The Salinger Contract

by Adam Langer

  Time passed—who could tell how much. Conner paced his cell. He lost any concept of how many hours were going by—whenever he called out to ask what time it was and Gales told him, the answer surprised him. He had to ask whether it was morning or night, and on two occasions, he guessed wrong. Once he fell asleep and when he awoke, he figured he had been asleep for a whole day, but only a few minutes had passed. He wondered who would come to see him first—the NYPD? The FBI? Shascha herself? He was still pondering these questions when Sergeant Gales unlocked his cell.

  “You must be a pretty important guy, Mr. Joyce; you must sell a lotta books.” Gales was holding a Ziploc bag with everything Conner had left at the front desk—wallet, phone, and the flash drive, too.

  “Yeah, right,” Conner said.

  “I’m not joking, Mr. Joyce. You’re free to go.”

  What did he mean, Conner asked. Hadn’t he called downtown? Hadn’t he called the FBI? Hadn’t he researched the case?

  “Yeah, we looked into all that, everything you told me,” Gales said, but he added that he had just gotten a call instructing him to release Conner and to return all his belongings.

  “Who called you?” Conner asked.

  Gales opened the cell door. “Your friend’s here to pick you up,” he said.

  “Friend?” Conner felt color return to his face, felt all the weariness of the past hours dissipate, replaced by an exhilaration he could compare only to the first rush of love. Angie must have gotten his messages, must have heard all the details he had told her, must have pulled some strings to get him released. He thanked Gales, shook the man’s hand twice, then walked out of the cell, sprinting into the lobby where he imagined Angie waiting.

  But Angie wasn’t there.

  46

  You are disappointed to see me. I understand. I am sorry for thees,” said Pavel Bilski. He was now wearing a long, lined khaki trench coat that fit tightly over his blazer. But for all Conner felt, the man might just as well have been wearing an executioner’s robe. Every drop of energy and excitement Conner had felt moments before had now bled out of him as suddenly as if his throat had been slit. He made no effort to argue with Sergeant Gales; he knew his cause was futile. Someone had paid Gales off, or had paid somebody else off, probably Dex had done it; it didn’t matter. Wherever Pavel was headed, Conner could run or he could follow; either way, he would wind up in the same place. I had once told Conner about a quote from one of my mother’s favorite films, and that quote returned to him now as he considered his predicament—“Oui, je peux perdre, mais je gagne toujours”—Yes, I can lose, but I always win.

  Conner followed Pavel out of the precinct headquarters and onto 100th Street, expecting to be blasted with daylight. But it was night. He expected to see Dex outside, waiting in a car. But no one was out front. He remembered how full these streets had seemed whenever he had walked along them with Angie; it seemed significant to him that they were empty now. Empty apartments, empty squad cars, an empty library, an empty church, empty storefronts with For Rent signs in them, buses and taxis without any passengers.

  “Where’s Dex?” Conner asked Pavel.

  “He has flown back.”

  “Chicago?”

  Pavel nodded. He made a gesture, indicating that Conner should walk with him, then started to head west. Conner thought of asking where they were going, but didn’t see what difference the answer would have made.

  “I assume you’re carrying,” he said to Pavel, miming a gun.

  “Thees ees true, yes,” said Pavel.

  As he walked alongside Pavel, Conner took out his phone to call Angie. The voice mailbox was still full.

  “My wife,” Conner said. “She’s still not answering.”

  Pavel raised his eyebrows.

  “Is she all right?” Conner asked.

  “As far as I know,” said Pavel.

  “Have you seen her?”

  “I have not.”

  “Has Dex?”

  “Neither has he,” said Pavel, then added philosophically, “as far as I know.”

  The farther west Conner walked, the darker the streets seemed to become. Past Broadway, every building appeared to be cast in shadows.

  “Are we going to someone’s apartment?” Conner asked.

  “No,” said Pavel.

  “Are we looking for your car?”

  “No, Conner, we are not.”

  “Are we going someplace to talk?”

  “No,” said Pavel. “I do not expect there will be much talking after it is done.”

  Riverside Park was never particularly crowded this far north, especially not at night. Every so often, someone would turn up dead here—a drug deal gone wrong, a homeless person who got killed for someone else’s kicks. The park was a good place for a killing; the Hudson was a good place to dump a body. Conner thought back to the time he spent in the Navy, all the things he thought he would have been willing to die for. Now he couldn’t imagine dying for his country—his family, though, that was different. Whatever Pavel and Dex had in mind, he would go along with it; he wouldn’t fight, as long as Atticus and Angela would be safe.

  “Did Dex plot all this out?” Conner asked Pavel.

  “Most, yes,” said Pavel.

  “This walk? Did he plot this walk?”

  “He did.”

  “And did he plot what would happen at the end of it?”

  “Yes,” said Pavel. “He had a plan for this, too.”

  “I assume the gun is loaded?”

  “Always.”

  “And that you plan to use it.”

  “This is the plan.”

  “I could run,” said Conner.

  “I would not advise that,” said Pavel.

  “I could. But I won’t. I won’t resist if you promise me something.”

  Pavel stopped walking near a set of stairs that led down to the park’s lower level, barely visible at all in the blackness. The river lay just beyond, hard to make out from this vantage point and yet Conner could hear the flow of the water.

  “Promise me,” Conner repeated, “nothing will happen to my family. Once I’m gone, that’s the end of the story. I don’t want them to owe Dex anything. I don’t want him to take any revenge out on them for something they had nothing to do with.”

  “I am sorry, Conner, but I am afraid that is not exactly what I have in mind.” Pavel drew the gun.

  47

  Conner had spent a lifetime around guns, and yet this was the first time he had seen at such close range a gun he was certain would be used against him. It looked small in Pavel’s hand.

  “Pavel? Don’t you have a family?” he asked.

  “I left them long ago. Much heartache. But familiar story. Pedestrian. Not so interesting.”

  “Isn’t there something I can do?” asked Conner.

  Pavel held up a finger to quiet Conner. He patted Conner down, as if searching for a weapon. He reached into one of Conner’s pockets and took out a pen—the black-and-gold Montblanc that had once belonged to J. D. Salinger. Pavel unscrewed it; inside was a small microphone receiver. Pavel cracked the pen in two, then threw it down, speckling the snow with black ink.

  “Ees there something you can do?” Pavel asked. “Yes, Conner. There is. Take the gun.” The weapon was lying in Pavel’s open palm. “Take it,” he said.

  “That didn’t turn out so well the last time,” said Conner. “What’re you trying to frame me for this time?”

  “Frame?” Pavel asked. “Nothing is framed.”

  “Then what’s the twist?”

  “The tweest? This is it. The tweest. In Dex’s story, I am supposed to shoot you, you understand.”

  “Dead?” asked Conner.

  “This is it. Exactly. This is what he would like. You dead. The Hudson River, et cetera. He is no writer.
His is an obvious story. Unnecessarily crude. Not so imaginative. And then, of course, the next step.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is I take a cab uptown to your mother-in-law’s apartment. I find your wife, your son, and there are some ugly things that I say and do to them there. I do not wish to speak further of this.”

  Conner made as if to speak. Pavel interrupted. “But I do not like this story so much. I prefer my own way of devising a story. More elegance. Less bloodshed and cruelty.”

  “What happens in your story?” asked Conner.

  “The one I will tell Dex if he finds me?” Pavel shrugged. “I will say that you and I, we struggled for the gun. You grabbed it, you shot me, perhaps in the hand, perhaps in the leg, nowhere too dangerous. You choose. Something like thees. It will not seem so implausible.”

  “But why?” asked Conner.

  “Because I do not like to shoot people in general, and I certainly do not want to shoot you, Conner,” said Pavel.

  “Why not?”

  “Perhaps it is because I have a soft spot for writers,” said Pavel. “Particularly those who wrote me nice letters many, many years ago.”

  Pavel reached into the inside pocket of his blazer, from which he extracted a folded sheet of yellowed paper.

  “Dear Mr. Dudek,” the letter began; it was signed by Conner Joyce. It was one of the many letters Conner had written when he was a young man. He had written to so many of his heroes and role models—Thomas Pynchon, J. D. Salinger, and Jarosław Dudek, the Olympic shot-put medalist and author of Other People, Other Lives who had once worked as a functionary for the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  “Dudek?” asked Conner.

  “I am he.”

  Conner studied the man’s face; he could see the resemblance to the last known photo of Jarosław Dudek. And he could recognize the sardonic, shrugging, fatalistic humor of Dudek’s prose in Pavel’s speech too.

  “But you disappeared,” said Conner.

  “I did,” said Jarosław Dudek.

  “You never published again.”

  “This I did not.”

  “And you wound up working for Dex?”

  Dudek took a breath and smirked. “In a sense, one way or the other, we all wind up working for Dex,” he said.

  “But who’s Pavel Bilski?” asked Conner.

  “Thees is the name of a character in a book I once wrote.”

  “I don’t think I read that book.”

  “Only one man did,” said Dudek.

  “Dex?”

  Dudek nodded.

  “So, it’s all true. Everything—about Salinger and everyone else.”

  “Yes,” said Dudek. “All true.”

  “And the flash drive? That was your idea, not Dex’s.”

  “Yes. So one day you would be able to prove your story was true.”

  Conner looked down at the fountain pen that had concealed the mike. “And that’s how?” he asked.

  “How what?” asked Pavel.

  “How you listened to me? How you knew what I was doing?”

  “Yes, of course, but if not that, then something else. There are numerous ways. I have much experience with this. Much professional experience. This is unimportant. We have other business to attend to.”

  “Like what?” asked Conner.

  Pavel reached into a trouser pocket, took a key, and handed it to Conner.

  “What’s that?” asked Conner.

  “Dex’s key,” said Dudek. “There should be a manuscript or two in his apartment that could be of some use to you.”

  Conner took the key. “What will I do if Dex is there?”

  Dudek shrugged. “He is an old man, Conner. And he has lost his best protection.”

  “You mean you?”

  “This is my meaning—yes.”

  Conner took the gun. He wanted to ask Dudek so many more questions—about writing, about Poland, about what exactly he had done for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, about how he had spent the past twenty-odd years, about whether or not he would publish again.

  “Perhaps we can discuss this upon some other occasion,” Dudek said. “But now, it is time for you to shoot me.”

  “What will you tell Dex if he finds you?” asked Conner.

  “A story. He likes stories. This is what I like best about him. Perhaps he will believe me. Perhaps he will not.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about me. This is not your problem,” said Dudek. “And I have always been quite adept at finding ways to disappear. Now, shoot me, Conner.”

  Conner took half a dozen steps backward. He cocked the weapon. He aimed it at Jarosław Dudek’s leg. And then he fired.

  48

  The last flight to Chicago was leaving at 10:05 p.m., and Conner had less than an hour to catch it. He had waited in Riverside Park until he made sure Jarosław Dudek had hobbled into a cab to Roosevelt Hospital. Then Conner flagged down another cab and told the driver to take him to 145th and Amsterdam.

  In the back of the taxi, Conner kept punching Angela’s number into his phone’s keypad. And no matter how many times he got the message saying, “This voice mail customer’s message box is full; please try your call again later,” he kept trying until the taxi stopped in front of the De La Rojas’ apartment building.

  “It’s Conner,” he shouted into the intercom. “I need to see Angie.”

  “She is not here, Conner,” Gladys said.

  “Buzz me in. It’s important.”

  The door clicked open. Conner ran up the stairs to the apartment on the fourth floor. Angela’s mother stood in front of the door wearing a housedress and shower clogs. Her hair was white, but in the hallway’s fluorescents, its glow was lavender.

  “Angie here?” Conner asked.

  “No, Conner,” said Gladys.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s really not here?”

  “No.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know. She got a call.”

  “She got my calls? She listened to my messages?”

  “I don’t think so. She talked to someone and then she said she had to go.”

  “To where?”

  “She didn’t tell me.”

  “Did she say when she’s coming back?”

  “As soon as she can.”

  “Where’s Atticus?” asked Conner.

  “The child is sleeping.”

  “Can I see him?”

  Gladys stepped back from the doorway. Conner walked past her, into the room where a crib was stationed beside a bed that had once been Angie’s. On the few nights Conner had stayed over, even after they had gotten engaged, he had not been allowed to sleep in this room. He had slept on the living-room couch, which was a few inches shorter than he was. Now, as he stared at his son’s face, Conner could see his wife’s cheekbones, her luminescent black hair. Friends and family often said that Atticus had his father’s eyes, but those eyes were closed, and as for that peaceful expression on the boy’s face as he slept, Conner couldn’t say whether that belonged to him or to Angela. If either of them had ever looked so calm, both he and Angela had lost that feeling long ago. He wished he could rest in the bed beside the cot until the boy woke up. But in his pocket, he had a key to an apartment, which contained the manuscripts that, along with the flash drive, could help to convince Angie and the police that his story was true. And in his coat, he had a gun with one bullet gone.

  “I’ll be back for you, buddy,” Conner whispered to his son. “As soon as I can. I’m gonna leave you for just a little while, but after I’m back, I’ll try my best to never leave you again.”

  He kissed Atticus’s forehead, ran his hand through the boy’s ha
ir. And then he walked out of the bedroom. Conner borrowed a shoebox and a suitcase from his mother-in-law. In the bathroom, he unloaded the gun, and placed it and the bullets in the suitcase along with his coat. He knew he could carry a gun in his checked luggage as long as it wasn’t loaded—Cole Padgett did it all the time.

  49

  The flight from LaGuardia was fast and smooth, and the skies were so clear that, as Conner looked out his window, it seemed as though the plane were flying upside down and the lights he was seeing were coming not from towns and cities but from planets and stars. He passed over Pennsylvania and Ohio. On some level, he was aware of all the drama in the lives that must have been going on below him. Yet at the same time, he found himself unable to conceive of those lives from this distant vantage point, even when he passed over a tiny slice of Indiana, the state in which the events of my last half decade had been playing out—a small version of Conner’s story, a tale of lives upended by words.

  When he got to O’Hare, he picked up his luggage at the baggage claim. He unzipped the suitcase in a men’s-room stall. He took out his coat, put it on, loaded the gun, and placed it in a pocket. He wheeled the empty suitcase to the taxi stand; no one else was waiting in line.

  “Where to, my good friend?” the taxi driver asked as Conner got in.

  “Six-Eighty Lake Shore.”

  The driver laughed. “Used to be seeks-seeks-seeks,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that,” said Conner.

  The driver had an Eastern European accent, and for a moment, Conner feared that everything that had just happened in New York had been a fantasy, and now Pavel Bilski was driving him to be ambushed by Dex. But upon closer inspection in the rearview, the taxi driver—Sy Radosevich was printed on his license—had very little in common with Dudek, save for the accent and eyebrows. Conner wondered who this man had been before he started driving a cab. Maybe he had been a writer too, one who had also disappeared. Maybe cities were filled with writers leading double lives, all of them secretly working for Dex.