Kill Your Darlings Read Free Page A

stubby pencil.”
    “Did I ever mention I hate New York?”
    “Frequently.”
    “Well, just for the record, I hate New York.”
    “You do manage to keep stumbling onto murders, in that little hayseed community of yours.”
    “Give me a break, Tom. It happened twice. And years apart.”
    “You’re just the only mystery writer I know who’s done research
that
active. Still live in a trailer?”
    “I moved out.”
    “How come? Did it finally sink into that landfill it was sitting on? Or did selling your books to the TV movie folks make you
nouveau
rich?”
    “That’s
riche
. I think. As for the trailer, I got tired of being mistaken for Jim Rockford. Anyway, I did come into some dough from those TV sales, and got a chance to pick up a little house.”
    “On the prairie?”
    “No, with a river view.”
    “Sounds real Mark Twain.”
    “It’s a house, not a houseboat, Tom. I don’t want ’em to start mistaking me for Travis McGee.”
    “Well, you
did
put a color in one of your titles.”
    “Hey, be fair, Tom—last I heard, the rainbow was in the public domain. You didn’t like that book much, did you?”
    He shrugged. “I liked the book okay. I just like your short stories better.”
    I shrugged back. “Can’t make a living at that. Books are where it’s at. Maybe you’ll like the next one; maybe I’ll put you in it.”
    “That’d help,” he admitted. “Just promise me you won’t make any cracks about my name sounding fishy.”
    “If you slip me a fin, it’s a deal.”
    His grin under the almost-mustache was infectious. “Very funny. You know, I can’t say I was nuts about what the TV folks did to your first book.”
    I groaned, swigged some beer. “Couldn’t we talk about something more pleasant? Like my hernia operation?”
    But Tom was enjoying my misery, and plunged on, archly: “Granted, they made some minor changes. They switched the locale from rural Iowa to Los Angeles, and your white-bread hero was played by O. J. Simpson. And they changed the ending, ’cause they didn’t think the high school sweetheart ought to be involved in the murder.”
    “Otherwise it was a faithful rendition,” I said.
    Now Tom seemed to feel a little bad about needling me, and leaned forward and said, with no archness at all, “Don’t forget what James M. Cain said when the reporter asked him what he thought about what the movies had done to his books: ‘Nobody did anything to my books,’ he said, ‘they’re right back up there on the shelf, just like I wrote ’em.’ ”
    “O.J. Simpson isn’t going to be in the next movie.”
    “That’s good.”
    “They’re talking Scott Baio.”
    “Maybe we better get some more beers. That better be some house.”
    “Oh, it is. Got a roof and everything. I bought a new car, too.”
    “What was wrong with the van?”
    “Just not my style. I’m not a kid anymore. I turned thirty-three last time I looked.”
    “What car d’you buy?”
    “A silver Firebird.”
    “No kidding? That’s what Rockford drives.”
    I’d just bought the car a few days ago, and this drive into Chicago, on a cold, rainy October afternoon, had been my first extended experience behind its wheel. I liked the feeling of driving a sporty car, my last two vehicles having been an old Rambler and that van Tom had asked about; but the dreariness of the day, and the realization that I had finally gotten a sporty car at an age, or anyway “time of life,” when it didn’t mean as much to me, had a sobering effect on me (unlike the Pabst I was now chugging).
    I’d been nervous about attending the Bouchercon; the last one of these I’d attended, I was a barely published writer of short stories—now I was a more visible “author” of two published hardcover novels, one of which had just been nominated for Novel of the Year by the Private Eye Writers of America (whose awards ceremonies were traditionally held at Bouchercon). I considered the nomination a fluke—for one thing, the