“Mr. Jones, this is Lieutenant Bacchetti of the NYPD.”
“I didn’t do it!” Jones cackled. “She swore she was over eighteen, anyway.” He roared with laughter. It took him a moment to recover himself.
“Mr. Jones, I’m trying to find a client of yours.”
“And which client would that be?” Jones asked, clearing his throat loudly.
“Frederick James.”
“What a coincidence,” Jones said. “He’s my only client!” This time, he nearly collapsed with laughter.
The man has to be drunk, Stone thought. “Mr. Jones …”
Jones continued to laugh, cough and clear his throat. “Yeah?” he said finally.
“It’s very important that I see Mr. James.”
“Well, if you can do that, pal, you’re way ahead of me. I’ve never seen him.”
“He’s your client, and you’ve never seen him?”
“He’s reclusive.”
“And how do you communicate with him?”
“E-mail,” Jones said. “FJ at frederickjames dot com.”
“How about a phone number?”
“Don’t have one. I’ve never even spoken with him.”
“And how did you become his ag
ent?”
“Manuscript came in over the transom,” he said. “Literally. I came to work one morning—I was just about to close up the shop for good—and the manuscript was lying on the floor. Tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I was all washed up as an agent. But when I read Tumult, I knew I had a winner. Trouble was, nobody in any established house would even take my calls, let alone read the manuscript. So I called my nephew, who was an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster, and he read it and went nuts. His dad loaned him some money, and he packaged the book and got S and S to distribute it for him. He’s making out like a bandit.”
“Would that be Pete Willard?”
“That would be he.”
“Mr. Jones, did you ever know a writer named Paul Manning?”
“Sure, I knew him for twenty years; got him started and I represented him right up until his untimely death.”
“You haven’t heard from him lately, then?”
“Not likely. I don’t have those kind of connections!” Jones laughed hysterically again.
Stone waited him out. When Jones had recovered himself, Stone tried again. “Mr. Jones, how do you send Mr. James contracts to sign, checks from his publisher, that sort of thing? You must have some kind of address.”
“You promise not to tell him where you got it?”
“I promise.”
“He lives at One Vanderbilt Avenue, right here in New York.”
“Phone number?”