Fat Ollie's Book

7

IT WAS WHILE OLLIEwas investigating what in his mind would always be known as “The $$$ Case,” that he’d received from a knowledgeable editor at the publishing firm of Wadsworth and Dodds, which later turned out to be a front for a big drug-running operation and God knew what else—but that was another story. Anyway, a woman up there named Karen Andersen had given him a form letter from an editor up there named Henry Daggert, and it was from this letter that Ollie had learned everything he knew about writing bestselling thriller fiction. The letter read:

Dear Aspiring Writer:

I often receive inquiries from writers who wonder about the most effective way to get a suspense novel on the bestseller list. After years of experience, I have discovered that there are some hard and fast rules to be followed in the writing of successful suspense fiction. I would like to share these rules with you now, if I may.

IF YOU WANT TO CRACK THE BESTSELLER LIST

1) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PUTS AN ORDINARY PERSON IN AN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION. Your protagonist must be an “Everyman.” However, you must have at least one complex female character as well. Don’t forget, you want to capture both male and female readers.

2) YOU MUST CREATE A PLOT THAT PLAYS OUT A UNIVERSAL FANTASY. You must put the reader in a situation that tests him in ways he’s always wanted to be tested, vicariously.

3) YOU MUST COME UP WITH A PLOT THAT PASSES THE “COOL” TEST. You must find an idea that makes readers want to read the book simply on the basis of the ideaalone!

4) YOUR PLOT MUST INVOLVE HIGH STAKES. You must make clear that the fate of the world hangs in the balance—or, at least, the fate of a character we desperately care about.

5) YOU MUST INTRODUCE A TICKING CLOCK. You must give your protagonist only a limited amount of time to solve his problem, and the reader should be regularly reminded of the urgency via “COUNTDOWN CUES.”

Ollie deciphered all this to mean that a bestselling suspense novel had to tell a simple story about an ordinary person who found himself in an extraordinary situation that tested him in ways he’d always wanted to be tested, vicariously. Moreover, the plot had to include at least one complex male or female character in it, and the fate of the world had to be hanging in clock-ticking suspense.

But there was yet more to learn.

6) BE SURE TO AVOID AMBIGUITY! You must avoid situations where points in favor of both sides diminish the reader’s ability to root intensely for one side over another. For example: Novels about the IRA. Novels about murky Central American conflicts. Novels about Pro Choice versus Right-to-Life disputes.

7) AVOID WRITING ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE NEWS! Editors (and especiallythiseditor) will be seeing a slew of books onwhateverit is, believe me! Be especially wary of plots about Computer Hackers, Genetic Engineering, Air Disasters, Terrorist Attacks, etc.

Good luck!

Sincerely,

Henry Daggert

Before Ollie went to bed that night, he reread the last chapter of his novel yet another time. It seemed to him that it was perfect. He had completely mastered all the rules of bestselling suspense fiction, which was why he’d been able to bend them a little. Hence the multiple twists, turns, and edge-of-the-seat suspense inReport to the Commissioner.

Small wonder some cheap thief had stolen the book.

I am locked in a basement with $2,700,000 in so-called conflict diamonds and I just got a run in my pantyhose.

I am writing this in the hope that it will somehow reach you before they kill me.

You will recall having met me once, Mr. Commissioner, when I received a Police Department bravery citation for having foiled, as they say, an imminent robbery at the Stillwater Trust on King Street in Rubytown, as that section of the city is called. They were giving away free toasters when the Attempted Rob occurred. I spilled a glass of red wine, do you remember? Not during the holdup attempt. I mean at the reception following the award. On your white linen suit.

I am a female police detective, twenty-nine years old, five feet, eight inches tall, and weighing one hundred and twenty-three pounds, which is slender. My hair is a sort of reddish brown, what my mother used to call auburn. I wear it cut to just above the shoulders, what my mother used to call a shag cut. My eyes are green. I look very Irish, although Watts is a British name, I think, although Olivia is Latin, which I’m not. My friends call me Livvie. I am a single woman, Mr. Commissioner; I notice from the newspapers that you are recently divorced, by the way; my condolences. My weapon is a Glock nine I carry in a tote bag, but this was taken from me along with all my identification when I was locked in here. A black woman brings me my meals. She is armed with an Uzi.

I have not been killed yet because they are waiting for orders from someone higher up. I can’t imagine why anyone would want me dead. Then again, nothing is ever simple in police work, is it, Mr. Commissioner? I guess you know that better than me. Or perhaps even better than I. I don’t even know where I am. Otherwise I would give you the address and make things really simple. But I was driven here blindfolded from the underwear factory. Which makes it somewhat complicated. So I guess I’d better take it from the top, and tell you everything that happened, and get this report out of here somehow. Then maybe for the love of God you can piece it all together and get to me in time.

Let’s start with Margie Gannon and me, or perhaps Margie and I, having an after-hours beer last Monday night in a bar called O’Malley’s a few blocks from the station house. Margie is sometimes partnered with me, although I’m known in the squadroom as “Livvie the Lone Wolverine,” which of course is the female tense of “The Lone Wolf.” Margie has blond hair she also wears short, and blue eyes, and we make a good team together, partnered or otherwise. We were sipping beer when these two detectives from the Oh-One waltzed over to join us, nice guys we worked with once on a joint narcotics bust sometime back. (I was surprised, to tell the truth, that the little police action back then hadn’t netted at leastsomebodya citation, but I know you have a lot of other things on your mind.)

Anyway, Frankie Randuzzi, who is with the Oh-One, and was on that Colombian bust I was telling you about, is getting married in June, and he was showing us this rathermodestdiamond engagement ring, I must say, but you know how much detectives are paid in this city, don’t you, even First Grades like Frankie and me. The guy with him, Jerry Aiello, anotherpaisan,couldn’t help remarking that he’d seen bigger chips than that left by cows in a pasture, to which Frankie replied it was a legit diamond and not one of these diamonds had cost some kid in Africa the loss of an arm or a leg. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, excuse the French, Commish.

Margie, it so happens, knows quite a bit about diamonds. She has been married and divorced twice and has therefore sported engagement rings of various sizes on the third finger of her left hand, more’s the pity I have not. In fact, she is fond of telling the boys around the squadroom that she gets divorced every six years and shot every three, which happens to be true. I was with her once when she took one in the left shoulder. She never wears off-the-shoulder gowns to police functions anymore, but she is very well constructed otherwise, witness the way Jerry Aiello was trying to peer down the front of her blouse.

Margie explained that there’d been a war going on forever in the Sierra Leone and in Angola, over there in Africa someplace, wherever, I always thought Angola was a max security prison in Louisiana. She said that so-called conflict diamonds were what funded the rebel groups fighting over there.

“They call themselves the RUF, which stands for the Revolutionary United Front. They’re eleven-year-old kids armed with AK-47s and machetes,” she said. “They chop off people’s arms and legs, that’s how they maintain control. But you’re wrong if you think these rocks are cheaper than a legit diamond, Frank. In fact, once this rough ice is traded and polished, it’s impossible to know where it came from. That may be one of them you’re showing us right this minute.”

I never knew Margie was so smart.

Before then, I thought she was just a good-looking babe who got shot and divorced all the time.

It just goes to show.

I did not make the acquaintance of Mercer Grant till the next day. That is not his real name. He told me right off it wasn’t his real name. He said it would be too dangerous for him to give me his real name. Grant (or Lee or Jackson or Jones or Smith or whatever his real name might have been) was a tall, light-skinned Jamaican with a neat little mustache under his nose. He came up to the squadroom around ten o’clock on that Tuesday morning in question, and he asked to talk to a police detective, of which there were only eight or nine in the squadroom that minute, it’s a wonder he didn’t trip over one of us. I signaled him over to my desk, and offered him a chair, and asked him his name.

“My name is Mercer Grant,” he said. “But that is not my real name.”

“Then what is your real name, Mr. Grant?”

“I can’t tell you my real name,” he said. “It would be too dangerous to tell you my real name.”

All of this in that sort of Jamaican lilt they have, you know? Like Harry Belafonte doing “Hey, Mr. Taliban.”

“Because, you see,” I said, “we’re required to fill in the name and address spaces on these complaint forms. Plus a lot of other information.”

“I am not making a complaint,” Mercer said.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

“I am here because my wife is missing,” he said.

“Well, that’s a complaint,” I said.

“Not in the case ofmywife,” he said, and grinned, because he was making a joke, you see. He was saying nobody wascomplainingthat his wife was missing. He had a gold tooth in the center of his mouth. The tooth had a little diamond chip in one corner. His mouth lit up like a Christmas tree when he grinned. He thought his little joke was pretty funny. He kept grinning.

“Well,” I said, “what is yourwife’sname then?”

“I can’t tell you her name,” he said. “It would be too dangerous.”

“Then how am I supposed to find her if you won’t give me her name?” I asked reasonably.

“You’re the detective, not me,” he said reasonably. “Although I must tell you I’ve never dealt with a female detective before, and I’m not sure how happy I am about it,” the sexist pig.

“What kind of detectives have you dealt with before, Mr. Grant?”

“I have never been in trouble with the law,” he said. “I’m reporting my wife missing because it’s my duty as a citizen. My cousin Ambrose said I should report her missing.”

“Ambrose what?” I asked at once.

“Ambrose Fields. But that’s not his real name, either.”

“Does anyone in your family have a real name?”

“Yes, but these names would be too dangerous to reveal.”

“Can you tell me where you live?”

“No.”

“Can you give me your phone number?”

“No.”

“Well, Mr. Grant, let’s suppose by some weird stroke of luck—me being a female detective and all—Idofind your wife. How am I supposed to let you know I’ve got her?”

“I will stay in touch.”

“I have to tell you, you don’t sound tooeagerto find her, now do you?”

He thought this over for a moment. Then he said, “The truth is I don’t think youwillfind her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I think she may already be dead.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re here to report a murder, is that it?”

“No, I am here to tell you my wife is missing. As is my duty.”

“But you think she may be dead.”

“Yes.”

“Do you also think you know who killed her?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t beyouwho killed her, would it, Mr. Grant? This wouldn’t be a confession here, would it?”

Grant, or whatever his name was, leaned closer to me.

“Have you ever heard of the RUF?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Once. Last night, in fact. Why? Do you think the RUF had something to do with your wife’s death?”

“No.”

“If, in fact, sheisdead?”

“Oh, she’s dead, all right, oh yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“She wrote me a note.”

“Saying she was dead?”

“No. Saying if I didn’t hear from her by Tuesday, shemightbe dead.”

“Today is Tuesday,” I said.

“Yes. So she must be dead, am I correct?”

“Well, she only said shemightbe dead.”

“She must have had an inkling,” Grant said.

“What else did she say in this note?”

“Here, read it for yourself,” Grant said, and took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, and unfolded it, and smoothed it neatly on my desk top. The note read:

Dear Mercer…

“That’s not my real name,” he said at once.

“Then why did she address you as such?”

“I told you. She must have had an inkling.”

Dear Mercer,

By the time you read this, I will be gone.

Do not try to find me, it is too dangerous.

If I am not back by Tuesday, I guess I will be dead.

Your loving wife,

Marie

“That’s notherreal name, either,” Grant said.

“I know. She must have had an inkling.”

“Exactly.”

“So you think the RUF had something to do with her disappearance, is that it?”

“No,” Grant said.

“Then why did you bring them up?”

“I thought you might have heard of them.”

“Is that diamond in your mouth a so-called conflict diamond?” I asked.

“What is a conflict diamond?” Grant asked.

“Is your wife—orwasshe, as the case may be—involved in any way with the sale or transport of illicit diamonds in Sierra Leone or Angola?”

“My wife and I never discussed her private affairs. You will have to ask her personally. When you find her. If you find her. But you won’t find her because it’s Tuesday and she said she’d be dead.”

“Well, you’ve filed a complaint…”

“I’m not complaining,” he said, and grinned again.

“…so I guess I’ll have to investigate. Can you tell me what your wife looks like, please?”

“If she’s still alive, she is a dark-skinned woman of about your height and weight, with black hair and brown eyes.”

“How old is she?”

“About your age.”

“Twenty-nine?”

“I should have thought twenty-five,” he said, and grinned his charming gold-and-diamond grin.

“Any visible scars or tattoos?”

“None that I ever noticed.”

“How long have you been married?” I asked.

“Too long,” he said, and then suddenly ducked his head, perhaps to hide a falling tear. “She was a good woman,” he murmured.

The challenge now seemed clear: Find a good woman in this city. Which was not as simple as it first appeared. With all due respect, Commish, nothing is ever simple in police work, nothing is ever uncomplicated.

To begin with, if this woman…

Now hold it right there, Emilio thought.

Before things gettoocomplicated here, let’s just take a peek at the phone book and see if there reallyisa person or persons named Mercer Grant or Marie Grant or, for that matter, anybody named Olivia Wesley Watts, though he didn’t think a detective would be so stupid as to list herself in the phone book. Emilio had only two directories in the apartment, one for Isola, the other for Riverhead, and neither one of them listed either a Mercer or a Marie Grant, which wasn’t surprising since the guy in Livvie’s report (Emilio was already fondly thinking of her as Livvie) had himself told her it wasn’t his real name. There was no Margie Gannon in either of the books, either, nor anybody named Frank Randuzzi or Jerry Aiello, or Ambrose Fields, so he had to figure Livvie had made up these names for her own protection.

There was no O’Malley’s Bar, either, hey, big surprise!

But Livvie had written:

Let’s start with Margie Gannon and me, or perhaps Margie and I, having an after-hours beer last Monday night in a bar called O’Malley’s a few blocks from the station house.

So okay.

Somewhere in this city, a few blocks from a police station, there was a bar. Find that bar, whatever its real name was, and Emilio would be well on the way to finding a redheaded detective named Olivia Wesley Watts.

Let the games begin, he thought.

The clock is ticking!