Swimsuit

“So I need a simple yes or no, Len. Are you interested or not?”

Chapter 72

Leonard Zagami leaned back in his chair, rocked a couple of times, smoothed back what remained of his white hair, then turned to face me. When he spoke, it was with heartbreaking sincerity, and that's what really hurt.

“You know how much I like you, Ben. We've been together for what, twelve years?”

“Almost fifteen.”

“Fifteen good years. So, as your friend, I'm not going to bullshit you. You deserve the truth.”

“Agreed,” I said, but my pulse was booming so loudly that I could hardly hear what Len said.

“I'm verbalizing what any good businessman would be thinking, so don't take this wrong, Ben. You've had a promising but quiet career. So now you think you've got a breakout book that'll raise your profile here at RW and in the industry. Am I right?”

“You think this is a stunt? You think I'm that desperate? Are you kidding?”

“Let me finish. You know what happened when Fritz Keller brought out Randolph Graham's so-called true story.”

“It blew up, yeah.”

“First the 'startling reviews,' then Matt Lauer and Larry King. Oprah puts Graham in her book club – and then the truth starts leaking out. Graham wasn't a killer. He was a petty thug and a pretty good writer who embellished the hell out of his life story. And when it exploded, it exploded all over Fritz Keller.”

Zagami went on to say that Keller got late-night threats at home, TV producers calling his cell phone. His company's stock went down the toilet, and Keller had a heart attack.

My own heart was starting to fibrillate. Leonard thought that either Henri was lying or I was stretching a newspaper article beyond reality.

Either way, he was turning me down.

Hadn't Leonard heard what I said? Henri had threatened to kill me and Amanda. Len took a breath, so I seized the moment.

“Len, I'm going to say something very important.”

“Go ahead, because unfortunately, I only have five more minutes.”

“I questioned it, too. Wondered if Henri was really a killer, or if he's a talented con man, seeing in me the grift of a lifetime.”

“Exactly,” Len said.

“Well, Henri is for real. And I can prove it to you.”

I put the media card on the desk.

“What's that?”

“Everything you need to know and more. I want you to meet Henri for yourself.”

Len inserted the flash drive, and his computer screen went from black to a shot of a dusky yellow room, candles burning, a bed centered on a wall. The camera zoomed in on a slender young woman lying belly-down on the bed. She had long, pale blond hair, wore a red bikini and black shoes with red soles. She was hog-tied with intricately knotted ropes. She seemed drugged or sleeping, but when the man entered the frame she began crying.

The man was naked except for a plastic mask and blue latex gloves.

I didn't want to see the video again. I walked to the glass wall that looked straight down the well of the atrium, from the forty-third floor to the tiny people who crossed the plaza on the ground floor below.

I heard the voices coming from the computer, heard Leonard gag. I turned to see him make a run for the door. When he returned a few minutes later, Leonard was as pale as a sheet of paper, and he was changed.

Chapter 73

Leonard dropped back into the seat behind his desk, yanked out the flash drive, stared at it like it was the snake in the Garden of Eden.

“Take this back,” he said. “Let's agree that I never saw it. I don't want to be any kind of accessory after the fact or God knows what. Have you told the police? The FBI?”

“Henri said that if I did, he'd kill me, kill Amanda, too. I can't take that chance.”

“I understand now. You're sure that the girl in that video is Kim McDaniels?”

“Yeah. That's Kim.”

Len picked up the phone, canceled his twelve-thirty meeting, and cleared the rest of his afternoon. He ordered sandwiches from the kitchen, and we moved to the seating area at the far side of his office.

Len said, “Okay, start at the begi

So I did. I told Len about the last-minute Hawaiian boondoggle that had turned out to be a murder mystery times five. I told him about becoming friends with Barbara and Levon McDaniels and about being deceived by Henri's alter egos, Marco Benevenuto and Charlie Rollins.

Emotion jammed up my voice box when I talked about the dead bodies, and also when I told Len how Henri had forced me into my apartment at gunpoint, then showed me the pictures he'd taken of Amanda.

“How much does Henri want for his story? Did he give you a number?”

I told Len that Henri was talking about multimillions, and my editor didn't flinch. In the past half hour, he had gone from skeptic to inside bidder. From the light in his eyes, I thought he'd sized up the market for this book and saw his budget gap being overwhelmed by a mountain of cash.

“What's the next step?” he asked me.

“Henri said he'd be in touch. I'm certain he will be. That's all I know so far.”

Len called Eric Zohn, Raven-Wofford's chief legal counsel, and soon a tall, thin, nervous man in his forties joined our meeting.

Len and I briefed Eric on “the assassin's legacy,” and Zohn threw up objections.

Zohn cited the “Son of Sam” law that held that a killer can't profit from his crimes. He and Len discussed Jeffrey MacDonald, who had sued his ghostwriter, and then the O.J. book, since the Goldman family had claimed the book's earnings to satisfy their civil suit against the author.

Zohn said, “I worry that we'll be financially responsible to each and every one of the victims' families.”

I was the forgotten person in the room, as loopholes and angles were discussed, but I saw that Len was fighting for the book.

He said to Zohn, “Eric, I don't say this lightly. This is a guaranteed monster bestseller in the making. Everyone wants to know what's actually in the mind of a killer, and this killer will talk about crimes that are current and unsolved. What Ben's got isn't If I Did It. It's I Damn Well Did It.”

Zohn wanted more time to explore the ramifications, but Leonard used his executive prerogative.

“Ben, for now, you're Henri's anonymous ghostwriter. If anyone says they saw you in my office, say you came to pitch a new novel. That I turned it down.

“When Henri contacts you, tell him that we're fine-tuning an offer I think he'll like.”

“That's a yes?”

“That's a yes. You have a deal. This is the scariest book I've ever taken on, and I can't wait to publish it.”

Chapter 74

The next evening, in L.A., the unreality was still settling in. Amanda was cooking a four-star di

A half-dozen experts agreed that serial killers almost always learn from their mistakes. They evolve. They compartmentalize and don't feel their victims' pain. They keep upping the danger and increasing the thrill.

I could see why Henri was so happy and self-satisfied. He was being paid for doing what he loved to do, and now a book about his passion would be a kind of victory lap.

I called out to Mandy, who came into the living room with a wooden spoon in her hand.

“The sauce is going to burn.”

“I want to read you something. This is from a psychiatrist, a former Viet Nam vet who's written extensively on serial killers. Here. Listen, please.

“ 'All of us have some of the killer in us, but when you get to the proverbial edge of the abyss, you have to be able to take a step back. These guys who kill and kill again have jumped right into the abyss and have lived in it for years.' ”