Ken Bruen - The Max

“Look, honey, you want me to write this book with you, don’t you?”

He liked that – let the not-so-subtle threat hang there. That was the way to play hardball with the literary bitch. After all, not only had he cut off a man’s dick – yeah, he was starting to believe it himself – he was the king of Attica, a feared man, and he might as well start fucking acting like it, right? You want The… A.X. to give something, you gotta give him something in return.

Like that.

“I’ll think it over,” she said. “In the meantime, I was hoping we could-”

“I look like Chris Rock?” Max asked.

Paula looked confused, said, “I’m confused.”

“I look like Chris Rock?” Max repeated. “I look like a goddamn comedian?”

“No, but-”

“Then pay me some respect, okay? I’m an important man, I’m a big man. I need you, but you don’t need me. So you’re gonna give me what I need or you’re not gonna get what you need. You know that and I know that, so let’s not pussyfoot around. Let’s just keep the action going, the ball in play, all right?”

He had no idea what half this shit meant but, hell, he was on a roll. Yeah, you better believe it.

Her voice starting to weaken, she said, “Mr. Fisher, I can’t-”

Max dropped the headphones, got up and walked away. He went all the way to the other end of the room, making it seem like he was leaving for real, then, at the door, he stopped and turned back. Sure enough the book bitch was calling to him, trying to get his attention.

Max had her!

But he took his time walking back, milking the moment, then put the phones on and she practically screamed, “If I say yes, will you do the book with me?”

Ah, desperation. He loved it.

Max, waited, said, “Sweetheart, I’m gonna do a lot more with you than write a fucking book.”

Max Fisher had to be the smarmiest, sleaziest, most self-deluded guy Paula had ever met – a goldmine all right. She’d been worried, on the way up to Attica, that maybe Fisher would be a disappointment. After all, how could a guy be so far out there, so far gone? But, no, this guy lived up to his rep and surpassed it.

Just arriving at Attica had been such a fucking blast. The walls of the prison seemed to reek of testosterone and she’d laughed, said to herself, “Wanna talk about sperm count?”

She had to put that in the book. But first, Jesus, first, she needed to do another line. Yeah, just to get into the full Max Fisher mindset she’d started doing coke, and the sheer rush of snorting a line outside Attica was incredible. So she did one line, okay four, but c’mon, this is the toughest joint in the whole country and she was about to meet the craziest bastard any writer could dream of.

What was that book called, The Journalist and the Murderer? Yeah, something like that, Joe McGinnis, hottest true crime writer in the biz, two movies made till his subject, the killer doctor – McDonald? – sued him and sayonara Joe. Dealing with these guys was like juggling grenades. But if you could handle it… and she could, she knew she could. Now it was Paula Segal’s turn in the spotlight, on center stage.

The coke kicking in, she took a sip of her stone-cold vanilla latte. (Decaf. She wasn’t reckless. That caffeine was, like, addictive.)

She reached in her glove compartment, the nose candy giving her that icy drip that was pure heaven, and yup, there were her Virginia Slims. A cigarette, even a girly one, and she was so ready to rock and roll.

Oh, she loved Fisher. Who could invent a guy like that? She already had the chapter written in her head where he proposed marriage. Perfect, fucking perfect.

He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her tits. His obsession with busty women had come up during his trial and, okay, she’d expected him to respond more or less the way he had. It’s why she’d worn what she’d worn. But he’d gone further. Three weeks in jail and he was ready to propose marriage to a complete stranger. One with nice tits, but still. Couldn’t this asshole tell she was a dyke now? But if he couldn’t, he couldn’t. Not her fault. It was her right as a journalist to milk it for all it was worth. She decided to string him along, let him think she wanted to marry him. Jesus, how far would a man go just to get laid? But if that’s what it took to get him to open up in a few private sessions, give her some juicy quotes no one else had, baby, let him eye the twins all he wanted. About time they gave her something other than a backache.

Leaving the prison, Paula was shaking, not from fear but sheer hot exhilaration. Well, exhilaration and cocaine.

She did another line then, looking up at the gun turrets, realized she’d better get the car and her ass in gear.

As she pulled out of there, she was debating, Should she reveal in the book that she was gay? Then she thought, How big is the pink dollar? and laughed again, that damn coke. How much did dykes spend on true crime books?

But no, pulling an Ellen might alienate the great white majority. The hell with it, she’d ask her agent what to do, her new agent, not this fucking loser she had now.

Getting back to the motel, she found the coke high, like a sad dick, was wilting and she needed to stay up, stay on top of her game. She thought, Nice cold dry Martini would do the biz, maybe a bit of hot sex. She’d check her trick book But, shit, she wasn’t in the city. Her trick book was back home, and anyone listed in it was three hundred miles away. She needed some rough trade right here, right now. There had to some hot bull dykes somewhere in Attica, New York, right? Every prison these days had a diversity hiring requirement, and those butch female guards had to hang out somewhere.

Her thoughts skipped back, from sex to her book. She could see the dust jacket, had to be black and white, maybe they’d use Fisher’s mugshot. Or maybe she’d just take one herself, how difficult could it be? She had a digital camera.

Then the blurbs! Maybe she could get Dominick Dunne or Sebastian Junger or, better yet, Bill Clinton. He liked to read and, God, he was going to love to read about Max Fisher. Ah, and then, once word of her book got around, people would start asking her for blurbs, Even Connelly and King would be calling her. But she’d adopt a policy of no blurbing herself. Sorry, not even for Laura L.

She said aloud as she was putting on her leather gear, primed for a night on the prowl, something that would have gotten her thrown out of the very bars she was about to visit: “Max Fisher, I love you.”

Sebastian was so bloody happy to be back in old Blighty. Gosh, it was good to speak English with English people. He’d noticed the girl on the plane had spare keys in her bag and stupid cow, her address in Hampstead written right on the fob. Who knows, he might do a little reconnaissance there. He always kept his ears open for useful details. She’d mentioned she worked as a paralegal; perhaps while she was paralegalizing, he could stroll through her gaff, see what other goodies he might liberate.

The prospect of rifling her place tickled his fancy. Nothing like a touch of B-and-E to whet the appetites. He had for the past few years rented a one-room apartment in Earls Court. His parents paid the freight, mainly to keep him out of their home. Patrick Hamilton had written, “Those whom the gods have abandoned are left an electric fire in Earls Court.” It was indeed, depending on your vocabulary, A kip A hovel A dive A shithole

But it was a bolt hole, and it was useful to have an address. It had one wardrobe that held his prized Armani suit, his three pair of Italian-made brogues and, of course, the mandatory striped shirts, all bespoke. And, naturally, an assortment of ties, from Police Federation to Cambridge, Eton and Oxford to the Masons. Vital items for a con man on his uppers.