by Zev Chafets
Mack consulted his watch and ordered a Bloody Mary. “I want to ask you a question,” he said when Otto set the drink in front of him. “What would you do if you had a million dollars and one year to live?”
Otto wiped a spot off the bar and smiled. “Somebody gives me a million? I buy two Mercedes, one for me and one for Betty—a hundred thousand bucks. A house on the beach in Fort Lauderdale—half a mil. Hundred thousand in the bank for each of the two kids. And I’d blow the other two hundred on a trip around the world. That makes an even million.”
“You’ve got it all planned.”
“It’s not exactly a rare question in the bartender business,” said Otto. “You serve booze, you get a lot of what-ifs.”
“Yeah,” agreed Mack. “I guess. You must get sick of it.”
“Nah, goes with the job,” said Otto. “At least it’s better than the all-time white team.”
“What?”
“You know, who’s the greatest white basketball team in history. That’s the one gets me. I mean, I like basketball and all, but who gives a shit?”
“Right,” said Mack. He thought for a moment. “I guess you’d have to say Bird, Walton, McHale, Cousy and West.”
“Stockton. They all say Stockton instead of Cousy. Half the kids come in here these days, they never even heard of Cousy.”
Mack shook his head. “Cousy was a better outside shooter—” The door opened and Mack saw the squat, impeccably tailored reflection of Tommy Russo in the mirror above the bar. Otto scowled, not trying to hide his disapproval of the agent. “To be continued,” Mack said to the bartender, sliding off his stool. “Right now I’ve got to tell a priest about a miracle.”
Tommy Russo’s first thought was that the Flying Tiger hadn’t changed. The jukebox still played old-fashioned jigaboo music, the air stank of grease and stale beer and Otto gave him his usual Mick fish-eye from behind the bar. Mack looked the same too, dressed as always in a pair of faded jeans and a flannel shirt. Over the years Tommy often wondered how he lived the way he did, suffered so many disappointments and still looked so young. Protestant genes, he decided.
Russo himself had changed considerably. He had added forty pounds to his five-foot, seven-inch frame, weight that even his two-thousand-dollar suits couldn’t disguise. His thick black eyebrows had grown together, giving him the look of a well-groomed, roly-poly ape. And 10 percent of anything no longer seemed like a lot of money to him. He had become one of New York’s most successful agents—and, because of his passion for gambling, one of the least solvent.
Most of the ex-priests Tommy knew had gone sex-crazy after leaving their calling, but he was no more interested in women now than he had been at St. Fred’s. He had never married, and visited expensive prostitutes when the need arose. Luxury and high-rolling excited Tommy Russo—the thing that turned him on about sex was knowing that he was paying five hundred bucks an orgasm.
On the other hand he was willing to admit that gambling had become a real addiction. Wagering large sums of money gave him the kind of thrill that no woman ever could. Unfortunately, he had been on a bad run lately. The eighteen grand he owed Herman Reggie was just one of his debts; he was into bookies all over the country for more than a hundred thousand bucks. He had no doubt that he could eventually pay up, and most of his creditors were willing to wait. Herman Reggie was different, though, and Tommy needed to do something about him quick.
“Father Tomas,” said Mack, taking Russo’s hand and bowing in mock reverence. He had never lost the habit of treating Tommy with the proprietary superiority of an author for one of his characters. At one time this had annoyed Russo, but as Mack’s career slipped, he had forgiven him. The arrogance was good-natured and, Tommy thought, even a little brave, like a down-at-the-heels aristocrat sporting a fresh carnation in the lapel of a frayed suit. Russo felt a genuine affection for Mack, mixed with gratitude, pity and a nagging sense of guilt. Of course it wasn’t Tommy’s fault that Mack’s books no longer sold; there was no way he could have halted his client’s long slide down. At least that was what he told himself, and usually he could make himself believe it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Tommy said. “The cab ran into a demonstration on Broadway. Reverend Abijamin and some of his homeboys are picketing the theater district and it tied up traffic for a mile.”
“No enjoyment without employment!” Russo intoned. “These rhyming shakedown preachers make me want to puke.”
“Spoken like a true man of the cloth,” said Mack. “Sit down, Tommy, have a drink. I want you relaxed when you hear my idea.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m relaxed,” Russo said as he took a seat at a table near the window.
“You want to hear some music?” Mack asked, gesturing toward the jukebox. “Little Hank Ballard and the Midnighters maybe?”
“Midnighters my ass, this is the twentieth century. Motown’s dead, in case you didn’t know.”
“He wasn’t Motown,” said Mack. “He was from Detroit, but he wasn’t a Motown artist. He came a little earlier, around the time of Little Willie John and—”
“Come on, Mack, I’m not in the mood for rock-and-roll 101 today. What’s on your mind?”
“Okay, here goes. Last night I was walking home about three, all alone, and guess what happened?”
“You got mugged,” said Russo.
“How’d you know that?”
“Are you kidding? What else could have happened at three in the morning in this city?”
“Yeah, well, anyway, this kid jumps out of a doorway and pulls a gun on me—”
“What kind of kid?”
“How the hell do I know? I never saw him before,” said Mack. “Probably a crackhead.”
“I meant what color,” said Russo. “What color kid?”
“He was black,” said Mack, “but that’s not the important—”
“Yeah, right,” said Tommy with sour irony.
“Anyway, the kid says, ‘Give me your wallet or I’ll shoot,’ something like that. At which point, what do you think I did?”
“Gave him the wallet,” said Russo. “What’s the point here?”
“Like hell I did,” Mack said triumphantly. “I grabbed the gun, knocked him on his ass and sent him home.”
“What are you, a fucking moron? You got a death wish or something?”
“That’s just it—for one split second I did,” said Mack. “I was looking down the barrel of the gun and all I was was curious what would it feel like if he pulled the trigger. In a way I even wanted him to. You ever have a feeling like that?”
“Hell no,” said Russo.
“Anyway, there I am, standing in the street with the kid’s gun in my hand and all of a sudden a whole novel popped right into my head.”
“It popped into your head,” echoed Tommy.
“Right. It begins when this guy, a middle-aged writer, gets mugged and he suddenly realizes he doesn’t give a shit if the guy shoots him or not. Only in his case it’s not just a momentary thing, it’s real. He’s burned out, beaten down and just generally tired of living. So he decides to keep a diary about his last year on earth, sell it to a publisher for a shitload of money and then, at the end of the year, actually kill himself.”
“Why would he need the money if he’s gonna kill himself?”
“Let’s say he needs it for his kids. Or maybe he just wants to blow it on a last fling. The motivation will come later. The point isn’t the money. Maybe he doesn’t even get any money. The thing is, he sells the idea to a publisher and sets out on an adventure that’s supposed to culminate in his suicide. What do you think so far?”
“It gives me the creeps,” said Russo.
“It’s supposed to. Everybody wonders what he’d do if he only had a year to live. And suicide books are big these days. It can’t miss, Tommy, I’m telling you.”
“So then what happens? What does the writer end up doing?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Mack. “What I want to do is pu
t myself in the guy’s place, really try to get into his mind, see what happens. Maybe he’ll go through with it, maybe not. My not knowing will give it freshness.”
Russo paused, staring into space. Then he said, “I don’t like this. I may not be a priest anymore but I’m still a Catholic and suicide’s a mortal sin.”
“Hey, Tomas, this is me, the Oriole Kid. I’m not going to kill myself, I’m talking about a novel. Fiction. As your buddy Reverend Abijamin would say, no simulation without stimulation.”
Tommy looked at his friend and wondered. Mack was reckless about the way he lived and he had suffered the kind of disappointments that would have tempted the average guy to reach for the gas pipe a long time ago. Maybe he was finally cracking up. “Going around thinking like somebody who might off himself, that’s playing with fire. A man shouldn’t dick around with fate like that,” he said slowly.
“Jesus.” Mack laughed. “You and your Sicilian superstitions. Just tell me, in your professional opinion, is that or is it not a fantastic project?”
“Yeah, it’s a good premise, but—”
“No buts. I’ve been waiting for a great idea for years and I’m not pissing it away. The only question is, are you going to sell it for me or do I have to find some other defrocked priest to pick my pocket?”
For a long moment Russo remained silent. Then he sighed. “Yeah, all right, write up a proposal and I’ll try to find you a publisher.”
“I want Stealth,” said Mack.
“Wolfowitz? I don’t think so,” said Tommy. Six years earlier, when Mack’s last novel, Light Years, had bombed, Arthur “Stealth” Wolfowitz, editor in chief of Gothic Books, had dropped his old pal Mack Green with a thud.
“I know we had bad luck the last couple times out, but he’s the only editor in town I trust to do this thing right,” said Mack. “Take less money if you have to, but get him to do it.”
“You trust him,” Tommy repeated in a flat voice.
“Nobody can market a book better than Stealth,” said Mack. “I know that from experience.”
“He didn’t do such a hot job on the last ones.”
“It wasn’t his fault, it was mine,” said Mack. “I didn’t have the right story. Now I do.” He reached across the table and put his hand on Russo’s stubby arm. “Please, Tommy, do this for me. Convince him.”
There was a note of desperation in Mack’s voice that Russo had never heard before. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll talk to him if you’re sure that’s what you want. Just remember one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Mack, signaling to Otto for menus.
“Going to Wolfowitz was your idea,” Tommy said.
Three
The editorial staff of Gothic Books was gathered around the long mahogany table in the boardroom when Arthur Wolfowitz arrived at precisely nine and called the meeting to order. It was his custom to meet with the editors every Monday morning to discuss new acquisitions. He enjoyed the sessions because they gave him an opportunity to display leadership, foster team spirit and appropriate the good ideas of his colleagues.
“Good morning, everybody,” he said crisply, rapping his Mont Blanc pen smartly on the polished table. Wolfowitz was a man of little emotion; in its place he had developed a repertoire of artificial body language to express what he did not feel. He pursed his lips to show surprise, slapped his palm on tabletops to simulate anger, furrowed his brow to convey concern. Tapping his pen on the table was meant to signify businesslike efficiency. “Let’s get started. John, what have you got?”
John Quinn, a pudgy young man trapped in a tight-vested three-piece suit, was the junior member of the staff, entrusted mostly with insignificant fiction. Wolfowitz had hired him because his father worked in the book review section of the Times.
Quinn cleared his throat and looked at the others. “I’ve been reading a terrific proposal by a new writer from Mississippi named Terry Harper,” he said. “It’s a definite one, three, five and six and probably an eight, too.”
The numbers were a Wolfowitz innovation, a code designed to prevent editors from getting too windy about the books they wanted to sign up. The editor in chief, who had little tolerance for idle literary chitchat, had concocted a numbered checklist of attributes that he encouraged his editors to use at all times. Automatically he interpreted Quinn’s figures: one meant the book was commercial, three that it had humor, five that it contained kinky sex, six that a similar book had been a bestseller in the past two years; and eight that it could be acquired cheaply.
“How much five does it have?” asked Wolfowitz.
“Big-time five. It’s about this far from hardcore,” said Quinn, holding his fat thumb and finger an inch apart. Wolfowitz noted approvingly that Quinn’s gesture was an imitation of his own body language. The editor in chief liked obsequious young subordinates.
“Fine. What’s the eight on this?” he asked.
“He’ll take twenty-five thousand,” said Quinn.
“Okay, knock him down to twenty and make the deal. Brad?”
Bradley Knox was a tall, reedy, professorial man in his late forties who had been brought to Gothic by publisher Douglas Floutie. Wolfowitz distrusted Knox’s ties to the boss and dealt with him gingerly.
“I’ve got the Smith book that we talked about on the phone the other day,” he said. “I think it’s very amusing. Lots of three.”
“Right,” said Wolfowitz, arranging his mouth into a collegial smile. “Why don’t you tell everyone what the gimmick is, they’ll get a kick out of it.” Like most of Knox’s projects, this one was a sure loser, which is why Wolfowitz was encouraging it. His plan was to wait until Knox’s track record got so bad that Floutie would be forced to get rid of him.
“It’s called The Big Book of Smiths,” said Knox with a waggish grin. “It’s a sort of humorous guide to everybody and everything with the name Smith. Some of the categories are quite clever, I think. For example, Word Smiths—Smiths who were writers, such as Adam. Or Tune Smiths, such as Bessie or Kate. There’s Black Smiths—”
“Like Willie Smith,” Wolfowitz said helpfully.
“Exactly. The list goes on and on. And there’s also a history of the Smith name and a Smith geography with little-known facts. For instance, did you know that Smith County, Kansas is the exact geographical center of the United States?” Wolfowitz shook his head in wonder as Bradley Knox bubbled on. “Well, you get the point. The idea, and I think it’s a sound one, is that there are eight million Smiths in America. If even one in ten buys the book, we stand to make a fortune. Not to mention people who might give it as a present.”
“The perfect gift for the Smith in your life,” said Wolfowitz.
“And then we could go on to other names,” said Knox, missing the mockery in Wolfowitz’s tone. “It could become a series: Jones, Johnson, Williams—”
“Crosby, Stills and Nash, Martin and Lewis, Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith—here we are right back to Smith again,” said Wolfowitz, spreading his arms, palms up, in theatrical admiration. “You’ve really got something here, Brad. I want you to handle it personally. Dorothy?”
Dorothy Ravitsky was a thin, nervous woman with a sharp tongue and a very good eye for commercial fiction. Wolfowitz, who was a CPA by training, relied on her professional judgment, although the sound of her intense, high-pitched voice never ceased to grate on him.
“We’re still trying to sign up the Kleinhouse trilogy,” she said. “He wants a bundle, though, especially now that Hollywood is buying his books.”
“How much?”
“A million, five.”
“Who’s the agent?”
“Tomas Russo.”
“Let me speak to him,” said Wolfowitz. “He’s tough but maybe I can talk him down.”
No one around the table doubted that he could. The editor in chief was a legendary deal-maker. Like all great negotiators, his success was based on a keen understanding of human nature. Early in his career he had disc
overed that most writers knew nothing about money and, amazingly, were proud of it—so proud, in fact, that they were willing to fork over 10 percent of their income to literary agents whose main job was to preserve the illusion that their clients were too artistic to deal with mere commerce.
This simple insight had led to another: agents, unlike writers, were in it for the money. And since even the most prolific writer rarely turned out more than a book a year, agents who wanted to prosper needed to sell many books by many authors. That, in turn, gave Wolfowitz leverage. It meant that he was negotiating with people who needed him more than they needed their own clients.
There were, of course, ethical agents who refused to sell out their authors, but Wolfowitz tried to avoid them. Idealists made him uncomfortable. He preferred the realists, men and women who knew where their real interests lay. Tommy Russo was among the most realistic. Wolfowitz made a note to phone him and then quickly went around the room, calling on each editor in turn. When the last one had spoken, he gathered up his notes, popped the cap back on the Mont Blanc and clapped his hands decisively. “Okay, meeting’s adjourned,” he said. “Let’s go make some money.”
As usual, the first thing Wolfowitz noticed when he returned to his spacious corner office was the framed wedding photo of Louise on the shelf behind his desk. Visitors often commented on her youthful beauty, but to Wolfowitz she was, after almost twenty years of marriage, even more lovely—and more maddeningly desirable—than she had been as a bride. He glanced quickly through the messages on his desk, picked up the phone and buzzed his secretary. “Claire, get hold of Tommy Russo, see if he can meet me for lunch at Antonelli’s at one.”
“Will do. By the way, Floutie called. He wants to see you today.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
“Nope. You want me to fix a time?”
“Nah, blow him off. I’m not in the mood for His Nibs today.”
When Tommy saw Wolfowitz enter Antonelli’s crowded dining room he breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had been waiting for fifteen tense minutes, aware of the fact that the restaurant, one of the most popular luncheon spots for the publishing crowd, was exactly the kind of place where Herman Reggie might look for him. Now, with Wolfowitz here, he felt safe and hopeful that the deal they were about to make would net him enough to get him out of trouble with the giant bookie and his midget sidekick.