True Fiction (Ian Ludlow Thrillers #1)(3)
“The positive life force.”
“Good to know,” Straker said and picked up two full champagne glasses from a passing waiter. “Be seeing you, Wu.”
“Where are you going?”
Straker tipped his head toward the woman. “To create an unobstructed path for my chi.”
Ian Ludlow finished reading aloud from his book and smiled, pleased with the last line and with himself for being clever enough to write it. He stood at a wobbly lectern beside a table covered with hardcover copies of his latest Clint Straker thriller, The Dead Never Forget, and paperback copies of the previous six titles in his New York Times bestselling series. His book covers all featured the silhouette of his gun-toting action hero set against a backdrop of explosions, international landmarks, sports cars, and beautiful women with enormous boobs.
He was in Seattle, the first stop in a six-city, ten-day publicity tour for his new book. Today he was speaking at a boho-chic bookstore where everybody reeked of weed and only eight people showed up for his signing. Ian didn’t care about the low turnout. He was on a paid vacation.
“I think that excerpt sums up the essence of Clint Straker and what makes him so attractive to men and women alike,” Ian told his audience, who sat scattered among the four rows of chairs in front of him. “Any questions?”
A young guy in a faded University of Washington sweatshirt spoke up. “How much do you share in common with Clint Straker?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ian asked the audience. “Look at me.”
They did. What they saw was a guy on the dark side of thirty with the soft body of someone whose idea of exercise was walking into McDonald’s rather than using the drive-through. His right arm was in a blue cast and locked at a ninety-degree angle but he wasn’t wearing a sling. Instead, he just hooked his right thumb in the gap above one of the closed buttons of his untucked dress shirt to support the weight of his broken arm. He wore fashionably faded jeans and white Nikes. By contrast, Clint Straker was physically perfect, a six-foot-tall Special Forces vet who looked great wearing anything and could be mistaken for the model for Michelangelo’s David when he wore nothing at all. He was a spy for hire, a deductive genius and an unstoppable killing machine who didn’t salute any flag or fight for any political or religious ideology except his own personal moral code.
“Clint Straker can beat up three ninjas using only a napkin as a weapon,” Ian said. “But I’ve never hit anybody in my life and I’m a complete klutz. A few weeks ago, I accidentally blew up my house.”
Which was a big reason why he was glad to be on a book tour. He was going to be living out of a suitcase for a while and he much preferred to do it at his publisher’s expense rather than his own. While he was on tour, they paid for his accommodations and his meals, too. It was a sweet deal and the timing was perfect. He wondered if there was a way to extend the tour another week or two.
“So where did Clint come from?” the young man asked.
“Out of misery and desperation. I was in my third year as a writer on the TV series Hollywood & the Vine—”
The words were barely out of his mouth when someone interrupted and intoned, in a deep announcer’s voice: “Half man, half plant, all cop.”
Some people laughed and then it seemed like everybody in the store started singing the show’s theme song, which was basically the chorus of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” with very different lyrics.
Ooooh you heard about that cop Vine
A plant who can’t stand crime
You get caught, you’re gonna do time . . .
Honey, honey yeah . . .
Ian smiled good-naturedly and looked at the back of the room to see how this newfound attention was playing with Vince, the scraggly-bearded store manager, and Margo, the twentysomething “author escort” with short-cropped deep-black hair who’d been hired by his publisher to drive him around Seattle. Vince looked as if he’d been startled out of a nap but Margo was busy texting, seemingly oblivious to what was going on.
It was suddenly important to Ian that he win Margo’s attention. She was bone thin and braless in a retro tie-dyed T-shirt, torn jeans, and flip-flops. She wasn’t his type at all, not that he’d turn her down if she threw herself at him, but she was a barometer of sorts. She was being paid to show an interest in him and if she was bored, it didn’t say much for how his performance was going over with the people who weren’t getting paid to be there.
Ian went on with his story, which he’d told a thousand times before. It usually got him big laughs and lots of sympathy.
“I was writing for a shrub with a badge. It was soul crushing. So I escaped into the action-packed world of Clint Straker and before I knew it, I had a novel. I sold the book, left the show, and my publishing career took off.”
Book money wasn’t quite as good as TV money but he was a single guy without much overhead, especially now that his house was in ashes and he liked being in control of his own creative life. He didn’t have to write anything he didn’t want to anymore and that was worth a slight drop in his income. The only things he didn’t like about being an author instead of a TV writer were writing alone and buying his own lunch.
A frizzy-haired woman in the audience, dressed in a halter top that looked like it was hand-woven out of hemp, raised her hand. “How did you break your arm?”