“Why not?”
When she looked back into his eyes, he saw the lights flick off. “Are you for real?”
“Do you want me to be?” he said, his grin losing air on one side.
Thankfully, someone grabbed him and told him he had a phone call at the hostess station.
*
Tenpenny got a pit in his stomach the moment he heard his editor on the line. Scholl sounded different. Roger could have sworn he felt the presence of the Beresford brat beside him.
“New York. First thing in the morning. Be here,” Scholl said curtly.
“Tomorrow morning? Jeez, Paul, I’ve already had more drinks than the Pacific Northwest has serial killers—how about the day after?”
“I want you on the seven a.m. shuttle, do you hear me?”
“Um, okay, will there be a ticket waiting for me at the—”
“Buy your own ticket.” With that, his editor hung up.
Tenpenny walked straight out and up the hill to the Viking Hotel without saying goodbye to anyone. He lay in bed with a drink on his chest. He watched the vodka pulse, confirming that he was alive. He tried to convince himself he was overreacting to the phone call. Maybe Scholl meant he’d reimburse him for the plane ticket later. If stellar reviews were pouring in, perhaps his editor just wanted to read them to him in person.
There was a knock on his door. He opened it to find the poet’s wife tilting there like a human Tower of Pisa.
“Hi,” she said.
He glanced down the hall, then back at her. “What?”
“Uh, you invited me here.”
“Yeah, but . . . maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“I’ll let you do anything you want to me.”
Tenpenny looked her over. “Yeah, okay, come in.”
*
When he flew to the city the next morning, Roger Tenpenny knew exactly what he was going to say. He’d stick to his guns, laugh at the accusations, work his way to outrage later. It was his word against the kid’s. He would not vacillate. He even popped an Inderal in case a lie detector was requested. They would not steal this from him.
He arrived at Knopf just after nine thirty. The lobby was decorated with poinsettias, the fruitcake of plants. His editor led him into his office where they were joined by another very businesslike-looking man. Beresford was not present. The man introduced himself as Jack Sheehan, FBI, shook Tenpenny’s hand, offered him a seat. Stick to your guns, Roger thought. When the fed switched on a small tape recorder, Tenpenny looked to the grim Scholl for an explanation, but his glance was averted.
“Mr. Tenpenny,” Sheehan began, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Tenpenny said. “Enough.”
“Would you like to consult a lawyer, sir?” the man asked, enunciating as if he was teaching at a school for the deaf.
“What are you talking about? For what reason? What is this all about?”
Sheehan and Scholl looked at one another.
“Mr. Tenpenny—”
“Please, call me Roger.”
“Mr. Tenpenny,” Agent Sheehan repeated, “did you write the book that you have titled The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
This is where Tenpenny had planned to bark out a laugh, but, perhaps because of the Inderal, nothing came out. “Can you please say that again?”
“I repeat: Did you write The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
“Of course I did and I resent the implication.”
A curious smirk spread across Sheehan’s face. “Mr. Tenpenny, you are stating here that you and you alone are the author of the book that you call The Saturday Night Before Easter Sunday?”
“I cannot wait to find out what this is all about. Yes, I and I alone wrote the book—now, what’s going on here?”
Scholl ran his fingers through his hair and, standing abruptly, shouted, “Tenpenny, you fuck!”
Roger made a mental note that however this thing resolved itself, Scholl was out.
Sheehan opened a briefcase and took out a book with a German title. “Does this look familiar?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s the German version of your book.”
Tenpenny glared at Scholl. “What?! I specifically told you I did not want it released in Europe!”
“Though the words are the same,” continued Sheehan, “the German title is The Flawed God.”
“Nice,” Tenpenny said bitterly. “No one ran that one by me either.”
Sheehan folded his arms and appraised Tenpenny. “You still claim to have written it?”
Tenpenny sucked up every ounce of push-back he had left. “Mr. FBI man, let me explain something to you. Writing is about one thing and one thing only: telling the truth. That’s what a good writer does. He tells the truth. So for you to stand there and question whether I am the author of my own work is about as insulting as it gets.”
“This book was published in 1952.”
“Yeah, I had help.”
*