The Bookmakers (3 page)

“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 put 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.

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 discovered 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.

“Sorry, I got caught up in some last-minute crap,” Wolfowitz said with an apologetic smile as he slid into a seat across from Russo. “The Secretary of State called. This is between us, okay?”

Russo nodded gravely. At lunch, Wolfowitz never failed to drop names or pick up the check. It was, as far as Tommy was concerned, good physics.

“He’s getting ready to resign—apparantly he’s pissed off about Bosnia or something—but he wants to get a book deal first.”

“Very statesmanlike,” said Russo. “Just out of curiosity, what are you paying him?”

“Too much,” said Wolfowitz sourly. Actually he was delighted by the Secretary’s book proposal, which was full of nasty gossip about the President, the First Lady and assorted world leaders.
He was even happier about his acquisition of a retired secret service agent’s memoirs—he was planning to reveal that the Secretary had engaged in oral sex with a Latin American ambassador at an OAS conference. The books would promote each other nicely. “Speaking of paying too much, let’s eat.” Wolfowitz waved over a waiter and, without consulting Tommy, ordered two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of lunch.

“They must love you in this place,” said Russo.

“Spending money on you is good business. I want to get this Kleinhouse thing done. Ravitsky says you’re asking a million and a half.”

“It’s a fair price,” said Russo. “The guy’s hot. You cleaned up on his last novel and he knows it. Besides, we’d be tying up three books here, not just one.”

“Oh, so that’s what a trilogy means,” said Wolfowitz with a wintry smile. “I’ll pay nine hundred thousand. That’s plenty.”

Russo shook his head. “He won’t go for it, no way. Honest to God, I come back to him with that he’ll switch agents.”

“Well, what’ll it take? Don’t fool around, just give me the number.”

“I could swing it for one point two, I think.”

“Okay, but I’ll tell you frankly, the only reason I’m going that high is because Floutie wants it. Personally, I can’t see a trilogy about the Spanish-American War selling diddly-shit.”

“If it’s Floutie’s project, let’s make it one and a half,” said Russo. “What the hell, it’s his money.”

Wolfowitz shook his head. “His father-in-law’s money. And my reputation. One point two.”

“Your reputation, my commission,” said Tommy. “The difference between 10 percent of one point five and one point two is—”

“Thirty,” said Wolfowitz. He loved doing business with Tommy Russo. Most agents were willing to bend a little to stay on his good side, but Tommy was ready to flat out break the law.
Wolfowitz attributed Russo’s flexibility to his years in the priesthood; he was a man who knew the difference between a mortal sin and simple larceny. “I’ll make sure you get it,” he said.