Ken Bruen - Pimp

Gaylin eyed them both suspiciously for a bit longer. When neither showed signs of cracking, she went, “Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Mullen... Ms. Love. If I have any more questions, I’ll be back.” At the door she turned, said, “Oh. Mr. Mullen...”

“Aye?” Max said.

“Would you be open to a taking a lie-detector test?”

“Excuse me?” Angela said.

“It could help clear things up,” Gaylin said.

“Fook no,” Angela said. “What the hell. You have no evidence of anything, except for some story about a New York cop with obvious mental problems. I think you’ve wasted enough of our fookin’ time.”

Gaylin looked pissed off as hell, but reluctantly — what other choice did she have? — left.

When she was gone, Max and Angela laughed for a long time. Max knew Gaylin would be back at some point, and a lie detector could lead to disaster. But for right now PIMP was in control, and he wasn’t going to let anything ruin the ride.

When Paula woke up in her room at the Sofitel, she knew something was seriously wrong. She had an awful feeling she hadn’t felt since she’d found that the promised 20,000-copy print run of her last book at St. Martin’s Press had been reduced to 1,000 — all library sales. It felt like she was having a nightmare, but she was definitely awake, her face squished into an extra-firm pillow selected from the Sofitel’s pillow menu.

She turned onto her side, squinting against the California sun shining through the blinds, and noticed that Kat was gone. Then she noticed the note, handwritten on hotel stationery:

Baby ,

You know how much I admire you, but I think success has gone to your head and you know how I just can’t deal with that bullshit. I’ve also discovered that I’m no longer attracted to women. As my rabbi in Israel often said, “Go know!” If you’re not shocked already, I know this part will come as a bigger shock to you so please breathe deeply before you read the rest. Have you exhaled the breath? Okay, here we go — Lars and I have gone to Sweden to make amateur porn. He says he can make me a big star in Sweden and I believe that God has a plan for me and this is my time to shine. By the time you read this we’ll be boarding our flight, so please don’t try to stop me. Also, please understand that I am not a person, I am passion. This is who I am and no one will ever be able to change me, especially not you.

Shalom ,

Paula had always had a well, issue, with rejection, and this time was no different. She went on a rampage that would’ve impressed Johnny Depp, and it was goodbye extra-firm pillow and practically everything else in the room. Lamps were smashed, chairs broken, LCD TV shattered — Charles at Hard Case was going to flip when he saw the bill. But only one thought was careening through Paula’s brain at the moment — I’m going to be alone forever .

She’d thought that when she’d found Kat her search was over, that she’d found the one. But now her love was gone, she was Katless. Worse, she’d lost her co-writer. Slide, The Max and any future books in her Angela-and-Max series were in jeopardy.

She sobbed into the remnants of her pillow and finally rallied enough to call her agent, Janet Ortiz, in New York. Janet assured her that there was nothing to worry about, that Hard Case already had the cover painted for the next book and writers would be lining up to co-write with her. She texted Paula a jpeg of the painting.

“What the fuck?” Paula shouted. “There’s no redhead in the story. Angela is blonde .”

“So?”

“And what’s she doing, reaching for a...”

“A gun.”

“And Mr. Oblivious sitting there smoking doesn’t notice? What is he, a congenital idiot?”

“He’s distracted by her legs.”

“Who the fuck is he anyway? This is not a scene from my goddamn book! Nothing like this ever happens in it!”

“So what?” Janet said. “Since when has a Hard Case Crime cover ever had anything to do with what’s inside the book?” Then added unhelpfully, “Anyway, how do you know what will or won’t be in the book? You haven’t even written it yet.” Which was, after all, the bigger problem.

“Fuck,” Paula said. “Who the hell is desperate enough that he’d be willing to step into Stiegsson’s shoes? Do you really think you can find someone?”

“Absolutely,” Janet said.

Sure enough, within an hour, Janet called back and said Reed Coleman had interest.

“But isn’t Coleman currently writing with three other people, including Laura Lippman?” Paula asked.

“Yes, but he said he’d dump those projects, even stop writing Robert B. Parker’s books, to get on the Bust bandwagon. And Hard Case says whatever’s okay with you is okay with them.”

Paula liked Coleman’s enthusiasm, and if he was really willing to dump Lippman to write with her... This would be a double-whammy for poor Laura, since Paula knew she was already kicking herself for rejecting Paula’s initial co-writing offer and letting a max opportunity with Bust slide. But she hoped Laura had been around long enough to understand that writing’s a business, and sometimes you have to be the pimp.

“Tell Coleman he’s in,” Paula said.

So things were looking up. Okay, so she’d lost her love, but she’d kept what was dearest to her — her career as a novelist — intact.

Then she got a call from Donna James, her film agent, heard: “Have you been watching the news?”

Staring at the smashed TV, Paula said, “Not today, no.”

“Well, I have bad news and I have bad news,” Donna said, “which do you want to hear first?”

“I’ll take the good news,” Paula tried.

“Sorry, I don’t have any of that.”

Donna told Paula that Darren Becker had been murdered by a delusional man who went by the name Sebastian Child. Sebastian had been killed too, by Becker’s bodyguards. “Beheaded,” Donna said.

“Oh my God,” Paula said. “Sebastian?”

“You know him?”

“Of course I know him,” Paula said. “I met him while Max was in Attica, around the time of the prison break. He looks — well, looked — so much like Lee Child it’s freaky.”

“I see,” Donna said. “Well, with Becker gone, Brandi Love has a new producing partner, named Sean Mullen.”

“Wait, Sean Mullen?”

“You know him too?”

“He was a character in Bust . He disappeared around the time Max was at Attica.” Paula’s mind was churning, trying to figure out what this all meant, if it meant anything.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Donna said. “I mean Sean Mullen sounds like a common name.”

Now Paula was panicked. She asked, “This won’t affect the screenplay, will it?”

“That’s the other bad news,” Paula said. “Bill Moss has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Paula was stunned.

“He announced to Lionsgate that he had to exit the project for personal reasons,” Donna said. “An exec went to talk to him about it in person and his bungalow in Venice was cleaned out. He cancelled his phone service, credit cards, Netflix account. It’s like he doesn’t exist.”

“Personal reasons sounds like bullshit,” Paula said. “Why did he really leave?”

“You’re a natural mystery writer, aren’t you?” Donna said. “Well, what they’re saying on the news is that Sebastian and Bill might’ve known each other, and Bill had for some reason conspired with Sebastian to murder Darren Becker. I guess it’s sort of like the Tonya Harding and O.J. cases combined.” Donna laughed. “But I think that’s just a theory right now. As they say in the media — the story is fluid. I guess that’s a fancy way of saying they don’t know jack shit.” Donna laughed again.