Peter Christian was the moderator of the panel, and I spotted him in the wings, stage left. Knowing Pete, he’d probably been up later than both Sardini and Charterman, but he looked less bleary-eyed than either. Pete always looked like he’d just crawled out from under a collapsed building, without seeming any the worse for wear. He smiled as I approached him.
“I’ve been looking forward to this panel,” he said, holding a hand out for me to shake, even though I’d seen him the day before. “I feel quite delighted to’ve been asked to moderate, since I’m not from Chicago. One of their own, by all rights, should do the honors.”
“They just know a class act when they see one,” I said, meaning it.
Pete laughed a little, as though my remark had been sarcastic. He said, “My only worry is Donaldson.”
“Oh?”
Pete ran a hand over his head; he always managed to look tired and alert at the same time, seem simultaneously harried and calm, laid-back and energetic.
He said, “I’m told the guy
thought
he’d have the panel to himself... a one-man show.”
“Well,” I said, shrugging, “he
is
the guest of honor, after all. He probably should’ve had it to himself.”
“No,” Pete said, shaking his head. “Too many writers here who deserve to be on panels. The fans like to see a lot of faces.”
“Even this face?”
“Sure, why not? I think you, Sardini and Donaldson make an interesting grouping.”
“I thought Bill Pronzini was going to be on our panel.”
“Didn’t you hear? That’s who you’re filling in for. Bill dislikes Donaldson’s work so much that when he heard the man was going to be guest of honor, he stayed home in San Francisco, by way of protest.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
Pretty soon Pete and Tom and I were sitting behind the table on the platform; the room was packed. Everybody at the Bouchercon was here—except the guest of honor.
After five minutes, the crowd getting restless and noisy, Pete began: “I guess we’ll have to go ahead and get started. G. Roger Donaldson is supposed to be with us, as you all know, but—”
Then down the center aisle Donaldson rolled, like a little Patton. He nodded smilingly at either side of him as he moved along, acknowledging his troops.
He joined us at the table.
“Well”—Pete smiled—“speak of the devil....”
The crowd laughed, and Donaldson stood, and nodded at the crowd, who began to applaud him. Sardini and I exchanged looks; now we knew what it was like to be Moe and Larry—Donaldson was clearly the most popular stooge present.
Pete asked various questions, which each of us got to answer, all on the basic subject “Whither the Private Eye,” which was to say, what was the current state, and probably future, of the modern private eye novel.
Sardini talked about being a fan of private eye fiction, and dreaming of being a published writer of private eye fiction himself one day, and working hard at, and finally achieving, that goal.
I talked about having been an aspiring mystery writer who became involved in several real-life crimes, and how my method
in my first two books had been to bring some of the techniques of the private eye/mystery novel to a fact-based work.
Donaldson talked about using the private eye novel as a vehicle for his art (“If I may be so bold as to exalt my work as such”) so that he might explore love relationships, male bonding, ethical and moral issues, etc.
It went on like that: Tom and I would talk about plot, Donaldson would talk about epiphany; Tom and I would talk about character, Donaldson would talk about objective correlatives. Did I mention Donaldson teaches literature? At Berkeley?
Finally it was opened up to the audience.
“Mr. Donaldson,” an earnest young woman in a deerstalker cap said, “what is your opinion of Hammett and Chandler?”
A hush fell across the room; the great was about to pronounce judgment on the great.
Donaldson leaned forward; pursing his lips, he gave his measured assessment as follows: “Hammett wrote one very good book, one competent book, and three very bad books. Oh, and I happen to have had an advance look at the newly discovered novel, and it’s one of his better works. Of course, Chandler was by far the superior author, although a limited one. He wrote the same book seven times, after all. I think the modern artist using the private eye story as a vehicle for his art has to thank both these men—but must attempt to go far beyond them.”
Some of the faces out there wore looks of annoyance, a few people seemed amused, but most heads were nodding.
I spoke up. I wasn’t asked, but when did that ever stop me?
I said, “It’s magnanimous of G. Roger, here, to thank Hammett and Chandler. It’s quite a startling declaration. If Hammett and Chandler were here today, they might say, ‘Gee, Roger—you’re welcome.’ ”
Donaldson turned and looked at me, past an amused-but-trying-to-hide-it Pete Christian; it was the first time Donaldson had looked my way, and the first time he’d recognized that I was his enemy. He had money-green eyes that were on me like death rays.
He said, coldly, “I meant no disrespect to Hammett and Chandler... only that in the literary overview, their work needs to be placed in perspective.”
I said, coolly, “Where, in the literary overview, would you place yourself?”
With a one-sided smile and a wag of his round head, he feigned self-deprecation. “That’s not for me to say. I would hope posterity would notice me—but I’m not counting on it.”
Tom said, “Posterity pays lousy royalties.”
That got a laugh from the crowd, and Donaldson pretended to be amused, too.
Another question from the crowd, this from Brett Murtz: “What is your opinion of Roscoe Kane’s Gat Garson stories?”
Another hush fell over the room.
Donaldson smiled that meaningless smile again and shook his round head. “It is perhaps in bad taste for me to respond. But... the Gat Garson books are beneath contempt, really. Badly done—the main character, cardboard; not rounded. Nobody cares about Gat Garson. I rank Kane just above Spillane—which is faint praise indeed.”
Murtz, still standing, said, “Well, how would you characterize your own character, Keats, then?”
Donaldson smiled broadly and with no self-deprecation at all said, “Rounded, fully dimensional, caring, committed, beguiling—and good-looking.”
Most everyone out there was smiling at this horse-flop.
Donaldson went on: “The private eye story, remember, is useful to me only as a way to explore certain aspects of human life. I am attempting in my work to go where no private eye writer has gone before....”
“You do realize you’re quoting
Star Trek
,” I said, interrupting, “don’t you?”
A hush
really
fell over the room, though there were some smiles and stifled laughter.
Donaldson wasn’t smiling, however, or laughing. Just staring—unlike his fictional private eye, he did not have a fast comeback for me. So I said my piece.
“Mr. Donaldson,” I said, “I sat by and listened to you dismiss three of Dashiell Hammett’s books as ‘very bad.’ I listened as you tossed off Chandler as somebody who wrote the same book seven times. And I sat quietly as you verbally looked down your literary nose at Mickey Spillane, at the same time having the indecency to condemn Roscoe Kane before his body’s had a chance to cool. But I don’t care to listen to G. Roger Donaldson on the subject of G. Roger Donaldson, thank you.”
Donaldson, his face white where it wasn’t bearded, looked at me with those green death-ray eyes full of contempt.
“Excuse me,” I said to the crowd.
And I walked off the stage.
Kathy, running, caught up with me at the mouth of the down escalator.
“You were right about that jerk,” she said.
“I’ve sure been keeping my cool at this ’con,” I said, feeling ashamed and silly. I got on the escalator. She got on behind me.
“Tom Sardini’s right,” she admitted, putting her head on my shoulder, talking into my ear. “You
are
the talk of the convention.”
“As in, ‘What an embarrassing ass that guy Mallory is’?”
She shrugged. “Some of it runs like that.”
“Well, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Wait till this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “When I publicly announce Roscoe Kane ghosted the Hammett book.”
I knocked on Mae Kane’s door. Kathy was with me, feeling a little awkward, she said, about meeting Roscoe Kane’s recent widow. We were about to go out for some lunch, but I dragged her along with me to room 714, first. I needed to check in with Mae, as I’d promised Tom Sardini I would; had to make sure she’d be at the PWA awards ceremony at two o’clock.
Of course she didn’t answer right away; the do-not-disturb sign still hung on the knob, and she’d told me herself she’d gotten gun-shy from media people and well-meaning fans bugging her—and Tom had said she wasn’t answering her phone for anybody.
But I knew she was in there, so I kept at it.
“Mae, it’s Mal,” I said as I knocked.
And finally she cracked the door open; the Joan Crawford eyes were perfectly mascaraed and the red filigree largely gone. She smiled at me over the nightlatch chain, and she said, huskily, “Mal... I’d hoped you’d come by. But it’s a bad time....”
Then she noticed Kathy and her expression turned cool. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. To neither one of us in particular; just to the air.
“This is Kathy Wickman,” I said. “A good friend of mine. Kathy, this is Mae Kane.”
Kathy stepped forward and held out her hand, but with the door still only cracked open, nightlatch chain still in place, the well-intentioned gesture fell flat.
Kathy withdrew the hand, smiled sympathetically and said, “I’m very sorry about your husband. He’ll be missed.”
“Well, I’ll miss him,” Mae said, defensively, as if Kathy had implied she wouldn’t.
“Mae,” I said, wondering if she’d been hitting the gin, “are you all right?”
She found a warm smile for me. “Fine. Just kind of... tied up. Can you stop by later?” Kathy was obviously excluded from the latter invitation.
“Sure,” I said, and then Mae looked startled, and suddenly her face disappeared from the cracked door, which closed, abruptly, and the sound of the nightlatch being unchained hastily was followed by the door opening wide.
And Gregg Gorman was standing there.
Wearing, ironically enough, a black
Noir
T-shirt.
He pointed a finger at Kathy, thrust a finger at Kathy.
“What are you doing with
him?
” he demanded.
He meant me, of course; he sounded like a Ku Klux Klan kleagle who found his daughter Ellie Lou listening to Johnny Mathis records.
Kathy raised her eyebrows in that equivalent of a shrug and said, “Just along for the ride. We were on our way to lunch.”
“Care to join us, Gregg?” I asked. “We’ll find a place with a trough.”
Some ’con attendees (badges pinned to chests) came wandering down the hall, talking about how terrific G. Roger Donaldson was. Mindful of a scene, Gorman made a hurried
gesture toward Mae’s room. Mae was in there somewhere, presumably; she had disappeared from view.
We didn’t heed his gesture.
He tried again. “Step in,” he said. Forcing a civil tone into his thin, unpleasant voice. “I want to talk to you two.”
I looked at Kathy and she made a shrugging face at me again and I made one back, and we walked into Mae’s room.
Mae was standing in the bathroom, her face ashen; standing next to the tub where Roscoe drowned.
“Well, Gorman,” I said, “visiting the scene of the crime, I see. Morbid curiosity, or a return trip?”
He held two vaguely dirty palms up, like a referee. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear.”
“What are you doing here, Gorman? What’s he
doing
here, Mae?”
She stepped out of the bathroom; the arcs of silver hair swung with the rhythm of her body. Her supple body, as Gat Garson would say. Which today was sheathed in black, a clingy, attractive black; widow’s weeds weren’t what they used to be.
“Mal,” she said. “I know how you feel about Gregg. I wanted to avoid a confrontation...”
“What’s he doing here, Mae? What are you doing here, Gorman?”
Gorman shrugged; he was like a kid caught cheating on a test in school. “Business.”
Mae chimed in brightly. “It’s about Roscoe’s books. He wants to do a boxed set of Roscoe’s first six Gat Garsons. I suggested you for the introductions—”
“But,” Gorman said, picking up the ball, “I told her you’d probably turn me down. ’Cause you hate my guts.”
“I don’t hate your guts. I’m not that selective.”
Gorman’s face turned beet red, everywhere that wasn’t covered by his unsanitary goatee; oddly, his drinker’s nose seemed a lighter shade of red than the rest of his face.
But the anger I’d generated—or thought I’d generated—didn’t get vented on me.
Instead, he whirled toward Kathy and pointed a finger gunlike at her and said, “You little bitch, what’s the idea of—”
I took him by the small of the arm and walked him a couple of steps like a friend I was counseling; he looked at me with big eyes and open mouth, wondering what the hell.
“I’m having a bad weekend, Gregg,” I said, calmly. “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown or something. I’m punching people in the stomach, hitting people with garbage can lids, walking off panels in a huff—in a minute and a huff, as Groucho would say. I’m feeling so out-of-sorts, I’m liable to start breaking you up into kindling if you continue going ’round calling people ‘bitch’ and ‘asshole’ and the like.”
And I smiled and let him go, and he pulled away from me, gave me an indignant look. “You
are
cracking up. Do you know who you’re fooling with? Do you know?”
“I know,” I said. “I was in the alley last night, with your angels who deal in dirty pictures. They’re mob-dirty, too, but I don’t think anybody’s going to kill me just because I’m not nice to you, Gregg.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “Don’t be too sure.”
Mae’s Joan Crawford eyes went ultra-wide. “Gregg! What are you
saying
! I won’t have you talking to Mal that way—he’s my friend, and he was my husband’s protégé, and—”