Caper

by Lawrence Sanders

  I usually drink white wine, but at the moment I needed a martini. Sol had something pink with tequila and shaved ice.

  We weren’t exactly in a festive mood, and exchanged only a few words while gulping down the first round. Sol knew some of the people at nearby tables. He smiled, waved, told me who they were.

  “You know a lot of people in the business, Sol.”

  “The name of the game, doll; that’s how an agent operates. Personal contacts.”

  “So you have contacts at other houses where we could send this Thorndike book?”

  “Well, uh, sure. Lots of places.”

  We ordered another round.

  “Sol,” I said, “I seem to detect a lack of enthusiasm for sending the novel somewhere else.”

  “No, no,” he protested. “No, no, no. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Because you just used five no’s. Sol, did you read the book?”

  “Read it? Of course I read it.”

  “All of it?”

  “Well, listen, doll, maybe not all. I mean, I know your work; I know how professional you are.”

  “How much of it did you read, Sol?”

  “Oh … I don’t remember, exactly. Maybe the first fifty and the last fifty pages.”

  “And what did you think of it? Tell me the truth now.”

  “Jannie,” he said, turning sideways to look sincerely into my eyes, “I’ve got to level with you. I didn’t think it was up to your usual high standard.”

  I laughed.

  “Sol,” I said, “you’ve got more crap than a Christmas goose.”

  “Yes,” he said happily, “that’s true.”

  We ordered. I had the chef’s salad, and Sol got his shrimp and sausages broiled on skewers. While we were at it, we asked for another round. I was beginning to relax. The world wasn’t really coming to an end. Not that morning.

  “All right, doll,” I said, “let’s have it—what’s wrong with the book?”

  The poor dear really looked perplexed, blinking frantically behind his horn-rims as he tried to estimate how truthful he could be without losing a client.

  “Look,” he said, “I read enough of the beginning to know what the caper was and who the main characters were. Then I read the last part to find out how it all came out.”

  “And …?”

  “Well, listen, Jannie, you know why people read books like this? Crime stuff, spy stuff? Because it’s neat.”

  “Neat?”

  “I mean, it’s like a package. Say you got this bunch of guys involved in a big crime. They plan it, then they pull it. And then there’s the end.”

  “They get caught or killed, and justice triumphs.”

  “Not necessarily. I read a novel last year where the bad guys got away with it, grew mustaches, and took the loot down to Rio to live happily ever after. It was a good read. A very satisfying book. You know why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because it has a neat ending. No loose ends. When it’s all over, readers want it finished, resolved. Because everyone is looking for something that just doesn’t exist in real life.”

  “Form?” I said. “Everyone wants form and order?”

  “My very words,” he said gratefully. “Everyone wants form and order. Either the law catches up with the crooks or they escape. Who cares? But what’s important is that the whole thing is resolved. That’s very fulfilling. Now I read the last fifty pages of your Thorndike thing and, Jannie, it just left me with my thumb up my ass. Two guys get killed, one guy gets caught, one guy commits suicide, and one guy—you never do say what happened to him. That ending is such a mishmash, the reader doesn’t know what the hell happened. Doll, this book doesn’t end; it just stops.”

  I didn’t say anything. I forked away at my salad, thinking about what Sol had said.

  Binder had said the modern fairy tale had to be built on realism. But how could you be “true to life” with Sol’s neat, tidy ending?

  A puzzlement.

  “I’ll think about it,” I told him.

  We finished lunch with a vodka stinger. We left, feeling no pain, and Sol put me in a cab. I went back to my apartment, sharing the seat with Chuck Thorndike’s Murder for Breakfast. When I got out of the taxi I had a sudden desire to leave the manuscript behind. Maybe the next passenger would get a few laughs. But no, I lugged it upstairs.

  The phone was ringing when I came in; I dashed to grab it. I had the wild hope that Aldo Binder had changed his mind. But it was only my brother-in-law, J. Mark Hamilton, burbling with happiness. It seemed that Laura was being kept in the hospital another twenty-four hours, and how about a replay of last night?

  “Oh, fuck off,” I snarled. And slammed down the phone.

  My apartment wasn’t palatial, but I thought it was great, with a lot of polished wood and green plants. It was a two-bedroom layout, but the smaller bedroom had been converted into an office den. I did my writing in there. It was much more cluttered than the rest of the apartment and maybe more comfortable.

  I kicked off my loafers and settled back in a distressed oak swivel chair I had bought in a junk-antique shop for $29.50. It was comfortable enough and squeaked musically every time I turned.

  Then I began to read Murder for Breakfast by Chuck Thorndike.

  I rarely used to read or reread my stuff. I typed “The End,” then sent it off to Sol Faber, and after a while the checks began coming in. I really didn’t care if Binder Publications changed the titles and I wasn’t much interested in the covers they slapped on my books. I had done my job: the writing. The production, promotion, and selling were up to others. That may be a short-sighted attitude for a writer, but it was the way I felt. I had never been on a TV talk show and had never been interviewed by a newspaper or magazine. I couldn’t care less.

  So reading Chuck Thorndike’s Big Caper was like reading something written by a stranger. I hadn’t looked at it for almost two months, and meanwhile I had been working on Buck Williams’ newest.

  I didn’t have to read more than ten pages. I’ve never been so ashamed in my life.

  It was a piece of cheese.

  I mean it was bad. I started out squirming, and ended up laughing. It read like S. J. Perelman and Woody Allen collaborating on a classic put-on. I had everything in there, from the shifty-eyed villain to the whore with a heart of gold, from the Irish cop with his “Begorra” and “B’Jasus” to a private eye with snap-brimmed fedora and soiled trenchcoat.

  I started reading about 2:00 P.M., determined to finish the damned thing. The outside light grew dim. I switched on the desk lamp and read on; I can endure pain. I finished at about 7:00 in the evening. Then I straightened the manuscript pages, tapped them neatly into a smooth bundle, and dumped the whole thing into the wastebasket. Then I felt my cheeks. I was blushing.

  I went into the kitchen for a chilled, half-bottle of Gallo chablis and brought that and a glass back to my office. I peeled off my pantyhose and settled back in the swivel chair again. I poured a glass of wine, and sipped.

  MY WRITING CAREER

  DURING MY RELATIVELY BRIEF and successful writing career, I had been like someone who builds houses without knowing anything about engineering or architecture. He builds simply by observing how other houses are constructed—beams here, rafters there, shingles on the outside.

  I had written my novels the same way, by reading and observing how other people wrote similar books. Never once had I considered the theory or philosophy of the detective-mystery-suspense genre. I wasn’t even aware they were important enough to warrant a theory or philosophy.

  The comments of Aldo Binder and Sol Faber that morning were a revelation to me. I had been a lucky blunderer, grinding out imitative books people wanted to read. Now, because I really didn’t know what the hell I was doing, my luck was running out.

  Aldo Binder had been right: I had lost contact with the real world. Sol Faber had been right: I had forgotten, if I ever knew, what my readers wanted.


  Still, I wasn’t about to toss my hands in the air and seek employment as a domestic. It never occurred to me to stop. Obsession? Possibly.

  I WAS HUNGRY

  THESE DEEP, DEEP THOUGHTS were interrupted by a very human need: hunger. I’m a big woman, and a chef’s salad at noon really isn’t enough to see me through the day. I went into the kitchen to inspect the larder. Dismal. The best possibilities seemed a half-dozen eggs and a small, canned ham. Not the Four Seasons, but it would do.

  The kitchen clock showed a few minutes to 8:00, so I called Dick Fleming.

  “Richard,” I said, “am I interrupting?”

  “Nope. How are you, Jannie?”

  “Miserable. Eat yet?”

  “I was just looking in the fridge. How does a hunk of greenish cheddar and a few slices of gray baloney grab you?”

  “I can do a little better than that—ham and eggs. Want to share?”

  “Be right over,” he said.

  I met Richard J. Fleming at Sol Faber’s New Year’s Eve party, two years ago. …

  “Listen, doll,” Sol said excitedly, holding on to him, “you’ve got to meet this gorgeous guy, Dick Flemmer his name is, and he’s the new—”

  “Dick Fleming,” the man said, smiling.

  Sol snapped his fingers. “Right! Dick Fleming. He handles children’s books for Mayer, Markham. Dick, this beautiful lady is my favorite client, Jannie Shean.”

  “Jannie Shanahan,” I said soberly.

  “What?” Sol said, worried. “Oh, I get it! You’re putting me on. Right, doll? You’re putting me on?”

  Dick was a few inches taller than I, and almost as skinny. That helped. Also, it turned out, he was a quiet, sweet, amusing, unpushy man, and he became my closest and dearest friend.

  He was not gay, exactly, and he was not straight, exactly. He edited children’s books, and there was something childlike about him: sudden and brief enthusiasms, fits of stubbornness, an occasional tantrum. But generally he was smiling and serene, as if he had come to terms with himself and could live with what he was.

  He spoke little of his background, but I gathered he’d been raised by a widowed mother and an unmarried aunt. He came from someplace in Ohio, and in the two years I had known him, had never returned for a visit.

  He was lanky and loose-limbed, fair-headed, with pale, freckled skin. He moved gracefully and had a pleasing singing voice. He played a passable piano and guitar, and spoke three foreign languages. He was also an excellent cook and a marvelous host. He doted on parties.

  Dick’s apartment was three blocks from mine, on East 74th Street, and we frequently dropped in on each other, but never without calling first. During the previous summer we had rented a place together in Easthampton, and it worked out very well. He was easy to live with: quiet, neat, self-effacing. He was there when you wanted him, and gone when you wanted to be alone.

  When Dick came over, he volunteered to fix dinner. He scrambled the eggs with chives and found a can of pineapple slices in my cupboard to add to the baked ham. So that, plus an endive salad with a vinaigrette sauce, made a feast that we both tucked into with fervor.

  While we ate, I told him what had happened to me during the day. He listened closely, asked very perceptive questions and, as usual, seemed genuinely interested in my problems.

  We took our coffee and brandy into the living room and sprawled side by side on my chesterfield.

  “Well,” Dick said when I’d finished my tale of woe, “sounds like you’ve had a full day.”

  “Yeah,” I said sourly, “full of bullshit.” I sometimes used words like that. Dick didn’t.

  “What are you going to do, Jannie?”

  “I don’t know. I’m about a hundred pages into a new book. I read those over, too. Just as bad. I’ll have to junk them, I guess. What did you think about what Binder and Faber said? About mystery-suspense novels?”

  “I don’t read that kind of thing,” he said. “You know that. But I’m always suspicious about profound pronouncements. Maybe they’re right; I’m not saying they’re not. They could just as easily be wrong. But what disturbs me most is that you yourself think the book is bad.”

  “It’s bad, Dick. I read it over. I trashed it.”

  “All right. You’re entitled to a flop now and then. No one hits it all the time. But don’t let one turkey make you feel you’re a failure as a writer. Get started on something new, right away.”

  “That’s what Sol told me. But Binder told me I’ve lost contact. He was talking about reality. So how do I make contact with reality? I don’t know what to do. Spend the night?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You haven’t been shaving your legs with my razor, have you?”

  “I bought new blades.”

  “Good. Jannie, I shouldn’t even venture an opinion on your books. You know I don’t read anything written for anyone over fifteen years old. But I’ve found a factor in children’s books that may be applicable in the detective-mystery-suspense field. Kids are hooked by adventure. Risk and adventure. Unknown lands. Unexplored continents. Seas no one has sailed, uncharted galaxies. I think the same holds true for adults. Men and women read crime fiction for the adventure, the risk.

  “Did you see the results of that poll where they asked people what they thought of their jobs? The huge majority said their jobs were dull, boring, and offered no satisfaction, no fulfillment. They didn’t ask me, but I’d have said exactly the same thing: dull, boring, unsatisfying.”

  “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Well … sure. But what else can I do? The salary isn’t great, but it’s okay. I suppose someday I might get a similar job in some other house at more money. Or even become an editor-in-chief. So what? It’s all such a drag. I try not to look ahead because it depresses me so much. But that’s my point: If you can get a feeling of risk and adventure in your books, I think you’re home free. Readers have a longing to experience what life denies them.”

  “Bed?” I asked.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s take the brandy.”

  That suited me fine.

  Dick fell asleep first, head on my shoulder, his fine hair tickling my nose. But I couldn’t sleep. My brain was churning. I went over again and again what Aldo Binder had said, what Sol Faber had said, what Dick Fleming had said. What I should do and not do, write or not write. A woman’s curse: worrying unnecessarily about what men think.

  Dick was sleeping soundly. I kissed the tip of his nose. I moved his head off my shoulder as gently as I could. I disentangled arms and legs, pulled away and slipped out of bed. I pulled sheet and blanket up and tucked him in. Then I went padding naked into my office, snapped on the gooseneck desk lamp, closed the door.

  It was warm in there, toasty enough so that I didn’t need a robe. I sat down in the swivel chair, trying to keep it from creaking. I wondered if the seat cushion would leave button marks on my bare ass. I got out a long, yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen. But I didn’t write down a word.

  It started out as something wild, ridiculous, nonsensical. Then harebrained. Then merely insane.

  How long I sat there, brain-storming, I don’t know. At some point the door opened. Dick stood there, naked as a pin, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  “Dick,” I said excitedly, “sit down and listen.”

  “What time is it?”

  “How the hell should I know? Two, three in the morning. Sit down and listen to my great idea.”

  Grumbling, he folded himself into the armchair on the other side of the desk. He shook his head from side to side, trying to clear the sleep away.

  “Okay,” he sighed patiently, “I’m awake. Go ahead; what’s your sensational idea?”

  I told it to him.

  “How’s that for making contact with reality?” I said, laughing excitedly when I was done. “How’s that for getting back to ‘true-to-life’ details? I can’t make my next book any more realistic than that, can I?”

  He looked at me q
ueerly.

  “And get caught and do twenty years?”

  “I’m not going to commit the crime,” I said. “I’m just going to find out how to plan it. At the final step, just before the breaking-and-entering, I’ll bring the whole thing to a screeching halt. I can imagine the rest of it; the actual crime will write itself. Don’t you see what I’m doing? I’m going to put myself in place of my chief villain. I’m personally going to go through everything he’d have to go through: all the problems, difficulties, fears, delays. I’m going to experience everything I’ve been writing about and didn’t know about. My God, Dick, I’m going to become a Master Criminal!”

  He took a deep breath and blew it out, staring at me with that same look I couldn’t fathom, as though he thought I had flipped.

  “You’re going to recruit an actual gang?”

  “Right,” I said, nodding. “Bad guys. Bentnoses with a lot of experience. Felons.”

  “And how are you going to find them—put a want ad in The Christian Science Monitor?”

  “Dick, that’s just the point—don’t you see? I’ve got to find out how you’d go about recruiting a gang. Who you’d have to contact. How you’d find him. For instance—a gun. If I’m going to be a modern Ma Barker, I’ll need a gun. How do I go about getting a gun in New York City? I’m sure it can be done, but how? That’s the kind of problem I’ll have to solve. But look at what I’ll be learning!”

  “Jannie, are you serious about this?”

  “Of course I’m serious!”

  “Do you know what you’re getting into, getting a gun and hiring a gang of crooks? What happens when you hire your thugs and rehearse them for your Big Caper, and then call it off at the last minute? What do you think their reaction will be?”

  “Oh hell, Dick—I can handle that. They’re all morons. I’ll just tell them it’s off and disappear. If I pay them for a week or two of rehearsals, I’m not hurting them, am I? But that’s just a minor detail. I haven’t yet figured it all out. I’m just drafting the grand concept. What do you think?”