Hard Case Crime: The Max Read Online Free PDF Page B

know if she had the chops to pull it off.
    But the telemarketing cubicle loomed large and made her refocus. She Googled like a banshee and by the time she was done she was thinking, Edgar? Just the beginning. Why not a National Book Award? Or, hell, maybe even a Quill...
    She had to sit back and try to take it all in. The Fisher story had it all. There were, get this, Irish hit men who even had, whisper, IRA connections . There was also some odd stuff about Down Syndrome and gold pins that she didn’t quite get but hey, if there was a handicapped theme, hello Oprah , right? What would she wear on the show? Would Oprah cry when Paula talked about her long personal journey from unknown cult writer to literary goddess? Yeah, probably.
    She snapped herself back into focus, thinking, And, wait, there was even more handicapped stuff, some guy in a wheelchair who photographed women in, let’s say, compromising positions. Hello Playboy serialization. And there was also
    A hero cop: Hello Hollywood. At worst, a TV series.
    Boyz in the hood: Hello Spike Lee.
    Southern crackers: Hello National Enquirer .
    And above it all, loomed The... A.X. There wasno doubt that was the book’s title: The Max. She’d thought about Hot Blood, Tough City , toyed with Songs of Innocence . But, nope, it had to be The Max.
    She was so excited. She went and made herself a dry martini; no one, she knew it, no one, made them drier. It was good, just the right amount of martini, and gave her the boost of confidence she needed as she wrote the following to Mr. Max Fisher, c/o Attica State Penitentiary:
Dear Mr. Fisher,
    I am a mystery writer of high standing in my genre, a friend of Laura Lippman, Tess Gerritsen, etc. I have been commissioned by a very high profile publisher to write a true crime book and I truly feel you are the subject most deserving of my time. I believe you have been the most appalling victim of our Justice System and I would like to set the record straight and I must confess, as a woman, I find you hugely appealing. I enclose a photo.
    Yours sincerely
    Paula Segal (MWA, IACW, ITW, PWA)
    She had the perfect photo for this schmuck — her, bursting out of a bikini, nearly topless. And her favorite part about the photo, she looked demure. Demure was a word you got to use when you were a writer of her caliber. Recalling the photos of Petrakos from the trial, she knew this asshole loved big busts, and was he ever getting the max with this shot. Her previous lover,an Annie Lebowitz wannabe, had taken it. The girl was a lousy lay but she sure could take good photo.
    Delighted with her herself, she practically skipped down to the post office and sent the letter. Attica, just the thought of it made her shudder.

Four
    “I think you should get on my body now.”
    D AVID M AMET , Edmond
    It wasn’t like Max had never been raped before. During a drinking binge in the south he somehow wound up in a motel room in Robertsdale, Alabama with a Chinese guy named Bruce. Maybe it wasn’t technically rape because Max might’ve gone up to the room willingly, but really the saving grace was that he’d been so bombed he couldn’t remember any of it.
    Man, what he would have given for some hard liquor right now.
    The worst part, it was only around noon, and he had nine hours till Rufus and lights out. First, lunch in the mess hall. Jesus Christ, eighty percent of the prisoners were goddamn black. He felt like it was that time in the city he was so absorbed reading a copy of Screw that he missed his stop on the 6 train and got out at fucking 125th Street. Walking through the mess hall he was thinking, Be Richard Pryor in Stir Crazy. He was even whispering to himself, “That’s right, I’m bad, I’m bad.” But he must’ve been shaking his ass too much because the walk didn’t get him any respect — it had the opposite effect, getting him catcalls from allthe guys. They were whistling at him, calling him “sweety” and “honey,” and Max,