Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

“What was that all about?” I asked Cynthia.

“He and his brother don’t speak,” she said. “It’s simple envy on both their parts…. Tim gets the good reviews, and Curt gets the Hollywood sales.”

Culver’s twin brother, Curt-who wrote under the name Curt Clark-was the author of numerous comedy caper novels, a good half dozen of which had been snapped up by the movies. But it was Culver’s Hammett-like novels about professional thief McClain that had earned the critical raves, as well as a couple of Edgars and several overseas awards.

“Didn’t mean to step on any toes,” I said.

“Oh, he’s just in a gloomy mood today,” she said. “I think being with Roscoe Kane so shortly before his death made Tim a little dour, shall we say. Contemplating his own mortality-which of course is the male equivalent of the navel.”

She said this with the tiniest cocktail-party smile, and got a genuine smile out of me, despite my own mood. She was able to get away with saying the nastiest things by saying them in the most good-natured, offhand way.

“I liked your Hammett biography,” I said. “How’d you swing the cooperation of the estate?”

“Tact and patience,” she said. “Something the men who’d approached the estate hadn’t bothered trying.”

“I have to admit I was surprised you wrote a book about a tough-guy writer, what with your leaning toward the more genteel sort of mystery.”

Cynthia had made her reputation writing drawing-room mysteries, intelligent, urbane American versions of the Agatha Christie formula. Lately she’d begun doing occasional “big” books, suspense novels in the vein of Mary Higgins Clark; at this she’d again been critically and commercially successful, and was similarly successful with her Hammett bio.

“I’ve always admired Hammett,” she said. “That’s no secret. My own work is sort of an unlikely marriage between Hammett and Christie. But the tough mystery story beyond Hammett gets silly very quickly. Chandler has his merits, I suppose, but who else? Mickey Spillane? Don’t spoil my breakfast. Ross Macdonald? Possibly. But how you can take the likes of Roscoe Kane seriously-and I mean no disrespect, I’m talking about the man’s work, and nothing else-mystifies me.”

The table tension hadn’t departed with Culver.

“You’re embarrassed to see me again, aren’t you?” I said.

She shrugged; the cocktail-party smile settled uneasily on one side of her face. She lit a cigarette and handled it gracefully, almost regally, but underneath it were nerves. Even nervous, though, she seemed somehow calm; a bundle of contradictions, Cynthia Crystal was-cool and warm, bitchy and sweet. Whatever, she was a beautiful woman. I had told her so, once.

“I still have a crush on you,” I said.

She laughed. “That’s so like you, that word. ‘Crush.’ Are you destined to be an overgrown adolescent your entire life, Mal? Will you never grow up?”

I shrugged. “Yes and no,” I said.

Her smile turned gentle and suddenly her brittle manner fell away.

“Yes, damnit,” she admitted, “I am embarrassed at seeing you again. The last time I saw you, I treated you badly. I know it. And you know it.”

I shook my head no. “You treated me the way I deserved to be treated. I misread the situation, and you put me straight. Let’s leave it at that.”

She leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Friends?” she said.

I held a hand out and she took it, shook it.

“Friends,” I said.

Culver was on his way back to the table, finally having worked his way through the line to pay the check.

“You just like older men, that’s all,” I said.

“He’s a better writer than you, too,” she said with a wicked smile, and the sort of natural charm that made a remark like that seem a compliment.

I smirked. “You’re just saying that ’cause it’s true.”

She patted my hand and I rose.

I nodded to Culver as he approached and he at me, and I went on to join Sardini and Murtz in a booth.

“Mal!” Tom said, having been too deep in conversation with Murtz to notice me come in. “Jesus, sit down! You must’ve been through it last night.”

“The news about Roscoe Kane sure got around fast. I didn’t tell anybody. Has Mae Kane been down or something?”

Murtz made a disgusted expression under the every-which-way-but-trimmed mustache. “The hotel leaked it, apparently; reporters were around for a couple of hours, starting about eight, questioning every mystery writer they could get a hold of. I’m surprised they didn’t track you down.”

“They’ve talked to Mae, then?”

Tom said, “My understanding is she gave them a brief statement this morning. She mentioned that she’d been with a friend of the family when she found Kane’s body, but didn’t give ’em your name. I figured it was you, since you went up with her from the bar last night, and I mentioned that to some of our fellow wordsmiths-but not to the reporters. The word spread among the people here-but nobody tipped the reporters off that a mystery writer helped find the body. Nobody said much to the reporters at all, frankly, let alone hand ’em a juicy sidebar like that.”

“Why’s that?”

Murtz had a cynically amused smile going. “Well, the press sure wasn’t here ’cause Kane was a public figure; they vaguely knew who he was, of course. It’s more the sick joke novelty of a mystery writer dying at a mystery convention. An oddity, a cute ironic sidelight.”

“Who was here?”

Tom said, “A woman and a cameraman from the Trib . A guy and a cameraman from the Sun Times . Word is some TV people will be around this afternoon, when the ’con officially opens, to do a live minicam thing on the six o’clock news.”

The waitress came over at that point, and I had thought I wanted breakfast, but suddenly coffee seemed all my stomach could face.

“Has Mae been down?” I said.

Sardini shook his head no. “She talked to the reporters in her room. Just for a little while.”

I was surprised she hadn’t called me for some support; she was a strong woman, though, and had plenty of media experience. She could handle herself.

“Tom,” I said, “I’m assuming you’d like me to ask her to stick around until the awards ceremony Saturday.”

Tom shrugged elaborately, shook his head no, then broke out into a chagrined smile and admitted, “Yes. I don’t want to sound like as much of a media ghoul as those reporters, but we were depending on Roscoe-to get us a little ink.”

Well, he’d done that much for them already.

“It’d be good if we could get Mrs. Kane to accept the award for her husband,” Tom was saying as the waitress refilled our coffee cups. “I feel like a creep saying so, but we can use the publicity that’d bring.”

“I don’t think you’re out of line, Tom,” I said. “I want now more than ever to see Roscoe Kane given some public recognition.”

“Then you’ll talk to Mae Kane?”

“I’ll talk to her. Give it my best shot.”

“Thanks, Mal. Sorry to even mention it, really….”

“It’s okay. I brought it up.”

“Uh, would you mind,” Murtz ventured, “telling us what really happened last night?”

I told them; I took it easy on my suspicions, but I didn’t leave my suspicions out.

And Murtz said, “D’you really think he was murdered, Mal? Or have you just read too many mysteries?”

I tried to smile but it went sour. “I don’t know. Maybe I wrote too many. I found a body one other time, and it was murder-clearly murder. Remember? Maybe I’ve got delusions of being an amateur detective now.”

“Maybe you’re just researching your next book,” Tom offered, then realized that sounded uglier than he’d meant it to, and added, “I didn’t mean that exactly that way, Mal….”