Pulse

39

New York, the present

N eeve Cooper sat alone on a bench in Central Park and read more manuscript pages of Overbite, the vampire novel Paranormal Books, a small publisher, had assigned her.

She wielded a sharp red pencil in her right hand and from time to time made a mark or jotted a message on the pages. Whatever she penciled had to be legible. This would be published as an e-book, but also in audio and print forms. Her editing would find its way into all formats.

For almost five years Neeve had been an associate editor at Noir and More, a publishing house with offices on Hudson Street. Then Noir and More had been bought (absorbed, the execs liked to say) by Schmelder and Kott, a large German publisher and distributor of skiing equipment. The problem was that half the Noir and More employees, including Neeve, hadn’t been absorbed with the rest of the company.

So she had become a freelance editor, copyediting manuscripts for publishers that, like Noir and More, were short of employees during this hard time for publishers. Neeve considered herself lucky to have hooked up for freelance work with Paranormal. She could make enough to eat and pay the rent, but she sure got tired of reading about vampires and zombies. Her book before this one had been about a vampire cat. The worst part was, halfway through, she found herself enjoying the damned thing.

She glanced at her watch, then took off her reading glasses and brushed back the lock of long dark hair hanging down one cheek. She was a pretty, brown-eyed woman in her mid-thirties who looked younger and had at one time considered pursuing a career in ballet. She had the powerful, lithe body for ballet, and the balance. Then she’d been horrified to find that she was growing boobs, and large ones that the other girls envied. But those girls didn’t want to be ballet dancers. Neeve had considered surgical reduction, but her mother said that was insane, and besides, she’d known women who’d had breast reduction and their breasts had grown large again.

At eighteen, Neeve was finished as a ballet dancer. She enrolled in college and pursued an English degree.

Some of the grace from her ballet days showed as she bent effortlessly and stuffed the rubber-banded vampire manuscript into the computer case on the ground. Neeve used the case for print manuscripts (it was the perfect size unless they ran over six hundred pages). She draped the case over her shoulder by its padded strap, then picked up her knockoff Gucci purse and stood up from the bench. Several people observed her walk away. A few of the men seemed hypnotized. It was like watching a dance.

Neeve knew she’d have to hurry to get to the Pig in a Poke restaurant on time. She was meeting three friends there at twelve-thirty, which was only fifteen minutes away. She lengthened her stride and her legs seemed long even in her flat-soled jogging shoes. The long stride emphasized the artful turn of her ankles and the musculature of her calves. Some shape on this woman.

At the first intersection outside the park she had to stop with a knot of other people to wait for the walk light. She noticed she was breathing hard. Out of condition.

It also occurred to her that she didn’t have to hurry. If she was half an hour late, her friends would still be there. This wasn’t a business lunch of the sort she’d gotten so used to at Noir and More. There was no need to be on time. She was self-employed, and that carried with it some definite advantages.

She walked slower and smiled. Self — employed. In business for herself, by herself.

The future was uncertain, but she’d been getting enough work lately. Reading vampire novels wasn’t all that bad. And one of the large publishers had agreed to e-mail their manuscripts to Neeve, which meant she could use the editing software on her computer. This lugging around of pounds and pounds of paper would cease, and she could still get out of the apartment from time to time. She could take her laptop with her. It wasn’t half as heavy as a text-on-paper manuscript.

Neeve tried to think around her trepidation and the moodiness she’d fallen into. She decided she could use a little uncertainty and adventure in her life. Publishing was changing, and no one could predict exactly how. Once she learned to get used to the uneasiness that accompanied that situation, she might learn to enjoy the world of the freelancer. Maybe this was one of those times when opportunity visited in disguise.

Suddenly Overbite didn’t seem so heavy.

The Alfred A. Aal Memorial Library smelled exactly as a library should-of perspiration-infused wood and old books. It was also suitably hushed.

“We don’t have to be as careful about Ms. Culver as we used to,” Penny said to Feds, after he’d timed pecking her on the cheek when the chief librarian was looking the other way. “She’s depressed these days.”

“Too bad,” Fedderman said. “Library business down?”

“You could describe it that way. She’s worried about e-books.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“It isn’t funny, Feds. It would be like you being edged out of work by robotic cops.”

“That’s already happening.” He glanced toward the front of the library and the distraught Ms. Culver. “She should have learned by now to deal with progress. And libraries aren’t going to simply disappear overnight because all of a sudden some people are reading books on little screens. She needs to lighten up, for her own good.”

“Ms. Culver tends to catastrophize,” Penny said.

“Is that a word?”

“It is now. It might not make much sense for her to build what is a very real problem into some kind of dilemma, but everybody has a pet issue.”

“It can be that way in my work. With Quinn. He doesn’t catastrophize, but he sure gets obsessed with the job. He kind of locks in, not so unlike Ms. Culver.”

“Speaking of your job, I saw in the news that a patrolman was shot to death by a car thief in the Village last night.”

“Young guy named Messerschmitt,” Fedderman said. “Been on the job less than a year.”

“Was he married?”

Fedderman figured Penny already knew the answer to that one. He was getting used to her methodology. “Married and with an infant son,” he said.

“See what I mean about being a cop’s wife?” Penny said. “I don’t even know this woman and I broke out crying when I saw that on TV news. I found myself identifying with her.”

“You don’t have a baby, Pen.”

“Being a smart-ass doesn’t make this a less weighty subject, Feds. You tell me I shouldn’t worry about you, and this poor guy wasn’t even on the job a year and he’s dead.”

“He pulled his gun when he didn’t have to,” Fedderman said.

“How could you know that?”

“Word gets around fast. The car thief was cornered and panicked, and had a gun of his own. He was sixteen years old.”

“Are you saying it was this Messerschmitt’s fault?”

“I’m saying he made a mistake I wouldn’t have made. And he wouldn’t have made it after spending more time on the job. And you’re wrong, Pen, in thinking the longer you go as a cop and don’t get hurt or killed, the more the odds turn against you. It’s the other way around; the longer you go, the less likely you are to do something that bites you.”

“Anything can happen,” Penny said.

“Even to people who try to live their lives in a bubble of safety. Like a library.”

“You’re impossible, Feds.”

“I want to show you there’s no reason to be afraid for me.”

Penny looked exasperated. “You carry a gun. The people you deal with carry guns. Enough said.”

“Maybe your sister should have had a gun.” The moment he said it, Fedderman knew he was in trouble.

And he was wrong: Penny’s sister, Nora, probably would have been murdered by the brutal serial killer who’d taken her life, even if she’d owned a gun. The aggressor, the one who moved first, almost always won the struggle. They knew this, the predators of the world. The Sullivan Act made it difficult to own or carry a gun in New York. The predators knew that, too.

“Don’t stand there and give me a lot of Second Amendment bullshit!” Penny said.

“All right. I’m sorry.”

Penny turned around and busied herself shelving books. He knew she was plenty angry, and she’d be thinking again and talking again about how he should consider changing occupations.

“Pen…?”

She wasn’t going to answer. She slammed a book into place so hard the shelves swayed. A man browsing in Biographies gave her a stern look.

Fedderman knew there was nothing to be done until she calmed down. All because Messerschmitt hadn’t kept his gun in its holster.

It was impossible to talk with Penny when she was feeling, and acting, this way. He turned around and trudged toward the library exit, up near the checkout and return counter, silently cursing.

He didn’t like the way this point of contention was going with Penny. Each time they talked about it she seemed to become more and more worried. Madder and madder.

One thing he’d learned about Penny: she usually did something about her anger.

How the hell was this going to end?

He knew how cops’ marriages too often ended.

He reached the tinted glass door, leaned heavily into the metal push bar, and felt the heat from outside.

When he looked back he saw Ms. Culver glaring at him as if he were an e-book.