Night Film

62

“You talked,” I said.

“Haven’t said a word,” insisted Stu on the other end.

“You must have mentioned my name in connection with Cordova at one of your power lunches, because nothing else explains this.”

“You’ll find it difficult to fathom, McGrath, but I have other clients and I don’t always discuss you at every hour of every day, though I admit, it’s terribly tricky to pull off, you’re so damn captivating.”

It was always a mental adjustment talking to Stu. As a posh Englishman, he was so well educated, with such an expansive vocabulary, his briefest conversations peppered with irony and wit and deep knowledge of current events — it was like communicating with Jeeves if he ever anchored the BBC.

“How do you explain it, then?” I asked.

“Damned if I know. If, by some miracle of God, Olivia Endicott wants you to ghostwrite her autobiography, take the job. To quote Captain Smith, ‘Grab what you can and fight your way to a lifeboat.’ Everyone associated with the slow printed word is fast becoming the Great Crested Newt of the culture. First it was the poets, the playwrights, then the novelists. Veteran newspapermen are next.”

“Is that supposed to make me nervous?”

“Grab the work when it comes, my man. Your competition is now a fourteen-year-old in pajamas with the username Truth-ninja-12 who believes fact-checking a story is reading his subject’s Twitter feed. Be afraid.”

Assuring Stu I’d call Endicott, I hung up.

“A means to track down Marlowe Hughes just fell into our lap,” I said to Nora, rearing back my desk chair. “The timing can’t be a coincidence. Someone’s been talking. Someone we’ve talked to or bribed.”

Nora looked bewildered.

“Olivia Endicott du Pont wants to meet with me.”

Nora frowned. “Who’s Olivia Endicott du Pont?”