Murder For Love

Clay bared his teeth at her. "That's what we pay you to do, Amy. You're the goddamn star's goddamn editor. She likes you. We even had to write it into her last contract that she will only work with you."

"Don't lose sleep over it. The chances are against Roxa

"He's humble because he knows no one wants to read artistic work. Let Ticknor & Fields have him. They don't have Jambon et Cie breathing down their necks." Clay picked up his latest fax from Brussels and waved it at her.

Amy skimmed it. Jambon was disappointed that Clay had rejected all of their previous marketing proposals, but pleased he had let Gary Blanchard go. All of the scenarios they had run on Quattro showed that every dollar spent on advertising would lose them thirty cents on revenue from Blanchard's work. They definitely did not want anyone on the Gaudy list who sold fewer than twenty-seven thousand in hardcover.

"This isn't publishing," she said, tossing it back at him. "They ought to go into breakfast cereal. It's more suited to their mentality."

"Yes, Amy, but they own us. So unless you want to look for a job right before Christmas, don't go signing any more literary lights. We can't afford them."

"I dreamed I went to the airport to catch my flight to Paris, but they wouldn't let me in first class. They said I was dirty, and badly dressed, and I had to fly coach. But all the coach seats were taken so I hud to go by Greyhound, and the bus got lost and ended up in this dreary farmhouse in the middle of Kansas."

The eminent psychiatrist, his kindly gray eyes moved to tears by the beautiful girl on the couch in front of him, sighed and stirred in his chair. How could he ever persuade her that she was clean enough, good enough, for first class?

Amy choked. "Roxa

"It's here. In front of you. Have you forgotten how to read?"

"But your readers expect passion, romance. Nothing happens. The doctor doesn't even fall in love with Clarissa."

"Well, he does of course, but he keeps it to himself." Roxa

Clarissa put her hand trustingly in the older man's. "You don't know how much this means to me, Doctor. To finally find someone who understands what I've been through."

Dr. Friedrich felt his flesh stir. His professional calm had never been pierced by any of his patients before, but this gaminelike waif, abused by father, abandoned by mother, so in need of trust and guidance, was different.

He longed to be able to say "My dear, I wish you would not think of me as your doctor, but your dearest friend as well. I long for nothing more than to protect you from the blasts of the stormy world beyond these walls." But if he spoke he would lose her precious trust forever.

Roxa

"Well, why can't he marry her?" Amy asked.

"Amy, you didn't read it, did you? He's already got a wife, only she's in an institution for the criminally insane. But his compassion is so great he can't bring himself to divorce her. Then the Nazi-hunters confuse him with a man who was a prison-camp guard who looked like him, and he gets arrested. It turns out that the wife has turned him in-that her criminal insanity has given her a persecution complex and she blames him for all her troubles. So Clarissa has to find him, behind the Iron Curtain-this takes place in 1983-where he's been put into a gulag-and rescue him. And the wife has a brainstorm when she finds out he's been rescued. That kills her. But Clarissa has already become a nun. They sometimes dream about each other but they die without seeing one another again."

Amy blinked. "It seems a little downbeat for your readers, Roxa

"Don't wonder at me, Amy," Roxa

"I warned you," Clay snarled. "Send her off to the fucking shrinks and what happens? We get cheap psychology about her readers and a book no one will buy. The woman can't write, for Christ sake. If she loses her adolescent fantasy about true love she loses her audience."

" Maybe Dr. Reindorf will betray her as badly as Gerardo and Ke

"We can't take that chance," Clay said. "You've got to do something."

"I'm sixty," Amy said. "I can take early retirement. You're the one who's worried about it. You do something. Get the publicity department to plant a story in the National Enquirer that Roxa

She meant it as a joke but Clay thought it was worth an effort. His publicity staff turned him down.

"We can't plant stories about our own writers. Publishing is a community of gossips. Someone will know, they'll leak it to someone else who hates you, and the next thing you know Roxa

Clay began to lose sleep. Final Analysis, done in silver with a suggestive couch on the cover, came well out of the gate, but word of mouth began killing it before the second printing was ready. It jumped onto the Times list in third place but stayed there only a week before plummeting to ninth. After five short weeks Final Analysis dropped off the list into the black hole of overstock and remainders.

The faxes from Brussels were hot enough to scorch the veneer from Clay Rossiter's desktop, while Roxa

"But you can't market long, dull dreams and their interpretation," Clay howled to his secretary. "As I told Amy."

Clay fired Amy, to relieve his feelings, then had to rehire her the next morning: Roxa

"Only, if she's going to keep turning out cheap psychology it won't matter. Pretty soon even Harlequin won't touch her. And, by the way, we won't be able to afford you. How long has she been seeing this damned shrink?"

"About nine months. And the last time she was in New York she only stayed overnight so as not to miss a session. So it doesn't seem to be following the course of her usual infatuations."

"He's not in New York? Where is he?"

" Santa Fe. This isn't the only town with psychiatrists in it, Clay."

"Yeah, they're like rats: wherever you find a human population, there they'll be, eating the garbage," Clay grumbled. "Maybe he can fall off a mesa."

When Amy left he stared at the clock. It was eleven in New York. Nine A.M. in New Mexico. He got up abruptly and took his coat from behind the door.

"I have the flu," he told his secretary. "If some moron calls from Brussels tell him I'm ru