God Save the Mark

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Naturally,” he said, beaming in a friendly fashion at me but not getting up from the rocker. “Any time at all. Any time you’re free.”

  “Then there’s no time like the present,” I said. But an instant later I thought that had sounded too eager, and added, “If you don’t have to hurry off anywhere, that is.”

  “Not at all, not at all. Happy to show you.” Now at last he did get into motion, clinking the teacup back into its saucer, bounding to his feet, and dropping immediately to his knees in front of the suitcase. Wrestling the suitcase over onto its side and going to work undoing the leather straps, he said, “Young man like—you—be very interested I’m—sure. Thirty-one years—work here, thirty-one. Got it all worked—there it is!—all worked out.”

  With which he opened the top of the suitcase and looked up at me like the genie delivering treasure to Aladdin.

  Treasure? The suitcase was full of paper, typewriter paper, six stacks of it filling the interior. The top page of each stack—and, I suspected, all the pages underneath—was completely covered with writing in ink in a tiny but neat hand. The ink was the same shade of dark blue as Wilkins’ right hand.

  I said, “What is it?”

  “My book,” he said reverently. He patted the nearest stack of papers. “This is it.”

  “Your book?” A sort of dread overtook me, and I said, “You mean, your autobiography?”

  “Oh, no! Not at all, no. I didn’t have that sort of career, not me, no. Quiet tour, quiet tour.” He gazed down fondly at his stacks of paper. “No, this isn’t fact at all. But based on fact, naturally, based on fact.”

  “A novel, then,” I said.

  “In a way, in a certain way. But the history is accurate.” He squinted at me as though to demonstrate how accurate he’d been, and said, “To the finest detail. Facts almost impossible to find, all in here, all accurate. Studied the era, got it all down.”

  Still groping in the dark, I said, “It’s a historical novel.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said. Kneeling there beside his suitcase full of paper, he leaned toward me, braced one hand on his manuscript, and whispered, “It’s a retelling of the campaigns of Julius Caesar, with the addition of aircraft.”

  I said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “I call it,” he said, “Veni, Vidi, Vici Through Air Power. Pretty good, eh?”

  “Pretty good,” I said faintly.

  He peered at me shrewdly, squinting only one eye. “You don’t see it yet,” he said. “You think the notion’s a little loony.”

  “Well, it’s just new,” I said. “I’m not used to it yet.”

  “Of course it’s new! That’s half the point. What makes it to the big time, ever ask yourself?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Originals! It isn’t the imitations that get on the bestseller list, it’s the new ideas, the original thoughts. Like this!”

  He thumped his manuscript for emphasis and we both looked with surprise at the sound of the thud. I said, “Well, it does sound original.”

  “Naturally it’s original!” Now he was warmed to his task; crouched forward, hands gesturing, he explained it all to me. “I’ve kept the historical facts, kept them all. The names of the barbarian tribes, strength of armies, the actual battles, kept everything. All I’ve added is air power. Through a fluke of fate the Romans have aircraft, at about World War I level. So we see the sort of difference air power makes by putting it in a historical setting where it wasn’t there.”

  I said, “You mean, how it changes history and all?”

  “Well, it doesn’t change history that much,” he said. “After all, Caesar won almost all the battles he was in anyway. So not much is different afterwards. But the battles are different. And the psychology of the commanders is different. I’ve got it all down here, all down here. Julius, now, Julius Caesar himself, he’s really something. Quite a character, quite a character. Wait till you read it.”

  “You want me to read it?” But that didn’t sound right, so I immediately said, “I’ll be glad to read it. I’d like very much to read it.”

  “It’s an exciting idea, that’s why,” he told me. “You look at it right off the bat, you say to yourself, that’s loony. Loony idea. But then it gets to you, you see how it has to be. Rickety little airplanes coming over the hills into Gaul, dropping spears and rocks—”

  “They don’t have guns?”

  “Of course not. Gunpowder wasn’t invented till a long time after that, long time. What I’m keeping here, I’m keeping accuracy. Aircraft is all they’ve got.”

  “But,” I said, “if they have airplanes, that means they have the internal combustion engine. And gasoline. And refined oils. And if they’ve got all that, they’d just about have to have everything else, all the things we’ve got right now. Automobiles. Elevators. And bombs, too, maybe even atomic bombs.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said, smiling, sure of himself, and he patted his manuscript again. “It’s all in here, all worked out in here.”

  I said, “Have you got a publisher?”

  “Publisher!” Sudden rage flushed his face dark red, and his hands closed into fists. “Blind!” he shouted. “Every last one of them! Either they want to steal a man’s work, or they don’t see the potential. Potential, that’s the word, and they don’t see it. Stick with the tried and true, that’s all they know. A man comes along with something really new, really different, really exciting, they don’t know what to do with it.”

  “They’ve been rejecting it?”

  “Went to one fellow,” he said more quietly. “Said he’d publish it. Some sort of cooperation thing, I pay the expenses, printing costs and all that, he publishes it and sends the copies around to the bookstores. I don’t know, I didn’t think that was how they worked it, but he says so. Showed me a lot of books he published that way. Looked good, some of them, nice job, bright colors on the front, good paper, nice printing. Never heard of the books, though. That worries me. Of course, I’m not a reader, not that much, not outside my specialty. You, now, you probably heard of all of them. Some, anyway.”

  “I don’t do much reading myself,” I said. “Contemporary reading. Most of my reading is research.”

  “Like myself,” he said happily. “Two of a kind, we are.” He smiled at me, then smiled at his manuscript. “Done now,” he said.

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Fellow said all the big names started out that way,” he said, gazing off into the middle distance. “Publishing their own books, going in with fellows like him. D. H. Lawrence, he says. James Joyce. All sorts of big names.”

  “It could be,” I said. “I really don’t know that much about literary history.”

  “Naturally it costs a few thousand dollars,” he said. “And then more after that, for the publicity. You don’t get anywhere in this world today without publicity, believe you me. Got my own ideas for publicizing this book. Ad copy to knock your eye out, put it right in the New York Times. Papers all over the country. Get the message across to the reading public.”

  “That sounds expensive,” I said, feeling tremors of a premonition.

  “Takes money to make money,” he said. “But think of the profits. Book sales, that’s only the beginning. Foreign publishers. Movies, there’s bound to be a movie in this. Got a suggested cast list here, Jack Lemmon for the young Julius Caesar, Barbara Nichols—got it right …” He began rooting around among the stacks of manuscript, without success, until he said, “Oh, here’s this. Cover. Rough idea.”

  He held toward me a sheet of paper containing a drawing of sorts, also done in the inevitable dark-blue ink. Two lines of lettering across the top, done shakily in a style reminiscent of the Superman logo, read:

  VENI, VIDI, VICI

  THROUGH AIR POWER

  “That’s just a rough sketch,” Wilkins told me unnecessarily. “I’m no artist. Have to hire someone to do it right.”

  He s
eemed to know his limitations; anyway, he was right about not being an artist. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the drawing was supposed to be. It contained any number of lines, some straight and some curved, some long and some short, most crossing several others, but what they were supposed to represent I couldn’t begin to guess. Could this possibly be a rickety biplane coming over the hills into Gaul? There was no way to tell. I very nearly turned the sheet upside down, to see if it made any more sense that way, but stopped myself in time, knowing it would surely insult Wilkins, who would think I’d done it deliberately to make fun of his drawing ability.

  I said, “I don’t seem to be able to—this doesn’t—”

  “It’s Caesar and his staff,” Wilkins explained, “standing beside one of the airplanes.” He was still kneeling there, beside his suitcase, and now he clumped over to me on his knees and began pointing at various scrawls on the sheet, saying, “There’s the plane,” and, “There’s Julius,” and, “There’s one of the loyal Goth commanders.”

  There was nothing to do but nod and say, “Yes, of course. Very nice.” Which is what I did.

  When we were done looking at the drawing, Wilkins took it back, clumped over to his suitcase again, and returned it to its spot somewhere in the middle of the manuscript. Doing so, not looking at me, he said, “What I need now, naturally, is financing. Split the profits fifty-fifty with the right man. Kindred spirit, money to invest. Fellow at the publishing house does the printing, distributing, simply for cash, no percentage of profits. I do the book, ad copy, all publicity, appearances Tonight Show, et cetera, take fifty per cent. Third fellow finances, gets it started, sits back, gets fifty per cent.”

  I was beginning to feel very nervous. Wilkins was by no means a con man, he wasn’t trying here to cheat me out of any money, but it was by now patently obvious he wanted me to invest in the publication of his novel, and I had no idea how I could possibly refuse him. What could I say? Any refusal at all would be an aspersion on the novel, and that would be insulting.

  Actually I liked Wilkins, liked his ink-stained appearance, his offbeat way of speaking, his neat and mouselike air of self-containment. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, didn’t want us avoiding each other’s eyes during chance meetings by the mailbox.

  Besides, what did I know about publishing, or novels? Though it did seem unlikely that Wilkins had actually written a best seller, think how many best sellers there have been that must have looked at least as unlikely beforehand. But the right people got behind them and pushed, the time was right, something was right, and there you are. And with publicity, a strong well-financed ad campaign, Wilkins just might have something after all.

  But I had to be sensible about it. After all, I had money now, a great deal of money, and if I was ever going to learn to be alert about money, this was the time. It was true that Wilkins wasn’t a con man, but that didn’t necessarily mean his novel wasn’t a gold brick.

  The thing for me to do, before even considering an investment, was talk to this publisher he had in mind, see what the man said, what he thought the prospects were. Always go to a specialist in the field, that’s the rule.

  I said, “Have you signed any contract with this publisher yet?”

  “Well, it can’t be done,” he said, “without the guarantee of cash. Chap has his own expenses, after all, he can’t just go around signing contracts with every crackpot walks into the office. A man has to show he’s serious about it, has to put the money on the line.”

  “You’re supposed to see him again, is that it?”

  “We left it open,” Wilkins said eagerly. “I’m to call if I get a fellow to go in with me.”

  “I suppose the thing to do—” I started, and there came a sudden loud knocking at the door. “One minute,” I said to Wilkins, and went over and opened the door.

  I’d completely forgotten about Gertie Divine, but in she came now with two sacks of groceries, just as I’d anticipated. “You owe me three bucks,” she said, and came on into the living room, and looked with some surprise at Wilkins, kneeling there on the floor beside the open suitcase. “What’s this?” she asked. “A prayer meeting?”

  “My neighbor, Mr. Wilkins,” I said. “Mr. Wilkins, this is, uh, Miss Divine. She was a friend of my uncle.”

  Still holding the sacks of groceries, she gazed down at Wilkins and said, “What’s that you got there, Pop, the minutes of the last meeting?”

  Wilkins abruptly shut the lid of the suitcase and said to me, “Can she be trusted?”

  Gertie met his suspicion with an equal dose of her own.

  Turning around, peering at me from between the grocery bags, she said, “What’s this geezer got in mind, Fred?”

  Wilkins answered her, saying frostily, “Mr. Fitch and I are in partnership. It’s a confidential matter at the moment.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  I said, “Mr. Wilkins has written a novel—”

  “And he wants it published,” she finished. “And you’re supposed to spring the geetus to some vanity house.” I blinked. “Vanity house?”

  “When you write a stinking book and nobody wants it,” she said, “you go to a vanity house and they soak you for whatever you got. I had a girl friend once, she did this exposé, The Real True Life of a Stripper, called The Shame of the Ecdysiast. Cost her sixty-five hundred bucks to get the thing published, sold eight hundred copies, got one stinking review. And they hated it.”

  Frozen-voiced and frozen-faced, Wilkins said, “The gentleman I have been in contact with happens to be president of a respectable old-line firm, they publish a full line of—”

  “Crap.” She looked at me, made a motion of her head toward Wilkins, and said, “Throw the old bum out.”

  “Now, see here,” said Wilkins, getting creakily up from his knees.

  “Never mind,” Gertie told me. “Just hold these.” She dumped the two sacks in my arms, turned around, grasped Wilkins by the arm, and walked him briskly to the door. As he went by me I saw him looking absolutely blank with astonishment, an astonishment that kept him speechless until he was already out in the hallway, where he managed to wail, “My manuscript!”

  “Coming up,” Gertie told him. Back she came, gathered up the suitcase as though it were a six-pack of beer, carried it to the hallway, and heaved it out the door. I seemed to hear a repeated and receding series of thumps, as though something heavy were falling down stairs. I seemed also to hear a fluttering sound, as though from the beating of many tiny wings. I know I heard, before Gertie slammed the door, Wilkins give vent to a cry of despair.

  I stood there knowing I should do something about this, stop Gertie, help Wilkins, assert myself, but all I did was stand there. And it wasn’t simply cowardice, though that was a part of it. It was also relief, the knowledge that the decision about Wilkins’ novel had been taken out of my hands. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to say no to Wilkins, though in the back of my mind I had known all along I should say no to him, and it was with great relief and guilty pleasure that I permitted Gertie to wrest the decision out of my hands.

  Gertie came back into the living room, brushing her hands and looking pleased with herself. She looked at me, stopped, put her hands on her hips, and said, “What are you doing, standing there? Put the goods away.”

  I said, plaintively, “You won’t tear down my living-room curtains, will you?”

  “Why the hell should I do something like that?”

  “God alone knows,” I said, and went off to the kitchen to put the groceries away.

  7

  WHAT with one thing and another I’d completely forgotten Reilly’s having told me about the visitors I would be getting from Homicide, so when someone knocked at my door at four o’clock my first impulse—since I believed it was probably Wilkins with a shotgun—was to ignore it.

  Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—my impulses no longer mattered around this place. As I sat there in the living room, trying to assemble th
e jigsaw puzzle of my mind, Gertie came striding through from the kitchen, carrying a sharp knife speckled with celery in her right hand, and opened the door before I could think of how to stop her.

  God knows what the detectives thought, having the door opened to them by a woman with a knife in her hand. But they recognized her, so I suppose that cut short their shock. In any case, I heard a masculine voice say, “Well, if it isn’t Gertie. You part of the inheritance, honey?”

  “That’s just what I am, Steve,” she said. “You boys here on business?”

  “Official is as official does,” said the voice known as Steve.

  “Then come on in,” said Gertie, and stepped back to allow into my home two men who looked almost exactly like the phony cop who’d worked the counterfeit con on me this morning.

  Gertie said to me, “Here’s Steve and Ralph, a couple of dicks.” Motioning at me, she told them, “That’s Fred Fitch, Matt’s nephew. I suppose he’s the one you want to see.”

  “You’re the one I want to see, Gertie,” said Steve, as roguish as a bulldozer, “but Fred here is the one I want to talk to.”

  “I got dinner on,” she said. “You boys will excuse me.”

  “For almost anything, Gertie,” said Steve, laying his gallantry on with a trowel.

  She gave him an arch grin and walked out, and Steve turned to me, his manner suddenly becoming Prussian. He said, “You are Fredric Fitch?”

  “That’s right,” I said. I got to my feet and said, “Would you like to sit down?”

  They promptly sat down, the both of them, and then I sat down again and began to feel very foolish. I said, “Uh, Jack Reilly told me you’d be coming to see me.”

  “We got a report,” Steve told me. “As we understand it, you didn’t know about this bequest you got until today, is that it?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Well, no, not exactly. I heard about it yesterday, but I didn’t believe it until today.”

  “That’s kind of a shame,” Steve said, straight-faced. “Knocks you out of being our number one suspect.”