The Salinger Contract (10 page)

T
he rain had let up, but Conner said he still didn't really want to go anywhere, so we wound up driving around the back roads of Bloomington, passing this and that nature preserve, passing the chain stores and fast-food restaurants along the bypass, driving around the university campus, through the quiet, homey neighborhoods where I used to think my children would grow up. I had never particularly cared for this place, but now I viewed it with a sensation approaching nostalgia. It was a place comfortably free of ambition or expectation. Maybe Conner had been right to seek me out here—even if someone had overheard us, no one would have believed this discussion of big book contracts, unpublished Salinger manuscripts, nefarious skullduggery, and cockeyed flumdummery would happen here.

“But exactly how would someone steal the flash drive?” I asked Conner.

“So easily,” he said. “So, so easily, my friend. Or at least it could be if you were writing a novel about it.”

Throughout the history of literature, every publishing company has had special protocols for dealing with its most important manuscripts. In the old days of tweed and cigars, of manual typewriters and carbon paper, critics or journalists who wanted an early look at an important forthcoming novel by, say, Ernest Hemingway­ or J. D. Salinger, would sit with a copy of the page proofs in the publisher's office, reading while an editorial assistant kept watch, making sure the journalist didn't steal it. In some cases, journalists were not even allowed to take notes, or if they did, they had to share those notes with an editor before they departed.

At
Lit
magazine, I got a chance to visit the J. R. Kenworth printing plant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I interviewed the longtime plant foreman Mitch McGauhey about some of the books that had been printed there. Sometimes, he told me, special measures had to be taken when a particularly controversial book was being printed—say, something like
Lolita
or
Portnoy's Complaint
, both of which had led workers to walk off the job rather than participate in the production of something they felt was pornographic. Therefore, manuscripts of this sort would arrive at the plant with dummy covers and fake title pages, identifying them as academic books or yawn-worthy biographies of American presidents. Some editions of
The Satanic Verses
had been printed in that plant, but because of the bomb threats issued against anyone associated with the production or publication of Salman Rushdie's novel, no one in the plant knew they were printing it. In the case of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, the title given to the third book,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
, was
Manuscript #110
. It was printed on July 4, 1999, when the plant was supposedly closed for Independence Day and the only people allowed in had undergone rigorous security checks.

These days, with rampant digital piracy and hundreds of free P2P file-sharing sites, when one could download the digital file of a manuscript in seconds with a mere click of a mouse, the stakes were greater, and so were the risks. Most probably, that explained the security forces accompanying Margot Hetley. That certainly explained the Tiffany jewel box with the diamond-encrusted, monogrammed flash drive that Shascha kept in her locked drawer.

More than anyone else, save, perhaps, for Margot Hetley herself, Shascha understood how much the ninth installment of Wizard Vampire Chronicles was worth. In short, it was just the sort of item whose theft would make for a good, original heist thriller. The list of suspects seemed endless, and those suspects weren't the sort who usually appeared in genre thrillers—editors, authors, security personnel. Anyone who worked in the Schreiber & Sons Building, any of Shascha's employees, would have had a strong motive for committing that sort of theft. If, in real life, someone found a way to break into Shascha's office and take that flash drive, everyone would have been under suspicion—Steve Kaczmarak, the supposedly loyal security guard; Courtney Guggenheim, who, like most editorial assistants, probably had dreams of writing her own books and no doubt was tired of taking orders from Shascha; even, and perhaps most likely, Conner Joyce, or someone like him, a recently terminated author who had been insulted by Hetley and needed to devise a new way to support his family.

Once someone got hold of that flash drive, the rest would be easy. The thief or thieves could set up a website, maybe one overseas, spread the word through Twitter and other social-networking sites that pirated copies of WVCIX were available. Then the thieves would take credit-card orders, assemble e-mail addresses, and click Send All. They would collect the money, then close down the site. How much money could you make? Two and a half million seemed conservative.

While writing his Cole Padgett books, Conner had always thought the best way to become a criminal would be to lead as honest a life as he and Angie had, then gamble everything on one crime. The more he thought about it, he almost wanted to commit this particular crime instead of writing about it.
Almost
. He would have considered it if he were a different sort of person. And when he wrote the book, the character based on him would be the thief, for he was the most plausible suspect of all.

Yes, Conner Joyce thought as he walked toward Penn Station to catch his train, there really could be a thriller in this.

C
onner spent six hours a day writing in his home office in the Pokes, using the Smith-Corona manual typewriter that he had saved from his boyhood, making edits with J. D. Salinger's old Montblanc pen. He told Angie he was working on “that Hollywood project,” and didn't want to discuss it for fear of jinxing it. She may have been suspicious, but she didn't ask any questions.

Work on the novel proceeded quickly. Conner knew the situation, the crime, and the potential suspects. He knew Dex wanted details, so he provided them. There was no danger of libeling anyone, since no one would ever read the novel save Dex and perhaps Pavel and the ghost of Truman Capote, so he used real names, places, and addresses. He usually conducted copious amounts of research for his novels, but since he knew the individuals involved, where they worked, and their personality quirks, there was little need. He knew what it was like to be a frustrated writer on the road, trying to maintain his enthusiasm in front of an audience of a dozen people in a shopping-mall chain store that was going out of business; he knew how it felt to argue with his wife when both were overwhelmed by parenthood and felt uncertain about their futures; he knew every inch of the lobby of Schreiber & Sons and Shascha's floor; he knew how it felt to wait outside Shascha's office while she met with Margot Alexandra Hetley; he knew how it might feel to lose everything, then catch sight of a small, priceless object that could save him and his family. He knew what could make an honest man turn to crime, the way it always happened in his novels.

The only trouble with the book was that it just wasn't all that sexy. His own life story, unlike those of his recluse writer heroes J. D. Salinger, Jarosław Dudek, B. Traven, Harper Lee, and their ilk didn't seem compelling enough for a thriller. There were no knives or guns, just a valuable document with a compromised password and a stolen flash drive. So he did something he had rarely done in his Cole Padgett novels; he embellished. The doggedly earnest, first-person narrator, with his faithful wife, adorable young son, and lovely home in the Poconos seemed too wholesome and dull, so he made the guy into a scumbag. He gave the narrator a handlebar mustache, tight jeans, flowery shirts open to the chest, a drawer full of gold medallions, and a sex addiction. The
Ice Locker
readings he had given in various bookstores throughout the country weren't dramatic, so his narrator seduced bookstore managers and autograph hounds, then took them back for wild sex in his author's suites, which were appointed far more lavishly than the ones in which he tended to stay.

He did much the same thing for the rest of the characters in the novel. He broadened all of their personalities and gave each of them even more credible motives for stealing the flash drive. The narrator's wife, Angie, became a nymphomaniac who had been thrown off the NYPD for coke abuse; Shascha Schapiro had actually bedded down with Condoleezza Rice and Gustavo Dudamel, and her publishing imprint was about to go bust while her father had been nailed for insider trading; Courtney Guggenheim was no Guggenheim after all—her real name was Corey Podmolik, a con artist from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who had done time for kiting checks and was just waiting for the right occasion to take down her boss; Steve Kaczmarak, the Schreiber security chief, had a gambling problem and a juice loan to the mob that he had to pay off in thirty days. Put briefly, Conner made every guy in his novel a scheming stud, every woman a money-hungry skank; he embellished every single real-life character save for the one he didn't need to embellish: Margot Hetley, whose tart questions and insults (“Ain't you never seen a pair?” “Tell the cunt to get in line”) he toned down considerably. Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable.

Writing the book was as liberating as Dex said it would be. Knowing Angie would never read it—as stipulated by Dex, he locked the manuscript in his desk whenever he was finished for the day—allowed Conner to explore aspects of himself he would have otherwise kept private. He could indulge his wildest fantasies, live out each of his unlived lives without fear of repercussions, perhaps a little bit like a man imagining nine different fathers. Conner's narrator wasn't really him, but who he might have become had circumstances been different, had his parents divorced, say, or had he never known his dad. As he wrote, he silently thanked Dex for allowing him to write whatever he wanted without any fear of judgment. All writers should be so lucky, he thought; everyone should have the right to put whatever crazy thoughts he or she had on paper without wondering what critics or psychoanalysts would say or whether readers would buy it, or whether any family members would get pissed. He now understood why so many writers had agreed to Dex's proposal. It was as if he were being paid to dream, and who could say no to that?

Certainly not me, I thought as I drove around the Walnut Creek neighborhood of Bloomington, listening to Conner's story, looking at all the For Sale signs on houses I had once thought I might have a chance to buy. I would have done anything if I could have been paid to write my first novel as long as no one else read it. What wouldn't I have given to go back in time and make sure no one could read the blog Sabine and I wrote? It was too late for me, but not for Conner. At least, that's the way it seemed at the time.

T
he final manuscript clocked in at three hundred pages, the exact same length as
Devil Shotgun
, yet considerably shorter than any of its sequels, which had grown more convoluted with each installment. When Conner was finished typing, he shredded each of his previous drafts and burned his notes on his charcoal grill while he prepared salmon for dinner one evening. He read over the manuscript three times after he had finished it, fixed the spelling and grammar, and retyped it; each time he read the book, he liked it better­. The characters were vivid, the dialogue crisp, the descriptions spare but effective. He felt alternately sorry that no one but Dex and Pavel would ever get to read it and relieved that no one would; he regretted that even he would never get a chance to read the novel again once he had given it to Dex, and that it would exist only in his memory and in a strange bookcase in Chicago beside other volumes only Dex and Pavel could read.

He gave his book a title—
The Embargoed Manuscript—
and then put it in a manila folder, placed that folder in his center desk drawer, locked it, and contemplated how he would get it to Dex. They had never discussed exactly how, when, and under what circumstances he would submit the finished manuscript. Dex had said only that he would be “in touch” and that he would not give Conner a deadline. But just a few days later, Conner stepped outside to pick up his newspaper and noticed a sealed, unstamped envelope sticking out of his mailbox. He opened the envelope and found a train ticket to Penn Station and a short note on Dex's stationery written in that distinctive, loopy handwriting—
Keens Steakhouse, tomorrow, 1PM, Dex.

Keens
. It almost seemed as if Dex were making a joke at his expense; this was the very steakhouse where Shascha had taken Conner to celebrate her purchase of
Devil Shotgun
. But at the same time, Keens, much like the Coq d'Or Lounge and the long-defunct Gold Star Sardine Bar, was Dex's sort of place too. It was a serious, old-style business executive's establishment—white tablecloths, dark-brown leather banquettes, blood-red steaks, professional waiters with Teutonic demeanors and occasionally Teutonic accents, well-fed diners in dark suits already on their third Dewar's by noon.

The next day, Conner arrived at Keens promptly at one, carrying his manuscript in a black leather satchel. Dex and Pavel were already drinking cocktails, and the grim-faced Deutsche maître d' led Conner to their table, where a bottle of Champagne was chilling in a pewter ice bucket. Dex stood, smiled, and shook Conner's hand; Pavel's expression, as always, seemed harder to pin down.

“I believe there may be cause for celebration,” said Dex. Though Conner wondered how Dex knew this was true, he didn't ask.

After the men had ordered their steaks and Dex had directed the waiter to pop and pour the Champagne, Conner took the manuscript out of his satchel and handed it to Dex, who spent some time contemplating the title. Pavel spoke first.

“
The Embargoed Manuscript
,” he said. “I like
thees
title very, very
motch
.”

Dex flashed Pavel a look, then skimmed the first two pages. He sipped his Champagne, then placed the manuscript in an attaché case that had been leaning against one of the legs of his chair. He zipped that case closed.

“You work fast,” said Dex.

“I was inspired,” Conner said.

“By the story or the money?” asked Dex.

“Maybe both.”

“As it should be,” said Dex.

“But what happens if you lose it?” asked Conner.

“The money?” asked Dex.

“The manuscript.”

“I'll never let it out of my sight, and Pavel never lets me out of his.” Dex reached into his inner jacket pocket and produced a check made out to Conner for $833,333.33. On the memo line, Dex had written the words “Upon Submission.”

“I'd still like to know where your money comes from,” Conner said.

“The answer would only wind up disappointing you,” said Dex.

“Because the truth wouldn't be as interesting as what I might imagine?”

“It never is,” said Dex.

Conner folded the check and placed it in his wallet. He tried to act unimpressed. “I assume there'll be some revisions you'd like me to make to the manuscript?” he asked.

“I suppose there might be, yes,” said Dex.

“And how will you let me know about those?”

“We'll assess that when it's necessary,” said Dex.

“But how will I know whether or not you like what I've written?”

“When I pay you.”

“So, you'll be reading the manuscript soon?”

“Relax, Conner,” said Dex. “I am not a slow reader, but I do like to read at my own pace. I will finish when it is time for me to finish. Don't concern yourself with that. I have always paid my writers. And I have always done so after a reasonable number of revisions and within a reasonable time frame. That's really all you need to know.”

At which point, Dex stopped discussing the details of the contract. Instead, he spoke of the Champagne lunches to which he had treated his other writers, the steak restaurants in various world capitals where he had entertained Truman Capote and John Updike.

“But what will happen to all the books they wrote?” Conner began, then stopped, feeling uneasy with where his thoughts had headed.

“You mean, after I die?” Dex asked.

“For example, yes,” said Conner.

“They will be burned.”

“Burned? Why?”

“Because that's the agreement,” said Dex. “If something is intended to be private, it should remain so. Would you care for dessert?”

By now, Conner and I had driven along practically every major road in Bloomington. The end of the afternoon was approaching, rain was still falling lightly, and we were back in the parking lot of the Lake Griffy Nature Preserve; Conner's rented Nissan was the only car still there; the boats were gone; the boat sheds were padlocked.

“How long ago did you have that lunch with Dex and Pavel?” I asked.

“About three months ago,” said Conner. “I suppose I don't need to tell you what happened next.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, you do.”

“You must not read the newspapers much,” he said.

“Rarely get the chance these days.” That was true. Lately, Sabine and I had been so preoccupied that whole weeks' worth of the
New York Times
and
Bloomington Times Herald
would lie on our front porch before we bothered picking them up, at which point we just chucked them in the recycling box. The only use we ever seemed to get out of the newspaper was for lining the compost bucket or entertaining Beatrice and Ramona with papier-mâché projects.

“Well,” Conner began. He seemed to be settling in for the next chapter of his story, but when I checked the clock in the car, I knew I didn't have time to hear it. Not then, anyway. Soon, I would have to pick up the kids, and I hadn't even started dinner.

“Tonight, then,” he said.

“It'll have to be late,” I told him. In recent weeks, it had been taking even longer than usual to get our daughters to sleep, and I couldn't just walk out on Sabine without notice. She had papers to grade, lectures to prepare, recommendations and job letters to write. Besides, much as I felt somewhat starved for friendship, I couldn't help but feel that Conner was taking my availability for granted, as if I could easily change whatever I had scheduled to accommodate his story.

“I still don't get why you're telling me all this,” I said.

“I think you already know,” he said.

“If I knew, I wouldn't ask,” I said.

“Well, how about this? You remember the line in that Le Carré book I told you about? ‘Promise me that if ever I find the courage to think like a hero, you will act like a merely decent human being'?”

“Of course.”

“Pretty soon, there may come a time when I'll have to act like a hero, and if that happens, I may have to ask you to act like a merely decent human being.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “What would I have to do? What are you trying to get me involved in?”

“I'm the one who's involved, not you,” Conner said. “There's no risk for you. I'm the one taking the risk by coming here and talking to you.”

“But what would I have to do?”

“Just tell my story. As honestly as you can,” he said. “The way you told
Nine Fathers
.”

“Couldn't you tell it yourself?”

“I'm not sure about that,” he said. “Lately, I've been getting the feeling I might not be around long enough to tell it, and you're the only person I can trust with it. You get it, don't you?”

“Sure.” But I didn't. Not really. For a long time, among my friends, I have had a reputation for being particularly honest and moral. It's a reputation I find flattering but inaccurate. I do listen fairly well, though, a talent people often mistake for trustworthiness. Because Conner was moral and honest, he saw those traits reflected in me, when in fact I was and still am a great deal less admirable than he thought. I wasn't listening to him because I sympathized or shared his opinions; I just liked a good story. I did feel flattered by his friendship, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't have known how to tell him no.

“Is that the only reason?” I asked. “Because you trust me?”

Conner considered for a moment. “Also because no one knows you,” he said. “No one knows we're friends. And even if Dex did know, I'm sure he wouldn't wanna mess with you.”

“With me?” I asked.

“That's right,” said Conner.

“I think you've got the wrong guy,” I said.

“No sir,” said Conner. “Trust me.”