Michael Connelly - The Poet

"What about the publishers?"

"I'm working on it. You?"

"I gave up once your first story came out. My agent said the editors he talked to were more interested in you than me. You had the brother, you know? You were obviously on the inside. Only thing I'd be able to sell was one of those quick-and-dirty jobs. I'm not interested. I've got a reputation."

I nodded and turned to get out of the car.

"Thanks for the ride."

"Thanks for the story."

I was out and about to close the door when Warren started to say something but then stopped.

"What is it?"

"I was going… ah, hell, look, Jack, about the source on that story. If-"

"Forget it, man, it doesn't matter anymore. Like I said, the guy's dead and you did what any reporter would do."

"No, wait. That's not what I'm saying… I don't give up sources, Jack, but I can tell you who isn't a source. And Thorson wasn't my source, okay? I didn't even know the guy."

I just nodded, saying nothing. He didn't know that I had seen the hotel phone records and that I knew he was lying. A new Jaguar pulled under the parking overhang and a couple dressed head to toe in black started getting out. I looked back at Warren, wondering what he was trying to do. What scam could he be pulling by lying now?

"That it?"

Warren turned a hand upside down and nodded.

"Yeah, that's it. Being that he's dead and you were there, I thought you might want to know."

I looked at him for another moment.

"Okay, man," I said. "Thanks. I'll see you around."

I straightened up and closed the door, then bent down to look at Warren through the window and gave a wave. He snapped off a military-style salute and drove away.

In my room I connected my computer to the phone line and dialed into the Rocky's computer. I had thirty-six E-mail messages waiting for me. I hadn't checked in two days. Most of the in-house messages were congratulatory, although they weren't explicitly worded as such because the senders probably hesitated to do so, wondering if it was proper to congratulate me for killing the Poet. There were two from Van Jackson asking me where I was and to call and three from Greg Glenn asking the same. The Rocky operator had also dumped my phone messages into my E-mail basket and there were several from reporters across the country and from Hollywood production companies. My mother and Riley had also called. There was no doubt I was in demand. I saved all the messages in case I wanted to call back and signed off.

Greg Glenn's direct line rang through to the operator. She said Greg was in a story meeting and she had standing orders not to ring into the conference room. I left my name and number and hung up.

After waiting fifteen minutes for Greg to return my call and trying not to think about what Warren had told me at the end of our ride, I got impatient and left the room. I started walking down the strip and eventually stopped at Book Soup, a bookstore I had noticed earlier during the ride with Warren. I went to the mystery section and found a book I had once read which I knew was dedicated to the author's agent. My theory was that this was at least the sign of a good agent. With the name in hand, I next went to the research section and looked up the agent in a book listing literary agencies, their addresses and phone numbers. I committed the phone number to memory, left the store and walked back to the hotel.

The red light on the phone was flashing when I got back to my room and I knew it was probably Greg, but I decided to call the agent first. It was five o'clock in New York and I didn't know what hours he kept. He answered after two rings. I introduced myself and quickly went into my pitch.

"I wanted to see if I could talk to you about representing me in regard to a, uh, I guess it would be called a true crime book. Do you do true crime?"

"Yes," he said. "But rather than discuss this on the phone I would really prefer that you send me a query letter telling me about yourself and the project. Then I can respond."

"I would but I don't think there is time. I've got publishers and movie people calling me and I have to make some decisions quickly."

That set the hook. I knew it would.

"Why are they calling you? What's it about?"

"Have you read or seen anything on TV about this killer out in L.A., the Poet?"

"Yes, of course."

"I'm the one who, uh, shot him. I'm a writer-a reporter. My brother-"

"You're the one?"

"I'm the one."

Though he was interrupted often by other calls, we talked for twenty minutes about the possible book project and the interest I'd already gotten from the movie production people. He said he worked with an agent in Los Angeles who could handle the interest from that industry. In the meantime, he wanted to know how quickly I could send him a two-page proposal. I told him I'd get it to him within the hour and he gave me the number of his computer's fax modem. He said that if the story was as good as he had seen on TV, he thought that he could have the book sold by the end of the week. I told him the story was better.

"One last thing," he said. "How did you get my name?"

"It was in A Morning for Flamingos."

The red light on the phone continued to wink at me but I ignored it after hanging up and went to work on my laptop writing the proposal, trying to consolidate the last two weeks into two pages. It was a difficult process, not helped by having only one usable hand, and I went long, finishing with four pages.

By the time I was done, my hand was beginning to throb even though I had tried not to use it. I took another one of the pills the hospital had given me and had gone back to the computer, proofreading my proposal, when the phone rang.

It was Greg and he was livid.

"Jack!" he cried out. "I've been waiting on your call! What the fuck are you doing?"

"I did call! I left a message. I've been sitting here an hour waiting for you to call back."

"I did, goddamnit! You didn't get my message?"

"No. You must've called when I went down the hall for a Coke. But I didn't get any-"

"Never mind, never mind. Look, what do we have for tomorrow? I've got Jackson on it here and Sheedy took a plane out this morning. She's going to a press conference at the bureau. But what can you give us that's new? Every paper in the country is following our ass and we need to stay in front of them. What's new? What do you have that they don't have?"

"I don't know," I lied. "Not a lot's going on. The bureau people are still tying up the details, I guess… I'm still off the story?"

"Look, Jack, I don't see how you can write this. We went over this yesterday. You're too involved. You can't expect me to let-"

"Okay, okay, I was just asking. Um… uh, there's a couple things. First, they traced this guy Gladden back to an apartment last night and they found a body there. Another victim. You can start with that. But that might be what the press conference is about. Then, also, tell Jackson to call the field office out here and ask about the computer they found."

"The computer?"

"Yeah, Gladden had a laptop in his car. They had their computer geeks going over it all night and this morning. I don't know, it might be worth a call. I don't know what they found."

"Well, what have you been doing?"

"I had to go down there and give a statement. Took all morning. They have to go to the district attorney and ask for a justifiable homicide ruling or something. I came back here when I was done."

"They're not telling you what's going on?"

"No, I only overheard a couple of agents talking about the body and the thing about the computer, that's all."

"Okay, well that's a start."

I was smiling and trying to keep it out of my voice. I didn't care about revealing the discovery of the Poet's last victim. That was probably going to come out anyway. But someone like Jackson calling cold wouldn't be able to even get confirmation that there was a computer, let alone what was in it. The bureau wouldn't put that out until it was good and ready to.