His hand shook as he took it and they clinked the precious glasses and drank deep. Well, Sean drained his, and she hopped up, said, “Let me freshen that, amach, and we’ll talk guns and why you’re going to help me.”
She added three fingers of the Jay and not so much of the black.
He half finished that, a dribble coming from his lips, tried, “A-a-a-a-ngela… I… d-d-d-d-dr… iv-v-v-ve… a… cab.”
She put her hand on his dick, said, “I always had a thing for you, Sean.”
The continued use of his name and with such tenderness, plus the booze, was really screwing with his head. Not that it looked like it took much, since the blowtorch incident; looked like his mind was mostly scrambled eggs anyway.
She unzipped him, asked, “Would you like me to take care of that stallion you have rearing up there?”
Would he fooking ever. He’d have sold the mother’s linen, glasses and grave for it.
She said, “I’m going to be your woman, okay, darling?”
He nodded, too weak to speak, and she asked, “The guns?”
He stuttered, “How… m-m-m-m-m-man… y… d-d-d-d-o… y-y-y-y-you, you… y-y-you… w-w-w-w-w- want?”
Seventeen
“He had to hit him, but only him and only once.
After that it was sadism.”
In the morning before the night when all hell broke loose, Max met Paula for an interview session for the book. She’d arranged to have another private meeting, wearing something super low-cut, but this time the view didn’t give Max any liftoff.
“Sorry, babe, the wedding’s cancelled, kaput, finito.”
Said it stone-faced, no emotion, figured, Why sugar-coat it? Gotta hit hard, hit low, and hit early. And, man, he loved delivering bad news – what a fuckin’ rush! It reminded him of the days when he was a CEO and he got to fire people. That was the best part of his job – crushing the assholes’ dreams, watching them fucking melt.
“Oh,” she asked, “and why’s that?”
He could tell she wasn’t taking it well. She’d probably been planning for the big day, telling all her friends. Fuck, she’d probably had the band picked out.
“No offense, baby, but something bigger and better came along. A lot bigger and a lot better.”
Still hurting she asked, “This won’t affect the book, will it?”
“No, my motto is, Always do what you say you’re gonna do.”
“All right, then,” she said.
Was she stifling tears? Yeah, probably.
But she was a pro and managed to put it behind her. She started in with her questions: Do you remember your first meeting with Angela Petrakos? Was it love at first sight? What are your impressions of her boyfriend at the time, Thomas Dillon, AKA Popeye?
It was rough for Max, having to relive that dark period in his life. Well, it wasn’t really, but he acted like it was, knowing that sounding like it had been painful and traumatic was what sold books. Wasn’t that how Oprah did it?
Then Paula started asking the harder questions like: Did you want to kill your wife? Did you plot with Angela and Dillon to kill your wife? And – the most potentially incriminating of all – did you hire Dillon to kill your wife?
If Max hadn’t been flying so high, if he hadn’t been in the midst of the power trip to end all power trips, he might’ve thought it over first and realized that confessing to his wife’s murder, and admitting involvement in other murders and crimes he’d never been charged for, wasn’t exactly in his best interest. But, hell, he let it fly. It was the equivalent of an outright confession, details that could get him the death penalty.
But right then Max wasn’t thinking penalty, he was thinking publicity, he was thinking celebrity. That was what it was all about, right? Why hold back on the meat? You’re gonna open the door, open it all the way.
And Paula, yeah, she was eating it up, telling him how excited she was about the project, and how the biggest challenge would be to fit all this amazing material into one book.
“I might have to make it into a trilogy,” she said, and Max suddenly had a vision of the great Hollywood trilogies. Star Wars, The Godfather, Shrek, Revenge of the Nerds.
Imagining billions of dollars in DVD sales, merchandising, box office receipts, imagining walking onstage to accept his Oscar, Max made another impulsive decision.
He said, “You wanna get a first-hand look at The… A.X. in action? What’re you doing tonight at, say, midnight?”
“I don’t have plans,” Paula said. “Why?”
“How’d you like to ride in a getaway car with The… A.X. and the rest of his crew?”
Yep, he told her all about the whole prison break, down to the last detail. Probably not a good idea to share this info with a woman he hardly knew – and, worse, a woman he’d just fucking dumped – but the escape was going to climax the greatest moment in his life, and he wanted his biographer there to witness it.
Later, heading back to his cell, Max was still pumped, thinking how lucky a thing it was to be Max Fisher, when he saw Sino. He’d probably just been released from the hole – he was in cuffs, being walked along by a guard. When Sino saw Max he stopped and the guard stopped with him. Sino gave Max the dead-eye glare, and his nostrils flared and his jaw shifted as he grinded his teeth. Max didn’t back down. He shot back with his own mean-ass look, feeling like he was in a Western, two hombres staring each other down before the big shootout.
Then, suddenly, Max smiled widely. He made his thumb and forefinger into the shape of a gun, pointed it at Sino, and bent his thumb, pulling the trigger.
Man, the look on the big lump of meat’s face was fucking priceless.
Paula went back to the motel, real disappointed. She wouldn’t be the next Mrs. Max Fisher – how would she ever get over it? She laughed, thinking, Was the guy for real or what? Sometimes she thought he was fucking with her, with all the weird accents, the tough talk, the outrageous stories. It had to be some kind of schtick, a put-on. She was always waiting for him to crack up and say, Got you good there, huh? But it had never happened. And now he claimed he was staging a prison break? Probably a delusion like the rest of it. But hey, if it happened, she was going to be there to chronicle it. A first-person account of her subject escaping from Attica? It would like Junger getting a chance to ride the boat into the perfect storm.
After she parked her car, she walked to the soda machine near the motel’s office and bought a Tab – had to watch the figure if she was going to attract maximum babe-age. She figured she’d find some girl-girl porn on TV, rub one out, then try to find some decent food for lunch, not an easy task in this shithole town. After the incident at the bar, she was trying to keep a low profile. For all she knew it was legal to shoot dykes up here. Jesus, up here you wouldn’t even know you were in New York. It was like a fucking red state.
As she headed back toward her room she stopped and did a double-take when she saw Lee Child walking toward her with another guy. What the hell was Lee Child doing up here? Was he on an author tour? Was the guy his media escort? Was there a mystery bookstore in Attica? Were there any bookstores in Attica? Were there any books in Attica? Hard to imagine that they even knew how to read up here.
Back in her straight days she’d had a big thing for Lee – who didn’t, right? – and now she was so flustered, so starstruck, she couldn’t even say hello or call out his name. She just watched with a dumb expression as he and the guy he was with went into their room.
She wondered: Why was he staying at this crummy motel? Wasn’t he loaded?
Then she had a thought that terrified her – was he up here to try to steal the story out from under her? She knew he was doing well these days, at the top of the Times list and all, but every writer was always on the lookout for the next big thing. Hell, Paula herself had gotten most of her ideas for books at the bar at one mystery
