A Cold Heart

Milo said, “If you don’t like the writing, why do you print it?”

“Because it’s there, mon gendarme. And some of our readership digs it.” She spit out another laugh, set off a metal whirligig. “With our budget, we ain’t exactly The New Yawker, honeybunch. Our focus-my focus, cause what I like is what flies- is lots of fashion, some interior design, a little film, a little music. We toss in the finesy-artsy shitsy because some people think it’s cool and in our niche market, cool is everything.”

Milo said, “Who’s FS?”

“Hmm,” said Padgett. She returned to Bumblebee and lifted an earphone. “Todd, who’s FS?”

“Who?”

“The credit on the Kipper story. It’s signed ‘FS.’ “

“How would I know? I didn’t even remember Kipper.”

Padgett turned to us. “Todd doesn’t know, either.”

“Don’t you keep a file of contributors?”

“Wow,” said Padgett, “this is getting seriously investigative. What’s the deal, a serial vampire killer?”

Milo chuckled. “What makes you say that?”

“I dig the X-Files. C’mon, tell Patti.”

“Sorry, Patti,” he said. “Nothing exotic, we’re collecting information.” He smiled at her. “Ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” she said, placing a black-nailed hand over a generous breast. “Be still my fluttering heart- hey, how about you guys let me follow you around and write up what you do- day in the life and all that. I’m a kick-ass writer, MFA from Yale. Same for Todd. We’re as dynamic a duo as you could hope to encounter.”

“Maybe one day,” said Milo. “Do you keep a contributor file?”

“Do we, Todd?”

Off came the earphones again. Padgett repeated the question. Todd said, “Not really.”

“Not really?” said Milo.

“I’ve got a quasi file,” said Todd. “But it’s random- data inputted as it comes in, no alphabetization.”

“In your computer?” said Milo.

Todd’s stare said, Where else?

“Could you please call it up?”

Todd turned to Padgett. “Isn’t there a First Amendment issue, here?”

“Puh-leeze,” said Padgett. “These guys are going to let us ride with them, we’ll do a kick-ass law enforcement issue- use that strung-out Cambodian model for the cover, whatshername with the sixteen-syllable name, doll her up in a tight blue uniform, give her a riding crop, a gun, the works. We’ll rock.”

Todd cleared his screen of graphics.

***

It took a second. “Here it is. FS- Faithful Scrivener.”

Milo hunched lower and stared at the screen. “That’s it? No other name?”

“The proverbial ‘what you see,’ “ said Todd. “This is how the submission came in, this is how I log it.”

“When you paid, what name did you put on the check?”

“Right,” said Todd.

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Padgett.

“You don’t pay.”

Padgett said, “We pay the cover models and the photographers as little as we can. Sometimes if we get someone with a genuine resume- a screenwriter with a credit- we can scratch up something- like a dime a word. Mostly we don’t pay because no one pays us. Distributors refuse to advance us the wholesale price until returns are caculated- we get royalties only for issues sold, and that takes months.” She shrugged. “It’s a sad day for entrepreneurship.”

Todd said, “She was an undergrad econ major at Brown.”

“As a sop to Daddy,” said Padgett. “He runs cor-po-ra-tions.”

“How long have you been publishing?” I said.

“Four years,” said Todd. Adding with pride: “We are currently four hundred thousand in the hole.”

“In hock to my daddy,” said Padgett. “To appease him, we maintain a job.”

“Jaguar Tutorials,” said Milo. “Which is?”

“SAT preparation,” said Padgett, lifting a business card from her desk and flashing it at us.

Patricia S. Padgett, B.A. (Brown) MFA (Yale)

Senior Consultant, Jaguar Tutorials

“Our mission should we accept it,” she said, “is to educate the offspring of anxiety-ridden social climbers in the fine points of college entrance exams.”

Milo said, “Jaguar as in…”

“The connotation,” said Todd, “is of mastery and swiftness.”

“Also,” said Padgett, “of upscale. As in Jag-oo-ar motorcars. We can’t afford Beverly Hills rent, but we want to pull in the B.H. kids.”

Todd said, “The Ivy League thing helps.”

Padgett said, “Todd did his undergrad at Princeton.”

“So,” said Milo, turning back to the screen, “this Faithful Scrivener person sent you a piece under a pseudonym, and you printed it and never paid.”

“Looks that way,” said Todd. “This notation- OTT- means an over-the-transom submission.”

Padgett said, “That’s publishing-speak for we didn’t solicit it, it just showed up.”

“You get a lot of that?”

“Plenty. Mostly garbage. Real garbage- I’m talking illiterate.”

“Has ‘FS’ written any other pieces for you?”

“Let’s see,” said Todd. He scrolled. “Here’s one. All the way back at the beginning.” To Padgett: “Back in Issue Two.”

Milo read the date. “Three and a half years ago.”

She said, “The halcyon days- look at this: evidence, clues, red herrings- we’re stylin’ and sleuthin’, Todd- hey, Officer, can we get cool badges, too?”

She went and got a copy of Issue Two. Faithful Scrivener’s first piece was in a section entitled “Pits and Peaches.” Brutal reviews alternating with mindless raves.

This one, a Peach. Two paragraphs singing the praises of a promising young dancer named Angelique Bernet.

Review of a ballet concert at the Mark Taper, in L.A. Experimental piece by a Chinese composer entitled “The Swans of Tianenmen.”

Two months before Bernet’s murder in Boston.

The company had been to L.A., first.

Angelique had been part of a trio of ballerinas featured during the final act. FS had picked her out because of “slap-in-the-face cygnian grace so fully synched with the tenor of the composition that it tightens one’s scrotum. This is DANCE as in paleo-instinctuo-bioenergetics, so right, so real, so unashamedly erotic. Her artistry sets her apart from the palsiform pretendeurs that comprise the rest of la compagnie allegement.”

“Ouch,” said Padgett. “We really need to be more selective.”

“ ‘Cygnian,’ “ said Milo.

Todd said, “It means swanlike. It’s on the advanced SAT vocab list.”

“ ‘Tight scrotum,’ “ said Padgett. “He had the hots for her. What are we dealing with, some kind of sexual psycho?”

Milo said, “Could you print copies of both articles? And as long as we’re at it, have you ever run anything by someone named Drummond?”