Authors’ Rep #Mystery

Posted: May 15, 2020/Under: Uncategorized/By: Christine Young

Authors’ Rep: The world’s most popular horror writer thinks his agent BUYS manuscripts from other authors, to be published in his name. In truth, his sleaze of an agent has these would-be authors killed.

Authors’ Rep: Mystery

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BLURB: Authors’ Rep

The story of Authors’ Repis that the world’s most successful horror writer (who is possessed of two attributes: boyish good looks and lovable charm, making him a P.R. delight; and an I.Q. that any self-respecting snail could top) believes that his literary agent secures “his” novels for him by buying quality manuscripts from their authors, which are then published under his name. In fact, the agent’s reader, a Princeton-educated MFA, is also a professional killer, who, upon finding a worthy novel in the slush pile, is dispatched to kill the author, thus leaving the property free and clear. Our main protagonist, a bored and unhappy writer for a two-bit NY-based soap opera, gets his novel to the agent, who thinks it’s the best thing he has ever read. However, our Princeton grad murders not the author, but two other people: this leaves our agent with the dilemma of two “authors” of one great book.

EXCERPT: Authors’ Rep

Check looked in the mirror, turning his head this way and that, examining his beard with hubris. Only eight weeks, and it was full and neat, not at all shaggy or patchy. Maybe one percent gray, it lent him more dignity than his forty-two years of age may have otherwise entitled him. He took the little bathroom scissor and snippedoff an arrogant little hair right on the jaw line.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM came a gentle tapping at the bathroom door. “Come on, goddammit Gerry, you’re either shaving that monstrosity or giving birth in there.”

“Giving birth,” he yelled at the mirror.

“Well, get your ass out here, I told them to be here at eight and it’s five after already. I need you. Now.”

Gerry sighed and looked himself in the eye. “They all want you, big guy,” he murmured to his reflection. “It’s a curse.”

“Now,Gerald,” he heard.

“Coming, mother,” he responded in his best young Richard Crenna imitation, which wasn’t very good. He gave his reflection a double thumbs-up and double-clicked his tongue. “Go get ‘em, tiger,” he said, and exited the bathroom.

~ * ~

Gloria was pacing the living room, moving pillows a sixteenth of an inch, pushing ice cubes from one end of the punchbowl to the other, all but using a carpenter’s level to make sure the Wheat Thins were lined up in perfect order next to the cups of clam and avocado dip. She regretted not having asked their part-time housekeeper to work tonight. Of course, that would have cost extra money.

Ms. Endgame was wearing a very loose blouse with big puffy sleeves and hostess pants, each leg of which could have housed the population of a small orphanage.

~ * ~

Gerry walked into the room, clad in his neatest jeans and his favorite black denim shirt with the pseudo-cowboy piping across the chest. His belly stretched the shirt out over his belt only a little.

“Is thatwhat you’re wearing?” he was confronted.

He looked down at himself. “No. You’re hallucinating. I’m not wearing anything. You just can’t believe the size of my gesundheit, so your mind invented clothing on me. What the hell…?”

“Shut up, they’ll be here any minute,” Gloria turned away from him, bending down to straighten out a strand of carpet that was not perfectly perpendicular to the floor.

“It’s not a them, it’s just…” he was interrupted by a BING BONG followed immediately by Edgar’s “Get the door, Gerry, get the door. Feed the bird, Gerry, feed the bird.”

“Get the door,” Gloria yelled as she ran from the front of the house toward the kitchen.

“W-why don’t…you’re standing…” Gerry sputtered from just inside the living room.

“Because I have to make an entrance, you asshole,” his loving spouse shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared from sight.

Shaking his head, and reflecting that if he’d had a nickel for every time, she’d made him shake his head…he opened the front door. Oliver Rank was there, standing slightly behind a very attractive woman about his own age.

“Oliver, Patricia, come on in,” Gerry invited, stepping back to let his guests enter.

He and Patricia exchanged quick pecks, while he and Oliver managed the tricky feat of moving a wine bottle from Oliver’s hands into Gerry’s while still managing a perfunctory shake. A billowing vision of fluttering fabric burst into the room as Gloria floated in from the kitchen.

“Pat, Ollie,” she gushed. Taking one hand from each in one of hers, managed a quick kiss on each of two cheeks.

“Gloria, you look scrumptious,” Pat Rank said, running her eyes up and down Gloria’s outfit. “I haven’t seen you since the Emmy show. Have you lost weight?”

“Nah,” Gloria’s husband offered. “She’s just wearing an outfit four sizes too big.”

Oliver turned away because he didn’t want to be seen laughing.

Gloria gave Gerry an erection-motivating smile and said, “Why don’t you stick that wine bottle up your ass and then swallow a corkscrew and open it?”

Patricia Rank wasn’t sure, but changed her mind when she saw her husband with his forehead against the wall, shaking. “Oh, okay.” She nodded. “It’s gonna be one of thosenights, huh?”

“It’s our fault, Pattycakes,” Gerry said with a sad frown. “We never should’a married actors. They’re all freaking insane. Writers should only marry writers.”

“I’m not a writer, Gerry,” Pat corrected him. “I own an antique shop.”

“Oh, I’m not hinting that I wanted to marry you. God, no.”

Pat Rank looked at her husband, tears of laughter running down his face, and at Gerry, looking all innocent and Lou Costello. “Gloria’s right,” she finally said. “Stick that fucking wine bottle up your ass.”

The four of them burst into peals of hearty laughter.

Still laughing, Gloria put her hands on Oliver and Pat’s backs and gently ushered them toward the couch.

“It’s polite to open your guests’ wine first,” Gerry said, still standing near the front door. “I don’t want to embarrass you, Ollie, in case it’s rented and you have to have it back by midnight.”

“No, no, I bought it just for you, Gerry, it’s a special blend,” Oliver said in his best stentorian stage-voice. “The skull and crossbones is just the logo, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Gerry gave him a nod of acknowledgement, an ‘E’ for effort, and walked over to the bar where he proceeded to struggle with a corkscrew. Gloria had, in the meanwhile, sat down in one of the chairs opposite the Ranks and started a conversation.

BING BONG.

“Redrum. Gerry, get the door.”

“Door, Gerry,” Gloria called to him, not moving a muscle.

Gerry pointed at his crotch. “Schmeckle, Gloria.” He pointed upwards. “Ceiling, Gloria.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re trying too hard, Gerald.”

“Well at least somethingabout him is hard,” Oliver offered.

His wife slapped him on the back of the hand. “You’re off-duty, John Wilkes Booth,” she hissed at him.

“Okay, I’ll behave,” he whispered to her.

“You too, Gerald,” Gloria called to him as he crossed the room. “This is a social gathering, not an America’s Got Talentaudition.”

“Thank God it’s not,” he muttered, intending her to hear.

He opened the door to reveal Lucena Philidor, wearing a peasant blouse and elephant bells that had probably been all the rage on Carnaby Street in Soho in 1968.

“Lucia di Lammermoor,” Gerry announced, throwing his hands up. “Wilkommen aus mein haus, as they say in England.”

“No, we won, so we don’t have to say it like that.” She handed him a paper bag that felt like it contained some kind of plastic container. “Here, here’s some Eton Mess. It’s a traditional British dessert. I had to search all over bloody Manhattan ‘til I found a place that made it.”

“I appreciate your efforts,” Gerry bowed to her. He pretended to stare over her shoulder. “I thought we told you to bring a date, or at least a paid escort.”

“Been in the country ten bloody weeks, haven’t even had time to establish a relationship with the guy at the corner newsstand, much less a boy-toy,” she said, as she shoved him aside and stepped into the room. The other three waved at her. “Who’s a girl got to sleep with to get a gin and tonic around here?” she announced.

“Me,” cried Gloria.

Lucy pretended to look her up and down with a sneer, then ran her eyes up and down Gerry. “Bloody hell, I’ve done worse.” She went over to the couch, where she plopped herself down next to Pat Rank. “Lucena Philidor,” she said, extending her hand.

“Ohhh,” Pat said, taking it. “So, you’re the living, breathing reincarnation of the hell-spawned offspring of Hitler and Genghis Khan.”

Oliver jumped to his feet. “Need a little help in the kitchen, there, Gerr ol’ boy?” he asked.

“Siddown, Ollie. You married it. You pay the price for it.”

Everyone got a good-sized chuckle as Oliver sat down. “While you’re getting Lucy her drink…:

“…and refrigerating the dessert…”

“Get me a Bloody Mary.”

“Redrum. Feed the bird, Gerry, did you feed the bird?”

With mutual cries of “Oooh,” Pat and Lucy got up and hurried over to the macaw.

Since he knew this meant hand-fed almonds and sunflower seeds, he puffed upon his chest and flapped his colorful wings a few times. “Feed the bird,” he squawked. “Polly wants a cracker. Redrum. Your motherwants a cracker.”

Pat and Lucy turned away from the pretty bird for a second to give Gerry the look that women have been giving men since the Garden of Eden. He just shrugged and walked into the kitchen.

The two women ooh-ed and aah-ed over the bird while Gloria and Oliver exchanged a few inanities. Gerry had left the front door standing open after Lucy’s triumphal entrance, and just as he came back out of the kitchen, DaMarcus Grimshaw, hand-in-hand with a stunningly beautiful woman maybe three-quarters his height and ten skin shades darker than his own coffee-colored pigmentation, walked into the room.

Mark paused and put his head on a three hundred-sixty-swivel. Putting on an exaggerated ghetto-y accent, he said, “Lessee. Sho-front Long Island commoonity, five hunnerd thousand dolluh house, roomful of white peoples…yassuh, we’s sho’ nuff in de right place, Jemima.”

“Wassamatta, Mark, you never been to the suburbs before?” Gerry called to him from across the room.

“No,” Mark says, “I’se a city boy. From the get-toe.”

“Ah, bullshit,” the lovely woman at his side said, even the curse softened and made lovely by her delicate Jamaican accent. “He’s from Desert Hot Springs, California. His father’s an orthodontist and his mother’s a dermatologist.” She rubbed her fingers together indicating wealth.

“Well,” Oliver offered. “That explains your perfect smile and flawless skin.”

“It’s even better than that,” Mark said. “I was born Caucasian.”

“Too bad one of his parents wasn’t a proctologist,” Gerry offered. “Maybe he wouldn’t’a been such an asshole.”

That got him a good laugh, from Oliver, which of course Mark could not permit to go unchallenged. “Hey, Mait,” he addressed his wife. “Did he have that written on his cuff, or are there cue-cards pinned to the curtains?”

Mrs. Grimshaw smiled and said, “You give him too much credit, Marcus. You’re assuming he knows how to read.”

“Aha, diss,” cried Oliver. “And by an actress.”

Gerry had to grin. “Well, thanks for coming folks, now goodnight, and get your asses out of here.”

Website URL: elliottcapon.weebly.com

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LINKS

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087DV34LW

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/authors-rep-elliott-capon/1136898134?ean=2940162833604

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/authors-rep/id1509789698?mt=11&app=itunes