The Salinger Contract (5 page)

I
knew the Coq d'Or well. When he was still alive, my father was a fan of the place—at least, that's what my mother told me. When he was in town on business, he drank there, entertained friends, and, on one fateful evening, met a young cocktail waitress and invited her up to his suite, where I was conceived. After I graduated college and moved out of my mom's apartment, I wrote short stories in the Coq d'Or, hoping to connect with some aspect of my past, but also because it was an atmospheric joint with excellent soups and the best club sandwich in Chicago. The waitstaff knew rich people tended to be eccentric; even if you dressed poorly and didn't look like you had much dough, they didn't hassle you about sticking around all night.

But to Conner, stepping into the Coq d'Or was like stepping into a world he had only read about in books, or perhaps seen in movies about ad execs in the early 1960s. The place was a piano bar populated largely by well-heeled, martini-swilling tourists and the occasional regular from Chicago's Gold Coast aristocracy, some of whom owned apartments in the Drake, many of whom were alcoholics; some of the men were accompanied by high-dollar escorts; some of them paid their bills with Drake Hotel credit cards, a perk offered to hotel regulars. There were white tablecloths, maroon leather booths, a long oaken bar behind which a white-clad bartender operated a cocktail shaker. In the air was the scent of lobster and clam chowder. On the night Conner entered the bar, a tuxedoed pianist was playing “Stardust” and doing a surprisingly good job of it. In another era, Conner would have expected to see women smoking long cigarettes and men puffing on stogies, but what Conner actually saw was a man he immediately knew was Dex Dunford.

“Was that his real name?” I asked Conner.

“I doubt it,” he said.

The man was sitting alone at a table with copies of
Ice Locker
,
Devil Shotgun
, and Conner's other three novels placed atop it. Clad in a dark-blue, pinstriped suit with a pale-blue pocket square, he looked dapper, even debonair. As he sipped his Rob Roy dry on the rocks with a twist, he could have been nominated for “America's Best Dressed Executive” during a time when people were still nominated for such titles. Dex was a small man—slim, yet authoritative. His hair was full and white, and upon first viewing him, Conner couldn't decide whether he looked more like a fifty-year-old man from another decade or a well-preserved seventy-five from the present one. Propped up against the wall behind Dex was a hand-carved walking stick with the face of a yellow-eyed falcon for a handle.

“What would you care to drink, Mr. Joyce?” Dex asked. His accent sounded vaguely British, but that seemed more a function of class than geography; he spoke with what passed for a generic, wealthy cadence, favored by actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, such as Clifton Webb or Ray Collins; he didn't pronounce the
r
's at the ends of his words.

Conner didn't answer Dex's question. He wasn't sure he would be drinking anything at all.

“Please, sit,” Dex said. “What harm could possibly come to you by merely sitting down for a drink?”

Conner didn't immediately answer. “Well, I suppose you're right, after all,” said Dex. “Why, all sorts of harm could come to you. After all, we've never met. I do feel I know you, though, Mr. Joyce.” He said he was a fan of Conner's work. He had read all the Cole Padgett books. He liked the new one,
Ice Locker
, he said, and thought it was one of Conner's better works. He said he always loved his attention to detail, the specificity of Conner's locations. “But it's hard for any writer to outdo his first success,” Dex said.

Conner began to relax. He was familiar with this sort of conversation; it was the same sort he had with the people who attended his book readings or interviewed him on public radio shows.

“Are you in the business?” he asked.

“Which?”

“Publishing.”

“Not exactly,” Dex said. “I collect.”

Conner took the seat across from Dex, and when a waiter asked if Conner would be eating or drinking anything, Conner agreed to take a glass of ice water.

“A collector,” Conner said. “You mean first editions?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Dex. He asked Conner how
Ice Locker
had been selling, and when Conner muttered something about how it was too early to know, Dex asked if the book was doing any better business than his last two novels had. Dex assured Conner that he wasn't trying to pry; he was genuinely concerned because he understood how hard it was for writers to maintain their careers.

“You shouldn't take it personally,” Dex said. “My last two authors took it personally, even though I assured them they shouldn't.”

“Authors?” Conner asked. “Didn't you say you didn't work in publishing?”

“That's true,” said Dex. “I did say that, sir.”

“What business are you in?”

“I believe we're getting ahead of ourselves.” Dex motioned to the waiter and summoned another Rob Roy for himself.

Time passed, perhaps an hour. The pianist finished his set with a medley of Cole Porter tunes, then made his way to the bar, where a martini and a girlfriend in a black sequined gown awaited him. Men who had entered with escorts left with those escorts, presumably en route to one of the hotel suites that was far better appointed than the Author's Suite. Although Conner couldn't say he was beginning to feel comfortable around Dex, he did sense, as long as he remained in this bar, no harm would come to him. The rest of the evening seemed clear. Once he left the Coq d'Or, he would get his bags from the porter, grab a cab, and head to the Hilton at O'Hare.

When Dex was done with his third Rob Roy, he made a writing-in-the-air gesture to the waiter. He paid his tab, then put his palms down on the table.

“So, Mr. Joyce,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“For me to show you something,” said Dex. “But I'm afraid that you'll have to come with me to see it.”

Conner's Spidey sense began to tingle again. “Why can't you just tell me about it?” he asked.

“Because, my friend,” said Dex, “you won't believe a word of what I tell you until I show you.” He reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew an envelope.

T
he envelope was plain white. Inside were two items. The first was a calling card upon which was written in embossed gold script—“
Dex Dunford, Collector of First Editions, 680 N. Lake Shore Drive
.”
There was no phone number or e-mail address.

“This is you?” Conner asked.

“It is.” Dex pointed to the address. “And that's where you and I will be going.”

Conner took out the second item—a personal check made out to Conner Joyce for $10,000. The handwriting was loopy, exquisite, drawn with a fountain pen.

“And what's this supposed to be?” Conner asked.

“A down payment,” said Dex.

“For what?”

“Nothing the least bit sordid, I can assure you. Nothing that would endanger or compromise you in the slightest. But again, before we reach my apartment, there is no point in telling you anything further, for I can assure you that you won't believe me.”

“How am I supposed to know I'll make it back in one piece?” Conner asked.

“I would assume that my word as a gentleman would suffice,” said Dex. “But since it rarely does these days, you may do this: Take note of the address on my calling card. You may leave the card with the desk clerk upstairs. Tell him if you're not back in ninety minutes to call the police and direct them to my address.”

As for the check, Dex said he would advise Conner to keep it in his wallet. For, though he had dealt with this particular desk clerk many times over the years for transactions such as the one he would soon be proposing, ten thousand dollars posed too great a challenge to trust any man with.

“Apparently, you've plotted out everything,” Conner said.

“I have,” said Dex. “In fact, I've even thought of one other thing that might make you feel safer.”

“What's that?”

Dex reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and touched the speed-dial icon.

“Pavel?” Dex said into the phone. “Please join us.”

Dex pocketed the phone. “You've already met my bodyguard, yes?” he asked Conner.

“Why do you need a bodyguard?” Conner asked.

Dex smiled. “For a man of my wealth, lifestyle, and history the question should be, ‘Why do you need only one?'”

Pavel entered the Coq d'Or, then sat at the only unoccupied seat at Conner and Dex's table. He reeked of cheap aftershave, the sort found on sale in jugs at airport duty-free shops. “Yes, Mr. Dunford?” Pavel asked with slight amusement. But he seemed to know why he had been called. He was already reaching inside his tight, tweed jacket when Dex told him, “Please give Mr. Joyce your gun.”

“Of course.” Pavel placed a snub-nosed .45 on the white tablecloth before him.

The piano was closed, but the pianist was still drinking at the bar with his sequined girlfriend; the bartender was polishing glasses with a rag; the waiters were gathered around the bar, watching a Formula 1 race on a mounted television; most of the tables were empty, and yet Conner was wondering who might be watching, who else might catch a glimpse of this gun. What had the gun been used for? he wondered. What would he risk by holding it? By putting his fingerprints on it?

Dex jutted his chin toward the weapon. “The characters in your books seem to know how to use one, but do you?” he asked.

“I do, actually.”

“Well,” said Dex, “then you will be able to tell from its weight that it is loaded. Now, put it in your pocket.”

Conner weighed his suspicions against his curiosity. The offer of ten thousand dollars had the effect of overruling his suspicions. The money would come in handy, whatever Dex was planning. No matter what happened, when he arrived home and Angie asked how the tour had gone, he would have a story to tell and a check to deposit—if the check was good, of course.

Conner put the gun in a jacket pocket, and Dex handed him a black-and-gold fountain pen and a sheet of stationery with his Lake Shore Drive address embossed upon it.

“What's this for?” Conner asked.

“For the note you'll be leaving with the desk clerk. It's a good pen. You may keep it. When you return to the hotel in an hour and a half's time, you may keep the ten thousand dollars, regardless of whether you agree to my proposal or not. Are we ready?”

Dex and Pavel stood, then Conner followed suit. As the men exited the Coq d'Or where Dex had left a $50 tip on the table, Conner headed toward the blue-carpeted steps that led to the main lobby of the hotel while Dex and Pavel made their way to the front door. When Conner reached the desk clerk, he scribbled a note—“I will be traveling with Dex Dunford to 680 N. Lake Shore Drive. If I am not back in ninety minutes, call the police immediately, and send them to this address.”

He handed the note to the desk clerk, then noticed a house phone on the desk in front of him. His own phone was almost out of juice, so he asked the clerk if he could make a call.

T
hat was when I called you the first time last night, buddy,” Conner told me.

Here by the Hilton pool in West Lafayette, Indiana, the temperature had already climbed ten degrees since we had arrived and we were reclining upon a pair of white, plastic lawn chairs, drinking Diet Pepsi. Conner was lying directly in the sunlight, while I lay in the shade cast by a gray Hilton umbrella that had once been white.

I felt somewhat sorry that I hadn't been able to talk to Conner the previous night, but I wasn't sure what useful advice I could have given him anyway. Never would I have joined some mysterious gentleman and his gun-toting Eastern European henchman on that fateful journey to 680 N. Lake Shore Drive. I'm not a risk-taker, would no more get in a car with a stranger at age forty than I would have at age four. At the same time, I had full confidence in Conner's ability to survive, and no matter what the danger, I knew I would have wanted to hear the story.

“Of course you went,” I said to Conner.

“I did.”

“So what happened?”

Conner said he was surprised by how empty the streets were when he joined Dex and Pavel, who were waiting for him in front of the Walton Street entrance of the Drake Hotel. He had always thought of Chicago as a smaller Manhattan, but it was actually far larger and more spread out. Chicago wasn't a city that never slept; it tended to go to bed around ten p.m. Outside, in the still-searing summer night—nights didn't cool down in Chicago the way they did in Indiana—every restaurant seemed closed; hotel lobbies were empty; sidewalks were populated by a smattering of nervous city dwellers walking home as quickly as they could and tourists who thought they were in a smaller New York and didn't realize they were supposed to move fast.

Conner looked for a car, imagining a sinister black Volga with a posse of arms dealers inside. But he didn't see any vehicle waiting.

“Where is it?” Conner asked. “The car.”

Dex's face registered puzzlement and disapproval. “I wouldn't feel comfortable getting into a car with strangers, and I wouldn't expect you to do so either,” he said. “No, we will walk. The air is good, the night is lovely, and we won't be walking far.”

And so Conner strode between Pavel and Dex, heading east, passing darkened doorman buildings and restaurants that had shut down hours before. The only sounds Conner could hear were those of cars zooming down the Drive on their way home, the roiling black lake crashing against the shore, and the footsteps of these men—Dex, himself, and Pavel. Before them, the lights of the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier blinked on and off, like some electric god's eye.

“Tell me,” Dex asked Conner as they walked, “how does it feel?”

“How does what feel?” Conner asked.

“The gun,” said Dex. “To hold a weapon that so many others before you have held, so many notable individuals.”

Conner snorted slightly. “Yeah? Like who else do you have in mind?”

“Well, Norman Mailer held that gun,” Dex said. “Saul Bellow, also. He was quite old when he held it. His hands shook and I feared I might have to take it back from him, lest it go off inadvertently.”

Conner followed the men as they turned south, passing stark, black apartment buildings—all bright emptiness in their lobbies, all darkness on the floors above. Dex continued enumerating the authors who had supposedly held the weapon Conner now had in his pocket. John Updike had held it, said Dex. And Jarosław Dudek. So had Robert Stone, Truman Capote, and even Harper Lee.

“You have to be joking,” Conner said.

Dex stopped walking.

“Something you should know about me, Conner, if we are going to be doing business together,” he said. “I appreciate a good sense of humor. I enjoy it on the rare occasions when I see it in your work. But I never tell jokes myself, and I never joke about business.”

“I didn't realize we had decided to do business together,” said Conner.

“We may not,” said Dex. “That will be up to you.”

Dex began walking again, propelling himself forward with his befalconed walking stick, and Conner and Pavel sped up to keep pace with him. Conner could now see the address up ahead for a high-rise apartment building—680 N. Lake Shore Drive.