The Bookmakers

by Zev Chafets

  “Thanks. I’ll tell Norman you’re a fan, next time I bump into him.”

  “Yeah, do that,” he said. They sat in silence again and then Packer said, “You gonna tell me what brings you back to town?”

  “Business,” said Mack. “I’m writing a book set here.”

  “In Oriole? Shakespeare couldn’t write a book about this shit-hole.”

  “I don’t know,” said Mack. “We had some memorable times.”

  “Kid stuff,” said Packer. “Small-time fun and games.”

  “You trying to tell me you sit around the house these days watching the tube? The great Buddy Packer grounded?”

  “Well, I get out every once in a while,” said Packer, flattered by Mack’s image of him. “I still go on an occasional fo-ray.”

  “Next time, give me a call. This book I’m working on could use a few good Buddy Packer stories.”

  “Okay,” said Packer. “Since you brought up favors, here’s what I was thinking. How about a story on Irish Willie for Sports Illustrated?”

  “What?”

  “Aw shit, was I speaking in Latin again? I gotta quit that. I’ll say it in English this time—how about writing up a story on Irish Willie Torres?”

  “What kind of story?”

  “Fuck if I know, you’re the writer, I see your stuff in there from time to time. Something that’ll help him get a title shot, make me some dough.”

  “Has he ever beaten anybody? Is he ranked?”

  “If he was ranked I wouldn’t need you, would I? It wouldn’t be a favor.”

  “I’d like to help, but—”

  “But,” said Packer, dragging on his cigarette and looking at Mack through narrowed eyes. “But.”

  “Hey, it’s not my magazine. Besides, I’ve got a book to work on. I didn’t come out here to write articles.”

  “Yeah, well, call me in another twenty years,” said Packer, raising a bony hand for the check. “Maybe you won’t be so busy.”

  “Come on, man, I didn’t mean it like that. Look, if it’s that important to you, I’ll get in touch with an editor I know, see if I can pitch him something. Maybe we can hang a story on fighters with strange names or something. But I can’t promise.”

  “I don’t accept promises anyway,” said Packer, taking the check from the waiter and handing it directly to Mack. “I don’t need some cutesy-pooh bullshit about nicknames, I need a piece says that Irish Willie deserves a shot at the title. He gets it, I’ll give you ten thousand bucks. How’s that?”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Mack. He had no intention of calling Sports Illustrated, but he didn’t want to argue with Packer. He needed him too much for that.

  It was just after eleven when they left Stanley’s. On the way out to the car Mack turned to Packer. “You ever hear anything about Linda? Where she is, what she’s doing?”

  “What Linda?” asked Packer, although he knew exactly who Mack meant.

  “Linda Birney.”

  “Linda Birney? Don’t tell me you still got a thing for that stuck-up bitch.”

  “I haven’t seen her in years,” said Mack. “I was just wondering where she might be, that’s all.”

  “Can’t help you,” said Packer. Just like you can’t help me with twenty-five thousand, he thought to himself. He saw the disappointed look on Mack’s face and made a mental note that, big-time author or not, Mack Green was still somebody he could lie to.

  At eleven, Joyce went up to bed. McClain locked the front door, leaving the porch light on for Mack, and joined her. By 11:15 Joyce was asleep. At 11:20 McClain, dressed in pyjamas decorated with little brown bears, climbed gingerly out of bed and padded barefoot down the hall to Mack’s empty room.

  It took approximately forty seconds to jimmy the lock on the desk drawer where Mack kept his manuscript. McClain looked at the title page, The Diary of a Dying Man, felt a flutter in his large belly and began to read.

  I decided to kill myself on my forty-fifth birthday. I could be cute and say that’s the day I realized I was in the final stages of an incurable disease called life, but that’s not what happened. The fact that I decided to pull the plug on my birthday was a coincidence, like the fact that it happens to be the anniversary of the Berlin airlift. Probably a few famous people were born that day as well, but I’ve never checked. I don’t even know my sign, to tell you the truth; up until now, I’ve never believed in luck and now that I’m getting ready to die, I don’t really need any.

  No, what made me decide to do myself in (in what, I wonder; there’s a lot of suicide terminology that doesn’t make much sense) was a chance encounter on Columbus Avenue with a thief named Shit. Actually I think that’s just his professional name.

  McClain stood frozen, the manuscript in his hand, remembering Mack’s story about his mugging in New York. “Holy Mother of God,” he breathed to himself and turned the pages. When he saw his name he began reading again:

  —Big John’s the kind of guy I always wanted for a father when I was a kid. My dad was a lawyer, the type people called “dependable,” but he wasn’t much fun. I remember going up to his office as a kid, him looking around frantically for some way to amuse a ten-year-old. He wound up sending me to the dimestore with his secretary, Andrea. I’ve often wondered if he was banging her, but he died before I got a chance to have that kind of conversation with him. If there ever would have been such a time.

  Big John wouldn’t have had a problem entertaining a kid. He would have tossed me in his squad car and said, “Okay, hotshot, today your old man’s going to take you out on the mean streets and show you how to maintain law and order.” At least that’s the way I picture it—

  McClain nodded assent and read on for about twenty minutes. Then he carefully replaced the manuscript, relocked the drawer and went back to his bedroom. “Joyce,” he said, shaking his wife’s shoulder gently. “Joyce, wake up.”

  “What’s the matter, baby?” she asked. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m all right,” said McClain. “It’s Mack. He’s in worse trouble than I thought.”

  “What happened?” asked Joyce, her eyes widening with concern.

  “It’s not what’s happened, it’s what’s going to happen.”

  “What do you mean, John? Stop talking in riddles.”

  “His book is a suicide diary.”

  “A what?”

  “You heard me,” said McClain. “He didn’t come to Oriole to write a novel. He came home to kill himself.”

  Fourteen

  On the flight back from Detroit, Wolfowitz eased off his loafers, sipped a Bloody Mary and took his time rereading the pages of Diary of a Dying Man. He was impressed. The concept was brilliant and the writing was vintage Mack—funny, touching and morbid. He wasn’t surprised that a dolt like McClain had mistaken it for the real thing.

  Thank God for McClain. Until his call, Wolfowitz had no idea where Mack was or what he was up to. Then, yesterday, Claire had buzzed him and said, “There’s a man on the line who says he’s a friend of Mack Green’s and it’s urgent that he talk to you—”

  Wolfowitz signaled the stewardess for another Bloody Mary and idly hefted the purloined chapters of Mack’s novel. He could see that the McClains were another Mack Green pickup, sidekicks like Tommy Russo, like himself, people for Mack to charm, to use and eventually to betray. This time, though, thanks to John McClain, it wasn’t going to work out that way.

  They had met that morning in the coffee shop of the Pontchartrain Hotel in downtown Detroit. “Thanks for flying out here on such short notice,” McClain said.

  “Mack’s more than an author to me,” said Wolfowitz. “He’s a friend.”

  “I know. He’s told me a lot about you.”

  “Some of it good I hope,” said Wolfowitz, the hick expression coming easily to him; back in upstate New York, he had known a lot of dummies like McClain.

  “I brought a copy of the diary,” said the big ex-cop. He handed it to Wolfowitz ginge
rly, as if he were afraid the words might spill off the page onto the floor.

  Wolfowitz raced through the first entries, making sure to furrow his brow and occasionally grunt with concern. “Thank God you called me,” he said finally. “It looks like Dr. Ephron was right.”

  “Who’s Dr. Ephron?”

  “Mack’s shrink. After you phoned yesterday I got in touch with him. Naturally he didn’t want to say much—”

  “Naturally,” said McClain. “Those guys never want to talk for free.”

  “But between the lines he let me know that he’s been expecting something like this. Apparently Mack’s been sounding suicidal for months. Ephron wants to see these”—he tapped the papers in front of him—“and whatever else Mack writes from now on. Can you get it?”

  “Long as he stays with us,” said McClain. “Breaking into my own desk is a snap.”

  “Excellent,” said Wolfowitz, smiling to convey admiration for the big man’s professional skills. “Send me copies say, once a week, and I’ll pass them on. That way Ephron can monitor Mack’s state of mind.”

  “What happens if he, well, decides to go through with it?”

  “Dr. Ephron said that Mack probably regards you as surrogate parents”—Wolfowitz shrugged to indicate his own inability to understand such abstruse psychiatric reasoning—“and that it isn’t likely he’ll do anything rash while he’s with you.”

  “You ask me, what Mack needs is a good woman,” said McClain. “He’s lonely. It comes through on every page. I was like that until I met Joyce. You married?”

  “Happily,” said Wolfowitz. “Very happily. I won’t be, though, if I miss my flight back to New York.” He made a rueful, you-know-how-wives-are face and scooped Mack’s pages into his briefcase. “Just keep sending me the pages and I’ll stay in touch.”

  “This Ephron, you’re sure he knows what he’s doing? I mean, some of these shrinks—”

  “Relax, John,” said Wolfowitz, taking his elbow to convey manly intimacy. “Ephron’s the best in his field. He won’t let things get out of hand. Trust me on this, okay?”

  “You know what they say about guys who say ‘trust me,’ ” McClain said. Wolfowitz looked at him sharply and McClain grinned. “Hey, just kidding,” he said, tapping the editor’s briefcase. “I wouldn’t be giving you this if I didn’t trust you. If there’s one thing I am, it’s a judge of character.”

  The pilot announced the plane’s descent into LaGuardia. Wolfowitz fastened his seatbelt and considered his next move. He took a small, leatherbound address book from his briefcase, checked under “H” and found what he was looking for: the phone number of Walter T. Horton.

  Six months ago, Walter T. had come to him begging for help. He was HIV positive, had no health insurance and was desperate for money. “I’d even be willing to ghostwrite,” he said.

  Wolfowitz had nothing for him then, but he did now. Walter T. Horton was going to write a suicide diary of his own. Like Mack’s, it would be the story of an author with a year to live who goes back to his hometown and moves into his old house. Its structure, plot, even some of its characters, would be strikingly similar to The Diary of a Dying Man. Only Horton’s novel, published by a small house in which Wolfowitz was a very silent partner, would be on sale before Mack Green’s diary was even due.

  Naturally, Horton’s extraordinary work, given force and drama by his personal circumstances, would get a lot of publicity. Wolfowitz would discover, to his horror, that Green had stolen the idea for The Diary of a Dying Man from another author—one suffering from AIDS, no less. Gothic would be forced to sue, the news would, of course, leak out—and Mack Green’s career would be over; no publisher in America would ever touch one of his books again. As a bonus, the scandal would generate huge sales for Horton’s novel.

  Maybe, after all that, Mack might really commit suicide—there was a morbid core to The Diary of a Dying Man that encouraged Wolfowitz to hope. Or maybe he’d just spend the rest of his life as a drunken, dazed pariah. Either way, Dr. Ephron wouldn’t be much help because there was no Dr. Ephron. Wolfowitz smiled, relishing the irony of inventing a fictional character to bring about the destruction of Mack Green. Maybe I should become an author myself, he thought, as the plane touched down on the runway.

  Fifteen

  Six weeks before Christmas, Herman Reggie made his annual trip to California. He stayed, as usual, with his cousin Jeff Reggie and his family in Cheviot Hills. During the day he played uncle, taking his two young nieces shopping, to the movies or out to Venice to watch the roller skaters. Evenings he spent with Jeff and his wife, Rosie, often in the company of other movie executives and producers. The only time Herman Reggie was alone was when he was asleep in the guest bedroom, and even then he made sure to keep the door open so that the sound of his snoring would be audible throughout the house.

  Herman’s California routine was calculated to give the impression of a bachelor enjoying some time with relatives. In fact, he came to LA for an alibi. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were always a rough time in his business. People were more reluctant than usual to part with their money, especially when it was supposed to go for Johnny’s new bike or Susie’s new dollhouse. But a debt was a debt, and Herman Reggie wasn’t Santa Claus. An unusual amount of coercion was needed during the holiday season, and sometimes accidents happened. It was a good time to be three thousand miles away from New York, surrounded by respectable citizens who could vouch for his whereabouts.

  Still, Herman genuinely enjoyed the time he spent with his relatives. The little girls were well-behaved and Jeff and Rosie were old friends as well as family; they had all grown up together in the same Jersey neighborhood. For a while, years back, Herman and Rosie had been the couple, not Rosie and Jeff. Herman didn’t hold it against her that she had chosen his cousin. Rosie was a smart handicapper, which he respected. Her choice had set her up for life in a big house with a pool and lemon trees in the yard, his-and-hers Porsches and a live-in couple from El Salvador to do the dirty work.

  All this luxury had been provided by Jeff Reggie. At fifty-one he was two years younger than Herman, although the two cousins, with their bald, oval heads, pinched features and soft, pear-shaped bodies, looked enough alike to be brothers. Jeff was a successful and well-regarded producer of schlock movies—kick-boxing epics, made-for-TV tearjerkers about kids with fatal diseases, cheap sci-fi and the like—and he also did a flourishing side business in porno. He didn’t need the money from the skin flicks, but he had never prepared himself for a life of virtue, and his unexpected respectability left him feeling somehow unfulfilled.

  Herman understood this—his cousin was, after all, a Reggie—and it served as the basis for collaboration. From time to time, Jeff introduced Herman to high-rolling Hollywood customers. In return, Herman provided New York outlets for some of his cousin’s raunchier porno movies. The deals weren’t favors—each Reggie scrupulously took his percentage of the action—but there was a sense of family solidarity and trust to the transactions that Herman appreciated.

  “I want your opinion about a property I own,” he said to Jeff one evening as they sat, dressed in baggy wet bathing suits, sipping white-wine spritzers and snorting lines of coke by the side of the piano-shaped pool. “It’s a book. I wonder if it’s worth anything.”

  “A book? Since when do you need my advice about making book?”

  “No, a real book, a novel. By an author named Mack Green. Ever heard of him?”

  Jeff tilted his head and shut his eyes, trying to remember the name. “Yeah, Paramount bought a baseball story by him a while back,” he said. “Nothing ever came of it as I recall. What do you mean, you own his book?”

  “Not all of it, 10 percent. His agent owed me some money and I took his cut instead.”

  “No kidding? Who’s the agent?”

  “Fella by the name of Russo, in New York.”

  “Tommy Russo?”

  “That’s right, Tommy Russo. You know
him?”

  “Sure I know him. In this business, everybody knows everybody. You gotta be careful with this guy, Herm. He could be connected. Maf.”

  “Maf,” scoffed Reggie. “The man’s afraid of midgets.”

  Jeff looked at his cousin closely but said nothing—he had long ago stopped trying to understand Herman’s enigmatic remarks.

  “Anyway, I was wondering if maybe this book might not make a good movie,” Herman continued. “And if so, how I go about selling it.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “I’ll tell you the story,” said Reggie. “See what you think.” Slowly he recounted the plot as Russo had explained it to him in New York.

  “Not bad,” said Jeff. “It’s what they call high concept. Guy decides to kill himself, one year to live, that’s good. And author movies are hot these days. How’s the book?”

  “Green’s still working on it,” said Herman. “Russo says he’s out in his hometown in Michigan.”

  “Nice touch,” said Jeff. “Hero goes back to his hometown. Maybe he decides not to kill himself after all, the thing’s got a happy ending. Happy endings are best.”

  “Well, they can change it around for the movies, no matter how he writes it,” said Herman. “That’s what they do, right?”

  Jeff nodded. “Make it more commercial, yeah.”

  “So? What can I get for it?”

  “Right now? Nothing. If it’s a good story, maybe ten, twenty grand on an option. Of course a best-selling novel goes for seven figures. But that’s a longshot.”

  “You’re right there,” said Herman. “Green’s track record lately has been pisspoor.”

  The two men sat in silence for a while. Then Herman Reggie said, softly, “But what if he really did it?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, supposing this suicide diary turned out to be real? Supposing he wrote it and then went ahead and killed himself?”

  “Why would he do that?”