The Thieves of Manhattan

by Adam Langer

  Roth took a seat next to me on his couch, put his feet up on his coffee table, and then said that, actually, he himself wasn’t planning on doing anything with the manuscript. He asked if I remembered what Geoff Olden had told him about it.

  I did: “No serious house in New York would ever consider publishing this in its current form, and there was only one way anybody ever would—if every word of it was true.” I could hear Olden saying that, cackling in his imperious, unctuous, snide, know-it-all way.

  “Man, what a jackass,” I said.

  “No, Olden was right,” said Roth, adding that A Thief in Manhattan was, in fact, too implausible, too slight, and too shallow. Fiction had to be plausible, more so than the truth. And Roth’s novel wasn’t plausible.

  “That’s why the book will be published, yes, but not as fiction, Ian. It will be published as a memoir.”

  I laughed a little when Roth said that, thinking he was making a joke about Blade by Blade. But when he stared straight at me, I saw he wasn’t joking.

  Wait, I said, beginning to put it together, did Roth really mean to say that he would try to pass off his novel as truth, that he would present everything—the chase scenes, the gunfights, the search for the Girl in the Library—as a memoir?

  “You’ll say it all really happened to you?” I asked.

  “No,” Roth said, and then he smiled. “No, Ian. We’ll say it all happened to you.”

  I tried to play it off like I still thought he was joking, but now he was regarding me even more intensely, as if I’d become his coconspirator. And somehow, I felt as if I already had.

  “Yes, you’ll say you wrote it,” Roth continued. He kept repeating that word you as if he were slapping me in the face with it. “You’ll say it all happened to you just like it did in the book. And if you agree, Ian, here’s what will happen next. Agents will want to represent your book. Publishers will want to buy your book. There will be reviews of your book, there will be interviews with you, and then …”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “Then what? Then, when a hundred thousand copies of your book have already been shipped to every bookstore in America, you’ll say that every word in it is a lie, that it was all made up. And here’s the part you’ll like, Ian. When people ask why you did it, why you took a book full of lies and pretended it was true, you’ll tell them that you did it because it was the only way to get anyone to pay attention to your stories. And soon those stories you wrote, the ones no one would publish because they were too small and no one knew who you were—everyone will want to publish them. Because you’ll be somebody then, Ian. You’ll have a name.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he thought I was the stupidest guy in the world, or the cleverest and most cynical. He seemed to be suggesting that the two of us had a lot in common, had been implying that ever since we’d sat down at the 106 Bar and he’d told me his life story, and I had no idea whether he thought he was paying me a compliment or the nastiest insult he could devise.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Because you’re the first person I’ve met who might hate Blade by Blade even more than I do,” Roth said. He told me that he’d been coming to the café before I’d noticed him. He had heard me mouthing off about Blade Markham, and that’s when he’d come up with the idea of taking A Thief in Manhattan out of its drawer. After he saw the name on my Morningside Coffee badge and remembered it from the few stories of mine he had read, he made a habit of coming into the café during my shifts, ostentatiously reading Blade by Blade and leaving large tips, waited to see what, if anything, I’d do. He said he hadn’t been sure of his plan or that I was the right one to execute it. In my stories, the protagonists were too ineffectual; they always preferred to wait for events to take advantage of them than to seize them and create their own destinies. But when he saw me charging toward him at the café, when I grabbed his book out of his hands and whipped it down Broadway, he knew I could do it.

  “You must think I’m pretty desperate,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say. We both knew I was desperate. Roth didn’t contradict me.

  “Anyway, what’s in it for you?” I asked.

  “Revenge, of course,” said Roth.

  “On Merrill?” I asked.

  Roth nodded. “Merrill, Rowell Templen, Geoff Olden, the whole pack of ’em. Take your pick.”

  And when Roth could see that I wasn’t completely satisfied with his answer, he added, “I could make up something more romantic, Ian, something that might appeal more to your Midwestern sensibilities. But that’s it, really. If this works the way I know it will, Blade Markham might well survive it. He will probably thrive. And so will you, Ian. But Jim Merrill? No. That little bastard Rowell Templen? Not him either. Because once people look more closely at the other ‘true stories’ Merrill has been publishing, no one will trust their word again. And then people will start looking at what other publishers have been putting out.”

  Roth’s idea was funny in a sick sort of way, but I still felt there was something he wasn’t telling me, still felt that all this seemed like a whole lot of trouble to go through just for a bit of revenge, no matter how detestable or gullible the Merrill Books crowd was—sure, they believed Blade Markham’s book, but Roth’s was even more far-fetched. Roth must have been reading my mind again because he said, “Oh, one other thing I should mention, Ian. If we do this together, I’ll also be taking twenty-five percent.”

  “Of the book?” I asked.

  “Of both books,” Roth said. “My book and your stories. Call it a gamble. If I’m right, both of us come out with quite a bit of money.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” said Roth. “It’s not high crime. It’s not politics. No one’s going to be breaking any laws. Only ethical ones, perhaps, but those don’t come with prison terms. It’ll just be a little publishing scandal, and outside of that tiny universe of authors, editors, agents, and readers, no one will give a damn.”

  But A Thief in Manhattan had been rejected years ago, I said; no one had wanted to publish it when Roth had first written it.

  “Ancient history,” said Roth. Besides, he added, it was a different book now.

  How much had he changed, I asked.

  “Just the word novel,” he said. “That’s all I needed to change.”

  I looked at the manuscript again. I looked at Roth. He seemed so confident that I would say yes. I wasn’t sure if I felt more frightened by the thought that his scheme would work or the thought that it wouldn’t, that I would ruin whatever reputation and self-respect I might have had for nothing, or that lying would make me as successful as Blade Markham.

  “No,” I finally said—there was no way it would work and no way I’d try it. I stood up, grabbed Roth’s manuscript, and thrust it back at him. I thought I was flinging it hard, but he caught it and smiled, then set the manuscript back on the table as if I’d lobbed him a Frisbee.

  “Why don’t you do it if it’s such a killer idea?” I asked.

  “I’m too old for the part,” said Roth. “No one would look at me and think I’d be chasing girls and hopping freight trains. Besides, the publishers all know me. And I’m not a writer anymore anyway. I’m not the one writing stories that everyone on the planet is rejecting while my Bulgarian girlfriend gets her stories published.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend anymore,” I said, getting angrier now, “and she’s Romanian. And you probably know that. And you probably just said that to get at me.” No, I told him. I could feel my headache returning, the fatigue curtaining down again. Roth would have to find someone just a bit more desperate than me, just a bit dumber, or just a bit more cynical.

  I was at the door, hand on the knob, when I heard Roth’s voice, as calm and measured as it had been all night and all morning.

  “Oh, Ian?” He was staring at me again. “You remember what I said before? That talent of mine? Knowing when people are lying?”

  I stared
back at him.

  “You’re doing it now, Ian,” he said.

  “You go straight to hell,” I said and walked out the door.

  EFFECTIVE MEDICINE

  My resolve was firm as I approached 112th Street, but when I reached 113th, it was already beginning to weaken. My thoughts had been clear on Riverside Drive, but when I turned east toward Broadway, I could already sense both mind and sight blurring, the sidewalk below me starting to tilt. The sun, up full now, was far too bright, but my army jacket was too thin for the cool, damp air. My chest felt cold, and yet my forehead was damp with sweat. How much coffee had I been putting in my body? How much scotch and beer? How much cynicism had Roth slipped into my mind like so much Rohypnol? How much self-doubt?

  I needed someone to talk to, someone to run the whole story by, someone to tell me I had done the right thing by walking out, and that all I had to do was trust myself and that everything would turn out fine. Anya would have said something like that—you heff sotch grett tellent, Ee-yen; you shoult trost in dett. I would have liked to talk to Anya, to have one more of those bedtime conversations we used to have when both of us seemed to be heading in the same direction. But my life with Anya was now just one more thing on a long list of things I’d screwed up or thrown away.

  I knew what my father would have told me; he believed in honesty at all costs—“Call up the hospital and tell them they didn’t bill for that last procedure, Ian.” But I didn’t know what was more relevant: the fact that he would have told me I had done right by refusing Roth or the fact that my dad was dead and that, in the end, all his honesty and sage advice hadn’t given him much except maybe some peace of mind.

  I wound up at Morningside Coffee. Joseph was on a stool by the register, munching a bagel as he halfheartedly tried to memorize lines for another show in which he probably wouldn’t get cast. Faye was finishing up a phone call and handing a customer a postcard for her gallery show. Joseph scowled as I entered and nudged Faye, who looked at me, raised one eyebrow at Joseph, then cheshired in my direction. For one more moment, I felt the floor firm beneath my feet; then it gave a sudden tilt and flung me down hard. I crashed into the Confident Man’s old table, where the whole story had begun.

  I woke up in darkness on a cold bed of concrete, my face pressed against burlap coffee sacks someone had meant to serve as pillows. I heard laughter and muffled conversations overhead. It took me half a minute to realize I wasn’t in Roth’s apartment anymore. A dim, distant light illuminated a steep metal ladder. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, stumbled to my feet, stepped on the bottom rung of the ladder, and started to climb toward the light.

  It was nighttime in Morningside Coffee; another day had already passed, the last customers were leaving, and Joseph was turning the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. Faye was slinging a beat-up red vinyl bag over a shoulder and stuffing it with her postcards. She looked as though she was heading out for the night, but when she heard me mounting the stairs, she turned and said, “Thought you were gonna sleep till morning, Sailor.”

  “Sailor” was Faye’s nickname for me, something she’d heard in some song, read in some book; apparently, it was a cultural reference I didn’t get. She asked if I wanted coffee, flashed me a knowing “You’re hungover and I’m not” smile. Joseph wasn’t smiling, though—as always, my presence seemed to bug him, as if I were an uninvited guest at his party, one who’d palahniuked on his couch then passed out, while he’d had to clean up the mess. I started to thank Faye for giving me the burlap coffee sack pillows and letting me sleep in the basement, but Joseph interrupted.

  “Didn’t you used to work here?” he asked me.

  Look, I said, trying to placate him; all I wanted was a cup of water and then I’d be on my way.

  “Cup costs fifteen cents,” said Joseph.

  I began to reach into my pocket for money, but Faye took fifteen cents out of her change purse, whipped the coins in Joseph’s direction, then told him to go home; she’d deal with the rest of the cleanup.

  “I don’t like the way you clean, woman,” Joseph said. He sighed and told Faye he’d see her in the morning, but her “friend” had better be gone by then. He lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching the two of us, then glumly walked out toward his big black Citroën, which was parked outside. Faye poured me a glass of water and told me that Joseph really wasn’t as nasty as he appeared to be and he really did have people’s best interests at heart; when you really needed him, he always came through. She said she was sure I could have my job back if I wanted it. I thanked her but said no, I had to figure something else out; I wasn’t going anywhere as long as I worked here.

  Faye left me alone to brood in the Confident Man’s old seat while she grabbed a pail of dirty water and a mop. She whistled a seventies tune as she washed the floor. Joseph was right about one thing: she sure did a lousy job—she left puddles everywhere, and her paint-spattered boots made tracks wherever she clomped. Was she pretty? A lot of our regulars seemed to think so, but I hadn’t taken the time to look at her that closely before. Her features were harsher than any thirty-four-year-old’s should have been, and her skin looked as though she were allergic to sunlight—she spent all her days in studios and her nights in cafés. Plus, I still wasn’t sure if she was straight or not. But either way, I couldn’t stop watching her, so amused by the world, so comfortable in her own body, so confident even in her own clumsiness.

  When I was done drinking the water, I got up, grabbed a rag, and started wiping down the tables and counters. Faye asked if I was reconsidering her suggestion about returning to work. No, I said, I just needed to focus my energy on something simple and productive, had to think about something other than the hours I’d spent with the Confident Man.

  “With who?” Faye asked with a laugh, and after I explained, she asked with a grin if he’d “had his way” with me.

  “Just about,” I muttered.

  I wound up revealing much more than I’d intended. Faye was still the perfect audience—paid close attention but never seemed to judge; asked questions, not because she was nosy but because she was interested; remembered little details I’d told her months ago. In this city, people paid two hundred daisies an hour for that kind of listener. I had no idea how Faye felt about me, but she seemed to genuinely like listening to my story, which is something every writer hopes for—a reader who gets so caught up in the story that she almost forgets who’s telling it. She understood that even a tragedy can be funny if you tell it right. Finally, when we were done cleaning up—a far better job than I’d ever done when I’d been paid to work—I asked Faye the question that had been obsessing me before I blacked out and woke up in the cellar.

  “You’d understand this, Faye; you’re an artist,” I said. “Let’s say you had an opportunity to get your work in front of more people than you ever thought you’d reach, a chance to get more money than you thought you could ever get, but you had to compromise everything you thought you believed in. Would you do it?”

  Faye appeared to contemplate my question for a moment or two. “Would I have to kill anyone?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Would anyone get hurt?”

  “No.”

  “What would I have to lose?”

  “Just your integrity,” I said. “Would you do it?”

  “Wouldn’t anyone?” asked Faye.

  I said I wasn’t sure.

  We walked out together and I waited for Faye to lock up. I figured that we’d keep talking—I certainly didn’t want more liquor, but I would have bought Faye as many drinks as she wanted with one of the bills Roth had given me. But when we reached the 116th Street subway station, Faye said that since I was going uptown and she was headed downtown, she guessed she’d see me around, “Sailor.” Didn’t she want to join me for a drink? I asked.

  “Nah, I’m not gonna be your Betty,” she said. When I said I didn’t understand, Faye asked if I’d ever read the Archie comic books; Betty
was the nice girl who Archie called whenever foxy Veronica was unavailable. I said it was over between me and “Veronica,” then felt myself flush. Faye raised an eyebrow and said she had work to do tonight, but maybe she’d see me again at her opening at the Van Meegeren. She handed me a postcard for her show. At the top of the subway steps, she advised me to stay away from hunky strangers in coffee shops, then raced downstairs before I could kiss her goodbye.

  “Carry on, my wayward son,” she said with a laugh.

  As I watched her clomp out of sight I felt more alone than I ever had in this city.

  IN SEARCH OF MYSELF

  I had no job, no money, no girlfriend. I was considering tracking down Jed Roth when something unanticipated happened: I started to write. One morning, after waking up well past noon, I showered, dressed, and, feeling newly refreshed, I sat down at my computer and began typing as if I’d been doing it every day of my life.