Corkscrew

by Donald E. Westlake

  'So what does he do?'

  'He kills the senator,' Wayne said.

  Bryce shook his head. 'That's a short story.'

  'It's the first hundred pages. There's a lot more, a lot about Washington, about deep-sea pollution, and Wall Street. Your book Two of a Kind, if you described the setup on that, anybody would say it's just a short story.'

  Bryce smiled. He knew it was going to be all right. 'You see? We can make it work.'

  'No,' Wayne said. 'You aren't serious about this.'

  'Of course I am. Who's seen your manuscript?'

  'My wife and my agent and my former editor.'

  'Send it to me,' Bryce said. 'I'll give you my card. Send it to me, and if it's what I think it is, I'll fiddle it around a little, send it in as my next book. Wayne, my advance is a million one.'

  Wayne looked impressed, but nodded and said, 'I thought it was in that area.'

  'I split it with you,' Bryce said. 'Before commissions and taxes and all that, we'll work out all those details, that's five hundred fifty thousand for each of us. That's seven times what you would have gotten if your publisher had stuck with you.'

  Wayne said, 'Bryce, this is crazy.'

  'No, it isn't. Wayne, what does it matter to you what name goes on the book? You were never gonna be able to claim it anyway, it was gonna be Tim Fleet.'

  'Yes, but—'

  'This way, we both get a breather, we both have money in the bank, we both have time to organize our lives.'

  'You'd have a book out there,' Wayne told him, 'with your name on it, that you didn't do.'

  'I don't give a shit,' Bryce said. 'It wouldn't be the first time in the history of publishing that happened, and it won't be the last, and I don't give a shit.'

  Wayne sat frowning, trying to find objections. 'If anybody ever found out…'

  'That's my worry, not yours.'

  'I suppose, I suppose you could… 'Wayne frowned and frowned, then shook his head and gave Bryce a quizzical grin as he said, 'It could work, couldn't it?'

  'It'll save my bacon. It'll save your bacon.'

  Thoughtfully, Wayne said, 'I was never gonna be a good college teacher.'

  'You'll send me the book.'

  Wayne nodded. 'I'll mail it in the morning.'

  'And we have a deal.'

  'We have a deal.'

  'With one condition,' Bryce said.

  Wayne looked at him. 'There's a condition?'

  'Just one.'

  'Sure. What is it?'

  This was it, now. Bryce looked levelly into Wayne's eyes. 'My wife must be dead,' he said.

  2

  Susan wasn't home yet, which was just as well. Wayne wanted to think some before he told her about today. He wanted a clear head. He wasn't used to a Bloody Mary and a bottle of beer in the middle of the afternoon, it left him buzzy, with a vaguely upset stomach. And he also wasn't used to offers like the one from Bryce Proctorr.

  Did I like him, in the old days? He could barely remember the Bryce of back then, because of course he'd been so aware of the changing Bryce over the years. Book after book on the best-seller list, interviews on television, op-ed pieces in the New York Times. He'd done a magazine ad for BMW. So it was hard to remember back twenty years when they'd both been young writers in New York, scuffling, hanging out with similar friends, all of them in that soft world before the triumphs and the defeats.

  Wayne hadn't wanted to say so, but he'd read about Bryce's marriage trouble in People, about eight months ago. There was a picture in the magazine of Bryce and Lucie 'in happier times' sprawled grinning together on a red velvet chaise set out on the green lawn in front of their big white-columned Connecticut home. He'd thought then that Lucie, a narrow-faced blonde, looked beautiful but dangerous, as though she might be slightly unbalanced.

  Wayne sometimes talked to himself out loud in the apartment, because Susan worked away and he worked at home, so he was alone a lot in these rooms, wandering around them when not at the computer, saying his thoughts aloud, sometimes surprised to hear what he was thinking, often not even bothering to listen. Now, walking through the apartment toward the kitchen, hoping there was some buttermilk left, thinking buttermilk would ease the jumpy stomach and help clear away the buzziness in his head, he said, 'It takes a rich man to think that way. He's a rich man now. And if you're a rich man, you find somebody to do your dirty work.'

  There was a third of a carton of buttermilk in the refrigerator; he drank it straight from the carton, standing in the middle of the kitchen. It was a large kitchen for Manhattan, in a rather large six-room apartment on Perry Street in Greenwich Village. Susan couldn't have children, so it was really too big an apartment for them, but it was rent stabilized. If they went anywhere else, they'd pay more. And they liked having the space, having one room that was the equivalent of an attic, another rarity in Manhattan. When times were good, they saw no reason to move to a better place, and when times were bad — were they bad now? or not? — they hung on to this nice inexpensive roomy cave in the city.

  Standing in the kitchen, holding the empty carton, looking at the neat array of spice bottles and boxes on the open shelf near the stove, alphabetized by Susan, Wayne said, 'Why does he think I'd do a thing like that? He doesn't even know me. I've never so much as hurt anybody, I don't — When was the last time I even had a fight? Grade school, must be. I'm not the person for this! It's insulting!'

  He threw the carton away, in the bag under the sink, and when he straightened he saw himself in the window there. The kitchen and second bath were the only interior rooms in the apartment, both with windows onto the airshaft, six stories from roof to ground, they on the fourth floor of this walkup. By day, what they saw out this window was grimy black bricks and the window of another kitchen, that one always with its yellowish shade drawn. By night, they either saw the yellow light of that window or, if that other kitchen was dark, they saw themselves, reflected in the glass.

  It was just dark outside, no one home in the apartment across the way, and Wayne saw himself. He looked frightened, like someone who's been almost hit by a car. Or doesn't know if there's another car coming.

  He turned away from that image. He never spoke aloud when he could see his reflection. Now, his back to the sink, he said, 'He doesn't know he's insulting me. He doesn't know or care anything about me. I'm just a tool he might use. What the rich man might use. Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars.'

  He shook his head and left the kitchen and moved on to his office, the smallest of the bedrooms, what the families in apartments like this called the nursery. He liked its snugness, the array of pictures and cartoons and notes and book jackets and oddments on its walls, the desk he'd made years ago out of two low metal filing cabinets and a solid door from the lumber yard.

  He sat at his desk, and did nothing at first, simply absorbed the sense of the room. Then he switched everything on, and rested his fingers on the keys.

  My wife must be dead.

  What? What do you mean?

  In order for this to work, Wayne, Lucie has to die. If she doesn't die, the deal's off.

  Are you asking me —

  Wayne, Wayne, no, I'm not asking or suggesting anything. But just this is the situation, Wayne. The divorce isn't done yet, we're still married. If I turn in this book, she'll want half. The law says she gets half. And I'm giving you half. What does that leave me?

  But — Why did you suggest it if you — If you can't do it!

  We can do it, Wayne. We can do it. There's just one simple thing. Lucie has to go.

  You want me to —

  Wayne, I don't want you to do anything but send me the manuscript. Then we'll see if it's possible to work something out, like I suggested.

  But not if your wife's alive.

  There's no point in it, Wayne, you can see that yourself.

  (silence — long silence — Bryce looks at Wayne — Wayne tries not to look at anything)

  I have to meet her. I have to talk wit
h her.

  Wayne? About what?

  The weather. Connecticut. Anything.

  Not to say, You know, Lucie, your husband just put a price on your head.

  No, no, that's not what I was thinking at all.

  Then what were you thinking?

  You say she's a bad person, spiteful and greedy.

  Oh, trust me, Wayne.

  Well, no, I don't want to. I want to know she really is as bad as you say.

  You mean, if she's the witch I think she is, it'd be easier.

  Bryce, I don't even know if it's possible.

  No, neither of us does. I understand this is a brand new thought for both of us, it isn't easy.

  I have to meet her.

  I don't think that's a good idea.

  Why not?

  She's everything I said, every bit the bitch I say she is, but she can come on like something else. Wayne, reflect a minute. I fell in love with her once. Maybe you'll fall in love with her.

  No.

  How can you be so sure?

  Susan.

  You've never —

  Not for a second.

  Not even thought about it?

  What for? Were you catting around? While you were married to Lucie?

  No, I wasn't. But the instant she left, boy…

  Susan isn't leaving me.

  You've been married, how long?

  Nineteen years.

  Kids?

  No.

  Just the two of you.

  That's all we need.

  That's wonderful, Wayne, I envy you that.

  Thanks.

  That's what I want, next time. Do it right at last.

  I wish you the best.

  Thank you. I'll figure out some way for you to meet her.

  Good.

  And send me the book.

  Oh, I will.

  Wayne read the dialogue over and over. Sometimes he read parts of it out loud, both his lines and Bryce's. He made Bryce sound insinuating, manipulative. He made himself sound innocent, vulnerable. When he heard Susan's key in the front door, he looked at the wall clock to the left of his desk. Six-fifteen. He'd been in here an hour and ten minutes. He moved the cursor to the X in the upper right corner of the screen, clicked. The boxed message appeared: 'Do you want to save changes to Document 1?' Cursor to No: click. All gone.

  •

  Susan worked for UniCare, a kind of umbrella organization for charities, funded mostly by New York State and partly by the tobacco companies. Not a charity itself, its job was to move the available funds around, to match resources with needs. The people with the money were for the most part soulless bureaucrats, who had no real interest in what they were doing, while the people running the charities were for the most part sentimentalists with their hearts on their sleeves, forever on the brink of tears at the thought of their 'clients.' These two groups could not possibly talk to one another under any circumstances. Susan, who could talk to both sides without losing her temper, was invaluable. She'd started with UniCare as a secretary fourteen years ago, and was now assistant director; that invaluable.

  She was also invaluable to Wayne. He knew that his life was devoted to fiction, to the unreal, and he thought sometimes, if it hadn't been for Susan's solid linkage to the factual, he wouldn't have survived this long. He believed that might be the reason so many writers fell into drink or drugs; at the end of the day, they just didn't want to have to go back to that drabber world where everybody else had to live.

  'Hi, honey,' he said, appreciating her lithe slenderness as she came down the hall in her office jacket and skirt, fawn-brown hair bobbing at her cheeks.

  'Sweetie,' Susan said, and paused in the hallway for a quick peck of a kiss. Her lips were always so soft, so much softer than they looked, that it always took him by surprise. Every day he kissed her, more than once, and every day he was surprised.

  He followed her into the kitchen. Even though she had the job outside the house and he was in here all day long, she was responsible for dinner. They'd both grown up in traditional families, where women did the cooking and men famously didn't know the first thing about cooking indoors but did all the cooking outside. There was no outside connected to a Greenwich Village apartment, so whatever alfresco culinary talents Wayne might have picked up from older male relatives around Hartford had certainly atrophied by now, and he had no interior chef talents at all. Susan too thought of cooking in a gender way, and after a few failed efforts on Wayne's part, several years ago, to put together something that could look like the evening meal, she'd assured him she didn't mind taking the responsibility, and apparently she didn't.

  What this meant, in practical terms, was that during the week she would bring home a meal already prepared by somebody else, which only required heating. Fortunately, in the Village there were a number of specialty shops that could provide meals a thousand times better than supermarket frozen foods, so they didn't have to dumb down their taste buds to get through life. And frequently, on weekends, particularly if they were having friends over, Susan would actually cook, and was very good at it.

  Now he followed her as she carried her white and green Balducci's shopping bag into the kitchen and put it on the counter. Looking at the wall clock, she said, 'Dinner after the news?'

  'Sure,' he said.

  'I'll put it in during the first commercial.'

  He also looked at the clock. The network news would be on in twelve minutes. He'd come into the kitchen with her in order to tell her about the meeting with Bryce Proctorr, the strange proposition he had to think about, but could they cover all that in twelve minutes? He wanted her undivided attention, because he really needed her thoughts on this. I should forget this craziness right now, he told himself, and I know I should, but I won't be able to until Susan says so.

  I'll tell her after the news, he decided, which was a relief, because in fact he hadn't figured out how he would tell her. How lead into it? What spin to put on it? I'll figure all that out during the news, he thought, and then tell her.

  •

  In fact, he told her over tonight's cod fillets in cream sauce and broccoli and scalloped potatoes and Corbett Canyon chardonnay in the dining room, another rarity in this neighborhood. Candles were on the table, and only reflected electric light spilled in from the kitchen. 'You won't believe who I ran into today,' he began.

  'Mmm?'

  'I went to the library,' he explained, 'to get college addresses. You know, for the resumes.'

  'Mmm,' she said, without looking at him. He knew she wasn't happy about that idea. She didn't think a college campus was the right place for him, and she certainly didn't want to have to give up her job and her home to go live in some small college town in Pennsylvania or Ohio. She'd let him know her feelings on the subject, as she always did, but she'd also let him know she understood he'd only go through with it if he absolutely had to, so whatever happened, she'd go along with him. But she wouldn't get into animated conversation with him about college addresses and resumes.

  He said, 'Bryce Proctorr.'

  She looked up. 'The writer?'

  'The famous writer. I used to know him years ago, before I met you. Before I went to Italy. Then I came back from Italy, and there was you.'

  He grinned at her, still delighted that she'd entered his life. She knew what he was thinking, and grinned back.

  That was such a lascivious grin, which no one would ever see but him. He felt himself stirring, but he still had his story to tell, and the thought of the story deflected him entirely.

  He said, 'Anyway, he was in the library, doing some research. He saw me first and came over and said hello and we went for a drink together.'

  'So he's a regular guy.'

  'I suppose. But he's rich now, you know. He told me he gets a million one per book.'

  'He told you.'

  'Well, he had a reason.'

  'Does he know about your problem?'

  'I told him, yeah.'

 
; 'And he told you he gets a million one. Rubbed your nose in it.'

  'It wasn't like that, Susan. Let me tell you what happened.'

  He described their drink together, and how he went first, telling Proctorr his problems, and then Proctorr telling him how his second marriage was ending in a very messy protracted divorce. 'There was something about it in People months ago, remember?'

  'Not really,' she said. 'But you used to know him, so you'd have been interested.'

  'He offered me a deal,' Wayne said. His heart was pounding now, and his stomach muscles were clenched. The food from Balducci's was good, as it always was, but he couldn't possibly swallow.

  'A deal? What do you mean, a deal?'

  'He's been so emotionally caught up in this divorce thing, he hasn't been able to work for a year and a half. He owes a book, and he doesn't have one, and he needs the money. He wants to publish The Domino Doublet under his name. If,' he added quickly, 'he thinks it's good enough.'

  Susan put down her fork and cocked her head, to hear him more plainly. 'He wants to take your book? As though it's his?'

  'It's a kind of a compliment, in a funny kind of way,' Wayne told her. 'I mean, he already knows my work. He's read The Doppler Effect, some of the others.'

  'But Wayne, why would you want to do that?'

  'For five hundred fifty thousand dollars.'

  She sat back. 'Oh.'

  'I'm supposed to mail him the manuscript,' Wayne said. 'If he thinks it's good enough, he'll put his name on it — his title, too, I suppose — and send it in as his, and we split the money. And nobody ever knows, not even his agent or his editor.'

  'Oh, Wayne…'

  'You know,' he said, 'The Domino Doublet wasn't going to be by Wayne Prentice anyway, it was another Tim Fleet.'

  'But it seems so… strange,' she said.

  'Famous writers have been ghostwritten before,' Wayne assured her, 'when they had writer's block, or they were drunk, or whatever. Publishing is full of the rumors, always has been.'