An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery by Robert Rosenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m counting on this book’s success. They’ve spent a lot. They want to make it back. If they do, the success rubs off on me, too.
    After all, as far as they’re concerned, I discovered you.” He paused, realized what was wrong with what he said, and added “in the literary sense.” “So you can stay. I told them you can speak for me.”
    “They don’t want me to speak for you. I don’t want to speak for you. I wanted this trip to try to sell my books, as well as yours. But I’m also here with you. If you walk out, it looks bad for me. They’ll wonder if they can trust me not to back out of a contract. I didn’t want to say this, but remember, Avram, we have a contract, too.” “You’d sue me, as well?” Cohen asked.
    “If you pull out now, we’re both facing a huge lawsuit,” Lassman tried. “You and me.” “Both of us?” Cohen asked.
    “Well, I’m liable, too. And for me, it’s a lot of money— especially considering the book was expected to do well, very well. If you made the public appearances. I helped you get this book published, Avram. I shouldn’t be punished because you suddenly aren’t happy with it.”
    The money wasn’t the problem. It was Lassman’s emotional blackmail, even if so poorly presented, that made Cohen wince. It was an old story in Cohen’s life, an Achilles’ heel made even more vulnerable by the knowledge that money couldn’t solve every problem. Lassman’s career was on the line. And even if the book was a mistake, when Cohen needed help on it he had asked Lassman.
    “I was serious,” Cohen said. “I’ll pay them back the money, if that’s what they want. They have the book. And I’ll make sure you don’t lose. It’s enough. I’m not made for speeches. For politics.”
    “Come on, Avram, you were great back there,” Lassman insisted. “Carey loved it—except for when you walked off.
    He wanted more. Kaplan did you a favor. He made you look good. Poor Tina. She’s devastated. She’s been a fan of his for years. But forget Kaplan, he’s crazy.” Lassman smiled at the irony. “You said so yourself.”
    “Everybody seems to think so,” Cohen said, remembering Francine. “But it’s not Kaplan. It’s the whole business. I didn’t know it would be like this. I didn’t know,” he repeated.
    “We still have that dinner tonight,” Lassman said, with hope in his voice that maybe Cohen’s talk about leaving was just that—talk.
    Cohen nodded, almost sadly. “As long as I’m here, I must. I signed the contract—and I don’t have a lawyer here to get me out of it.”
    “I’ll go with you.” “Thanks, Benny,” Cohen said. “But no need. I want to be on my own for a little while. I’m just going upstairs to get a raincoat and then I’ll go out for a while.”

6.
    He rode the elevator alone to the sixth floor, going back to the room he had left that morning. Turning into the corridor heading to his room at the end of the hall, he nearly fell over a chambermaid’s cleaning cart, startling the woman pushing it down the hall.
    “Sorry, sorry,” the tall young woman muttered in German in a very low voice, but Cohen barely noticed, glancing at her profile as she kept her face lowered, stepping aside as she moved on toward the service elevator he had noticed at the far end of the corridor.
    He watched her receding figure for a second, before turning up the corridor to his door. The chambermaid had piled his laundry in a corner, for the third evening in a row leaving a printed flyer from the hotel management saying that they had a laundry service—all he had to do was fill the folded bag that lay on top of the pile; she had made a stack of the magazines he had bought for the plane trip and didn’t read because he had used two double cognacs to get to sleep for the five-hour flight. His single suitcase was closed, on the low bench at the foot of the bed. She deserves a tip, he said to himself as he headed to the bathroom, picking up one