Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 Read online

  A LIKELY STORY

  Donald E. Westlake

  PENZLER BOOKS · NEW YORK

  A Likely Story. Copyright © 1984 by Donald E. Westlake. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Penzler Books, 129 West 56th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019.

  Book Design: John W. White Cover Illustration: Chris Demarest

  The characters in this story are fictitious, and any resemblance between them and any living person is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 84-61250 ISBN: 0-89296-048-1 Trade Edition ISBN: 0-89296-099-X Limited Edition

  FIRST EDITION

  Also by Donald E. Westlake

  The Mercenaries

  Killing Time

  361

  Killy

  Pity Him Afterwards

  The Fugitive Pigeon

  The Busy Body

  The Spy in the Ointment

  God Save the Mark

  Who Stole Sassi Manoon?

  Up Your Banners

  The Hot Rock

  Adios, Scheherazade

  I Gave at the Office

  Bank Shot

  Cops and Robbers

  Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

  Jimmy the Kid

  Two Much!

  Brothers Keepers

  Nobody’s Perfect

  Dancing Aztecs

  Enough

  Nobody’s Perfect

  Kahawa

  Why Me?

  Levine

  I’ll publish, right ‘or wrong:

  Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

  —Lord Byron

  The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women w love me.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  Notice to the Reader,

  and His Attorney

  THIS is a work of fiction. All of the characters in this book are fictional, and my creation. Some of these characters wear the names of famous real persons. I have not attempted to describe the true personal characteristics of these famous real persons, whom in most instances I do not know. In each case, I have put that famous name with what I take to be the public perception of that individual. (The equivalent, for instance, of suggesting that Jack Benny the person was really a tightwad, though in fact his public persona was that of a tightwad while he was very generous in private life.)

  I have deliberately chosen not to follow the accepted pattern of changing the name and keeping the public personality, to have a baseball pitcher named Jim Beaver, for instance, who led the Mets to the World Series in 1969. I think that method is arch, crass and deplorable.

  The famous names herein are just that: famous names. In looking behind them, the reader will not find the actual human beings who hold those names, nor satires on those human beings. The reader will find only what I believe is the generally held view of that famous name’s public self.

  The same, of course, is true of the obscure characters within this book. As for myself, gentle reader, I am a figment of your imagination.

  This is for Justin Scott Joe Gores Brian Garfield Hal Dresner A1 Collins and

  Larry Block

  and for two superb editors Lee Wright and Rich Barber

  Contents

  Tuesday, January 4fh

  Wednesday, January 5fh

  Monday, January lOlh

  Wednesday, January 121b

  Friday, January 14th

  Wednesday, January 19th

  Monday, February 7th

  Sunday, February 13th

  Tuesday, February 15lh

  Monday, March 21st

  Monday, March 28Ih

  Monday, April 4th

  Wednesday, April 6th

  Sunday, April 10th

  Tuesday, April 12fh

  Thursday, April 28ih

  Sunday, May 8th

  Thursday, May 19th

  Friday, May 27th

  Tuesday, May 3lst

  Saturday, June 11th

  Thursday, June 30th

  Sunday, July 3rd

  Monday, July 4th

  Wednesday, July 13th

  Sunday, July 17th

  Tuesday, July 19th

  Sunday, July 3lst

  Wednesday, August 10th

  Monday, August 15th

  Wednesday, August 17th

  Friday, August 19th

  Friday, August 26th

  Friday, September 2nd

  Monday, September 19th

  Tuesday, September 27th

  Thursday, September 29th

  Thursday, October 6th

  Friday, October 7th

  Tuesday, October 11th

  Friday, October 14th

  Friday, November 25th

  Saturday, December 24th

  Tuesday, January 4fh

  “NEVER write a novel in the first person,” Jack told me.

  “I know that,” I said. “And never write a novel in diary form either.”

  “An you shoah got to keep out ub dialect.”

  Oh, how we amused ourselves. Just a couple of old pals having lunch together, that’s all, good old roly-poly Jack Rosenfarb and the present speaker, Tom Diskant, chuckling over our sole Veronique and house chablis and letting the old real world just go hang. A comedy team at leisure, one skinny and the other stout, I Jack Spratt to his missus, Stan to his Ollie, Andre to his Wallace Shawn.

  The reality, of course, was quite different. Good old Jack was an editor with the publishing firm of Craig, Harry & Bourke, the firm was picking up the check, and 1 was there, heart and sole in my mouth, to peddle a book.

  “Well, the novels dead anyway,” I said. “I wouldn’t come here to talk to you about a novel.”

  “Bless you, Tom,” he said, his merry eyes crinkling. “You always know what to say.”

  I hesitated. We both waited for me to tell him what book I wanted him to buy. This was the moment of truth— well, in a manner of speaking—and I hated and feared the upcoming instant of either acceptance or rejection. What if he said no? Time was pleasant now, in the predecision phase, wining and dining and making jokes. Outside, the world was black and white and wet with January slush under a sky piled with round gray clouds like full laundry bags, cars and buildings all were speckled with city mud on a Park Avenue so dark and desolate and grim one automatically looked for tumbrels, but here inside the Tre Mafiosi all was warm and good, gold and ivory and pale, pale green.

  Oh, well; man does not live by lunch alone. “It’s a Christmas book,” I mumbled, and chugged chablis.

  Jack’s merry twinkle faded. He looked puzzled, faintly troubled, as though afraid he was about to hear—or have to give—some bad news. “It’s a what?” he asked.

  “Christmas,” I said. “A Christmas book.”

  “Oh, Lord,” he said, laughing, but hollowly. “Haven’t we had enough of all that? We’re getting the damn tree out tomorrow, at long last. Twelfth Night. The fucking thing is naked, Tom, there’s green needles everywhere I turn, they’re in the fucking bed."

  “Christmas will return,” I said.

  “Say not so.”

  “But it will, Jack. Along about May, the folks at Craig are all going to start saying, ‘What’ve we got for Christmas? We need a Christmas book. A big glossy picture-full star- studded Christmas-gift coffee-table book, twenty-nine fifty until January first.’”

  “Thirty-four fifty.”

  “Whatever.” Talking, starting, under way, 1 was beginning to get my confidence back. “Look, Jack,�
� 1 said. “We have had Marc Chagalls stained glass people flying upside down, we have had Dickens, we have had cats, we have had feminism through the ages, we have had gnomes, we have had cities photographed from the air, we have—”

  “Please,” he said. “Not a history of American publishing, not while Pm eating.”

  “1 have the ultimate Christmas book,” 1 said modestly. He thought. 1 watched him think, 1 watched him realize that yes, May would come, and with it the need to define the fall list, including one or more hot, pot-boiling Christmas books. Whether or not Christmas itself would ever return, or ever be asked back after its most recent behavior, May would certainly arrive, the need for a fall list was as inevitable as death and Garfield, and he who managed to think about tomorrow today would anon be a senior editor. “The ultimate Christmas book,” he murmured.

  “Exactly.”

  He shook himself, like a dog coming out of water or an elephant waking up. “Its too late for marijuana,” he said, “and the world will never be hip enough for the Big Picture Book of Cocaine. Orphans will continue to be out until both Vietnam and Annie have receded a bit further into the mists of time. The big faggot book about the apostles all being gay would probably go well at the moment, but you’re the wrong guy to do it. So what’s your subject?”

  “Christmas,” I said.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. He blinked, very slowly. “You mean,” he said, “a coffee table book about Christmas. A Christmas book about Christmas.”

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Is this a wonderful idea,” he asked himself, “or is this a stupid idea?” Frowning at me, all attention, he said, “Show me this book.”

  I pantomimed opening the huge book. “On this page,”

  I said, “we have a fourteenth century Madonna and Child. On the next page we have a Christmas story by Judith Krantz, especially commissioned. On the next page we have a nineteen-twenties comic Prohibition Christmas card. On the next page we have an original reminiscence by Gore Vidal, Christmas in Italy, bedding the acolytes. On the next—”

  “All right,” he said. “I see the book. You can get these people?”

  “Not without Craig, Harry & Bourke letterhead,” I said.

  “And money.” Jack waggled a playful finger at me, as though accusing me of being naughty. “You’re talking a very big advance here, buster.”

  “I know it, Jack.”

  “Excuse my saying this, Tom,” Jack said, his fingers walking gingerly among the silverware, to show he was pussyfooting, “but that isn’t your track record. The kind of advance you’re talking about here, you’ve never had anything like this before.”

  Of course not. I am a journeyman writer; I will do a piece on repairing your own sink for Ms magazine, sexuality among female ministers for Cosmopolitan, the rapaciousness of football team owners for Esquire. I did the books Coral Sea and El Alamein for the “We Go To War!” subscription series. I did Golf Courses of America, subsidized by American Airlines and published by Craig, Harry & Bourke, which is how I met Jack in the first place, for whom I’ve also done The bis and Outs of Unemployment Insurance and Hospitals Can Make You Sick.

  Track record, that’s all these guys talk about. It’s one of their many ways to avoid original thought; if they can see what you’ve done before, they know what to think about you now. I had to get Jack past that bump in the road, and the only lever I could find was humility. “Sometimes, Jack,” I said, “a small guy can have a big idea.”

  That shocked him into consciousness. “Tom, Tom,” he protested, “I never said anything like that. This isn’t you and me, this is the company. I’m thinking of the people I have to answer to, back in the office.”

  “Don’t sell them me,” I suggested. “Sell them the idea.” “There’s also execution of the idea,” he reminded me. “Tom, / know you can do whatever you set your mind to, but we’ve got Wilson to consider. Bourke himself. I’ll level with you, Tom,” he said, leaning close, looking at me with great sincerity. “If you were sitting there with a cute little idea, ten grand advance, maybe even twelve-and-a-half, one quarter on signature, we could do it in a flash. Within reason, I can close deals myself up to twenty-five grand, except even then they sometimes pull the rug out from under me. But this. You’re talking Judith Krantz, Gore Vidal, you’re talking money. And you need some for yourself, for God’s sake, you’re not doing this for charity.”

  “Half,” I said.

  He looked exceedingly blank. “What’s that?”

  “I figured that’s the simplest way to handle it,” 1 said. “We treat it like a regular anthology. Half the advance goes to me, the other half goes to the contributors and the research assistants and so on.”

  “Oh, come on, Tom,” he said. “For this page, we pay Gore Vidal and we pay you the same amount? Not on.” “That’s not what you’re paying for,” I said. “You pay Gore Vidal for that page. Me you pay for that page and for the page with the fourteenth-century Madonna and Child and for having thought it up in the first place and for talking Vidal into doing it.”

  “All right, possibly,” he said. “If we decide to go forward at all. If the company decides. Then we work out the details.”

  “With my agent. I never talk details.”

  “Still Annie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she’s reasonable,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I tell you what, Tom,” he said. “This is a very interesting idea, I won’t deny it. Let me take it back to the shop, talk to a couple of people, do you have a presentation on paper?”

  “I can’t describe the contents before I send out my query letter,” I pointed out. “I could do you a two-sentence memo.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “Jack. Jack, I came to you with this first. I did it for two reasons. I think you and Craig are absolutely right for it,” I lied, “and you’re almost the only person in New York I’d trust not to take the idea and run,” I lied again.

  “Well, we’ll see.” Behind his jolly eyes, his brain was turning over like a submarine’s engines.

  “And if I can start now,” I said, “we’re talking about this Christmas. ”

  “Tight. Tight schedule.”

  “I know that. I’m up to it, Jack.” I smiled at him. “What the mind of man can conceive, this man can do.”

  “I’ll talk it up around the shop,” he said. “And give you a call in a fewr days.”

  And that was the end of the conversation. He didn’t seem wildly enthusiastic, but on the other hand he didn’t reject the idea outright. And at least I’ve let him know I’m thinking in terms of a tight deadline. I’ll give him till Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. But that’s the latest.

  I came home from lunch too keyed up to sit still. Ginger was at work, the kids weren’t home from school yet, and I couldn’t think about any of the projects currently on my desk. There was nothing in my mind but The Christmas Book. Oh, if Jack would only come through!

  I phoned Annie, my agent, and got her answering machine. “This is the literary agency of Annie Lecadeaux,” said the luxurious voice of Roger Brech-Lees, an English client, a writer of historical romances under various female names, and—I think—a closet queen. “Please leave your name and a phone number, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.” Beep.

  Knowing how Annie hates hang-ups—unsatisfied curiosity eats at her vitals like the fox under the Trojan lad’s tunic—I hung up without leaving a message, to punish her. Finally, I came in here to the office and started to type out the story so far. Just recounting what’s going on.

  I really need the money.

  Wednesday, January 5fh

  TWELFTH Night. Its another of those ancient counting things from before they got good at math, like Easter Sunday being the third day after Good Friday. Twelfth Night is the twelfth night after Christmas, but only if you count Christmas Eve as night number one.

  Anyway, Twelfth Night is the eve of the Epi
phany, which celebrates two major religious moments, being the baptism of Christ and the arrival of the Three Wise Men. (It’s also the date of the wedding feast at Cana, whatever that might mean.) In the old days, Twelfth Night marked the end of the religious feast of Christmas and a return to secular concerns, usually kicked off with a carnival. In medieval England there was a royal court masque on Twelfth Night, politically so important that foreign ambassadors would bribe and intrigue for position at it. The humbler folk celebrated with a carnival starting with a beanfeast involving a cake with a bean baked in it. Whoever got the slice of cake with the bean was master of the revels. (As for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, that doesn’t have much to do with anything at all, but was merely from his Neil Simon phase, one of his comedies in which a male actor playing a female role was then disguised as a boy, ho hum.)

  Anyway, Twelfth Night. Neither Ginger nor I care about that sort of thing—we threw out our tree, along with several of its lights and ornaments, during our post-New- Year’s-Eve-party fight—but Mary of course is a goddam traditionalist all the way, so not only did she keep her tree until today but insisted I go over this afternoon to help her and the kids undecorate.

  Naturally, Ginger was annoyed. “You don’t see me running off to Lance, do you?”

  “He didn’t ask,” I said. “Besides, Helena wouldn’t like it.”

  “And I don’t like it,” Ginger said, narrowing her eyes. She looks trampy when she narrows her eyes like that; I made the mistake of saying so once, so now she narrows her eyes all the way through parties and as a result spills her drink a lot. Now, narrowing her eyes without ulterior motive, she said, “What it comes down to is, Mary needs a fella.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  And it’s true, it couldn’t be more true. Ginger’s exhusband, Lance, lives now with Helena, an assistant production manager at Time, Inc., whose ex-husband Barry more or less lives with the ex-wife of a psychiatrist named Terriman or Telliman or something. (Don’t worry about these names; these people don’t matter.)