him off. “They’re done and they’re not coming back. No way they’ll risk another job like this. It was a pretty stupid move in the first place. They wanted to stop Nelson from publishing the book, but they didn’t know that he had finished it. Now it will be published anyway.”
Polly said, “We’re assuming it’s good enough to publish, right?”
“Right,” Bruce replied.
“I’ve told you this, Bruce. I can’t read his stuff. I’ve tried many times and it just doesn’t appeal to me. I can’t imagine having to deal with his literary estate for years to come. I’m out of my league with the rest of his estate. I really want you to take the job.”
“Okay, that’s one reason,” Bruce said. “But the other reason is to attract this informant person who we think might actually exist but we’re not sure.”
“Correct,” said Lindsey. “We think it could be a crucial part of our plan.”
“And who’s ‘we’?”
“My people, Bruce. My team. This is what we do, what you’re paying for. We lay the traps, create the fiction, put the right people in place, and hope it all works. Just like three years ago. You said yourself our plan was brilliant.”
“It was, but it didn’t work.”
“What happened three years ago?” Polly asked.
Bruce smiled and said, “Let’s save it for dinner.”
A clerk walked in with three bulky manuscripts, all four inches thick. He dropped them on Bruce’s desk, handed him the thumb drive, and left the room.
Lindsey said, “Well, I guess we have our work in front of us.”
Polly said, “I really don’t want to read that. The summary was tedious enough.”
Bruce said, “I’m afraid you have no choice. You are both welcome to retire to my home and read on the porch, the veranda, in a hammock, or wherever. Noelle is there and she would enjoy having you around.”
“Where are you going to read?” Polly asked.
“Right here. I’m fast and I need to keep an eye on the store just in case a lost customer stumbles in.”
6.
Early reviews for Pulse were mixed. When they gathered for cocktails at dark on the veranda, the three weary readers compared notes. Bruce claimed to be almost finished, though he admitted he often skimmed as he blitzed through books. He was enjoying the story, said he was hooked. Lindsey professed to be no literary critic and her tastes ran to nonfiction and biography, but she was enjoying the story. The writing wasn’t that great. Polly was hardly halfway through the pile of five hundred typewritten pages and seriously doubted if she could finish.
“Can you sell it?” she asked.
“Of course,” Bruce replied. “Given Nelson’s track record, some publisher somewhere will give us a contract. It’s very commercial and the pages turn.” Bruce did not miss Polly’s use of the word “you,” as if the probate court had already substituted him as Nelson’s literary executor. He waited for her to ask “How much?” but she did not.
Noelle appeared with a bottle of white wine and refilled the glasses. She was certainly welcome to sit and join the conversation. Bruce had made it clear that he told her everything, but she left to check on dinner.
Bruce said, “I keep asking myself as I read how much of this can really be true. Is there really a drug that can prolong life in the sickest of old people? A drug whose true side effects are really unknown because the patients are comatose and dying anyway?”
Lindsey said, “It’s bizarre, but right now we have to assume it’s real. Nelson was murdered for a reason and until we know otherwise, we are assuming it’s because of this novel.”
“Which makes the informant all the more plausible,” Polly said. “Because there was no way Nelson knew anything about this story. I’ve been on the Internet for two months and have found nothing even remotely similar to this scenario.”