Serial Uncut - J. A. Konrath [13]
“I’m in 10th grade.”
“Excellent. I think you might be the youngest person here.”
“When is The Passenger coming out?” she asked.
“Probably next year.”
“I can’t wait to read it.” As he signed the last book, she said, “Look, would you maybe like to get a cup of coffee after this? I’d just love to talk with you a little more.”
He smiled and pushed her stack of books toward her. “I’d love to Lucy, but I’m actually flying back to North Carolina in about two hours.”
“Oh.”
“It was great to meet you.”
Lucy lifted her stack of books and headed out of the book room. She might have cried if she didn’t have something else to look forward to.
“What about her?” Lucy said.
“No, I know who that is,” Orson said. “She’s a pretty well-known cozy writer. She’d never go for it.”
Lucy was sitting between Orson and Luther on a sofa at the edge of the hotel bar, the conference booklet open across her lap. Every writer in attendance was pictured in the booklet, along with a brief bio. It made the hunting so much easier.
“I see a possibility,” Luther said.
“Where?”
“Guy standing alone at the corner of the bar, looking around, talking to nobody.”
“Gotcha. Can you read his nametag?”
“No. Too far.” Luther stood up and pushed his way through the crowd, passing within several feet of the mark. He circled back around and sat down on the couch again, said, “Richard Bryson.”
Lucy flipped through the booklet and found the man’s picture and bio. She read it aloud: “Richard Bryson is not only the author of Against the Law, a thriller about a corrupt police force, but the publisher as well. He is currently working on a new book.”
“Perfect,” Orson said. “Luther, head on up. We’ll be there in ten.”
Orson sat with Lucy after Luther had left, watching Bryson drink his beer alone.
“All right, Lucy, tell me how you’d get this man we’ve never met up to our hotel room.”
“Um, I’d tell him we have a party going on and invite him to come.”
“Okay. If some person you’d never met invited you up to their hotel room, would you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“The answer is no. You wouldn’t. Listen, look at me. You’re small and young, you have no physical strength, so if you want to do this, over and over and over again, without getting caught or killed, you have to be smart.”
She rolled her eyes. He was sounding a little like her mother.
“Oh, am I boring you? Get the fuck out of here then, you little brat.”
“You’re not. I’m sorry.”
“I’m trying to help you. So tell me. How would you get Bryson up to our hotel room?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ready to learn something?”
“Yes.”
“Vanity. Know what that is?”
She nodded. “When you’re in love with yourself.”
“Exactly. We’re all in love with ourselves. It’s our weakness. Our main failing. If you can play on that, if you can appeal to someone’s vanity without them knowing you’re doing it, you can get them to do anything you want.”
“I don’t understand.”
Orson stood up. “Follow me. Keep your mouth shut. And watch and learn.”
She followed Orson through the throng of people, stood behind him as he leaned his elbows on the bar and waited for the bartender to notice him.
After a minute, Orson began to look around, and when his eyes fell upon Richard Bryson standing right beside him, Lucy saw a huge smile break across Orson’s face.
He said, “Oh my God, you’re Richard Bryson!”
As the man glanced over at Orson, Lucy got her first decent look at him. He seemed old as shit to her, at least fifty. His coarse blond hair was long and wavy and on the verge of turning gray, and he had what she thought was a gross mustache.
The man gave a skeptical smile that belied insecurity and said, “Um, yeah, who are you?”
“Well, for starters, I’m a huge fan of Against the Law. I thought it was the best book I’ve read this year.”
“Oh, well thank you. You know, I just made it available as an ebook.”
“A what?”
“An electronic book. I put it up on my website as a free download.”
“Oh, neat.”
Oh stupid, Lucy thought. Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.
“Ebooks are going