PAUL DI FILIPPO

PLUMAGE FROM PEGASUS

You Won't Take Me Alive! (Without atLeast Ten Percent of the Box Office Gross)

"A ROMANCE writer's two-year flight from justice ended in a style befitting one
of her novels this week, when law enforcement agents knocked on her door at a
low-budget motel just outside Los Angeles. Rather than surrender without a
struggle, Barbara Joslyn stabbed herself in the chest.

"As Federal agents closed in on her...Ms. Joslyn barricaded herself in her
cramped motel room and shouted that she `would not be taken alive.'"--The New
York Times, May 5, 1997.

"Let me through, I'm from the SFWA."

As soon as the hard-eyed, bigshouldered young cop--standing intimidatingly with
folded arms on the crowd side of the yellow police tape--heard those words, he
gave me a deferential nod, lifted up the plastic ribbon, and ushered me under.
Even this rookie plainly knew who had saved the asses of his buddies in
countless similar situations across the country. I was hoping his superiors did
too.

Once on the far side of the barrier, walkie-talkies crackling practically in my
ears, I found myself in the middle of a barely controlled mob. Plainclothes
detectives, armored SWAT snipers, squat HAZMATrobots, reporters, priests,
psychologists, editors, agents, publicists, film directors--the usual mix of
do-gooders and vultures you always find at this kind of tragic scene. Using
perceptions and intuitions honed from dozens of equally chaotic past
confrontations, I zeroed in on the guy most likely in charge: a smartly coiffed
City Hall type wearing a suit that probably cost as much as I made in a month.

I waved my open wallet, credentials showing, under his nose. "Dorsey Kazin, SFWA
Griefcom. Whadda we got here?"

Maybe it was the sight of the understatedly famous silver rocket next to my name
in gold-leaf, maybe it was the calm assurance in my voice. Maybe it was the
chance to dump this whole mess in somebody else's lap. Whatever the case, the
guy's stern but nervous exterior collapsed faster than the Wizards of the Coast
publishing program, and he spilled his fears into my tender ear like a kid
telling his mother what he did that day in second grade.

"Am I glad to see you, Mr. Kazin! Ruben Spinelost here, assistant to Mayor
Whiffle." I tendered the guy a perfunctory shake. "Afraid I'm in a little over
my head in this dustup. Never dealt with one of these new-fangled hostage-based
contract negotiations before."
I cut him off. "Get used to it, Rube, this new tactic's all the rage --and I do
mean rage. Brief me quick now, before our gun-toting Gernsbackian decides to lay
a few of his more violent cards on the table--or maybe his hostage's ear."

Spinelost consulted a paper. "Well, the writer involved is someone named
Theodolite Sangborn. He's published--"

"Not necessary. I got everything I need to know about him along those lines out
of his SFWA file. I'm an instant Sangborn expert on his whole life, from his
formative childhood traumas down to how he deducted his mistress's hotel room as
a convention expense on his last 1040. Not to mention his entire miserable
midlist genre career. What I need from you is some idea of the kinds of demands
he's making, and who he's got in there."

Spinelost used his cheat notes to answer the last question first. "He's holding
his editor, a woman named Sherri Drysack. Ex-editor, I should say. Apparently
she made the mistake of deciding to pay him a visit in person to offer her
condolences--"

"On Bollix Books dropping Sangborn like a squirming roach when his last novel
stiffed. What a damn fool! Didn't she know her presence would be like holding a
lit match to a powder-keg?"

"Obviously not. I believe she's, um, fresh out of Bennington. Fine school, of
course, but.... Anyway, now Sangborn is using the leverage represented by her
peril to demand a new three-book, seven-figure con tract, with twenty percent
royal ties and assured softcover editions Oh yes, he also wants Leapsgerb
Studios to option his last book for; cool million."

I cursed eloquently. "These Heinlein wannabes with their de fusions of canonical
stature make me sick. They should consider themselves lucky to get a Whelan
cover, like Sangborn did on his Interstellar UPS, never mind option' and kick-in
clauses. And it always falls to Griefcom to hand them a reality check."

Spinelost coughed politely "Speaking of checks...."

"Don't get your boxers in a twist over nothing, Rube. Assuming I can bring this
whole debacle to a safe conclusion mutally agreeable to all parties, the city
will be fully compensated for any extraordinary expenses--as long as no charges
are pressed against our author, of course. Whichever publisher picks up Sangborn
will cut a check to the municipality tomorrow--and probably make a nice little
donation to the FOP. It's standard industry practice now. They just write it off
as a line item on the author's royalty statement."

"Very good. Still, I rather miss the old days--"

Just then a bullet zipped by over our heads like something out of Harrison's
Deathworld. Spinelost and the other suits fell to the ground, while the rest of
us hardened campaigners just groaned cynically at the requisite touch of
melodrama. From the innocent-looking suburban house where Sangborn was holed up
came a shouted threat.

"Hey, people! I want to see some goddamn action here, maybe a cover proof or a
multi-city booktour itinerary, and fast! Or Little Miss Blue Pencil is going to
have a new buttonhole in her Donna Karan jacket!"

I patted my coat pocket to make sure my cell-phone and palmtop with speed-dialer
attachment were there, then grabbed a loud-hailer from
agape-mouthed-social-worker.

"Sangborn! It's Dorsey Kazin! I'm coming in for some face time. Don't shoot
anymore, or these guys will put you on the remainder table faster than you can
say Robert James Waller!"

Silence for a moment, before Sangborn answered. "Okay, Kazin, I trust you. But
no one else!"

Handing back the hailer, I marched forward, the mob of officials falling aside
respectfully to let me through.

The time spent crossing that inevitable empty and unnaturally silent street to
the writer's house is always unnerving, no matter how often you've done it
before. Sure, you figure they're not gonna do anything crazy at this point, with
a solution to their problems so close, but you never know for certain. I still
broke out into a sweat when I remembered how my onetime partner, Alyx Jorus, had
gone permanently out of print, drilled through the heart as she approached a
writer involved in that hellacious work-for-hire Star Wars novelizations snafu.
There are some cases I wouldn't touch with a ten-light-year pole.

As I crossed to Sangborn's bungalow, I tried to reassure myself by thinking of
all my peers who were even now successfully and routinely doing my same job
across this nation of belligerent, mad-dog writers. Those various Griefcom
professionals from all the sister and brother organizations to SFWA--the guilds
of the mystery writers, the romance writers, the western writers, the horror
writers, the screen- and teleplay writers, even PEN--they all stood invisibly
shoulder-to-shoulder with me as I strode up to Sangborn's door. So bolstering
was my ghostly crew that when I got there I was able to knock with confidence,
call my name, then enter.

A disheveled Sangborn sat on the couch in the darkened living-room,
semi-automatic rifle loosely gripped. (SFWA sold armaments through the Forum
now, and had coffers overflowing with cash.) His hair was as messy as a sheaf of
manuscript pages dropped in a wastebasket, his face was stubbled, and he was
sweating like one of Fabio's fans getting an autograph. Perched insouciantly on
the edge of a coffee-table, Sherri Drysack was, by contrast, cool as one of Anne
Rice's vampires. Tucking long hair behind one perfect ear, she said, "It's about
time you got here, Kazin. My Dayrunner's showing two appointments and a meeting
later this afternoon, and I'm like, hello, can we get these negotiations moving,
or are we still in like the Stone Age?"
"Sangborn didn't kidnap you, did he? You're in collusion with him."

"Duh, Earth to Kazin, Earth to Kazin: wake up and smell your double-latte! Of
course I'm in this with him. I was planning to jump ship at Bollix all the
while, and Sangborn is my meal-ticket out."

I looked at the pitiful hulk on the couch. Shoeless, his hands shaking, his eyes
redder than Mars before Robinson got his mitts on it, he looked the most
unlikely prospect for success I had ever seen.

"You must have an ace in the hole. What is it?"

Drysack whipped a manuscript out of her briefcase. "Thought you'd never ask,
Kazin. Here's three chapters and an outline for an open-ended series that's
going to take the sf world by storm. Sangborn's going to make Niven and
Pournelle look like Hall and Flint after this."

I took the handful of papers from her and started reading. After a while, I let
out a genuine whistle of astonishment. "Looks like the real thing. A postmodern
space opera based on an amalgam of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Didn't think
the old hack had it in him."

Drysack moved to sit beside her property, draping a possessive arm around his
shoulder. She slitheringly crossed one Victoria's Secret-sheathed leg over the
other. Sangborn let out a plaintive mew like a Hurkle. "Oh, Theo's far from
washed up. He has a lot of good years left in him. All he needs is some tender
loving care from the right editor--and of course some fat residuals on any TV
series loosed on the Bronteverse."

I dug out my cell phone and palmtop and summoned up a fist of publishers in a
screen window. Having picked a likely candidate, I mated the speed-dialer and
phone. While the connection was being made, I moved to one of the windows,
pulled the drapes aside, and gave the all-clear sign to the cops. As they began
to move in, I saw one of the figures in the crowd answer his own ringing
cell-phone.

"Loomis Harmonica here. Is that you, Kazin?"

"Damn right. And I'm sitting on the hottest concept to hit sf since Asimov read
Gibbon. Is the publisher of Mary Kay Books interested?"

"You bet your bottom Imperial credit we are. Put Drysack right on."

I passed the phone to the eager lady editor, then walked across the room to a
shelf of liquor bottles. I poured myself an undiluted vodka, and knocked back
half of it.

Hell of a way to earn a paycheck. But when the Muse calls, you gotta answer.

Especially if she's packing heat.