Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(83)

I stumble along for another block, then I stop at a classic SoHo cast-iron building. It’s home to Writers Place, the last major publisher left in New York. Hell, it’s the last major publisher in all of America.

I clutch the box that holds the manuscript. Dirt streaks my face. My back and armpits are soaked. You know you smell like hell when you can smell your own sweat.

I’m about to push my way through the revolving door when I pause.

I feel like I could cry, but instead I extend the middle finger of my right hand and flip it at the drone.





ANNE GUTMAN, EDITOR in chief and publisher of Writers Place, greets me with her usual warmth.

“You look like shit,” she says.

“Thank you,” I say. “Now let’s get the hell out of your office and go someplace where we can’t be watched.”

“Where’d you have in mind, Jacob? Jupiter or Mars?” “Christ. I can’t stand it,” I say. “They watch me 24-7.” She nods, but I’m not sure she agrees with me. I’m not even sure she cares. I lean forward and hand her the box.

“What’s this?” she says. “A gift?”

“It’s the manuscript! It’s Twenty-Twenty!” I yell. Why am I yelling?

Anne tosses her head back and laughs.

“I can’t remember the last time I received a hard-copy manuscript,” she says.

Then I look at her intently. I lower my voice.

“Look, Anne. This book is incredible. This is corporate reporting like it’s never been written before.”

“You know my concern, Jacob,” she says.

“Yeah. I know. You don’t think the Store is worth writing about; you don’t truly think it’s morally bankrupt.”

“That’s not it. I think it may very well be morally bankrupt, but I can make a list of forty companies that are just as bad. I don’t think the Store is inherently evil. It’s a creative monopoly.”

“Read my book. Read Twenty-Twenty. Then decide.”

“I will.”

“Tonight?” I ask.

“Yes. Tonight. Immediately.”

“Immediately? Wow. That’s fast.”

Anne smiles at my minuscule joke. I try to remain calm. I’m sure if she reads the book she’s going to be blown away. Then again, maybe she won’t be. Maybe she’ll toss it after a few chapters. What do I know? After all, I’ve been wrong about this sort of thing before.

Suddenly there’s noise. A scuffling of feet. Indistinguishable but loud. It comes from outside Anne’s office. Then a very quick knock on the door. Before Anne can say anything, her assistant opens the door and speaks.

“Ms. Gutman, there are three policemen and two NYPD detectives outside here with me.”

“What do they want?” Anne asks.

“They’re here to arrest Mr. Brandeis.”

Anne and I look at each other. I’m about to fall apart. As always, she’s in take-charge mode.

“You go out through the conference room. Then take the back stairs down and outside. Find a place to stay.”

Anne hands me some money from the top drawer of her desk. I turn toward the conference room.

“I’ll handle the cops,” Anne says.

“Read the book, okay?” I say.

“Damn it, Jacob. Of course I’ll read the book.”

She walks out her office door. I also start walking. The last thing I hear her say is: “Good afternoon, officers. How can I help you?”





EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER


MY WIFE, MEGAN, wrote an e-vite to our dinner party that was like Megan herself: funny, sharp, and a touch mysterious:

MEGAN AND JACOB BRANDEIS

INVITE YOU TO OUR

“LAST GASP IN MANHATTAN” PARTY

TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 30

8:00 P.M.

322 PEARL STREET



We had invited our eight best friends to have dinner with us in the big goofy-looking loft space that we had carved out of half a floor in an art deco building. If you’re thinking when you hear the word loft that the space was glamorous, hightech, and modern, you’re thinking wrong. Our very long, very narrow apartment was in what had once been an old insurance company building. After that, it was vacant for five years. Then it was home to a bunch of squatters. Then it was bought by a bunch of would-be writers and artists. Each apartment had a tiny view of the East River and a fabulous view of the garbage barges docked at the South Street Seaport. We could afford the apartment only because the area at the time (then the Financial District, now very chicly called FiDi) was a no-man’s-land. The nearest grocery store was two miles away in Greenwich Village. We could also afford it because we were making fairly decent money writing everything from ad copy to catalog copy to an occasional piece for New York magazine and the New York Observer. Like everyone else in Manhattan who hadn’t founded a tech company or managed a hedge fund, we made do. What’s even better is that our kids seemed to have no problem making do.

Lindsay was sixteen and attended Spence. When I was a kid at George Washington High, Spence was debutante-snooty. Only a touch of that culture remained, and those types didn’t seem to interest Lindsay. In fact, most of her friends seemed to be the Latinos and African American scholarship kids, with a UN ambassador’s daughter or Middle Eastern princess thrown in for diversity.