by Steve Toltz
“What do you want, hag?”
“You’re up to something.”
He didn’t answer, just gave her a smile that said, “Maybe I am, you rotten wench, but it’s none of your fucking business.”
She turned to me and started examining. “I know you from somewhere.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you ask me for money on a train once?”
I said I had never asked anyone for money on a train, which was not true, because once I had asked someone for money on a train.
“All right, visit over,” Stanley said, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her out of the office.
“OK, OK! I just came to ask you for a divorce!”
“Whenever you want. Although I’d prefer to be a widower.”
“Fuck up and die, you bastard!”
Once he had her in the corridor, he slammed the door in her face and said to me, “Call a locksmith. We have to get the locks changed, then let’s get back to work.”
Stanley had given Harry a couple of little tasks to do. The first was the title, and Harry had handed me a sheet of paper with his suggestions. I sat down and read over the list. A Handbook for Criminals, A Handbook for Young Criminals, The Handbook of Crime for Young Criminals and Toddlers, Crime: How to Do It, Breaking the Law by Numbers, Felony for Dummies, Step-by-Step Guide to Crime, Lawlessness Is Easy!… The list went on.
Then came the problem of the preface. Harry had given me his first draft and asked me to pass it on to Stanley untouched. I couldn’t touch it even if I wanted to. It was the outpouring of a man on the edge. It went like this:
There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. Then there are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men.
—the author
Stanley sent it back and told him to try again. Harry’s second attempt was no better.
They have you in their sights. They have you on their list. They want to turn the product of your semen’s blood into steam engines that churn out power to light up their lives. Well I’m here to tell you if you read this book and follow its advice you can fill your own pockets with gold for a change and let someone else’s children carry the stone tablets for the corpulent Egyptian taskmasters. I say, why not get them first?
—the author
Stanley didn’t think anything that sounded bitter or insane would be good for sales. I could see his point. I gently asked Harry to take one more crack at it. His third attempt I opened and read as the bus rolled toward the city. It read simply:
Ah-ha! Worship me! You cunts!
—the author
I tore it up and composed my own preface and put Harry’s name to it.
The world’s a fat place, so fat you’d think there’s enough to go around. There isn’t. So some have to grab what they can without following the rules because the rules state that they get next to nothing. Most stumble along this path unguided, unmapped. By writing this book, I am not trying to cause a revolution, just giving some roadside assistance to the disadvantaged on the road less traveled by lighting it a little, showing the potholes and the pitfalls, putting up entry and exit signs and speed limits.
Drive well, you young thugs, drive well…
—the author
Finally the day of printing arrived. I had to go to Stanley’s office and disclose the author’s name. Harry and I sat in the backyard smoking cigarettes for breakfast. He had gone beyond anxiety; his hands were shaking vigorously. We both tried not to notice it, and when I had to light his cigarette for him, we pretended it was because I was his long-serving houseboy. I said, “There you go, sir,” and he replied, “Thanks, boy.”
Above us the sky was a strange color, the same algae green as his swimming pool.
“This publisher. Can we trust him?” Harry asked.
“Implicitly.”
“Is he going to screw us?”
“No.”
“When you speak to him next, tell him I’ve killed seventeen men, two women, and a child.”
“You killed a child?”
“Well—a young adult.”
Harry handed me a sheet of paper. On it was a list of acknowledgments. I took it and went off to fulfill our destinies, hitting the streets with my arms swinging at both sides. That’s how you walk when you’re doing destiny’s dirty work.
I met Stanley at his office. He was too excited to sit. In the first two minutes after I arrived, he went from the door to the window three times, making strange gestures with his hands as if strangling chickens.
“This is it, mate—the printers are standing by. I’m ready for the name now.”
“OK, here it is. The man who wrote The Handbook of Crime is Harry West.”
Stanley’s mouth opened and stayed that way as he let out a long throaty exhale.
“Who?”
“Harry West!”
“Never heard of him.”
I ran through his rap sheet, not leaving anything out. “Harry West,” Stanley said as he wrote the name down, sounding a little disappointed. Then, as I fed him information, Stanley composed a biography for the “about the author” section. It ran like this:
Harry West was born in Sydney in 1922. For the next fifty-five years he broke every law in the Southern Hemisphere. He escaped from custody and is currently a fugitive from justice.
“And Harry’s written a list of acknowledgments he wants to go in the front,” I said.
“Fine.”
Stanley took a look at it. It was just your standard page of thanks that precedes a life’s work.
I would like to acknowledge my father for giving me a taste for violence, my grandfather for giving my father a taste for violence, who in turn gave it to me. I have no children, so I’ve had to give it to acquaintances and passersby. I would also like to acknowledge the New South Wales criminal justice system for teaching me about injustice, the New South Wales police force for their indefatigable corruption and tireless brutality, violence in cinema for desensitizing my victims so they take longer to say ouch, my victims for losing, my victors for showing me there is no dishonor in a bullet in the thigh, and finally my editor, friend, and brother in isolation, Martin Dean.
“Are you sure you want your name on this?” Stanley asked me.
“Why not?” I asked stupidly, knowing why not. I was practically admitting to a crime: harboring a known fugitive and editing his opus. “I think so,” I said.
“Think about it a second.”
I thought about it. Was I making a mistake? It was obvious there was no real reason my involvement needed to be mentioned in any way. But this was my work too. I had broken my back to get this book this far, and I wanted the world to know it.
“Yeah, leave it in.”
“OK then, well, we’re all ready to go. I’m going to run this down to the printers. Afterward, can I meet him?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a hot idea right now.”
“Why?”
“He’s not well at the moment. He’s a little…on edge. Maybe when the book’s out in the stores. When will that be, by the way?”
“Three weeks.”
“I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“You bet your arse,” he said, and just before he left the office, Stanley turned to me with a strange, far-off look on his face and said, “Tell Harry I think he’s a genius.”
I said that I would.
“What did he say when you told him my name? What was the look on his face? Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out,” Harry said breathlessly from his front door as I headed up the drive.
“He was impressed,” I lied. “He’d heard of you.”
“Of course he’s heard of me. A man doesn’t kill steadily for fifty years without making a name for himself. So when’s it in the stores?”
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“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks! Fuck!”
There was nothing left to be done but wait. Everything was sorted. I had that feeling of satisfaction and anticlimax that comes with the completion of a job. Now I knew how all those Egyptian slaves must have felt when the pointy stone was put on top of the pyramid of Giza and they all had to stand around waiting for the cement to dry. Also I felt a sense of disquiet. I had been involved in something meaningful for the second time in my life, after the suggestion box; now what the fuck was I going to do? The ambition rising in my chest had no further outlet. That was annoying.
After a few hours of forecasting our phenomenal success one minute and dismal failure the next, I dragged myself back home to look after my mother. The chemotherapy and regular bombardments of radiation left her fatigued all the time, she had lost weight and some of her hair, and moved around the house by groping the walls. It was clear the body she was inhabiting was fast becoming uninhabitable. The only pleasant surprise was my father, who actually turned out to be not that dissimilar to a human being, and one of the nice ones too. He became kind to my mother, loving, and supportive at a level far deeper and more committed than either she or I had expected of him. So did I really need to linger there all the time? Now that I had been in the world, every fiber of my being revolted at the idea of spending another second in that miserable town. That’s why you should never make an unbreakable bond. You never know what the fibers of your being are going to feel like doing later on down the track.
Those weeks of waiting were an intricate and elaborate torture. I’d always known there are 1,440 minutes in a day, but during those three weeks I felt them, profoundly. I was as jumpy as naked wires. I could nibble, but I couldn’t eat. I could close my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I could stand under the shower, but I couldn’t get wet. The days stood their ground like monuments to timelessness.
Somehow, magically, the day of publication arrived. At three in the morning, I caught a bus into the city. On the way I had the smug feeling that I was a famous person who had sat down in a public place and was only waiting for someone to turn around and scream, “Hey! There’s so-and-so!” That was me: I was So-and-So. It felt good.
A city is a strange place for dawn. The sun just can’t seem to make any headway in the cold streets, and it took two hours to get sunny. I walked down George Street past a crowd of partygoers falling over each other and kissing and cursing the unwanted arrival of daytime. They sang in my face as they walked by, a drunken song, to which I did a little dance that must have been OK because they all cheered me. I cheered them back. It was cheery.
Dymocks bookshop had promised to put a copy in the window. I was two hours early. I smoked some cigarettes. I smiled, just for something to do. I pushed the crescent moons of my fingernails down into the fingers. A thread from my shirt took me through from eight to eight-thirty. Then, at a few minutes to nine, a woman appeared inside the shop. I don’t know how she got in. Maybe there was a back entrance. Maybe she slept there overnight. But what was she doing in there? She was just leaning against the counter, as if she were a customer. And then, why was she messing around with the cash register? Why was that important now? When bookstores have a new book to put in a window, that should be the first priority. It’s obvious!
She got down on her knees and cut open the lid of a cardboard box with a knife. She took a handful of copies and walked toward the window. This was it! Stepping up on the little podium, she placed the copies on an empty stand. When I saw the books, my heart fell out.
This is what I saw:
The Handbook of Crime, by Terry Dean
What’s this? What’s this? I had to take a closer look. Terry Dean? Terry Dean! How the hell did this happen? I ran to the doors. They were still locked. I banged on the glass. The woman inside the shop peered at me from the other side.
“What do you want?”
“That book! The Handbook of Crime! I have to see it!”
“We don’t open for another ten minutes.”
“I need it now!” I shouted as I pounded on the door. She muttered a cruel insult under her breath. I think it was “book lover.” There was nothing I could do. She wouldn’t open the door. I ran back to the window and pressed my eyeballs against the glass. I could see the front cover. It said, in color with a star around it,
A book by fugitive Terry Dean—written on the lam!
I couldn’t work it out. Nowhere on the cover was there any mention of Harry. Shit! Harry! He’d…A steel door slammed shut inside my head. My brain wouldn’t let me think about Harry. It was too perilous.
On the nose of nine o’clock the store opened and I rushed inside, grabbed a copy of The Handbook of Crime, and flicked through it frenetically. The “about the author” section was entirely different. It was Terry’s life story, and the dedication said simply, “To Martin, my brother and editor.”
Stanley had double-crossed us! But how? I’d never mentioned that I was Terry’s brother! I pushed some money at the clerk and ran out of the store without waiting for change. I ran all the way to Stanley’s office. When I burst through the front door, he was standing at his desk, talking on the phone, saying, “No, he can’t give an interview. He just can’t. He’s a fugitive, that’s why.”
He hung up and beamed at me triumphantly. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook! There’s a shit storm! It’s better than I ever anticipated!”
“What have you done?”
“I guarantee every copy will be gone by this afternoon. I’ve just ordered another fifty thousand to be printed. First day, and it’s a hit!”
“BUT TERRY DIDN’T WRITE IT!”
“OK, come on, Martin. The cat’s out of the bag. I know you’re Terry’s brother. You tried to keep that secret from me, you naughty boy. Actually, believe it or not, you know what put me onto the idea? My fucking ex-wife! She recognized you from the papers. It hit her a couple of hours after she left that day and she called me, demanding to know what I was publishing with Terry Dean. Then it hit me. Of course! It was so obvious! Harry West was a pseudonym for Terry Dean! It’s not clever like an anagram or anything, but it is bullshit. Problem is, pseudonyms aren’t going to sell books, my friend. Not when the author is as famous as your brother is!”
I moved closer to Stanley’s desk, wondering if I was strong enough to pick it up and squash him with it.
“Listen to me, you dopey bastard,” I growled. “Terry didn’t write it! Harry did! Oh my God! Harry! Harry is going to explode!”
“Really. And who is this Harry?”
“He was Terry’s mentor.”
Stanley looked at me curiously for a long time. “Come on, mate, give it up.”
“I’m telling you. You’ve fucked up! Harry’s going to go on a rampage! He’ll tear us all to pieces, you idiot!”
Stanley’s face looked as if it were tossing up between smiling and frowning and finally settled for an uncomfortable combination of the two. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious.”
“You’re saying, then, that Terry didn’t write this book?”
“Terry can’t write his name in the snow with his piss!”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Oh,” Stanley said, before burying his face behind a pile of papers. He picked up a pencil and started scrawling something. I went over and ripped it out of his hands. This is what he’d written: “Oops!”
“Oops! Oops? You don’t know! You don’t know Harry! He’ll kill me! Then he’ll kill you! Then he’ll kill Terry and then he’ll kill himself!”
“Why can’t he be first?” Stanley cried absurdly. He stood, buttoned up his jacket, unbuttoned it, and sat down. He finally had the sense to panic.
“Didn’t you think of at least checking my story? Didn’t you think to find out about Harry?”
“Now, hang on…”
“Call them back!”
“Who?”
“The press
! The publishers! Everyone!”
“Now, wait a tic!”
“Do it!”
“I can’t!”
“But it’s a lie!”
“Sit down. Calm down. We have to think about this. Are we thinking? Let’s think. OK. Think. Are you thinking? I’m not. I don’t have a thought in my head. Stop looking at me for a second. I can’t think when someone’s looking at me. Turn around. I mean it, Martin, turn around.”
Reluctantly, I half swiveled my body so I was facing the wall. I wanted to smash my head against it. I couldn’t believe it! Here was Terry again! Taking center stage again! What about me? When was it going to be my time?
Stanley rattled off thoughts that stank up the room. “OK. OK. OK. So…what we had, with The Handbook of Crime, was a literary scandal. Spectacular. Controversial. Polemical. That we already have. But now it turns out the author is in fact not the author. That means…what we now have, on top of the scandal…is a literary hoax.”
“A what?”
“OK. You can turn around now.”
When I swiveled back, Stanley was beaming at me triumphantly. “Two in one!” he shouted joyously.
“Stanley—” I started.
“This is brilliant! It’ll serve us well. Tell Harry to be patient—in a year or two, we’ll leak out the truth. He’ll be famous.”
“A year or two!”
“Sure, what’s the rush?”
“You still don’t get it! Harry will think I was in on this. He’ll think I’ve betrayed him. This is his legacy to the world! You have to tell him! You have to tell him it was your own fault, that you made a mistake! You fool—he’s going to kill us!”
“So what? Let him come. I’m not afraid! If I have to die, let it be for a book. Yes, I like it! Let it be for this book. Yes! Bring him on!”
Stanley held his fist up in the air as if it were an award he’d just won. Can you beat that? This was the worst crisis imaginable, and I was in the company of a man right at the time he’d found something to die for. He looked disgustingly, inappropriately peaceful. I wanted to tear his lips off.
