Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 120, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 733 & 734, September/October 2002

Ghost Writer by Janice Law

Janice Law’s latest novel, The Lost Dianes of Iris Weed (Forge Books), was published in January of this year to rave reviews. But interested readers can also now find most of Ms. Law’s early books, including the award-winning Anna Peters mysteries. Thanks to modern print-on-demand and the new on-line publishing companies (see iUniverse), the early Annas are back in print.

Marvin was excited when his agent called. It had been awhile since he’d heard from Audrey, whose soft, raspy voice was permanently, if hopelessly, associated in his mind with sales I and contracts, and the possibility of fame, if not fortune. Some foreign rights? A chapter in an anthology? Ready cash?

“Can you stop by today?” Audrey asked.

Of course, Marvin said he would, clearing out time that would otherwise have been spent in a fruitless perusal of his notebooks or in research on-line for a now overdue article or in sharpening pencils and tidying his desk and probably, the way things had been going, quitting early to hit the beach. Instead, he fought the traffic down I-95 through blizzards of snowbirds and the mind-numbing exhaust of heavy trucks to Audrey’s blue glass office building in the center of Lauderdale.

Audrey Striker had been his agent for six years. Three books, U.K. rights on one, a modest movie option on another: not bad, not great, about par for the course for a midlist author of more ambition than talent and more talent than luck. What else is new? Another agent might have done better for him but would just as likely have done worse. Besides, he liked Audrey’s throaty, world-weary voice, her greed, her toughness.

She was waiting for him, that was surprise number one, and number two, Cindy, her secretary, was nowhere to be seen. He was being allowed an unprecedented private audience. “Come in, Marv,” Audrey called when her office door beeped. She was sitting with her back to the blue-tinged panorama of pastel condo and hotel towers, her large, wellshaped head awkwardly balanced on her small twisted frame. Her spindly legs were propped up on a footstool. Her cane was beside her, the motorized wheelchair she used for longer distances parked in the corner.

“I’ve been looking at your latest royalty statements,” she said.

Marvin’s heart sank. He hoped she had not called him all the way downtown just to tell him that his career was in the toilet. He took one of the handsome leather chairs and angled it away from the bright pastel towers of the cityscape toward the comforting expanse of close-packed bookshelves. He could see the slender spines of his own novels.

“I think we need to make a move in a slightly different direction, and I think you might be right for a proposal I’ve received.”

“What sort of proposal?”

“Completion of a dark-fantasy trilogy. I have the contract in hand.”

“Sorry,” said Marvin, disappointed in spite of himself, “that’s hardly my field.”

Audrey was undeterred. “We already have a fairly detailed plot outline of the first novel, and rough — I’ll be honest — very rough outlines of the second and third. However, with the exception of two characters...” She scrambled among her notes. “Ah, here we go. Someone called Lord Ostrucht and the Lady Fergaine must be spared at all costs. Otherwise, you would have almost complete freedom. And,” she added, seeing Marvin was about to interrupt, “if the first novel proves successful, as I’m sure it will, you would have even more freedom with the later books. The key, Marv, dear, is speed and quality. Write me a good book fast and we can make a lot of money.”

“Look, Audrey, not that I don’t appreciate it, but I write literate contemporary novels. I don’t want a reputation for swords and fantasy.”

Audrey gave a smile that marred rather than enhanced her fine, clean features. Nature, Marvin thought, had had a grand design in mind with Audrey and then, at the last moment, smashed it. “Your last two novels earned mid four-figure advances,” she said. “You can’t live on that. Think of this as work to support your serious writing. Also, I can assure you, Marv, dear, that your name will never be mentioned. Will never be, must never be; that is a most important condition.”

Interesting! Marvin racked his brain to think of who could command serious advances on the basis of rough outlines. The only possibilities were names big enough to scare him just a little. It was one thing to dismiss certain popular works; it was quite another to invent the same sort of audience-pleasing junk. “How much?”

“The whole package is two point five million. I am authorized to give you a partial advance of fifty thousand dollars on signing. On completion of each novel, you and the writer whose name will appear on the jacket split the profits, advance, royalties, everything, fifty-fifty.”

The sum was a shock, almost a physical shock, and it took Marvin a moment to digest the possibilities of repairing the Datsun, paying off his credit cards, leaving the Sun ’n Surf apartments.

“Are you on?” Audrey asked.

He could feel a little bubble of exhilaration growing around his heart, but he didn’t quite trust himself to decide yet.

“I know you can do it,” Audrey said, “and I think you can do it quickly.”

“How fast and how long?”

“I need a manuscript of no less than six hundred pages; a little longer would be better, but six hundred would do.”

“Whew!” said Marvin.

“We have a full year. I was able to get an extension,” Audrey added a trifle grimly, “on the grounds of ill health.”

“And are we sick?” Marvin asked.

“We are drunk, if you must know.” Audrey’s tone was drily sarcastic. “We have developed multiple addictions and responsibility issues and a damn bad attitude! I need you to do this, Marv, dear,” she said in a different tone. “You and I will earn every penny, but it’s a pretty penny, and having invested twenty years of work in — our author — I’m not about to lose the best contract I’ve ever negotiated.”

“All right,” said Marvin, “but I’d better have a look at the outline and I’d better read some of the other books — there are others, right?”

“The proverbial five-foot bookshelf.” Audrey levered herself to her feet, grabbed her cane, and limped to the nearest bookcase. She came back with a handful of novels which she laid facedown on her desk. “There will be a confidentiality statement for you to sign,” Audrey said. “All the usual. Basically, you promise never to reveal your authorship.”

“As if I’d want to,” said Marvin.

“But understand, Marv, dear, only your best work will do for this project.”

“My best work, my heart and soul.” Marvin could already feel himself adjusting to prosperity.

Audrey produced a thick folder of legal documents. She offered the confidentiality statement first. “In case, Marv dear, you should change your mind.” This document was as near to ironclad as dozens of “to wits,” “whatsoevers,” and “to whomevers” could make it.

Marvin signed with a flourish, then turned over the first novel in the stack on the desk. “Ah,” he said in surprise; he had read some of Hilaire LaDoux’s novels and liked them. “I thought LaDoux did sci-fi.”

“All the work is on the border of the genres,” Audrey said. “Alternate worlds, alternate futures — same old human nature.”

“Here’s to human nature,” Marvin said and held out his hand for the contract.

“You’re sure?” Audrey asked. “Please be sure, Marv, dear, because there won’t be time to get another writer if you change your mind.”

“Worry not, sweet Audrey!” He flipped to the end of the document and signed his name. “I’m your ghost.”

He left with a stack of LaDoux’s novels in a Burdine’s shopping bag and stopped at his local liquor store on the way home for some really good beer and a bottle of vintage Bordeaux. I’m going to be rich, if not famous, he told himself, and better by far to be at least one or the other.

Marvin sat down on his minuscule balcony, poured a Bellhaven, and opened The Cave of the Winds, the first novel in LaDoux’s Galatan Trilogy. He read for three hours, making notes occasionally on a yellow pad as he picked out favorite vocabulary, sentence structures, the little tricks like adjectives grouped in threes and a fondness — a weakness in Marvin’s eyes — for beginning with participial phrases.

After dinner, he checked the outline for Dragon in the Sun. It was, as Audrey had promised, thoroughly detailed. Ten single-spaced pages outlined an epic and dynastic struggle which he found intimidatingly inventive until he realized that most of the events had been lifted from the Hundred Years War in France and the English Wars of the Roses. Okay!

Marvin made a note to himself to begin some serious historical reading — the Borgias should be good for a plot or two, and the Russians for a series. He was sure that the various Ivans and Peters, not to mention the licentious Catherine the Great, could help flesh out the skimpy notes for Dragon II and III.

Though Marvin normally worked in fits and starts as inspiration took him, he was at his desk early the next morning. He had a year to produce six hundred pages, which meant, he calculated, roughly two pages a day, the other two months left over for the inevitable mishaps which afflict manuscripts as well as man. He was slightly daunted at the prospect of working up scenes and characters which were not his own, and he dawdled, as he usually did, straightening his desk and hopping up to water the plants and take out the garbage. It was on this latter errand that Marvin had the happy inspiration of imaging not the novel but Hilaire LaDoux.

He sat down at his computer and told himself that this new book would be the contrivance of an invented character, a bestselling novelist of considerable talent and an unerring popular touch named Hilaire LaDoux. His LaDoux invariably started early in the morning, well before time for the first drink of the day, and tapped out exactly two — no, better make it four — pages a day, as good genre writers were known for their productivity.

Hilaire LaDoux would work to something ancient, Marvin decided, and he rejected several possibilities before selecting Monteverdi, his Orpheus. Unlike Marvin, who liked to write sitting on his balcony, LaDoux would keep the shades drawn and would wear something elegant and unusual, something Marvin would have to acquire. But for now, semidarkness and Orpheus would have to be good enough. He slid the CD into his computer, heard the chords, exotic with the everlasting strangeness of genius, and began typing: “Trotting along the long, weary, dry road into Balson, Lord Ostrucht saw clouds black as serpents darkening the horizon and laid his hand on the Blade of Zermain. He was alone now, he was the only one left...”

Although Marvin took some time to settle into this routine, so different from his own, novelty proved potent. Day after day, Lord Ostrucht struggled with warriors and wizards, with dragons and other chimeras of the mind, searching always for the Lady Fergaine. At first, Marvin stayed close to the original design, but very soon Ostrucht began to develop some new and interesting habits.

Marvin knew that he was really on his way when he discovered one morning that the cliché dragon of one of the planned set pieces had evolved into a yellow-tinged mist, so faint as to be almost subliminal. This scarcely noticed alteration in the atmosphere gradually disturbed perception, causing its victims to see the world as horror, as such unrelieved and dreadful ugliness that they were driven to despair.

“That’s very good,” Audrey said, looking up from the latest installment of the manuscript. “That’s very good, indeed.” Like all authors, Marvin needed compliments and reassurance, particularly during composition, and she had learned the right way to do this: Praise only the book and never, by so much as a syllable, hint that he had a genuine flair for this sort of thing. In fact, Audrey was convinced that Marvin was writing better than ever, that a sort of literate action was his true métier. Instead, she said, “Very LaDoux. Hyper LaDoux.”

Marvin smiled. “The creation of the character was the key thing — and unexpectedly inspiring.”

“Lord Ostrucht,” Audrey said.

“No, no, he’s quite an interesting fellow, but I meant Hilaire LaDoux.”

Audrey looked at him. Yes, now that he mentioned it, she could see some changes, which she had registered without attaching importance to them. An expensive haircut and good clothes were only to be expected from sudden prosperity, but she would not have expected Marvin’s choices: a cerise silk shirt, and an Italian silk and wool sweater patterned in mustard, lavender, and sienna, worn with khakis and sandals. Marvin had always been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy who owned a blue suit for good. He’d added a pair of tinted glasses, too, which shadowed his eyes and made him look subtly different, enough like the real LaDoux to give Audrey a little frisson, because no image of Hilaire LaDoux had been published for years. Well, she wasn’t going to worry about that! Whatever works, she thought, and congratulated herself on spotting Marv’s potential. “We’ll have no problem completing the book,” she said.

“No problem at all, and, Audrey, I’m getting so many ideas for volumes two and three. I’ve started to plant material for future books. Now this scene,” he turned the pile of manuscript around and ruffled through the pages. “Here, in chapter sixteen where I’ve introduced Ranoch, the squire...”

“I like Ranoch,” said Audrey.

“I’m glad you do, because I see an important role for him in the second volume.”

She pulled out a yellow pad and began making notes. When they were finished, she assured Marvin that the publisher would be thrilled, then shook his hand and saw him out of the office herself, as Cindy, who was apparently not privy to the arrangement with Mr. LaDoux, had been sent on an errand.

Marvin supposed that was only prudent, though in his own mind Hilaire LaDoux came into existence when he put on the very handsome silk jacket that Hilaire wrote in, added the blue-tinted spectacles, and slid the Monteverdi Orpheus into the CD player. During the less and less frequent days when Marvin took off, wore his own clothes, listened to Talking Heads, drank beer, and loafed on the beach, Hilaire LaDoux, Esquire, simply ceased to exist, leaving Marvin to enjoy the fruits of his labor and of LaDoux’s reputation.

And after the first volume was published to acclaim and profit, there seemed no reason why Marvin couldn’t continue writing about Lord Ostrucht and the Lady Fergaine and their ilk virtually forever. The second volume was finished and Marvin was well into the third before the first cloud appeared.

He was in Audrey’s office for one of their now routine private meetings. The latest chapters of The Dragon’s Child lay on the desk between them, and Audrey was running her delicate fingers nervously over the pages. “Quite brilliant,” she said, tapping the manuscript, “everyone agrees, and you know, Marv, dear, I’d be the first to tell you if the books weren’t up to par.”

He did know that.

“So you’ll know this is none of my doing. I’m thoroughly satisfied, and so is everybody at the publishing house.”

“What’s the matter?” Marvin asked, sensing a problem without really being troubled by it. He had money — and people like Audrey — to sort problems out for him. Since the great success of the Dragon books, their relationship had undergone a sea change: Now she waited for his calls and arranged her schedule to suit him. Now it was her plans and her strategy which came under scrutiny as much as his manuscripts.

“Well, it’s Hilaire, of course. Jealousy, I’m sure. If I’d thought, Marv, dear, I’d never have let Dragon be nominated for any award whatsoever. Never.”

“Hilaire?” It took Marvin a moment to remember that there was such a person with volition of his own, a real person whose desires could not be altered by a few lines of type. “He’s unhappy? Fifteen weeks on the bestseller list, foreign rights, a pot of found money — what more does he want?”

“He’s feeling creative again. He feels — well, Marv dear, he feels he doesn’t need you anymore.”

Marvin’s first reaction was fury, modulating into shock. “He can go to hell! I’ve got another three novels plotted out, plus some terrific new characters!” It was illogical, inconceivable, grotesquely and monstrously unfair. And besides, he’d been counting on the money.

“He’s got an ironclad contract. Look, Marv, dear, I’ve tried to talk to him, but he claims he’s inspired. And more important, he’s determined to cut back on the drinking.”

“Great for him. All right, let him write. I still have three good plots and half a dozen new characters.”

“His characters,” she said. “All his. You know that, Marv.”

“So I change the names and we’re still in business.”

“And who are you?” she asked. “Do you think I can get as good a contract as you can get from selling the outlines to Hilaire? Be real.”

Marvin swore there must be some way to indicate that he was the writer behind LaDoux’s latest bestseller, and Audrey raised the confidentiality agreement. But she promised to hold LaDoux up for plenty. “I think even a credit isn’t out of the question. Something along the lines of ‘based on a story by,’ which will do you good later, Marv. Besides, you can get back to your own writing now, and with what you’ll make from the plot outlines...”

Marvin was furious, but though he had a lawyer friend go over the contract not once but twice, there was no way out. LaDoux had all rights to the books. As far as the publishing world went, it was Marvin, not Hilaire LaDoux, who was an imaginary character, or rather, what was worse, a middling author with no real prospects.

For consolation, he had a good whack of money for the work he’d done on The Dragon’s Child, but he absolutely refused to sell anything more, causing Audrey to roll her eyes and to wonder aloud why she hadn’t taken to representing sensible people like stunt men and professional wrestlers. Then she sighed and told Marv that he might perhaps change his mind.

“After all,” she added, accurately, but somewhat unkindly, “now you have what you’ve always said you wanted: time and money to do your own writing.”

So he got busy. He opened his old notebooks and took up a plot he’d begun then set aside, a story about a talented man down on his luck in paradise: a.k.a. South Florida. Marvin struggled with it for several months, but the story was dead in the water. Oh, the writing was good; Marvin had an easy style that rolled from one paragraph to the next without the slightest hitch, but also without the oddity and flare that can illuminate old stories and make familiar characters fresh.

The very smoothness that had rendered Lord Ostrucht, the Lady Fergaine, and a host of supernatural entities plausible worked against Marvin’s contemporary characters. They were just a little bit boring, and, realizing that, he began to find new and creative ways to delay his stints at the computer. When he got fed up with procrastination, he’d throw on his swim trunks and head for the beach: As far as writing went, Marvin was stymied.

Then, one depressing morning, just as an experiment, he got up early, put on Hilaire’s silk writing jacket, and dropped Orpheus on the CD player. When he sat down to work at the keyboard, Lord Ostrucht was waiting for him, sitting melancholy on the back of his black charger, reading a farewell letter from the Lady Fergaine. Marvin almost wept with joy.

Two days later, when he’d at last obtained LaDoux’s address from an unwary new editorial publicist, Marvin was surprised to find that the novelist lived not more than five miles away, along a swanky stretch between the inland waterway and the ocean. Marvin drove out that same night, burdened with a bottle of expensive white French Burgundy and uncertain intentions.

Decorative lights lined the waterway side of the narrow street, illuminating boat slips and gazebos and freestanding decks where the big spenders could sip cocktails and contemplate hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of marine horsepower. The ocean side was dark with overgrown trees and ambitious plantings. Only a few discreet lights punctuated the shadows, revealing heavy metal gates across nicely tiled driveways or else big signs indicating that trespassing on a job site is a felony in Florida. Since the neighborhood seemed full of folks constructing hurricane bait, there were plenty of these posted warnings.

LaDoux’s house was of an older, less ostentatious vintage, well screened by live oaks, bamboos, and a variety of large and thriving palms — My kind of place, Marvin thought. The flat-roofed building was coated with a scabbed and cracked rust-colored stucco, vaguely Mexican in inspiration and adjoined by a massive screen made of blocks interwoven with a bright climbing vine. Several soft yellow lights, perhaps candles, glimmered behind this screen, and a weak bulb illuminated the weathered front door. Otherwise, the house, which was handsome in conception, but clearly neglected, remained in darkness.

Marvin stepped out of his car to the sound of surf and of cars and motorcycles passing. He rang the intercom buzzer on the gate several times, and he was ready to give up when a voice, quite loud and very close to him, asked what he was doing and what the hell he wanted. Marvin gave a start. Someone about his own height and weight was standing half hidden by the dappled purple and ocher leaves of a rampant ornamental shrub. The man wore a white shirt and an ascot, like a country-house extra in an English movie, but what sent the evening lurching in a direction Marvin had not expected was the man’s appearance. Marvin immediately recognized their surprising resemblance. “I was hoping to see Hilaire LaDoux,” Marvin said. “I’m a big fan of his books.”

“Take a look and get out,” said LaDoux, starting to turn away. Marvin noticed that he carried a drink in one hand.

“You might want to take a look at me, too,” Marvin said. “I wrote your last two novels.”

“What are you doing here?” LaDoux demanded, his voice rising. “You’re not supposed to have any contact with me. That was in the contract!”

“No,” said Marvin, “that was about the only thing that wasn’t.”

“Audrey should have thought of that,” LaDoux said querulously. “Did she give you my address? I’ll fire her if she did. No one’s supposed to have my address.”

“I acquired it elsewhere,” Marvin said. “Look, I thought we might work out a deal. Something beneficial to us both.”

LaDoux eyed him suspiciously. “What’s Audrey been telling you? She’s wrong to give you any hope at all. I’ll get back on schedule.”

Marvin decided that he was probably drunk. “This has nothing to do with Audrey. I’ve constructed some interesting plot outlines, and I want to talk to you about them.”

LaDoux’s eyes glittered. “Plots, plot ideas, used to be my forte,” he remarked. “But no more. The Muse has shown me her backside lately.”

“So we should talk,” Marvin repeated.

“Audrey said you were being difficult. Audrey said you didn’t want to sell anything.”

“Well, now I need the money.”

“Where is this material?”

Marvin tapped his breast pocket. He had a diskette, plus an envelope with a few printed pages from one of his detailed outlines.

“Pull your car in,” LaDoux said. He opened the gate and waved Marvin up the short drive and into the dark and empty garage.

The door clattered down behind them, giving Marvin a moment’s trepidation before his host switched on a light. Marvin stepped out with the bottle of wine. He followed LaDoux through the hall and a book- and paper-strewn dining room that opened onto the terrace and a rustling jungle of palms and banyans. On the west side, a heavy flowering vine cut off the lights and noise of the street with a cascade of foliage and deep red blossoms, while the east was open to the coal-black sea, fringed white with breakers along the sand. The place struck him as absolutely perfect.

“For me?” LaDoux asked when Marvin held out the bottle. “Naughty. I’m reformed, on the wagon, learning abstinence.” He gave a sour laugh. “We’re at the mercy of mysterious forces. That’s the reality of it.”

Marvin agreed; he certainly felt that way at the moment.

“’Course, a certain awareness of mysterious forces is what pays our bills.” LaDoux opened the bottle expertly and poured the wine into two large and ornate glasses. He raised his glass silently and took a long drink. “Not bad.”

Marvin said nothing.

“And your problem?” LaDoux asked, after he’d refilled their glasses for a second time. “I assume there is a problem.”

“I can’t do my own work anymore. The only ideas I get now are for the Dragon novels, for Ostrucht and his Lady. Even your beautiful terrace with the sound of the sea suggests...” Marvin sighed. “I’ve been ruined after writing your novels.”

“You wrote them rather well, the critics say. Of course, my reputation provided a leg up there,” he added.

Marvin nodded. He knew the ways of the literary world.

“So?”

“I thought we might collaborate,” said Marvin.

“But I don’t need you now, and it’s time for you to depart — in the literary sense, I mean.” He splashed more wine into each glass. “There’s no reason for you to leave this nice Burgundy.”

“Yet you were willing to buy the outline for the second trilogy.”

“The flesh is weak,” LaDoux admitted.

“Perhaps you’d like to see a sample.”

He looked up with an eager expression and stretched out his hand. He needed help, whatever he said. “Let me see.”

“One page.” Marvin opened the envelope and handed over the synopsis of the first five chapters.

LaDoux put on a pair of tinted glasses and scanned the copy. “Like this wine, not grand cru, but very nice. And the rest?”

“Good. Audrey knows. She wanted to buy them for you.”

“Audrey has somewhat lost confidence in me,” LaDoux said. In the silence that followed, Marvin listened to a rustling in the shrubbery and the night wind in the palms. Perhaps Lord Ostrucht should be sent on a sea voyage to some hot, tropical land. “What do you want?” LaDoux asked abruptly.

“To write some of the books,” Marvin said.

“But not all of them?”

“Not all of them.”

LaDoux stared at him for a minute. “We’ll drink to that,” he said. “But now I want to see the rest of the plots.”

“They’re on this diskette.” Marvin drew the floppy out of his pocket and dropped it back in. “We’ll call Audrey, shall we? Have her come over and draw up a contract.”

LaDoux hesitated, then smiled. There was an avidity about him that both encouraged and disgusted Marvin. “Right. We’ll call Audrey. To whom we owe so much. Including this whole bloody situation.” He stood up. “My office is upstairs. I never do business on the terrace.”

Inside, LaDoux switched on the weak hall light and started upstairs. Marvin saw old woodwork, Mexican tiles, cracked and dirty plaster. The main stairs made a steep run to a landing, then turned left. A full moon was shining through the tall window at the top, and Marvin was about to remark on its bright beauty when LaDoux suddenly pivoted on the landing and kicked him square in the gut. Marvin gasped, his lungs suddenly airless, and grabbed the banister to keep from falling. LaDoux struck him again, in the face this time, sending Marvin tumbling backward down the stair to land flat at the bottom.

He was quite helpless. His lungs were deflated, and he couldn’t make his legs work. The stair rose above him like a monstrous wave, down which LaDoux dropped toward him like a surfer. Marvin waved his arms, trying to pull air into his lungs, trying to strike LaDoux, who, clearly not as drunk as he’d appeared, caught Marvin under the arms and dragged him down the back hall. He kicked open the French door and pulled Marvin onto the grass and then, to his rising horror, toward the shore. Out of shock and surprise rose an awareness that he was very likely going to die.

Marvin tried to shout, but his voice was a cracked whisper, lost in the wind and surf. LaDoux hauled him through a low hedge and unceremoniously dropped him over the sea wall onto the sand. Marvin tried to get to his feet, but his whole body was focused on acquiring air and his limbs refused to cooperate.

LaDoux grasped him again and started toward the water, but here Marvin began digging his heels and his hands into the soft, deep sand, causing LaDoux to swerve and stagger. It was dark on the beach, too, the few lights dazzling and confusing rather than illuminating. Twice LaDoux dropped to his knees, but though Marvin could impede their progress he could not stop it. Drops of spray landed on his shirt as he was dragged through a fishy, salty-smelling band of wrack. Then LaDoux splashed into the surf, and cold water shocked Marvin’s back.

There were crushed shells underfoot. Unsteady, LaDoux slipped both left and right, stumbling on every step. Waves broke over Marvin’s head and sloshed down his legs. “The diskette,” he managed to gasp. “It’s in my pocket.”

LaDoux stopped and released one of Marvin’s arms, dropping him halfway into the water. Marvin jerked up his head, took a great gulp of air, and, as LaDoux fumbled in his shirt pocket, threw himself sideways, pulling LaDoux under with him.

They weren’t in more than a foot of water, but the shore was at once soft and gritty, the band of ground-up shells unstable beneath them. Thrashing and struggling, they got a little farther out, then farther yet, and as they swallowed more water and took more blows, they found it harder and harder to get back on their knees, to find their feet.

At last, they floundered into chest-deep water, and they were half swimming, half wrestling, each trying to hold the other under, when a big roller crashed into them, separating them and turning Marvin head over heels. As he felt himself dragged out by the current, he forgot LaDoux, forgot everything but the shore, dry land, air. He paddled forward, clawing for ground, and after a second wave broke over his head felt the rough band of shells under his hands and lurched onto the shore, gasping for breath and shaking with cold and shock.

He crawled onto the beach and fell forward on his face. The waves whooshed and thundered behind him, his lungs burned, the night wind chilled his sore back. He had nearly died; someone had tried to kill him; he had possibly drowned a man. With this, he remembered his danger and scrambled painfully to his feet, but he could not see LaDoux.

Marvin called softly: nothing but the sea and the rattle of palm fronds, and somewhere far away, the sound of traffic, of civilization. He limped to the water’s edge and peered into the darkness for what seemed a long time before he saw a whitish something as inert as a log rising and falling in the surf. Marvin waited until he was sure of that inertia before wading out into the water and hauling LaDoux’s body to shore.

Once he had wrestled the corpse up onto the sand, he laid his hand on LaDoux’s chest and felt for a pulse. When all signs proved negative, Marvin sat down, put his head between his knees, and vomited on the sand. “You’ve killed the golden goose,” said a voice in his mind.

And another, even less welcome thought followed: Hilaire LaDoux was someone whose death would be investigated, whose loss would be news. Marvin’s own version of events, so implausible and peculiar that even he had trouble crediting what had happened, would come under scrutiny. He had been attacked, there had been a struggle, and Marvin had survived without anything to prove his story. It did not take a novelist’s imagination to see big difficulties, both professional and legal, ahead for Hilaire LaDoux’s fired ghost writer.

Marvin stood up, washed off his mouth with salt water, and began to undress, dropping his sodden clothing on the sand beside the corpse. Next he turned to LaDoux, though the body already felt cold and the slippery feel of the skin, as well as LaDoux’s unsettling resemblance to himself, turned Marvin’s stomach and made his hands shake.

Finally, after an exhausting struggle, he managed to get his own clothes onto the body and jammed his sneakers on its feet. The diskette, ironically, was still in the pocket of his shirt. Marvin retrieved it and set it on the sea wall before dragging LaDoux back to the water. He towed the body out as far as he dared, and when he felt the first signs of a rip current, he let it go.

Back on shore, he bundled up the novelist’s wet and sandy clothes. One shoe was missing, and he made a futile search of the sand before returning to the house. The clothing went into the washer, the remaining shoe in a plastic bag. Up in LaDoux’s bedroom, Marvin found a change of clothes and dry sneakers. After he composed a brief note for Audrey, he drove north to the public beach, where he abandoned his car, keys, and wallet. He discarded LaDoux’s incriminating shoe in a trash barrel. Then Marvin went down to the surf, took off his borrowed sneakers, and slogged back along the shore to the house. He let himself in, found a bottle of scotch, and went up to bed.

A day later, Marvin saw a brief report about his abandoned car, and within a week read an account of the recovery of his body. He waited a few days before calling Audrey. By then he knew a great deal more about his new identity: debts, alcoholism, dubious investments, an estranged family, and the absolute impossibility of ever holding a driver’s license again.

On the other hand, he had a fair-sized bank balance, a spectacular if deteriorated house, and more important than all the rest, Lord Ostrucht and his lady, for whom Marvin, or Hilaire, as he must now call himself, had wonderful plans. He reached for the desk phone and dialed. “Audrey?”

“Yes, Audrey Striker speaking.” Her response seemed tentative; voices are, after all, hard to disguise.

“Hilaire LaDoux. I’m really flying on the new novel, and I wondered if you’d like me to send you the finished chapters.”

Again, the hesitation. He could almost hear the wheels turning. “Of course I would,” she said with a fair show of enthusiasm. “But Hilaire, you’re working? You’re really working? Because I understood you wanted me to find someone to replace poor Marvin — you heard about that?”

“Yes, I did. I can’t help feeling a little guilty. He sold me his last outlines, you know. Yes, yes, he cut you out, the naughty boy. But poor fellow! The writer’s life is not always a happy one.”

“I’d actually found someone — tentatively, you understand. I thought perhaps a woman writer this time...” In truth, Audrey had been nearly at her wit’s end.

“Quite, quite unnecessary,” he said briskly. “I’ve had a genuinely life-changing experience. You might say I met a ghost, Audrey, and I can assure you I foresee no more writing problems from here on in.”