The Salinger Contract

by Adam Langer

  A black limousine was parked in front of 680 Lake Shore Drive, but Conner paid it little mind. The doorman greeted Conner by name, but Conner was walking past him too quickly to register whether or not the name on his brass plate really was Pynchon.

  Conner took the gun out of his coat pocket as he rode the elevator up, held it firmly in his right hand. He stepped out onto the penthouse floor and wheeled his empty suitcase forward. It whirred softly over the carpet. Conner took Dex’s key out of his pocket as he approached the apartment, and was surprised his hands weren’t shaking. He brought the key toward the lock, but as he inserted it, the door gave way.

  Conner froze for a moment. Then, he pushed the door open the rest of the way, leaving his suitcase just outside in the hallway. The door opened without even a creak. The apartment was dark as Conner stepped gingerly across the soft carpet. He felt his way through the hallway, past the Norman Mailer bullet hole, then into the library. Even though he could barely make out any of the furniture, he knew where he was going. He had mapped the apartment inside his mind. He would navigate his way past the chairs in the library, and when he reached the bookcase, he would use the butt of the gun to smash the glass. He would grab the manuscripts, run for the hallway, drop them in his suitcase, zip it, run for the stairs, then through the lobby, out the front door. He would catch a cab to O’Hare, drop the gun in the trash when he got to the airport, take the next plane to LaGuardia, then head back to Gladys’s apartment; surely Angie would be back by then.

  He felt his way along the wall and stopped when he reached the bookcase. He could picture the small, locked glass doors in front of the manuscripts. He put out his hand just to make sure that he was in the right place. But there was no glass where there should have been; instead, he felt varnished wood. Where bound manuscripts should have been was empty space. He moved his hand gently through air, then felt something sharp slice the back of his hand. Broken glass. Conner winced, felt blood ooze from his skin. He touched the bottom of a shelf—there were jagged shards. The bookcase had been smashed open. Conner stepped back, felt his way along the wall. He was looking for a light switch when a voice split open the silence.

  “Put it down,” the voice said.

  Not Dex’s voice. Though the voice was low, it clearly belonged to a woman. “The gun,” the woman said. “Put it the fuck down.” Conner gripped the gun more tightly, but then a shot shattered one of the windows that gave out onto Lake Michigan. Conner lowered his hand, and when the voice ordered him once more to put down the gun, he placed it on the table.

  The room turned bright. One of the desk lamps had been switched on; it illuminated the library in an eerie green glow. Now Conner could see that there were no manuscripts in the bookcase; it was empty—the glass plate had been shattered and slivers were lying not only on the shelves of the bookcase but also on the carpet beneath it. At the head of the table, Dex was lying facedown, a pool of black blood flowing out from under him. In the blood, Conner could see reflections of the illuminated desk lamp, bursts of green and white light like stars in a blood-black sky. Conner made as if to run toward Dex, but the voice stopped him: “Don’t.”

  Conner turned slowly. He could now see the face of the woman who was holding the gun on him; she, too, seemed to glow faintly green.

  “Margot Hetley,” he said.

  50

  There sat the author of the Wizard Vampire Chronicles series—regal, enraged, like a betrayed queen. She wore a green-black dress that set off her green-blond hair; around her neck was a strand of greenish pearls. On the table in front of her was a green-black bag filled with greenly glowing manuscripts. In one hand, she held a green-black gun.

  I know certain individuals who would be very interested in the books you have written, Dex had said. Conner had not been thinking of Margot Hetley, but maybe he should have—he thought of the random violence that blazed through her novels, all the soulless intercourse, all the gratuitous gore; he thought of her fierce gaze when their eyes had met at Shascha Books—tell the cunt to get in line. The only other person who had broken her contract, Dex had said. He had repaid her with the crime Conner had written, but Pavel was gone and so was Dex’s protection. Conner could hear Dex’s low, strangled breaths.

  “Stand right there—still—and empty your pockets, mate,” Margot said, and when Conner did not comply, she gripped the gun hard with both hands. “I said empty your fucking pockets.”

  Conner took out his wallet, his change, and after Margot told him to “take out the bleedin’ rest,” he pulled out the flash drive and slid it across the table toward Margot. She snatched it and smiled a knowing, crooked smile. “You. Thievin’. Little. Wank,” she said.

  “I’m not,” said Conner. “All I did was write.”

  “Oh, I read what you wrote, mate.” Margot reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out The Embargoed Manuscript. “Your friend Dex, he told me all about it.”

  “Not my friend,” said Conner.

  “Yeah, not anyone’s friend anymore.” Margot jutted her chin in the direction of the body slumped upon the table. Dex’s breaths were coming more slowly, as if he were hooked up to a failing ventilator. “Now,” she said, “back up against the window, real slow.”

  Conner took a step back. He felt his legs quiver. He could make a run toward her, try to wrest the gun away, he thought. But he didn’t like his chances. He took another small step backward.

  “Margot,” he said.

  No response.

  “Ms. Hetley.”

  Nothing.

  “Look,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It was just supposed to be a story, that’s all.”

  Margot held up the flash drive. “What’s this then? Your story?”

  Conner tried to explain what had actually happened, but he couldn’t convince Margot of its truth any more than he had been able to convince Angela. He had lost his ability to tell a story people could believe. If he had been smart enough to write a perfect crime, how could he have been dumb enough to not know Dex would try to commit it?

  “But you know how it works,” Conner said. “He never told me.”

  “What?” asked Margot. “That he’d actually do it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you taking the piss?” She pointed a long, erect index finger at him. “Are you that bloody stupid? Or are you just that bad of a liar?”

  Conner felt his breaths coming faster; his chest felt tight. “I could pay you back,” he said.

  “With what?” asked Margot.

  “The money he paid me. The $2.5 million. I’ve still got most of it.”

  “What about the other half?” asked Margot.

  “What other half?”

  “You think that’s all he got? A measly $2.5 mil?”

  “Please,” Conner said. “I have a wife and a son.”

  “World’s full of wives and children. Nothing but,” said Margot. “’Fraid that’ll be their loss.”

  “But I have the same editor as you do.”

  “You mean you used to.” Margot cocked the gun. “No, mate,” she said, “you hurt me real bad, and now I’m gonna hurt you worse.”

  His back was up against the glass. One bullet and he’d smash through the window, down thirty stories, accelerating until he reached the pavement. He wondered if he would die before he hit the ground or if he would feel conscious of every moment of his descent. He ran for Margot as she pulled the trigger, but the moment she did, someone blasted through the doorway and leaped toward her.

  “What the fuck?” Margot Hetley pivoted toward the intruder, but it was too late; Angela De La Roja was on her in a flash.

  51

  It happened too fast for Conner to be sure he wasn’t dreaming it, that this wasn’t some lovely scene he was imagining as he was actually falling down to Lake Shore Drive. It happen
ed too fast for Conner to ask Angie how she had gotten there, if she had listened to his messages and finally believed his story. Before Conner had even made it from one side of the room to the other, Angie had wrestled Margot to the floor, disarmed her, cracked her across the face with the butt of a gun, then lifted up the internationally renowned, widely translated, award-winning, bestselling novelist of Wizard Vampire Chronicles volumes one through nine and threw her back into her chair. She trained one gun on Margot and passed the other to Conner. She checked Dex’s throat for a pulse. “Call 911,” she said.

  Conner pulled out his phone. He began to key in the number. Margot laughed.

  “Call the fucking bobbies?” Margot asked. “And tell them what?” Her lip was bleeding—that crooked smile she usually flashed for paparazzi looked even more sinister.

  “What do you think, mate?” Margot asked as Conner pressed a 9 and a 1 on his phone. “You think they’ll come after me? When there’s $2.5 mil in your bank account, your fingerprints on a gun and my flash drive, and a manuscript telling all what you done?”

  Conner didn’t key in the last 1 on the phone. He looked at Margot; Angie did too. Even with her lip bleeding, a man dying across from her, and two guns aimed at her, Margot knew how to tell a story that would make you listen.

  “No, that’s not the story,” she said. “The way I see it is that you and this toffer Dex was in on it all along; you came here to get your manuscript, then ice him. Anyway, that’s the way I’ll tell it, and believe me, mate, I know a fair bit about storytelling, a fair bit more than you. I read your work, mate. Much as I could get through. Bloody amateur. Nice details, dull plot. Shascha asked me to blurb it. I told her no bloody chance. I know what stories people will believe. Margot Hetley shot a man who stole her flash drive? That ain’t one of ’em.”

  Angie was backing her way toward Dex, keeping the gun pointed at Margot, but Conner was wavering. How much money could Margot throw at lawyers? He would probably wind up getting jail time, and Margot would sell a million more books. Maybe she could even get a memoir deal. He wondered what that memoir might be called. Then an idea hit him.

  “Write it down,” he told Margot.

  “What?” asked Angie.

  Conner opened a drawer and produced a sheet of Dex’s stationery and a fountain pen. He thrust them in front of Margot.

  “Write down everything that happened,” said Conner. “The real story.”

  “What the hell for? You’re coercing me, mate; you’re pointing guns.”

  “I don’t give a shit. Write it down.” Conner pointed the gun at her heart.

  “Conner,” Angie began, but he wouldn’t let her finish the sentence. It was the only way he could think of, he said. Margot was a good storyteller; people would believe the story she told.

  “Do it. Write it down. And tell the truth—all of it,” he said. “Details. Give every detail.”

  “Or you’ll what? Shoot me?”

  “You’re fucking right I will.”

  Margot believed him. He still had that talent—reflected what other people thought of themselves, and surely, in his place, Margot would not have hesitated. She began to write while Angie made her way to the head of the table, where Dex was still lying facedown. Angie pulled him up, ripped open his shirt. There was a bullet hole in his neck as big as the one in his wall, and blood was seeping out. She tried to use one of his shirtsleeves to staunch the bleeding.

  “Breathe,” she told Dex. “Breathe.”

  Dex looked every bit of his seventy-five years now, maybe even ten years older. His mouth was open, frozen in a mask of disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe a story about him could actually come true. His eyes were bloodshot, filmy; his chest looked hollow and the skin stretched over his ribs looked thin and used up.

  Angie called 911 as Conner kept his attention fixed on Margot and what she was writing; he kept pressing her to add more details, the sorts of details that would make people believe her story. He told Margot he wanted addresses; he wanted her flight number; he wanted to know where she had sat on the plane; he wanted to know who had sat next to her, where she had hired her limo, who the driver was.

  “And don’t make any of it up, ’cause you know I’ll fact-check the fuck out of everything,” he said.

  “All this’ll never help you, mate,” said Margot. Conner moved behind her, looked over her shoulder, followed the swooping, swirling path of her pen. He studied the words she was writing more closely. His eyes widened; he swallowed hard.

  “Holy mother of Christ,” he said.

  Angie had ripped the other sleeve of Dex’s shirt; the first sleeve was drenched in blood; now blood was seeping onto this one too. “What?” she asked.

  “She can’t spell.” Conner stared at the words on the page. Even in this moment, the revelation was dumbfounding. All the books Margot had written—were they really hers, or someone else’s creation? “The bestselling author in the English language,” Conner said softly, “and she can’t even spell.”

  “The story’s what matters; spelling’s overrated, you cunt,” Margot said. She thrust her pen into Conner’s guts, grabbed his gun hand, slammed it down on the table. Conner yelled. The gun came loose. Margot grabbed it, snatched her bag of manuscripts, raced for the door, fired the gun, then dashed down the hall, bound for the stairwell.

  “Christ! Ange! Goddammit! Shit!” Conner looked down at his palm. A hole had been blown right through it, and dark blood was flowing out. Angie reached for his hand, led him fast into the hallway. He was trailing blood on the carpet; his shirt was stained with blood and ink. Through his white shirt was a black ink hole where Margot had stabbed him with her pen. The black and the red were intermingling. There was no sign of Margot in the hallway save for one of the manuscripts, which had fallen out of her bag. When Conner and Angie got down to Lake Shore Drive, ambulances and police cars were already there—lights flashing, sirens blaring. A doorman named Pynchon was directing paramedics up to the penthouse.

  “When did you realize I was telling you the truth?” Conner asked Angie breathlessly. “When you listened to my messages?”

  “No,” said Angie. “When Margot Hetley called me looking for you.” She reached out to hail a cab.

  52

  This all happened last night?” I asked Conner.

  It was past midnight. I wanted to get back home to my kids. My mother seemed overwhelmed by everything these days, even more so late at night, and I had a hard time imagining her getting Ramona or Beatrice to sleep. The Coq d’Or was still going strong; there must have been a convention in town. I was trying to imagine my father having once been in the crowd, but couldn’t figure out which of the men he might have been or become. It didn’t occur to me then that that person might have been me.

  “Yeah,” Conner said. “It happened last night.”

  He and Angie had rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for the gunshot wound, but they had ducked out after the doc had said he would have to report the incident. The wound didn’t seem grave; he would just have to wear a bandage for a few more weeks. Angie had already gone back to New York, and Conner would fly back tomorrow. He could have flown with Angie, but he had wanted to stay a little while longer.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “So you and I could talk.”

  “I didn’t realize I was that important to you.”

  Conner drained his beer. “You’re the only one who can tell the story,” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “You could tell it.”

  “Nah, I’m done,” he said. “We’re heading out. I’m not gonna be a target my whole life.” He, Angie, and Atticus were going to disappear for a while. He was done with literary agents, lawyers, and publishers. The moment he started writing his story or trying to get people to publish it, he ran the risk of blowing his cover. Margot Hetley would
find him. Maybe Dex would too.

  “Isn’t Dex dead?” I asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Conner. “The paramedics were just showing up when Angie and I got outta there. He was still breathing.”

  “Where you going?” I asked. “Cornish, New Hampshire? Monroeville, Alabama? Mexico City?”

  Conner looked as if I had caught him at something, but he forced a smile. “We don’t know yet,” he said. Wherever he was going, he hoped he wouldn’t have to stay there forever, and the only chance he had to lead a normal life was for the whole story to get out. Someone had to write about everything that had happened with Dex and Jarosław Dudek and Margot Hetley, but since he couldn’t write it himself, someone else had to do it.

  “You’re the only one who knows how to tell it,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows it and you’re the only one I would trust with it.”

  For a moment, I found Conner’s faith in stories quaint. When I first met him, he had said stories had saved his life.

  “But what about me?” I asked.

  “What about you?”

  “I have a family too.”

  “Yeah, I know that, bud. That’s why I’m here.”

  “But wouldn’t I be in danger? Just like you are now?”

  “How?”

  “If someone finds out I’m writing the story.”

  Conner smiled. “You’ll be fine. I’ve been trusting you all along, so you’ve got to trust me on that. By the time the story gets out into the world, it won’t matter anymore anyway. I might even have a little surprise for you when you’re done.”

  “What surprise?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” said Conner.

  “And meanwhile, you’re gonna be another recluse writer?” I asked. “Like your buddies Salinger, Pynchon, and Dudek?”

  “Yeah, maybe. But with one big difference,” said Conner.