We went through the living area and into his kitchen, where he had just brewed a pot of coffee. The window looked down a rocky hillside to Puget Sound, which stretched away like an ocean into a wall of coming darkness.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said, “I’m terrible with names.”
I fed him my alias again and he repeated it in an effort to remember. The coffeepot gushed its last orgasmic perks and he poured two huge mugs without waiting for it to end. “I like it strong,” he said, and I nodded agreeably, waving off the sugar and cream. “So,” he said, getting down to cases, “you want to know about the Gray sons. Where do you want to start? I’m afraid you must be the guide here, sir—I don’t mean to brag, but my knowledge of the Grayson Press is so extensive that we could be here for days.” He gave a helpless-looking shrug.
“I’m not sure where to start either. I said I wouldn’t take up much of your time, but I’m just beginning to realize what a deep subject this is.”
“Oh, my dear,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Even the Aandahl biography is a monster. It’ll take me a week to read it.”
He made a derisive motion with his hand. Santa was suddenly cross. “The woman’s a maniac.”
“Who, Aandahl?”
“Journalists,” he sneered. “All they ever want is the garbage in a man’s life. Gossip. Bedroom stories. Lurid sex. But what can you expect from a newspaper reporter?”
“I guess I won’t know that till I’ve read it.”
“Don’t waste your time, you won’t learn anything about the books, Mr. Hodges, and isn’t that what we’re here to discuss? Listen, if Darryl Grayson himself were sitting with us at this table, he’d tell you the same thing. A man is nothing. All that matters is his work.”
I had never been able to swallow that notion, but I didn’t want to push him on it. It seemed to be a sore spot that he had nurtured for a long time.
“I don’t mean to be harsh,” he said in a kinder tone. “It’s easy to like Trish: she’s witty and quick and God knows she does turn a phrase. I’m sure she can be delightful when she’s not chasing off to Venus or obsessing over the Grayson brothers. But get her on that subject and she’s crazy. I don’t know how else to put it.”
He gulped his coffee hot. “I’ll tell you how crazy Trish Aandahl is. She thinks Darryl and Richard Grayson were murdered.”
I stared at him as if I had not heard the same words from Trish herself. “Is she serious?”
“Damn right she is. She gets her teeth into something and never lets go of it. She’s like a bulldog.”
“I guess I’m at a disadvantage here. I just got her book and I’ve barely had time to look at it.”
“You won’t find any of this in there. The publisher made her take it out.”
“Why?”
“The obvious reason—she couldn’t prove any of it. It was all conjecture. As a reporter you’d think she’d know better. But I hear she fought with her editor tooth and nail, really took it to the wall. It almost jeopardized the book’s publication. If she hadn’t listened to her agent’s advice, the whole deal might’ve fallen through.”
“What advice?”
“To take what she could get now—publish the biography without all the trumped-up mystery. To keep working the other angle if she believed it that strongly. If she could ever prove it, it might make a book in itself, but as it was, it just undercut the credibility of the book she’d written.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Of course it’s reasonable. But a reasonable person also knows when to stop. What’s it been now, three or four years since her book was published? Four years, and I don’t think she knows anything more today than she did then. But she’s still out there digging. Or so I hear.”
“I take it you and she are not bosom buddies.”
He smiled, struggling to mellow. “We’re certainly not enemies. It’s just her book I don’t like: I don’t like it even without the epilogue, or whatever she called the murder chapter. Who cares how many prostitutes Richard Grayson knew in Seattle, or that even poor Darryl never could keep his own pants zipped? I just don’t like that kind of business. I’m not a prude, I’m just suspicious of it. Trish will tell you she did more than three hundred interviews for her book. I say so what. How can we be certain that even Archie Moon, who was Darryl Grayson’s friend for life, was telling her the truth?”
“People usually tell the truth when they know they’re being quoted in a published record of their best friend’s life.”
“That’s what you think. You’ll pardon me if I remain a skeptic. I’m not saying Moon would lie—I just know that people do put their own spin on things. It’s human nature. How can anyone know what really went on between Grayson and Moon over a forty-year friendship, when one of them’s dead and the other might have an ax to grind? Moon’s agenda might be nothing more devious than to have Grayson viewed well by posterity. So he might not tell you something that would undercut that, even though it might well contribute to a better understanding of Grayson’s genius and how he made his books.”
“It sounds like you’re saying that Grayson’s genius had a dark side.”
“Can you imagine any genius that doesn’t? It comes with the territory, as people say these days. You’ll hardly ever find a truly brilliant man who isn’t a little sick in some way. But what difference does it make? The Graysons are of general interest only because of the books they produced. If they hadn’t done the books, they’d be nothing but a pair of swaggering cocksmen, forgotten by everybody including Ms. Trish Aandahl. Anyone can lie down with whores, but only one man could have done the Thomas Hart Benton Christmas Carol . Only one. That book was a creation , you see, and that’s what I choose to focus on. I don’t do interviews for my work, I’m not interested in what people say about the Graysons, all I want to know is what really happened. My disciplines are rigid, precise, verifiable, true. If that sounds like bragging, so be it. I don’t report rumors or pillow talk.”
He held my eyes for a long moment, then said, “You look like you disagree with everything I’ve just said.”
“I’m absorbing it.”
He poured me another cup, got a third for himself, and sat down again. “Very diplomatic, sir. But look, tell the truth—as a bookman—do you actually like biography?”
“It’s like anything else, a lot of it’s slipshod and crummy. I don’t like the Mommie Dearest crap. But I guess I believe there’s a need for biographies of people like the Graysons, done by a writer who’s a real writer, if you know what I mean. No offense to you— what you do is indispensable, but…”
“But I’m not a writer and Trish is. You won’t get any argument from me on that point. The woman is just a sorceress when it comes to words. There’s a seductive quality to her writing that hooks you by the neck and just drags you through it. Just wait till you get started reading her book—you won’t be able to leave it alone. You’ll wake up in the night thinking about Darryl and Richard Grayson, their times and the lives they led. Trish is just brilliant when it comes to conveying emotions with images and words. She could’ve been a great fiction writer, done the world a favor and left the Graysons alone.”