The Max

Seventeen

In the morning before the night when all hell broke loose, Max met Paula for an interview session for the book. She’d arranged to have another private meeting, wearing something super low-cut, but this time the view didn’t give Max any liftoff.

“Sorry, babe, the wedding’s cancelled, kaput, finito.”

Said it stone-faced, no emotion, figured, Why sugar-coat it? Gotta hit hard, hit low, and hit early. And, man, he loved delivering bad news – what a fuckin’ rush! It reminded him of the days when he was a CEO and he got to fire people. That was the best part of his job – crushing the assholes’ dreams, watching them fucking melt.

“Oh,” she asked, “and why’s that?”

He could tell she wasn’t taking it well. She’d probably been planning for the big day, telling all her friends. Fuck, she’d probably had the band picked out.

“No offense, baby, but something bigger and better came along. A lot bigger and a lot better.”

Still hurting she asked, “This won’t affect the book, will it?”

“No, my motto is, Always do what you say you’re gonna do.”

“All right, then,” she said.

Was she stifling tears? Yeah, probably.

But she was a pro and managed to put it behind her. She started in with her questions: Do you remember your first meeting with Angela Petrakos? Was it love at first sight? What are your impressions of her boyfriend at the time, Thomas Dillon, AKA Popeye?

It was rough for Max, having to relive that dark period in his life. Well, it wasn’t really, but he acted like it was, knowing that sounding like it had been painful and traumatic was what sold books. Wasn’t that how Oprah did it?

Then Paula started asking the harder questions like: Did you want to kill your wife? Did you plot with Angela and Dillon to kill your wife? And – the most potentially incriminating of all – did you hire Dillon to kill your wife?

If Max hadn’t been flying so high, if he hadn’t been in the midst of the power trip to end all power trips, he might’ve thought it over first and realized that confessing to his wife’s murder, and admitting involvement in other murders and crimes he’d never been charged for, wasn’t exactly in his best interest. But, hell, he let it fly. It was the equivalent of an outright confession, details that could get him the death penalty.

But right then Max wasn’t thinking penalty, he was thinking publicity, he was thinking celebrity. That was what it was all about, right? Why hold back on the meat? You’re gonna open the door, open it all the way.

And Paula, yeah, she was eating it up, telling him how excited she was about the project, and how the biggest challenge would be to fit all this amazing material into one book.

“I might have to make it into a trilogy,” she said, and Max suddenly had a vision of the great Hollywood trilogies. Star Wars, The Godfather, Shrek, Revenge of the Nerds.

Imagining billions of dollars in DVD sales, merchandising, box office receipts, imagining walking onstage to accept his Oscar, Max made another impulsive decision.

He said, “You wanna get a first-hand look at The… A.X. in action? What’re you doing tonight at, say, midnight?”

“I don’t have plans,” Paula said. “Why?”

“How’d you like to ride in a getaway car with The… A.X. and the rest of his crew?”

Yep, he told her all about the whole prison break, down to the last detail. Probably not a good idea to share this info with a woman he hardly knew – and, worse, a woman he’d just fucking dumped – but the escape was going to climax the greatest moment in his life, and he wanted his biographer there to witness it.

Later, heading back to his cell, Max was still pumped, thinking how lucky a thing it was to be Max Fisher, when he saw Sino. He’d probably just been released from the hole – he was in cuffs, being walked along by a guard. When Sino saw Max he stopped and the guard stopped with him. Sino gave Max the dead-eye glare, and his nostrils flared and his jaw shifted as he grinded his teeth. Max didn’t back down. He shot back with his own mean-ass look, feeling like he was in a Western, two hombres staring each other down before the big shootout.

Then, suddenly, Max smiled widely. He made his thumb and forefinger into the shape of a gun, pointed it at Sino, and bent his thumb, pulling the trigger.

Man, the look on the big lump of meat’s face was fucking priceless.

Paula went back to the motel, real disappointed. She wouldn’t be the next Mrs. Max Fisher – how would she ever get over it? She laughed, thinking, Was the guy for real or what? Sometimes she thought he was fucking with her, with all the weird accents, the tough talk, the outrageous stories. It had to be some kind of schtick, a put-on. She was always waiting for him to crack up and say, Got you good there, huh? But it had never happened. And now he claimed he was staging a prison break? Probably a delusion like the rest of it. But hey, if it happened, she was going to be there to chronicle it. A first-person account of her subject escaping from Attica? It would like Junger getting a chance to ride the boat into the perfect storm.

After she parked her car, she walked to the soda machine near the motel’s office and bought a Tab – had to watch the figure if she was going to attract maximum babe-age. She figured she’d find some girl-girl porn on TV, rub one out, then try to find some decent food for lunch, not an easy task in this shithole town. After the incident at the bar, she was trying to keep a low profile. For all she knew it was legal to shoot dykes up here. Jesus, up here you wouldn’t even know you were in New York. It was like a fucking red state.

As she headed back toward her room she stopped and did a double-take when she saw Lee Child walking toward her with another guy. What the hell was Lee Child doing up here? Was he on an author tour? Was the guy his media escort? Was there a mystery bookstore in Attica? Were there any bookstores in Attica? Were there any books in Attica? Hard to imagine that they even knew how to read up here.

Back in her straight days she’d had a big thing for Lee – who didn’t, right? – and now she was so flustered, so starstruck, she couldn’t even say hello or call out his name. She just watched with a dumb expression as he and the guy he was with went into their room.

She wondered: Why was he staying at this crummy motel? Wasn’t he loaded?

Then she had a thought that terrified her – was he up here to try to steal the story out from under her? She knew he was doing well these days, at the top of the Times list and all, but every writer was always on the lookout for the next big thing. Hell, Paula herself had gotten most of her ideas for books at the bar at one mystery convention or another. Piss-drunk authors would tell her their best ideas, then forget the conversations in the morning. Maybe Lee saw The… A. X as his next blockbuster, his big move into true crime. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made.

She marched over to room 16, started banging on the door.

If Sebastian thought riding in an airplane with Yanni had been a dreadful experience, and spending time with his family in Astoria had been painful, then riding in a car with him was a full-blown nightmare. Had the fellow heard that there’d been an invention – a true breakthrough – called deodorant? Lordy, the smell of the man! And he didn’t even have the decency to open the passenger-side window. He had all the controls on his side of the car, and he insisted on riding with the windows closed and no air conditioning. He mentioned something about allergies or whatnot, but Sebastian knew it was only to inflict maximum torture on him.

They passed a rest area and Sebastian had never been so excited to see a McDonald’s in his entire life. Naturally the mad Greek wouldn’t let them stop, though. He said something about “making good time” and “saving gas,” but Sebastian figured he was just being an ass.

They’d left at the crack of dawn and arrived in Attica at around noon. Oh, lucky them! Talk about a party town! Sebastian honestly didn’t know how his life had descended to this horrid state. A few weeks ago he’d been living it up on Santorini and now he was in a place that made those Western ghost towns you saw in the movies seem lively, being dragged around by the Greek from hell.

Their room wasn’t ready. That’s correct – room, singular. Yanni insisted on sharing a room, even sharing a king-size bed, so Sebastian couldn’t slip away.

“Oh, come on now, you can trust me,” Sebastian said as they stood at the front desk. The sarcasm couldn’t have been thicker.

“We sleep in same bed,” Yanni insisted, “and you wear handcuffs.”

The clerk heard this and with a concerned look said, “Uh, sir, this is a family motel.”

“ Please,” Sebastian said. “I’ll treat myself to a nice-looking chappie every once in a while like any good un, but I’d rather die than be a bottom for this cretin.”

“Cretan?” Yanni said, deeply insulted. “Yanni is not from Crete, my family live on Santorini nine hundred years.” Sebastian apologized for misremembering.

They waited in – where else? – the car until the room had been serviced. As soon as they got in, there was a hammering at the door. Sebastian answered it, saw a woman there, full figured, longish brown hair – attractive enough, but something about her made him think, lesbian.

She was saying, “Son of a bitch. You think you can steal The… A.X. from me, you fucking British bastard.”

Sebastian replied with an ultra polite, “Sorry, have we met?”

“Yeah, at last year’s ThrillerFest. I told you how much I loved Jack Fucking Reacher, remember?”

Going along he said, “Oh, of course, silly me. How could I forget?” He had, of course, no idea who she was, but he said, “I’d invite you in, my sweet, but alas, I’m otherwise occupied.”

Then Yanni was behind him, naturally, never more than Karelia spit away, and he asked angrily, “Who is this cunt?’

Sebastian said, “I say, old chap, steady on.”

The woman looked at the Greek and said, “What did you call me?”

Sebastian, if not always ready, was most definitely nearly always prepared, had taken some hooch from the Greek’s home, and said, “Now let’s all calm down. Come in, gell, have a drink, and dammit, we’ll thrash this out between us like civilized human beings.”

“Where you get booze in this shithole?” Yanni asked, and the woman asked, “The fuck is a gell?”

But they took it inside, neither of them the sort to turn down a drink.

Sebastian got the two plastic toothbrushing cups from the bathroom and produced a battered tin cup he still carried from his Chatwin days, he really believed he’d lived like ol’ Bruce. Then, with a flourish, out of the Gladstone bag came a bottle of scotch. Sebastian murmured, “Alas, we’re all out of ice, the maid has the day off.”

He poured lethal measures and nobody complained. He toasted, “To jolly good company, what?”

No one answered him.

They drank in silence, getting the good stuff to ignite in their system. When they’d killed the scotch and the contents of the room’s minibar, the woman said, “You’re not fucking Lee Child.”

Sebastian nearly laughed at the double entendre.

“Child?” Yanni asked. “Where child?”

Then Sebastian, scotch calm, said, “Ah, you’ve rumbled me, the game is up as old Sherlock used to say, or was that afoot? I’m actually Lee’s half brother. We don’t get on, and truly, I’m chuffed with his success.”

Yanni, tired of a conversation he was having trouble following, pointed his finger at the woman, asked, “Why are you here?”

She’d drunk the scotch way too fast and it loosened her tongue.

“I thought he was stealing my book,” she said, wagging a finger in Sebastian’s direction.

“Your book? What are you talking about?” Sebastian asked.

She told them all about some bloody awful book she was writing about Max Fisher and Angela, and about the murders Fisher had committed, and how he’d apparently become a feared man in prison. Sounded like a real winner all right. The punters would surely be rushing to the stores to buy that one.

Then she told them about a prison break at midnight.

Sebastian had a lightbulb moment, said, “Prison break?”

“Yeah, there’re going to be riots, big riots. I’m a big riot!” She looked at her glass. “What’s in this shit anyway?”

Sebastian egged her on, going, “So about the prison break…”

“Oh, yeah, it’s at midnight tonight, at least that’s what The… A.X. said. The… A.X.!” She laughed. “You believe that’s what he calls himself now? He put a ‘the’ in front of his name and he has initials. Initials! Is he a character or what? I’m gonna make a fortune on this book and Pulitzer, look out. Oh, and Angela, I’m dying to meet that crazy bitch. She’s going to be in the getaway car with some IRA guy. Is this gonna be a trip or what?”

Yanni put a switchblade to the woman’s throat said, “Shut up, cunt, and take us to this she-devil who killed my cousin. Now.”

The woman continued to smile drunkenly until her eyes focused on the knife and she started to scream. Yanni backhanded her in the face and knocked her to the floor.

Sebastian upended his tin cup and, patting its bottom, drained the last trickle of scotch. “Oh, lordy,” he said, “was that really necessary?”