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giving you my book. Okay, I understand. I should have known what to expect. You think you are SO SMART. Okay. I understand. You are really nothing but a dirty b etraying bastard. How much have you stolen. Plenty, I would guess. You think you are SO SMART but you are nothing but a “Warped Plank” in “the GREAT FLOOR OF THE UNIVERSE.” There are ways to deal with GUYS LIKE
    YOU. You probably think I am going to come and get you. But I am not. I would not
    “dirty my hands with your dirt,” as Mr. Keen us ed to say. But I can fix you if I want.
    And I want! I WANT!!!!
    Meantime you have spoiled everything here so I suppose you are satisfied. That doesn’t matter. I have gone West. I would say “fuck you” but who would. Not me. I wouldn’t even if I was a girl and you were Richard Ge ar. I wouldn’t if you was s ome really neat girl with a good build.
    Well I am going away but my material is copywright and I just hope you know what copywright is even if you don’t know “shit” from “shoe-polish.” So you just put that in your pipe and smoke it all the day long Mr. Judas Kenton. Goodbye.
    I hate you,
    Carlos Detweiller
    In Transit
    U.S. of A.
    35
     
    February 7, 1981
    Dear Ruth,
    I had sort of expected a “fuck-you” letter from Carlos Detweiller—it was in the back of my mind, anyway—and I got a dilly just the other day. I employed Zenith House’s creaky pre-World War I Xerox machine to make a copy, and have enclosed it with this letter. In his anger he is almost lyri-cal—I especially like the line about me being a warped plank in the floor of the universe...a phrase even Carlyle might admire. He misspelled Richard Gere’s name, but maybe that was artistic license. On the whole, I’d say I feel relieved—it’s over, at least. The guy has struck out for the Great American West, undoubtedly with his rose-cutting shears slung low on one hip (on one rose-hip? oh, forget it).
    “Yeah, but is he really gone?” you ask. The answer is, yes he is.
    I got the letter yesterday and rang up Barton Iverson of the Central Falls Police almost at once (after getting Roger’s grudging approval for the long distance, I might add). I thought Iverson would go along with my request to check matters out, and he did. Seems he too thought the “sakrifice photos”
    were too real for comfort, and the latest Detweiller communication does have a rather threatening tone. He sent a man named Riley—the same man who went before, I think—to check out Carlos, and he (Iverson, not Riley) called me back in ninety minutes. It seems that Detweiller served his notice almost right after being released from custody, and the Barfield woman has even advertised for a new florist’s assistant in the local newspapers.
    One mildly interesting thing: Riley checked on the guy in the “sakrifice photos,” and came up with a name I know: It was Mr. Norville Keen, the same guy, I’m pretty sure, that Detweiller mentioned in his first two letters 36
     
    (“Why describe a guest when you can see that guest,” and other pearls of wisdom). The cop asked her a few questions about the staging of those photos, and the Barfield woman clammed up, ka-bang, just like that. Asked him if it was an official investigation, or what. It isn’t, of course, so that was that...and in my mind, the whole subject is closed. Iverson told me that Riley can’t “make” the Barfield woman from any of the photos, so there was no handle to question her further...not that anyone there in Central Falls really wants to, I think. Iverson was very frank with me. “Let sleeping weirdos lay,” was what he actually said, and I agree two hundred per cent.
    If the new Anthony LaScorbia novel turns out to be Plants from Hell, though, I’m quitting.
    I’ll write you a more normal letter later in the week, I hope, but I thought you’d want to know how it all turned out. Meanwhile, I’m back to spending my nights on my novel and my days looking for a bestseller we