The Salinger Contract

by Adam Langer

  Once he had decided to go to Chicago, Conner didn’t even pack a bag. He just bought a plane ticket and drove to LaGuardia on Angie’s old motorcycle, the one with the Devil Shotgun exhaust pipes. He figured he would go straight to 680 N. Lake Shore Drive, buzz Dex’s apartment, and if Dex wasn’t there he’d leave a message and go to the Coq d’Or Lounge. But after he boarded the plane and fastened his seat belt, he noticed a broad-shouldered man in a tweed jacket and wrinkled black slacks hulking his way down the aisle, then taking the seat beside him. The man carried a black leather dopp kit and reeked of aftershave.

  “Dex?” I asked.

  “Pavel,” said Conner.

  Pavel sat down beside him, and Conner let loose with a flurry of whispered expletives. What had happened? What the fuck was going on?

  “I suggest that you take these matters up with Dex,” Pavel said.

  “Where is he?” Conner felt fully prepared to whip off his seat belt, climb over Pavel, and have it out with Dex in first class, which was where he assumed Dex would be sitting. But Dex wasn’t on their plane.

  “He will meet us at airport,” said Pavel. He added that he noticed Conner had not pekked a begg. He proffered his dopp kit to Conner. Dex had made a reservation for Conner at the Drake Hotel, he said.

  “I’m not staying,” said Conner. “After I get some things straight with Dex, I’m going home.”

  “This, of course, is up to you,” said Pavel. He added that he had quite enjoyed The Embargoed Manuscript and thought it was Conner’s strongest work since Devil Shotgun. He could tell that writing it had indeed been “leeberating” for Conner.

  “What the hell are you? Some kind of book critic?” Conner was about to start swearing again. But then he felt himself torn between outrage and curiosity. “Wait, you read it?” he asked.

  Pavel nodded.

  “The whole thing?”

  “That I did.”

  “You’ve read all of them, haven’t you?”

  “That I have.”

  Yes, Pavel said, he had read the Dudek, the Lee, the Hetley, the Mailer, the Capote, and the Pynchon. Yes, he had read them all.

  “You read the Salinger.”

  “I did, yes.”

  “What was it about?”

  “These matters, I must keep them confidential,” Pavel said. “It’s in the contracts, you understand.” And then Pavel pointed out that the flight attendants were beginning to perform their safety demonstrations. Once those demonstrations were over, Pavel closed his eyes and slept through the entire flight.

  “Of course, I didn’t sleep at all,” said Conner. Instead, he sat staring out the window, watching the lights of the city give way to blackness, then thick gray clouds, which persisted all the way to Chicago so that, for the majority of the flight, all he was able to see was his own reflection. Who was he? Who was he becoming? He was a rich man now by most estimates, and could become even richer the moment he deposited that final check from Dex. And yet, in doing so, he would be admitting his complicity, wouldn’t he? Wasn’t that why Dex had sent him the flash drive? To explain the costs of the money he had earned and the risks he would incur if he ever spoke of it to anyone? And yet, if you thought about it, he considered as he looked around at the other passengers on the airplane, wasn’t every person here an accomplice to some sort of crime? Didn’t everyone here pay taxes that supported all sorts of misbegotten military adventures? Wasn’t supporting the airlines supporting their manufacturers, who probably built horrifying weapons systems as well? Living in a prosperous society in the twenty-first century, weren’t we all complicit in something? Weren’t we committing a crime every time we ate at McDonald’s or filled up at a BP station or bought a pair of Nikes? And wasn’t the crime Conner had aided and abetted a bloodless one that targeted only a couple of wealthy individuals? Sure, the logic might have been tortured, but wasn’t there some truth to it? Wasn’t everyone on this plane, in some way, guilty of something? Weren’t they all working for Dex?

  “This was yesterday?” I asked Conner.

  “It was,” he said.

  A white pickup truck was driving around the parking lot of the Starlite Drive-In. It flashed its headlights twice before it pulled up alongside us. A rent-a-cop, probably in his sixties, wearing a state trooper’s hat, lowered his window and motioned for me to do the same.

  “Closing up here,” he said. “Pretty soon we’ll have to lock up the gates.”

  “We’re just finishing up a conversation, bud,” said Conner. “How long before you close?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes? Half hour?”

  “Can we stay here till then?” asked Conner.

  The cop shrugged, then drove off, steering his way through the lot as Conner continued his tale.

  30

  After Pavel and Conner passed through the terminal, they found Dex waiting for them on a bench at the O’Hare blue line elevated train station. He was dressed as usual, stylish but out-of-date, and he was carrying his walking stick with the yellow-eyed falcon handle.

  “Public transportation? How come no limo? I’m sure you could afford one now,” said Conner. He had wearied of the old-fashioned rituals of politesse that seemed to accompany all his interactions with Dex, all the “Good to see you, sir” and “Come, come, Mr. Joyce.”

  “Well, then I’d have to find a limo driver I could trust, and trust takes time,” said Dex. “Anonymity is safer.”

  “Dex is very parteeckular about his employees,” Pavel added. “For the right price, any one of them will betray you.”

  “Why not you?” Conner asked Pavel. “How come he trusts you so much? What’s he got on you? Immigration status problem? Or don’t you speak good enough English to get by without his help?”

  “It is because he has given me everything I have wanted, Mr. Joyce,” Pavel said. “Just as he has given you everything you have wanted.”

  “What did he give you?” Conner asked.

  “What we all want,” said Pavel. “The opportunity to be free.”

  “You don’t seem free to me,” Conner said.

  The train arrived. Its doors slid open and Conner followed the men into a mostly empty car. Conner sat in a window seat, Dex sat next to him, and Pavel on the bench behind as the train moved forward, accelerating out of the tunnel, following the eastward path of Interstate 90 toward the shimmering lights of downtown Chicago. Conner had seen those lights only once before, but this time they looked sinister; he felt drawn into the darkness that surrounded them.

  “You seem different than when we last met,” said Dex.

  “How do you mean?” Conner asked.

  “You appear upset.”

  “Of course I’m upset,” said Conner.

  “But why?” asked Dex. “Because I asked you to write a book and it gave me an idea? Isn’t that why all writers write? To inspire their readers?”

  “Not funny,” said Conner.

  “I’m not joking,” Dex said.

  “I’m not either. You straight-up lied to me.”

  “Me? Never. I despise liars. I hate them every bit as much as you do, Conner, and every bit as much as your wife does too.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Conner.

  “You know exactly what it means,” said Dex. “Don’t play stupid; it’s just another form of lying. You know I never actually lied to you.”

  “Then you misled me,” said Conner.

  “Only as much as you let yourself be misled,” said Dex. “Only as much as Salinger, Dudek, Pynchon, Capote, and all the rest.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” said Conner. “You did the same thing with all of them?”

  “When their stories worked the way I wanted them to, absolutely, sir, I did.”

  “And how often did that happen?”

  “Most of the time.”

  �
�And none of them objected when they found out?”

  “Perhaps two or three did.”

  “And the others?”

  “If they objected, they certainly didn’t bother me about it.”

  “Salinger too?”

  “He had some objections. Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And he requested a few minor emendations to the contract.”

  “Did you agree to them?”

  “Of course I agreed. He was my favorite, after all, still is my favorite, even now. But you know all this. I showed you the contracts. You read them.”

  “And then what did he say after you agreed?”

  “All that he needed to.”

  “Which was what?”

  “All that anybody needed to.”

  “And what was that?”

  “He signed the contract and he deposited his check.”

  “Dudek too?” Conner asked.

  “I have copies of each canceled check,” said Dex. “I will not let you read the books they wrote; but I have shown you the contracts and I can show you the checks if you’d like.”

  “You don’t have the last of mine,” said Conner.

  “Not yet, no,” said Dex.

  “I could just tear it up,” said Conner.

  “What possible good would that do?” asked Dex. “Donate it to charity. Support another writer. Feed someone’s family. Don’t merely tear it up. That’s foolishness.”

  Conner was about to say something about integrity, but it seemed a little late for that. “So,” he said, “you’re telling me that of all the people who wrote books for you, I’m the first one who really raised any serious objection. Everyone honored their contracts, kept their mouths shut.”

  “If you were listening, you would know that I did not actually tell you that, sir,” said Dex. “A couple raised a fuss. Some requested changes. Salinger added a rider, as you have already seen. One author even violated her contract outright.”

  “Who was that?” asked Conner.

  “Lady Margot Hetley, in fact,” said Dex, and when Conner asked for further explanation, Dex said, “She signed her contract. She wrote her book. She deposited her checks. And then she turned around, rewrote that same book, sold it, published it, then sold more than half a dozen others. You know the rest of that story.”

  “Doesn’t seem to have hurt her career much, now has it?” said Conner.

  “Not yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Why do you think she keeps those bodyguards, Conner? Because she’s such a ‘popular writer’?” Dex sighed. “Anyway, that’s not the point I’m making. The point is after everything was said and done, all the writers cashed their checks. And my sense is that when they learned what had happened, they all grew to like the idea, just as you will grow to like the idea so much that you might even want to do it again.”

  “No way,” said Conner.

  “It doesn’t satisfy you in the slightest?” asked Dex.

  “What?”

  “To know it worked? Your idea. To know you could write something that could become more than fiction?”

  “But it didn’t. You changed it. In the book, I steal the flash drive,” said Conner. “It’s the character based on me who does it.”

  “A small detail,” said Dex.

  “Who did it for real?” asked Conner.

  Dex gestured to Pavel, who offered a self-effacing smile.

  “You? How’d you even get into Shascha’s office?” Conner asked Pavel.

  “This was not so very difficult,” said Pavel.

  “But how?”

  “By telling her I was a writer with a story to sell,” said Pavel. “Publishers, editors—a very gullible species. You just have to tell them a story they want to believe is true.”

  “Christ, I wrote it only because it wasn’t true,” said Conner. “Not so that I could make it true.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Dex said. “In my experience, every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts; in my case, it took an artist to teach me how to be a criminal.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Conner.

  Dex gazed out the window. Traffic was light on the Kennedy Expressway. The lights of the city beckoned before they disappeared into the blackness as the train sped east, then downward into the tunnel that led to the Chicago Loop. In that tunnel, the sounds of the train became louder; the wheels screeched and the interior lights flickered onto the faces of Dex, Pavel, and Conner; they were now the only people left in the car. As was the case on Conner’s airplane, only reflections were visible in the windows and when Conner saw his reflection, he wasn’t sure he knew the person he was seeing anymore.

  Dex turned back to Conner. “Look,” he said, “when we first met, Conner, you asked me a question and I believe I responded more rudely than I should have.”

  “What was the question?” asked Conner.

  “You asked me how I made my money, and I told you in so many words that it was none of your damned business. Do you remember that conversation?”

  “I do,” said Conner. “But in a way, you’ve already told me the answer.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” said Dex. “You don’t know the whole story.”

  “Which is what?” asked Conner.

  “Well,” said Dex, “you know how I’ve made some of my money. You know about a few million of it, and you might have some ideas about how I made a good deal more. But there was a time when I was clean, as the saying goes. I was out of this ‘business’ that you and I now find ourselves in. There was a time when I could say I was only an amateur reader and a professional businessman.”

  “What business?”

  “Doesn’t really matter. It was never particularly dramatic or interesting or glamorous, and it tended to change from year to year. I bought some things. I sold some things. I invested. Usually, I made money. But it was all legal, every bit of it, that’s the point. I had retired from ‘crime,’ as you might call it. I had been retired for nearly thirty years.”

  “What happened? Did you run out of money?”

  “Not at all. But something did happen.”

  “What was that?”

  “I read a book called Devil Shotgun,” said Dex.

  Conner snorted.

  “It’s true,” said Dex. “The robberies in that book? So well wrought, the details so perfect that I couldn’t believe everyone reading it wouldn’t try to commit them. I couldn’t believe the author himself hadn’t tried.”

  “You’re full of shit,” said Conner.

  “Am I?” Dex reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an old newspaper clipping. The headline read, life imitates fiction: daring heist seemingly inspired by crime novel. Conner swallowed hard. He tried to read the article, but couldn’t focus on the words, kept reading the same sentences over and over. He had heard those rumors of a New Jersey heist that had been inspired by Devil Shotgun, but he hadn’t given them much credence. He didn’t really imagine that any book, particularly any book he had written, could inspire anyone to commit a crime. He wondered if he truly understood himself—perhaps Dex knew him better than he did. Maybe the reader understood more about a book than its writer ever did. Maybe you know more about me from reading this sentence than I ever could.

  “You see?” Dex told Conner. “Now you know The Embargoed Manuscript wasn’t the first work of yours that inspired me.”

  “How do I even know that’s true?” asked Conner.

  Dex shrugged. “I could show you a few keepsakes that would prove it to you, but there’s little need for that.”

  “Why?” asked Conner.

  “Because you already know I’m being honest.”

  Conner sighed
. He felt sorry he’d come to Chicago. He’d accomplished nothing other than confirming his suspicions and aggravating his anxieties. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see his wife and son. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to move on with his life. He wanted to cash his check and forget everything and everyone, go somewhere far away—just like Salinger.

  After the train stopped underground at Washington Street, Conner could barely steady himself to follow Dex and Pavel into the station. He felt his guts grumble. Small, clear bubbles swirled before his eyes. Sometimes he saw double. He walked behind the men as they climbed the stairs and stepped out into the Loop, so much more desolate and sinister than New York at night. They walked past the now-extinguished signs of theaters, department stores with darkened windows, deserted parking garages; a park that was far more black than green at this hour; a lone busker with an open guitar case, strumming a Joni Mitchell song—“Coyote.” They walked in and out of the streetlights’ amber spill until they neared the lake. The lights of the Navy Pier Ferris wheel blinked on and off, indifferent.

  When they reached 680 N. Lake Shore Drive, the doorman greeted Conner by name—“Good to see you again, Mr. Joyce.” By now, Conner’s mind must have been playing tricks on him, because he could have sworn the doorman was wearing a brass nameplate that read pynchon. How old would Thomas Pynchon be now, he wondered. About the same age as this guy. But this was madness; this was the world turned inside out.

  Conner followed Dex and Pavel, recalling with specificity the lobby’s marble floors, its gaudy chandeliers, the mirrored elevator that led up to the penthouse, the front hallway of Dex’s apartment with Norman Mailer’s bullet hole, the beautiful library with its view onto the lake, the locked glass bookcase behind which several dozen manuscripts were alphabetically arranged. The authors’ names were clearly visible, handwritten on the spines—Capote, Dudek, Hetley, Joyce.

  Dex took a seat at the head of his library table. Conner remained standing. Pavel stood sentry in the doorway.