The Bookmakers (6 page)

The Oriole Kid
hit the bestseller list in its first week, rose to number one and stayed there for four months. The day Mack’s picture appeared on the cover of
Time
, Douglas Floutie promoted Wolfowitz to senior editor and Harlan Fassbinder sent Mack and Artie each a crate of frozen chickens. To Wolfowitz’s he appended a handwritten note: “Goddamn,” it said, “I knew you were a rooster.”

A few weeks after the
Time
cover, an article on Artie “Wolfwitz” was published in
The Wall Street Journal
. It hailed him as “a new-breed editor who knows how to read a balance sheet as well as a manuscript.” It was the first time that Wolfowitz had ever seen his name in the newspaper and even the fact that it had been misspelled didn’t detract from his pleasure.

That night Mack arrived at the Tiger with a woman named Louise Frank. “I thought you two ought to get to know each other,” he said. “Louise is a writer, too.”

Wolfowitz tried to smile, but he felt as though his face was frozen. Louise Frank was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He stared at her and Mack, trying to figure out their relationship. With Mack it was never clear. He flirted with every good-looking woman he met, slept with most and refused to take any of
them seriously. He would go to great lengths to charm and seduce a woman, but he was completely unpossessive about his conquests. “There’s plenty to go around,” he often told Artie. “If you see someone you want, just help yourself.”

It was an offer that Wolfowitz had never accepted. He had a straitlaced, secretly romantic attitude toward sex and found the idea of swapping women like sweaters distasteful. Besides, he was sure that the kind of women attracted to Mack wouldn’t be interested in him. Artie had accepted this as a fact, without envy or resentment. Until Louise.

“I think Stealth’s in love,” said Mack, looking at the stunned expression on his friend’s face. Wolfowitz blushed deeply but said nothing; he didn’t trust his voice.

“Well, that was quick.” Louise laughed. “I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

From that night on, Artie Wolfowitz divided his energies and wiles between promoting Mack and pursuing Louise Frank. He tolerated her capricious independence and her infidelities, sent her exotic flowers and expensive jewelry, praised her writing and humbly obeyed her commands (a new wardrobe, a different haircut, replacing Artie with Arthur). He also bought a still-unfinished book of her short stories for fifteen thousand dollars. Luckily for Wolfowitz, Floutie was impressed with her Radcliffe prose and authorized the deal, but even if he hadn’t, Wolfowitz was prepared to pay the advance out of his own savings.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, they went to dinner at the Rainbow Room. After three cocktails, Wolfowitz reached into his pocket and with a trembling hand produced her birthday gift—a diamond engagement ring.

“If I take this, it means I have to marry you, doesn’t it?” she said lightly.

“Don’t tease me,” he said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“All right then,” she said, “here are my terms. I want a kid right away and a nanny to take care of him so I can go on writing.
And I don’t want you to have any fantasies about the little woman waiting for you to come home at night. That’s not me. If I marry you, I intend to have an independent career and an independent personal life. Understood?”

Wolfowitz nodded, so overwhelmed with emotion that he couldn’t speak; so overwhelmed, in fact, that for the first time in his life he failed to grasp exactly what he was being told.

A less love-struck, less cynical man would have wondered why a woman as beautiful and desirable as Louise Frank would agree to marry him. Wolfowitz attributed it to his growing professional importance, his persistence and Louise’s recent, almost obsessive desire for a child.

In this he was partly correct; Louise Frank was almost two months pregnant when she accepted his proposal. Of the possible fathers—a movie critic married to her cousin, a South American novelist named, she was pretty sure, Ramone, her tennis coach, her tennis coach’s friend, who had been visiting from Denver, and Artie—Wolfowitz was the only one who would conceivably marry her.

The ceremony was held at City Hall, with Mack acting as best man. Afterward they repaired to the Tiger for a raucous celebration hosted by Otto. Wolfowitz, drunk on champagne, played “Mind Over Matter” on the jukebox, draped his arm over Mack’s shoulder and pulled him close. “I love you, I just want you to know that,” he slurred. “I love Louise and I love you. You’re my family.” He leaned over and kissed Mack wetly on the cheek.

“Yeah, right.” Mack grinned, embarrassed by the uncharacteristic show of affection.

“No, I mean it, Mack, I really mean it. I love you. Honest to God, I really mean it. Do you believe me that I mean it?”

“Sure, I love you too, Stealth,” he said.

“Naw, you don’t love anybody,” said Wolfowitz with drunken insight. “Everybody loves you but you don’t love a goddamned soul.”

Not long after Wolfowitz’s marriage, Mack met Tomas Russo. Their first encounter took place in the confessional at St. Frederick’s, where Tommy was serving as junior priest and all-purpose workhorse under Francis X. Dorsey, the laziest pastor in New York. Tommy got all the parish scut work, but the job he hated most was hearing confessions. It infuriated him that shrinks and talk-show hosts got paid big money for listening to the same kind of sordid crap he had to hear for free.

And so Tommy Russo had been in a foul mood when Mack Green slipped into the booth and said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Russo, who had perfect pitch for the sound of Catholic contrition, instantly recognized from the tentative inflection that the man on the other side of the screen had never been inside a confessional in his life.

It wasn’t unusual for non-Catholics to turn up at confession—the
city was filled with nutcases, curiosity seekers and street people looking for a warm place to sit down. They filled Tommy with rage, because they were trying to beat the system—and since he was a part of the system, to beat him. It was one of his rules not to get beat and over the course of his short career he had developed ways of handling the deadbeats.

“What can I do for you, my son?” he said, stepping up the Brooklyn in his voice.

“I’ve sinned, Father,” said Mack.

“Yeah, you already mentioned that. You wanna be more specific?”

There was a long pause. “I’ve, ah, had sexual intercourse with the wife of my best friend.”

“How many times?”

“A few times. I’m not positive.”

“A few times in the same night, or a few different times? Don’t lie, I can tell.”

“A few different times.”

“Are you sorry?”

“Of course I’m sorry,” said Mack. “That’s why I’m here.”

Tommy smiled to himself—he had the guy going now. “You gonna do it again or what?”

“I might. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, well, you sound real sorry. You got anything else?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, close the door on the way out.”

“Aren’t you going to, ah, prescribe any penance?”

“For what, sthupping your buddy’s old lady? Okay, I hereby sentence you to see
The Sound of Music
three straight times. That ought to take your mind off poontang.”

“Hey, what kind of thing is that for a priest to say?”

“You got complaints, call the Vatican. The number’s in the book.”

“You’re not really a priest, are you?”

“What’s it to ya? You’re not a Catholic anyway.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Get outta here,” said Tommy. “You think I don’t recognize a Protestant voice when I hear one?”

“Protestant voice?” Mack said, laughing. “What does a Protestant sound like?”

“Very much like this,” said Tommy, raising his gravelly voice an octave and flattening his vowels in a good imitation of Mack’s Midwestern drawl. Green laughed again and the priest said, “Okay, pal, show’s over. Scram.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mack. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I’m a writer and I just wanted to find out what going to confession is like. It’s for one of my characters.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of writer?” asked Tommy, suddenly interested.

“A novelist. My name’s Mack Green.”

“Mack Green,” Tommy mused. “I’ve heard of you.
The Oreo Kid
, right?”

“Oriole,” said Mack.

“Hey, nice to meet ya,” said the priest. “I don’t get too many celebrities in here. My name’s Tommy Russo.”

“Not Father Tommy?”

“I’m twenty-eight years old,” he said. “You gotta be about that, right?”

“Twenty-nine,” said Mack.

“Well, you wanna call me Father, go ahead.”

“What I’d really like to do is buy you a beer and ask you some questions.”

“You mean like a consultant? Yeah, why not? ’Course I can’t mention names or anything—”

“I know that much,” said Mack.

“I can spring loose in about an hour,” said Tommy. “There’s a place on East Broadway, Brady’s. We could meet there.”

“Great,” said Mack. “How will I recognize you?”

“Just be on the lookout for a little Italian guy in a black leather jacket.”

“A black leather jacket?”

“I don’t go to bars in my clericals,” said Tommy. “Besides, I wasn’t born a priest, ya know?”

At Brady’s, Tommy ordered a dry martini, which seemed to him like a sophisticated choice, while Mack downed double bourbons with seemingly no effect and grilled him about his life. Delighted to be in the company of a famous young author, pleased to talk about himself for a change, Russo eagerly told Mack about his boyhood in a spit-on-the-sidewalk part of Bensonhurst, his days at the seminary and his increasingly onerous duties at St. Fred’s. “In the beginning I expected people to come in and confess to murders, like they do in the movies,” he confided, “but all I get is: ‘Father, I have impure thoughts, Father, I jerked off three times, Father, I told my kittycat a lie—’ ”

“You mind if I tell you something about yourself? Something personal?” Mack asked.

“Sure, why not?” said Tommy, feeling the gin. It seemed to him that Mack Green was the most interesting listener he had ever met.

“You don’t seem like a priest.”

“You mean like Bing Crosby in
Going My Way
? Yeah, I guess you’re right, I’m not really cut out for it.”

“Then why’d you become one?”

“Runs in the family,” Tommy said. “My uncle’s a priest, my older brother’s a priest and I got two sisters are nuns. I never really gave it much thought. One day I’m hanging out on the corner with the guys, singing, “Run Around Sue,” and then, bing-bang, I’m in the seminary. Just like that.”

“You didn’t have to go,” said Mack. “It’s a free country.”

“Where
you
live maybe it is,” said Tommy. “Not in my family. Besides, with the draft and all, the deferment seemed like a good deal.”

“There were easier ways to get out of Vietnam,” said Mack. “Get a letter from a shrink. Cut off your toe. Anything’s gotta be better than—”

“What, celibacy?”

“Well—”

“Don’t worry, everybody’s curious,” said Tommy. “It’s a part of the mystique. Truth is, it’s no big deal. I mean, I’m not a homo, I get the urge just like anybody else, but usually I can handle it okay.”

“What happens when you can’t?”

“Then I go outta town and get laid,” said Tommy.

“Are you supposed to admit that?” asked Mack, slightly shocked; he had an atheist’s awe of holy vows.

“It’s funny,” said Tommy. “You come to me for confession and here I am confessing to you. It doesn’t matter, though; I’m quitting.”

“When did you decide that?”

“Just now, when I said it. But it’s been building up.”

“Can you do that? Walk away?”

“Hey, we’re not talking Mafia here. The pope isn’t going to put out a contract on me. I’ll leave just before Easter and let that lazy bastard Dorsey do some work for a change.” The thought of Father Francis X. Dorsey chaperoning the St. Fred’s High School spring hop made Tommy grunt with pleasure.

“Why not sleep on it?” said Mack with real concern.

“Naw, like I said, I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of years.” He took another sip of his martini and smiled. “Ever since my draft lottery number came up 346.”

“What about all your uncles and sisters and—”

“They’ll survive,” said Tommy. “It’s like Sinatra says, I gotta do it my way. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve had guilt stuffed down my throat. And for the last few years I’ve been stuffing it down other people’s throats. But, hard as I try, I can’t feel guilty about this. I’m not priest material and that’s that.”

“What are you going to do? For a living, I mean?”

“I got a cousin in Jersey City sells life insurance. I can probably catch on with him for a while. After that, who knows? Other guys get by, I figure I can too.”

“You ever think about becoming an agent?”

“Like James Bond? Double O Seven? I don’t think I got the right accent.”

“I meant a literary agent.”

“A literary agent? I don’t even know what a literary agent does.”

“Not much,” said Mack. “You basically negotiate for authors with publishers.”