“This is not public record. How do you know who’s being hired or fired at the University of North Carolina?”
“We have our sources.”
Mercer frowned and shoved her salad an inch or two away, as if she were finished. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled at Ms. Shelby. “I can’t help but feel, well, violated.”
“Please, Mercer, hear me out. It’s important that we have as much information as possible.”
“For what?”
“For the job we are proposing. If you say no, then we’ll simply go away and toss the file on you. We’ll never divulge any of our information.”
“What’s the job?”
Elaine took a small bite and chewed for a long time. After a sip of water, she said, “Back to the Fitzgerald manuscripts. We think they’re being hidden on Camino Island.”
“And who might be hiding them?”
“I need your assurance that what we discuss from this point on is extremely confidential. There’s a lot at stake here, and a loose word could cause irreparable damage, not just to our client, and not just to Princeton, but to the manuscripts themselves.”
“Who in hell might I tell about this?”
“Please, just give me your word.”
“Confidentiality requires trust. Why on earth should I trust you? Right now I find you and your company to be very suspicious.”
“I understand. But please hear the rest of the story.”
“Okay, I’m listening, but I’m not hungry anymore. You’d better talk fast.”
“Fair enough. You’ve been to the bookstore in downtown Santa Rosa, Bay Books. It’s owned by a man named Bruce Cable.”
Mercer shrugged and said, “I guess. I went there a few times with Tessa when I was a kid. Again, I haven’t been back to the island since she died and that was eleven years ago.”
“It’s a successful store, one of the best independents in the country. Cable is well known in the business and is quite the hustler. He’s connected and gets a lot of authors on their tours.”
“I was supposed to go there with October Rain, but that’s another story.”
“Right, well, Cable is also an aggressive collector of modern first editions. He trades a lot, and we suspect he makes serious money with that part of his business. He’s also known to deal in stolen books, one of the few in that rather dark business. Two months ago we picked up his trail after a tip from a source close to another collector. We think Cable has the Fitzgerald manuscripts, purchased for cash from a middleman who was desperate to get rid of them.”
“My appetite has really disappeared.”
“We can’t get near the guy. We’ve had people in the store for the past month, watching, snooping, taking secret photos and videos, but we’ve hit a brick wall. He has a large, handsome room on the main floor where he keeps shelves of rare books, primarily those of twentieth-century American authors, and he’ll gladly show these to a serious buyer. We’ve even tried to sell him a rare book, a signed and personalized copy of Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay. Cable knew immediately that there are only a few copies in the world, including three in a college library in Missouri, one owned by a Faulkner scholar, and one still held by Faulkner’s descendants. The market price was somewhere in the forty-thousand-dollar range, and we offered it to Cable for twenty-five thousand. At first he seemed interested but then started asking a lot of questions about the book’s provenance. Really good questions. He eventually got cold feet and said no. By then he was overly cautious, and this raised even more suspicions. We’ve made little progress getting into his world and we need someone inside.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. As you know, writers often take sabbaticals and go away to do their work. You have the perfect cover. You practically grew up on the island. You still have an ownership interest in the cottage. You have the literary reputation. Your story is completely plausible. You’re back at the beach for six months to finish the book everybody has been waiting for.”
“I can think of perhaps three people who might be waiting for it.”
“We’ll pay a hundred thousand dollars for the six months.”
For a moment Mercer was speechless. She shook her head, pushed her salad farther away, and took a sip of water. “I’m sorry but I’m not a spy.”
“And we’re not asking you to spy, only to observe. You’re doing something that is completely natural and believable. Cable loves writers. He wines them and dines them, supports them. Many of the touring authors stay at his home, and it is spectacular, by the way. He and his wife enjoy hosting long dinners with their friends and writers.”
“And I’m supposed to waltz right in, gain his confidence, and ask him where he’s hiding the Fitzgerald manuscripts.”
Elaine smiled and let it pass. “We’re under a lot of pressure, okay? I have no idea what you might learn, but at this point anything could be helpful. There’s a good chance Cable and his wife will reach out to you, perhaps even befriend you. You could slowly work your way into their inner circle. He also drinks a lot. Maybe he’ll let something slip; maybe one of his friends will mention the vault in the basement below the store.”
“A vault?”
“Just a rumor, that’s all. But we can’t exactly pop in and ask him about it.”
“How do you know he drinks too much?”
“A lot of writers pass through and, evidently, writers are horrible gossips. Word gets around. As you know, publishing is a very small world.”
Mercer raised both hands, showed both her palms, and slid her chair back. “I’m sorry. This is not for me. I have my faults, but I am not a deceitful person. I have trouble lying and there’s no way I could fake my way through something like this. You have the wrong person.”
“Please.”
Mercer stood as if to leave and said, “Thanks for lunch.”
“Please, Mercer.”
But she was gone.
2.
At some point during the abbreviated lunch, the sun disappeared and the wind picked up. A spring shower was on the way, and Mercer, always without an umbrella, walked home as fast as possible. She lived half a mile away, in the historic section of Chapel Hill, near the campus, in a small rental house on a shaded, unpaved alley behind a fine old home. Her landlord, the owner of the old home, rented only to grad students and starving, untenured professors.