around her left index finger as she spoke in what Audrey knew was classic body-language come-on. Audrey felt her brow tighten as she watched the two young women fawn over Michael, who seemed to be politely enduring the attention. The short blond in the red vinyl said something apparently considered funny. Michael laughed, and the lines of his jaw shifted under his skin. His teeth were white and straight; Audrey wondered if he’d had them bleached.

She felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if she couldn’t figure out which was more alluring; the brunette with the sexy, thick lips or the warmth radiating from Michael Schiftmann as he stood next to her pretending-Audrey hoped-to listen.

Audrey felt her face redden and turned away, heading toward the bar with her empty glass. It was always this way for her at parties. Never successfully forcing herself to be comfortable, she often found herself standing alone with an empty glass in hand. No one ever offered to fill it for her. No man ever chatted her up. The small talk others made with her varied, depending on the place the other person occupied on the publishing feeding chain. Writers clawing their way up the ladder were either sycophantic, deferential, and fawning, or they were too intimidated to talk to her at all.

The established authors whose careers were already made condescended to her, patronized her, now that she was no longer essential to their success.

In either case, Audrey realized, none of them really knew her or gave a damn about her. As her turn at the bar came, Audrey decided to have one more Scotch and soda, then call it a night. Parties always brought her down. At least, she thought, that dreadful music had stopped momentarily.

“Excuse me,” a masculine voice behind her said. The voice was low, a smooth baritone, confident and relaxed.

She turned.

“You’re Audrey Carlisle, aren’t you?” Michael Schiftmann stared over the top of her glass, making direct eye contact and offering her his right hand.

“Yes,” Audrey said. She switched the glass from her right hand to her left, then took his outstretched hand before realizing her palms were wet with condensation from the glass.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Audrey said, pulling her hand away and wiping it on the side of her corduroy jacket.

“No problem,” Michael said, smiling. Audrey realized, suddenly, that the black-and-white picture that took up the entire back cover of his latest hardcover didn’t do him justice. His blue eyes were clear and penetrating, and the deep lines around his eyes seemed to bring an age and maturity to a face that would have otherwise perhaps been too boyish.

“I was hoping we’d get to meet,” Michael said, taking her arm and gently escorting her away from the bar. “Taylor told me she’d invited you. I’m so glad you came.”

As the two crossed the large room, the music started up again. Audrey winced.

“Wish they wouldn’t play that so loud.”

“Here,” Michael said loudly, motioning toward the far wall, “we can get away from most of it.”

A moment later, Audrey noticed the room’s acoustics did seem to direct the music away from the corner where she now found herself in intimate conversation with Michael.

Suddenly it seemed as if they were the only two in the room, that he was devoting his entire focus and attention to her. Audrey Carlisle felt warm and hoped she wasn’t too visibly flushed.

“This is probably totally inappropriate,” Michael said, leaning in close to her, “but I wanted to thank you for the piece that’s coming out tomorrow.”

Audrey smiled. “Why would that be inappropriate?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging slightly, “professional detachment, that sort of thing. Maybe in this business it’s just not cool to admit that you’re in someone else’s debt.”

Audrey had convinced her editor to run a full-length piece on Michael’s latest book, The Fifth Letter, and to time it with the book’s first appearance on The List. As was the paper’s practice, she’d sent an advance copy of the review to Brett Silverman as a courtesy, and obviously Michael had been given the chance to read it. It had been the first of Michael’s new series that she had reviewed personally. After reading the latest, she did something she had rarely done before in her career: She went back and read the first four installments before writing her review.

“I guess I just wanted you to know how grateful I am,”

Michael offered.

“You know,” Audrey said, sipping her drink, “I almost tracked you down to interview you for the piece, but I was up against deadline, and Brett Silverman said you were somewhere down in South Carolina or someplace like that.”

“I did three signings in South Carolina,” Michael said.

“One in Charleston, one in Hilton Head, and the other in-”

He hesitated a moment. “Jeez, I can’t remember. Colum-bia, maybe? I’m two-thirds of the way through a forty-city tour, and they’re all starting to run together.”

“I’ll bet,” Audrey said.

“So,” Michael asked, lowering his voice, “what would you have asked me if you’d been able to track me down?”

Audrey took another sip of the drink, this one longer and fuller, and felt the bubble of warmth in her stomach pulsate back and forth as the Scotch hit.

“I think the thing I’m most curious about is the disparity,”

she said after a few moments.

“Disparity?”

“Yes, the disparity. The incongruousness of someone who seems so nice, so pleasant, so normal, writing novels that clearly reflect an imagination so-”

“So what?” Michael asked.

“Deviant,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

Michael’s forehead seemed to tense, the blue eyes darken.

“What do you mean by that, Audrey?”

“Other writers have written books featuring assassins, hit men, as protagonists. Larry Block, Andrew Vachss, Elmore Leonard, for instance. But your books are the only books I’ve ever read that authentically, realistically capture the mind of a sociopath, a serial killer, a human being totally without conscience or sense of ethics or morality, and do it in such a way that you’re so drawn into the story that before you even realize it, you’re cheering for evil.”

Michael Schiftmann stared at Audrey Carlisle for a few beats, then looked uncomfortably down at his drink.

“Tell me, Mr. Schiftmann,” Audrey said, “do you have a moral compass?”

“In this day and age, how does one even know what a moral compass is?”

“Oh, one can know quite precisely what a moral compass is, and whether one has one …”

“I believe that all crime fiction is a morality play,” Michael said. “Everyone who writes about crime must confront the duality of and the battle between good and evil. I do it in my own way and with my own insights. I look around me every day and I see that in the battle between good and evil, evil is winning.”

Michael stopped for a moment, pausing to sip his own drink. “How else can you explain the resurgence of the Republican right wing?”

Audrey smiled. “Okay, you’ve got me there. Still, no one’s ever seen anything quite like this before. At least not with this degree of popular success. How do you do it?”

Michael smiled back at her, then raised his glass as if about to make a toast. “With the same two tools every writer uses: imagination and research.”