Page 64 of Ghostridden
I snorted and Carson scowled again. “What do you hate to tell me?”
“You realize you’re describing my job, right?” Since Carson believed that I should provide my services for free for the privilege of basking in my clients’ glorious words, I guessed he’d expected the same thing from Avi. “Ghostwriting requires a certain skill set and mindset. Avi didn’t vet other people’s manuscripts. He wrote his own.”
“He could havehelped. Heowedme those chapters. He threw them away, butItook them from there.Borderlinewas the new Jake Fields. A better Jake Fields. Readers won’t want an inferior retro brand when they’ve got the new one to look forward to. So you see”—he jammed his right hand into his pocket, and I really didn’t like how that pocket seemed to bulge with more than a fist—“that manuscript is irrelevant. You might as well hand it over now.”
“Do you think he has a gun in his pocket?” I murmured to Avi.
“Pretty sure,” Avi replied.
“Why are you talking about me in the third person?” Carson barked. “I’mright here.”
He pulled his hand out of his pocket, and yep. Gun.
I kept very still. “Anything you can do with that?”
My question was directed at Avi, although since I kept my attention focused on Carson, he, of course, assumed I was talking about him.
“I can doplenty.”He waved the gun around. From the way it was shaking, I seriously doubted his ability to aim, but who knew whether that would be a benefit or a drawback? “Ipractice. You can do anything if youpractice. That’s all Jake had to do. Help me practice, but henevertook me seriously. I wrote him dozens of letters, but he never responded.”
“Wait.” I shot another glance at Avi, but he wasn’t there.Great. No backup. Ireallyhoped Ricky was listening. “You wrote letters to Jake Fields?”
Carson sneered at me. “Of course I did.”
“You realize that you could have just talked to him, right?”
He blinked. “I can’t talk to him. He isn’t real.”
My head was starting to ache, probably from the adrenaline buzzing through my veins because a guy who was obviously divorced from reality was aiming a gun in my general direction. “When did you write all these letters?”
“What do you mean?”
“The letters to Jake Fields. When did you write them?”
“After the lawyers made all the retailers stop sellingBorderline. I had to prove it. Prove there could be no response, nopermission, because Jake Fields wasn’t real. Once I’d proved it, then they’d have to put the book back on sale and I could get my money.”
Money. It was always about money, sex, power, or revenge, wasn’t it? At least, that’s what my retired detective client claimed in his book.
“Carson,” I said softly but firmly, wondering where Avi had gotten to and hoping like hell that if Rickywasin Avengers-assemble mode, that he wouldn’t appear and startle Carson into taking a wild shot. “Jake Fields was Avi’s pen name. He couldn’t have answered those letters because he was already dead.”
Although I mentally taggedSince you killed himonto that sentence, I didn’t say it out loud, because, you know, gun.Carson was clearly unbalanced at the moment and I didn’t trust him not to take the giant step from blunt force trauma to GSW.
“Exactly. Proof, just like I said. Then I proved that anyone could be Jake Fields because heisn’t real. He’s a brand just like Carolyn Keene. Betty Crocker. Mark Twain.Brands, not people.”
He waved the gun again. It was a revolver, I could tell that much, but the eye of the barrel looked odd. As I watched, a dribble of sawdust drifted from the gun’s nose to the floor.
Avi.
Would the gun still fire if the barrel was stuffed with sawdust? Even if it did, I doubted it would do Carson’s aim any favors. Maybe it would jam. Might it explode in his hand? I didn’t know. But I expect Carson wouldn’t know either.
In any case, I wanted to give Avi plenty of time, so despite the danger that I might set Carson off, I decided to keep him talking.
“Carolyn Keene was the work-for-hire pseudonym the Stratemeyer Syndicate used for the ghostwriters who produced the Nancy Drew books, just like they used Laura Lee Hope for the Bobbsey Twins and Victor Appleton for Tom Swift. Betty Crocker started as a fictional character created to respond to customer queries before General Mills turned her into a brand.”
“See?” Carson crowed. “I told you. Not a real person. Abrand.”
I inclined my head. “In that case, yes. But a trademark-protected brand. Mark Twain, on the other hand, was the pen name for the very real Samuel Clemens. Just because somebody writes pseudonymously doesn’t mean that person isn’t real.”
The gun barrel was totally packed with sawdust by this time, and beneath the beat of my heart in my ears, I caught the telltale creak of the front door easing open. At least Ihopedit was the door, although Carson didn’t appear to register the sound.
