We had been moving — Pete’s a restless type, and when you talk to him he paces, chain-smoking — and were now at the mouth of the Parlor, the massive capital P parlor, which was really a lecture hall and would double as the screening room. Both the dining hall and the Parlor were on the so-called first floor (the real first floor being designated as the ground floor, in the European manner).
“Are you going to be a suspect or a player?” Peter asked Jill.
“Neither,” she said.
“I hope you’re not here for a rest,” he told her, wagging a finger. “This place will be a virtual madhouse for the next forty-eight hours. The Mohonk Mystery Weekenders take their mystery very seriously.”
“I thought they were here for fun,” she said.
“You’ll find all sorts of brilliant professional people here,” Pete said. “Intensely competitive types in their work — and in their play. They’re out for blood, my dear.”
“I hope it doesn’t get unpleasant.”
“If you’re a student of human nature, you’ll have a fine time. Anyway, I don’t take this as seriously as some do, yet I’ve guessed the murderer seven out of nine times.”
“How many of these have you attended?”
“All but one. This is my first time as a suspect.”
“I’m impressed,” she said.
“Mal,” Pete said, “sometime this weekend, we must get together. There’s something we need to work on.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been lobbying to get a Grand Master’s Award for Mickey Spillane.”
“From the Mystery Writers of America? Is there any hope of that happening?”
Pete shrugged elaborately, did a little take, put out a cigarette, found another, and got it going. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Spillane’s never joined the MWA, and some of the members feel he’s snubbed them.”
“Well, a lot of them have snubbed him. You can’t deny his influence on the genre, even if you don’t like his work. He deserves that recognition.”
“I agree, most heartily. I just wondered if you’d help me draft a letter on the subject to the proper committee chairman.”
“I’d love to.”
“There is a problem with that,” a voice said. Not my voice. Not Pete’s.
We turned to look at the source of the voice, which was across from us on a bench. A small, thin man in his late twenties in a gray three-piece suit with a dark blue tie snugged tight in the collar of a light blue button-down shirt sat with his legs crossed, ankle on knee, arms crossed, smirking. Handsome in an angular way, he was blue-eyed, pale as milk, with carefully coiffed longish blond hair. He had paid more for that haircut than I had for my last three.
“And what problem is that?” I asked.
“Mickey Spillane is a cretin,” Kirk S. Rath said. “He is — if you’ll pardon my crudity — a shitty writer.”
Jill swallowed and looked at me, knowing I wouldn’t take that well.
“If you’ll pardon my crudity,” I said, “you’re full of shit.”
And I turned back to Pete, who was, after all, the person I’d been having my private conversation with, and said, “When do you want to draft that letter? Let’s not make it tonight. I’m pretty wasted from two days in NYC, and that bus trip...”
Rath was standing next to me now; I hadn’t seen him come over. It was like a jump cut in a film.
“I don’t see any reason to get personal, Mallory,” Rath said.
I sighed. “You referred to a writer I respect — a man I’ve met and like — as a cretin. That strikes me as personal. Sort of like the personal conversation you inserted your opinion into.”
He smirked again. “Now I’m being accused of intellectual rape.”
“Hardly,” I said. “I don’t think you could get it up.”
The smirk dissolved into a sneer.
“You have a decided suicidal streak, don’t you, Mallory?”
“Why, because you’ll pan my next book? As opposed to those glowing things you’ve said about me in the past? Go to hell, Kirk.”
“You’re rude and you’re crude.”
“And I’m a hip-talkin’ dude. What do you know, Kirk? We’re rappin’! Now go away.”
Rath looked at Pete, sharply, and said, “I don’t like your choice of company, Christian.”
“I don’t like people who barge into private conversations,” Pete said, with some edge.
Jill glanced at me, and I glanced at her.
Rath pointed a finger at Pete like a manicured gun. “You’re vulnerable, too, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” Pete said. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to C.J. Beaufort.”
“What I did? Beaufort wrote very bad books, and killed himself. I had nothing to do with either.”
“You destroyed him in print!” Pete was shaking a fist. “It shattered him!”
Rath ignored Pete’s fist and laughed. “Writers are public figures; their work is submitted for public consumption. If they can’t take the heat, they should get the hell out of the literature.”
Pete was trembling; really worked up. “C.J. Beaufort was a kind, gentle man... and he was my friend!”
I stepped in between Pete and Rath. “I hate to break up this little family reunion, but we were all due downstairs about five minutes ago.”
Rath shook his head, said, “You people are pathetic,” and clomped down the nearby stairs.
“So that was Kirk S. Rath,” Jill said, shaken.
“Himself,” I said, feeling a little battered myself.
“I should have thrown him down the stairs,” Pete said as we started down them. He was huffing with anger.
“I shouldn’t have baited him,” I said, regretting having ignited the scene between them. “I was rude and crude.”
“Nonsense! We were talking and he butted in. That arrogant little bastard. You knocked him down a peg or two.”
“Yeah, right. That brings his ego almost down into the stratosphere.”
Jill said, “He’s amazing. Did you see his eyes?”
“What about them?” I asked.
“He’s certifiable,” she said. “He’s a sociopath.”
“He doesn’t feel a shred of remorse over Beaufort’s suicide,” Pete said, a little amazed.
“Kirk Rath isn’t a sociopath,” I said. “He’s just immature. He’s an arrested adolescent. Or is that an adolescent who should be arrested?”
“You’re too easy on him,” Pete said, shaking his head, lighting up another cigarette.
“I think he truly doesn’t understand why his criticism is taken so personally,” I said. “He’s a permanent grad student, dazzled by his own William F. Buckley vocabulary and arch prose style.”
“He knows about the power of the pen,” Pete said, nodding, “But he doesn’t understand the responsibility that goes with it.”
“Maybe that’s why everybody and his duck is suing him,” Jill offered.
“C.J. Beaufort can’t sue him,” Pete said.
And he walked on into the large downstairs parlor where the game players were assembling.
Jill looped her arm in mine. “What’s the story on this guy Beaufort?”
“I don’t know all the details,” I said. “Beaufort was a pulp writer, dating back to the Black Mask days. He was an alcoholic. He had some success in the forties, then faded, and wrote paperbacks under many names, for many years. He had some vocal fans, Pete among them, but mostly he was thought of as a solid pro, a journeyman, nothing special. Till Rath.”