“This industry can drive a person to kill,” he nods.

  “The more I learned, the closer I got to my breakthrough.”

  “Jerry,” he says.

  “You could say that.” I notice someone eavesdropping, a look of concern on his face. I turn and say, “I’m an author.” It’s enough to make him lose interest, believing all that’s being said is the mere process of getting the words on the page.

  “Anyway, I saw it all unfold, my body of work already plotted out, one scene after the other, and it was there, just waiting for me to follow through. You set them all up, and I ensured that they would become a name. When I’m done, everyone, especially those in the industry, will never forget any of their names.” I flash him a grin, “Especially you. You’re going to be remembered.”

  He looks out the window, “I would have liked to be known for being a great agent.”

  “The thing about that is…”

  Pendel brushes it off, “I know. I didn’t exactly help myself with my behavior. When you’re at the top, it’s easy to forget that the fall is twice as deadly.” He asks me another question, “Didn’t you ever, I don’t know, hesitate?”

  Again, the answer can only be no. “I didn’t, no. Hearing them beg, it’s infectious. It’s such a rush. Besides, I’m the one there to make the save. I’m saving them. Every single workshop, I make it clear where they are as an author, critiquing their craft, helping them meet their true potential.”

  “True potential,” he says, like an echo.

  “You were a special guest. You saw how I work.”

  “I certainly did,” he sighs.

  “Cheer up,” I say, giving him a nudge. “Not all is lost. In fact, you got your biggest find right here.” I give him a wink. “Right?”

  It sinks in, what I’m implying. Understanding that he’s got no choice at all, he holds onto the fear, the sheer trepidation, and plays along. “Yes. You’ll be bigger than Jerry.”

  “Don’t compare your authors,” I say, scolding him. “One of the many reasons things aren’t blowing over for you.”

  “You’re right,” he says.

  The train comes to a stop. We’re almost there.

  “You tell Marina yet?”

  “No, not yet,” he says.

  “That’s okay. I already did.”

  “What?”

  Oh, come on. He’s got to stop pretending. Let go and accept.

  “This is what I do, Pendel. You need to accept reality. You need to accept that I am in control of everything. She knows you’ve signed a new author, just like she knows that you’ve lost a few. Marina’s in the know. She probably has a better sense of the industry than you do.”

  Letting out a sigh, he seems to agree, “Then you’ve already signed the paperwork?”

  “Where do you think we’re going right now?” I lean back in my seat, “There’s still more to the day. By this time tomorrow, you’ll be an entirely different person.”

  He isn’t listening, instead he asks me again, “But how can you… kill a person?”

  “Hey, keep up with me,” I say, slapping him across the face. The sound turns some heads, makes Pendel feel like even less. I lean in and whisper, “It’s about sacrifice. You have to make sacrifices if you want to be the best at your craft. The way this story goes, I need more than a few sacrificial characters. Authors make it easy; they want so much validation that they’ll often take part in their own destruction.” I watch a couple arguing on the train platform. “And to answer your question, I think of how miserable they already are. It makes the kill easier. You’re saving them from themselves.”

  The train starts moving, next stop, Penn Station.

  I clap my hands together and shout, “Let’s make it official!”

  Chapter 14

  Marina is surprised to see him. Most of the other employees have already left the office, leaving Pendel and Moyer to use the bigger conference room, all in private. Marina keeps the information to herself, but it’s looking like Pendel’s time at the agency will soon come to an end. To sign a new author right now isn’t a good look, and more so a poor business decision. Yet that’s the thing about Pendel: He does what he wants.

  Pendel is putting on an act. He never acts this happy to see her, or anyone for that matter. He masks everything in a false sense of amiability, “Marina, meet Alex. Alex, meet Marina. This is the new author I’m signing. He’s going to be huge!” Another slip-up, measuring his authors with a constant ruler of judgment. “She’s my assistant. What would I do without her?”

  Moyer is led into Pendel’s office, where the agency contract is already on his desk, waiting for their signatures.

  Marina stands at the doorway, refusing to take part in the meeting.

  Pendel insists, “Sit down. You’ll want to get to know Alex.”

  Pendel sits behind his desk, grabs a pen, and signs the contract. “Your turn.”

  Moyer uses the same pen, signing on the line with a laugh. “I used to dream of this moment. It felt different in my imagination, more monumental.”

  “Yeah well, it’s just business,” Marina chimes in, gathering the documents.

  “I said you’re staying,” says Pendel, eying her attempt to flee the scene. To Moyer, he says, “Well then, welcome to the team.”

  “Thanks,” says Moyer. “It’s great to know that I’ve found my champion.”

  “Hey Marina, this guy writes some of the best murders in the entire business. The way he just goes for it, full detail, sparing the reader no relief, it’s impressive.”

  “Thanks,” Moyer grins. This is the point of the meeting: Give the author complete and unadulterated validation. Upon signing, the new author must feel like they are on top of the world. Anything they want, the sky’s the limit. “It took me so many years, honing my craft. You know the drill. I sucked for a long time until I had my big breakthrough. Suddenly I knew what kind of story I wanted to tell. The rest just fell into place.”

  “Uh huh,” Pendel, all fake grins and nods. “Tell her about your work.”

  Moyer looks over his shoulder, “Really…?”

  “Yeah, go right ahead. Tease her with a story. She’ll love it.”

  Moyer begins by explaining what sounds like a book, a thriller. Marina listens, expecting it to be the manuscript she read but Pendel rejected, Friends Selling Friends, yet the details sound completely different.

  “The first person to perish, he’s flying into the city, you know, because he’s a big deal, has a lot of fans, and is there to do some events. The killer waits for him at the terminal and then follows him to the hotel. At the hotel, he pays extra to get the room right next to the guy. They have this little back and forth in the hallway, just the cute and adorable stuff you’d expect when the ‘biggest fan’ meets their hero.”

  He describes a murder spree in a city, yet all the details are missing, save for the graphic detail of each kill. Marina has trouble making sense of it.

  “It’s later that there’s a knock on the door. Little mistakes,” Moyer snaps his finger. “It’s always the little mistakes that become life-threatening. The guy ends up in the hotel room, able to completely carve up the body.”

  Pendel is all smiles, nodding like he approves, stopping Moyer only to ask for even more detail. “Wait, talk about how it smells, the insides of a human stomach.”

  Moyer chuckles, “If you think vomit smells bad, just wait until you smell the stomach acids and partially digested food.”

  More laughter. Moyer starts talking about a night in the park, another victim meeting their demise. “Blood doesn’t stay warm for very long,” he explains. “And don’t get me started on the texture of blood when it starts to dry.”

  “Tell us about that one scene,” Pendel says, searching for specifics. “What was it, the one at the kitchen table.”

  “Oh right,” Moyer says. “The one where the victim wants to die and tells the killer how to cut herself up.”

  “Yeah!”

  Moyer turns to Marina and grins, “I had to do some research for that one. So much can be found on the internet, but some details you just have to see to believe.”

  Marina begins to feel queasy.

  “Stop,” she says, eventually. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Pendel and Moyer both laugh.

  “See? So evocative,” Pendel says.

  “Thank you,” Moyer says, enjoying yet another compliment.

  “You’re going to mess with people’s minds,” Pendel says.

  “I’m going to make them second guess the system.”

  “Yes! You’re going to make them think twice about tradition and trade. You’re going to have them thinking about those scenes, the entire story, for months to come,” Pendel says.

  “And isn’t that what it’s all about? Leaving a mark. Making people wake up and take notice? There’s a fatal flaw to every single business, everything on this earth. I think what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, is to make people wake up and think. I want them to second guess what seems so ironclad. I want them to see that if there’s any hierarchy, it can’t be good. It’s probably a house of cards waiting to fall over.”

  It’s a showing, two actors doing their best. This is all part of the story, and this scene’s important. It’s the moment when both villain and victim choose oblivion.

  Pendel with yet another compliment, “You’re going to have a long, acclaimed, bestselling career. I suspect we’re going to be working together for a long time.”

  “I’m just happy to be here,” he says.

  “Marina, ask him a question,” says Pendel. “I bet you have plenty.”

  “Umm,” she clears her throat. “Well…”

  “Don’t be shy,” Pendel says.

  “Yeah,” Moyer nods. “I’m an open book.”

  She defaults to a common question, one nearly every author is asked, particularly by those in the industry: “How did you endure so many years of rejection?”

  Moyer shrugs, “We all have a story to tell. Some are just willing to do anything to tell it.”

  Part Four DEAL OF THE DAY

  Chapter 1

  It feels good, having representation. My agent. I finally have the capability to possess and be possessed. My agent, my author: We’re both going to be remembered for this.

  Shortly after one author drops Pendel, there are more. The current count is something like 12. I ask him how many clients he has but he won’t answer. Really, he isn’t the right person to turn to in times of need. That’s why I’ve got Marina, who sends me the agent directory, a list totaling over 200 names. I’m not quite sure if the number should come as a surprise. How many clients must an agent have to survive?

  Anyway, Pendel is counting on me. I tell him to sleep this off. His apartment is so deafeningly quiet in the early morning hours, aided by it facing a courtyard rather than the busy avenue. He’s cocooned in blankets, snoring loudly; the guy hasn’t left his office since Jerry bled out. He’s going to need some energy for what’s about to happen.

  To help him out, I field all correspondence.

  This is all to be expected. Pendel in the spotlight for the wrong reasons has many of his clients worried. About an hour ago, the New York Post published an article detailing what they call “a mass exodus” of clientele from the “formerly leading agent.” A bit premature, but this is what I expected. I couldn’t have fully predicted the rollout, but it was evident that he’d lose clients. Authors are the skittish type, too afraid of how they’ll be viewed by the public to stand by their agent.

  The article is substantial. There are four authors named, each getting their own Google search. I should know their names; they may end up part of the story. I really should have worked on getting another byline. In honor of Mal, I decided against it. Her work will find its way, just as I will find out who poached these authors, and what they’ve sold.

  The name Violet Blue sounds familiar. A quick search yields a bunch of porn sites. Right, the porn star. She’s known for her girl-girl bondage flicks, and according to a fan site dedicated to collecting every photo and video, she has since become a top 10 porn star on OnlyFans.

  In the article, she is quoted as saying, “Pendel was always responsive and kind enough, to me at least, until he got what he wanted.” Once again, his pattern of behavior is made apparent: favoritism and grooming, manipulation of minds, and a predilection for pitting his authors against each other. “He sold a book and then I never heard back from him,” she says. “Well, he’d only ever email me about foreign rights or something like that.”

  To the credit of the journalist, they did a decent job vetting the claims. They wrote this article with a sense of objectivity that is frankly uncommon for a site like the New York Post.

  Her official website is all pornography, so I tweak my search terms so that I get more information about the book Pendel sold. It’s a collection of short stories titled Shades of Blue, published last year by FSG. Looking at the Goodreads page, and then Amazon, the book seems to have done well enough. 3.9 rating average across 8k reviews. BookScan numbers show that it sold just under 19k. That’s good, I believe, though what is considered “good sales” is determined on a book-by-book basis, often compared to the P&L document… that is if anybody actually ever goes back to that thing once a book is bought.

  I don’t have to look very hard to find out who signed her, clearly tagged in her byline on Instagram. It looks like her new agent already sold a book, this time a memoir.

  Adult film star Natasha “Violet Blue” McNamara’s ALL THEY SEE IS BLUE, an autobiographical novel about her experiences in the adult film industry, written in the form of her brand, depicting each scene and kink through the industry’s portrayal of the female body, to Hendrix de Leon at Alfred A. Wolf, in a preempt, by Jenny Jacobs at Writer’s House (NA).

  There’s the name I’m looking for.

  Hendrix. Seems he is undeterred by the events surrounding his most prized and closest agent. Searching Publishers Marketplace, the number is right there: Pendel’s sold 37 books to Hendrix. 37. That’s an important number for this story. Pendel would have done the same for Emily Mills, the same for any editor who stroked his ego and gave him everything he wanted.

  Author Tad Davidson is quoted in the article too. Pretty cool. I had no idea that Pendel represented the author. He has written some good crime fiction. Davidson only has the one quote, “I was always suspicious of how Pendel could turn things around in mere minutes, like he held all the strings and knew which ones to pull.”

  Not so much a damning statement as it is yet another hint at Pendel’s stranglehold over the publishing industry. Searching his name, I see that he’s also sold something:

  Victor award-winning author Tad Davidson’s KISS AND TELL, is about an alcoholic detective facing possible murder charges called upon by his former friend and hot-shot DEA enforcer to come out of his hermetic bubble for one last case, involving a deadly organized crime syndicate that deals in sex trafficking and drugs, to Greg Doas at Kessinger, in a major deal, by Michael Oliver at Vermillion and Co. (NA).

  The other two authors named both say the same thing: Pendel made them feel small. It’s the anonymous authors who implicate Pendel for illicit and borderline illegal business dealings.

  Emerging arts fellow and star of the critically acclaimed documentary on homelessness A Hard Place, Kyle Rubin’s PARENTHESIS, a debut novel about the area of space between statements, featuring twin protagonists on opposite ends of the justice system, one an attorney and another a lobbyist, both seeking the truth from a country dealing exclusively in lies, to Karl Smith at HRH, in a preempt, by William Carth at The Anderson Agency (NA).

  All these authors call harm and foul, yet by the looks of it, they’re all doing more than fine.

  Debut novelist Hayden Feehan’s OLIVE BRANCH, a multi-generational family saga set around managing a failing vineyard, and COLOR SWATCH, a short story collection of culinary and linguistics in equal measure, to Forsythe Monahan at Chronicle Books, in a preempt, by Heather Ann Augusto at Inkling (World).

  One agent’s demise is another agent’s hot hand. For everyone that leaves Pendel, it appears they are given a clean slate; best of all, all this publicity yields attention to all manuscripts out on submission.

  This is reputation death.

  By the time he’s speaking to hopeful authors at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, there will be a drastic shift in his public persona. In the audience, his demons will sit in wait, dormant until he speaks up and is put under the spotlight.

  To get there, we’re going to need to make a dire statement.

  Thankfully I have both office and cell numbers. I also have his home address. Lives in Sunset Park in a nice part of the neighborhood. Hendrix de Leon, we’re going to work through this. By the time we’re done, he’ll become a pivotal part of the story.

  Don’t you worry, Henry. You’re in good hands.

  Chapter 2

  He wakes up to the detective’s call. Pendel was so exhausted, he fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep. Barely able to shake free the clouds of slumber, he reaches for the phone and answers, “Hello?” Wasting no time, Detective Monroe’s tone has drastically changed. Where he had once been competitive yet overall courteous, it has all been tossed aside. In its place, he has no reason not to treat Pendel like the monster he believes him to be.

  “Check social media,” the detective says.

  “Excuse…”

  “Shut up. Check social media.”

  Pendel rubs his eyes, lowering the phone receiver only to realize the call was made to his landline, not his cell phone. A moment’s hesitation, he blinks and slowly comes to the reality of what’s happened during his brief slumber.

  He finds his cell phone on the bedside table, plugged in and charging. Countless notifications keep the phone scalding hot, the screen ever glowing. He ignores the texts, the calls, though one pokes through, a familiar industry publication, The Bookseller, likely calling for a quote, yet another article about Pendel in the works. He goes to social media, notices that his notifications have maxed out, the sheer vitriol being thrust his way. Pendel looks and sees that his name is trending. Clicking PENDEL leads to a viral post by the New York Post. Its contents surmise the end of Pendel’s career, calling it a “mass exodus” of clients choosing to leave Pendel and Cooper Willis Endeavor.