Show Business is Murder

at it, sometimes for hours, with hints of sleep glazing his eyes. Even when he turned away, he always knew it remained, always knew where it was. But after they routed Mai Teng, he knew it wasn’t the typewriter, that he would finish even if he had to write the rest on the walls in his own blood. He wondered what Barry’s friend would think of the skewed type on the sheets that he passed along.

He had a meeting in the morning, somewhere across the city, and his check had run out so he didn’t have money for a bus. He’d have to leave at 10:30 to make sure he got there by noon. He didn’t know what exactly it meant, but Barry said he had a friend who might give him money for his story, and he needed money right now more than almost anything. Barry said he’d pay for lunch if it was a lunch meeting, and Janson would have walked an hour and a half across town just for a decent meal.

He had written up to the very end. He didn’t know how many more pages, but he could feel the door closing. He didn’t think about it consciously, but he knew somewhere inside that he’d have to get through Henry Wilder to put it down, to put it all down. But for now, he couldn’t face the typewriter, so he concentrated on washing his pants and shirt in the sink so he wouldn’t smell at the meeting. He would try to tape the hole in the knee from the inside so it wouldn’t hang open.

He had given Barry the latest segments-the total was now one hundred seventeen pages and two paragraphs on the one hundred eighteenth. The pages were not numbered and he did not consciously count them, but each fresh sheet tolled, somehow, inside his head. Although he turned over the new pages the day before yesterday, he remembered just how he had written the storm, and could still feel it rattling inside him.

The thunder was still there, and it was all light that didn’t fade and shrapnel still in flight. I waited for the trees to stop shaking-what world what ungodly world where even the trees shake and the soil flies at you and folds under you-and for the rain to stop whipping my cheeks, but I had waited days or months already to no avail. When the ground eats its own progeny, then we’ve all come to judgment day, but I’d seen it all, seen the very ground spread its jaws and pull my struggling comrades down into tunnels and unimaginable torments, seen bodies waist deep in soil jerking with the movement of hands gripping them beneath the ground. And yanked down in a flash of foreign tongue moving vertically even in sound and then a scurrying of footsteps beneath. Always beneath and below. Footsteps in the cellar of my mind, even then in the rain with the shock of the blast still settling over and throughout me.

And the skies opened only with rain.

He knew that he was almost there; he had even allowed one of Wilder’s hands to creep over the edge of the coffin, but he slammed the lid on it. It would have to wait until after his meeting if he was going to get through it.

“I’M TELLING YOU, you would’ve died if you saw him. I know, I know-the suit. Last year Armani. Well he’s a prick. He was a prick when I knew him at Doubleday. That’s right, that’s exactly right. Can’t talk foreign, I want him off my fuckin’ Rolodex.”

Adam Diamond leaned forward and hit the fourth red button in from the left. “Janice. Richard Dawkins. Off the fuckin’ Rolodex, out of the computer. Done.”

“Yes, just like that, Harvey. I trust your judgment, especially when it coincides with mine. Hey-and guess who I’ve got coming in in about…” Adam flicked his Movado out from beneath a cuff. “… five minutes? The guy-the bum guy I told you about. Jaston Tanker. I’ll-”

The green light flashed on his desk, and a female voice crackled through. “We have a security problem, Adam. A homeless man in the lobby won’t leave, says he has an appointment with you, but I have you with Janson Tanker for your twelve o’clock and Michael Weaver for your twelve thirty.”

“Goddamnit Janice,” Adam roared. His voice dropped with the second half of the same breath. “Harvey, I’ll call you back.” He slammed down the phone and stood up, leaning over his desk toward the intercom. “That probably is Jaston Tanker.”

The intercom was silent for a minute. “You mean Janson Tanker, Adam?”

Adam was silent for a long time as he tried to control his breathing. Finally, he spoke, his voice wavering with rage. “Just you push me, you cunt. You push me about an inch further and you’ll be rolling calls the rest of your fucking life. Now get him in here.”

He sighed, and raised the jade duo balls from their box, a blue case with a flowing Asian design. He sat down and rolled his black leather chair to his enormous glass desk.

After a few seconds, there was an uncomfortable knock on the door, and then Janson entered the room. Adam could see how security had mistaken him for a bum; his shirt was so washed out that it had faded to a greenish gray, the color all clothes turned to once they were old enough.

Janson crossed the room, a walking shadow. He hadn’t shaved, but the stubble was as much a part of his face as anything else.

He was probably the kind of guy who grew scruff within seconds after shaving, just to cover his face a little, Adam thought. Not just to make him look tough, but to keep something in. He had the hardest green eyes Adam had ever seen. They reminded him of his father’s.

“Please. Sit.” Adam beckoned Janson forward, indicating the smaller seat on the far side of the desk.

“Tha-” Janson cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, and sat down. His voice was rich and deep; it had a full rainbow of colors in it. Adam found himself instantly charmed.

“I like you,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Janson replied. He didn’t look shocked (Adam bet it took a hell of a lot more than that to shock a guy like Janson), just perplexed. And more than a little out of his element. Adam tried again.

“I like you. I like your writing. I haven’t read it all, but I took home the first half of your book as a weekend read and I like your style. Reminds me of…” Adam stopped for a minute, studying the Lichtenstein hanging behind Janson’s head. “Reminds me of Faulkner. I’m intrigued. I want to read more, I want to know more. You’ve got a rough style that’s not meant to be polished. I like that. I like the… animal feel. Where’d you get it?”

Janson frowned, biting his lip and pulling it to the side. Adam could see something moving in him like wind through a chime. Discomfort, maybe. “My mother was a schoolteacher,” Janson finally said. “Had me reading early and typing by high school. I had a year of junior college before the war.” He was proud of that. Proud, yet not asking for approval.

“I have always thought,” Adam replied, “that formal schooling is vastly overrated.”

Janson flicked his head back slightly in response, and Adam could detect a slight edge in his eyes. Suddenly he didn’t like him quite so much.

“You want me to cut the bullshit and tell you why you’re here, don’t you?” Adam asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what I do?”

“No.”

“I’m not really an agent like you’d think of an agent. More of a packager. I put deals together. Books. Movies. People. I like your style, I like your writing. I already told you that. I need the end of your book, then I need to run it through a circuit of editors and producers.”

Janson watched Adam attentively, chewing on the skin underneath one of his fingernails.

“Now, here’s what I can do for you,” Adam continued. “I can run this story through my circuit, and if it goes, it goes. Not small time. I’m talking book deal, publishing, hard and soft cover-I don’t work with anything without a hard release. I’m talking film rights, and we can negotiate for screenwriting credit. It depends what you come up with, how much the studios like it and you, and if you can give them what they want. A publishing deal can get you from twenty-five thousand to a quarter of a million. That used to be more than you could expect for a first-time writer, but first-time writers are hot. Unless you’re John Grisham or Jane Austin, established writers are having a tough time at the movies right now. They’re looking for hot young writers. You’re not exactly young, but you’re new and that’s the biggest word from LA to New York. Film rights go, they can go seven figures.”

Adam watched Janson’s eyes widen. I have him, he thought. He’s mine and only mine until I decide if I’m using him. He continued, tasting the words as they rolled from his tongue. “Now I deal mostly with film rights, but if those go, you can expect a publishing deal. What publisher isn’t going to want to get a book if we get you on line with a big studio? None. More money for you, more money for them.” He paused and let the thoughts sink in, fumes settling over a softly lit meadow.

Adam cleared his throat once. Sharply. “Now before you go picking out the color of your new BMW, I’m telling