The Hook

by Donald E. Westlake

  “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 to 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 resumés.”

  “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 resumés.

  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.”

  “Yes, I know about those,” she said, since she’d been around the publishing world for years, through him.

  “So this is just that again,” he said. “I can’t get The Domino Doublet published myself, under any name. This way, instead of not being worth a nickel, it’s worth half a million dollars.”

  “I guess . . . I guess you should say yes.”

  “But there’s one extra kicker to it,” he said.

  She waited. “Yes? What?”

  “Something he wants.” It was very hard to actually say it in words.

  “Something he wants?” That little leering smile again, and she said, “What does he want, droit du seigneur?”

  He laughed, suddenly realizing how tense he’d become, as rigid as crystal; tap me, and I’ll shatter. “No, that would be an easy one, I’d just tell him to go to hell.”

  “Good,” she said, still smiling.

  He didn’t feel like smiling. He looked at his uneaten dinner in the candlelight, pale cod, pale potatoes, acid-green broccoli. “He wants me to kill his wife.”

  “What?”

  Now he looked at her astounded, disbelieving face. “Essentially, what it is, that way, I’d be getting her half of the money.”

  “Wayne, what are
you talking about?”

  “If she’s alive, she gets half his advance for the book. If I get the other half, there’s nothing for Bryce, no reason for him to do it.”

  “He’s paying you to kill his wife.”

  “Yes.” Wayne shook his head. “And for a book.”

  They were both silent, neither eating, she frowning at him, he miserably looking everywhere around the candlelit room except at her. The wall clock in the kitchen was battery-operated, and the minute hand clicked at every second’s jerk forward, a sound they almost never heard, but which both could hear now, as loud as a metal spoon being tapped on the table between them.

  “What did you tell him?” Said so softly he barely heard it, above the ticks.

  “I said I had to meet her.”

  That surprised her. “Meet her? Why?”

  “Well, he was describing how awful she was, greedy, nasty, a real bitch. If she was that bad . . .”

  “It would be a little easier. Oh, Wayne.”

  “I know, I know. But the point is, he agreed. He’s going to figure out a way for me to meet her. In the meantime, I’m supposed to send him the manuscript. Tomorrow.” He shook his head. “I’ll send out some of those resumés at the same time, might as well get back to reality a little bit.”

  “No.”

  He looked at her. “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “Don’t send out any resumés,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  She didn’t say anything. He watched her, waiting, and she said, “Wait till you’ve met her.”

  His breath stopped. They gazed at each other, both unblinking, and he thought, she wants me to do it! He’d been so sure she would pull him back from the brink, sure of her solidity, her disdain for fantasy. They stared at each other, and he read the grim set of her jaw, and he said, “And if it turns out he’s wrong? She’s a decent woman, someone we’d like?”

  “Then you send the resumés,” she said, and looked away from him, and said, “You’re not eating your dinner.”

  “Neither are you. Susan, why do you want me to wait?”

  She nodded, still looking away, then faced him again to say, “I’ve been feeling awful about this college idea.”

  “I know you have. I have, too.”

  “Wayne, it’s the end of the marriage, I know it is, but what could I say? What was the alternative? You can’t live on me. Of course, you could, but you can’t. The life you had for twenty years just dried up, and it isn’t your fault, I know it isn’t. The markets change, the rules of the game change, everybody knows that’s true, nobody ever thinks the ax is going to come down on him. But it comes down on someone, and this time it was you.”

  “Not the end of the marriage, Susan.”

  “We’d hate each other in Fine Arts Gulch, sweetie, you know we would. We’d hate ourselves, and we’d hate each other, and one day I’d pack up and come home, and you wouldn’t be able to.”

  “But what we’re talking about doing here, I mean, you know, this is—”

  “You don’t have to say the words, sweetie,” she said. “We know what we’re talking about.”

  “Susan, I thought you’d—”

  “I want us, Wayne. I want this apartment and this life. I want my job, I want what I do. I don’t want the world to be able to kick us apart like some sand castle.”

  He looked down at his plate. He picked up his fork, but didn’t do anything with it. Then he looked up again, and Susan was watching him, impassive. He said, “What if she turns out to be a nice person?”

  Her eyes glittered. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Three

  The Ambien wasn’t working. Bryce didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to acknowledge that he was still awake, but finally boredom and exasperation and worry all combined in him with sufficient force to drive his eyelids up, and the red LED letters on the bedside clock read 4:19. Oh, damn.

  If Isabelle could have stayed over, surely he’d be asleep now. With her beside him, somebody beside him, a warm and companionable body, the insomnia would not come back. But Lucie had hired private detectives—he’d have known that even if lawyer Bob hadn’t warned him about it—and there was only so much he dared do before the divorce was complete. He could date Isabelle, have dinner with Isabelle, but sleep alone, or not sleep, but alone, night after night.

  Sometimes he got up and read, sometimes he got up and drank, sometimes he got up and watched a tape, but usually he just lay in bed and worried or raged or felt sorry for himself. Sometimes the sleeping pills worked, and then he would get up in the morning feeling fine, almost his old self. Sometimes they didn’t work. Tonight it wasn’t working.

  And tonight he had a fresh worry to rasp and grate inside his brain, claw at him in the dark. What stupidity it had been to make that offer to Wayne Prentice! How could he have exposed himself that way, made himself so vulnerable to somebody he barely knew, didn’t really know at all?

  What if Prentice talks? What if he were to go to Lucie? What if he were to decide the way to kick his career back into life was with publicity, telling everybody in the world that Bryce Proctorr had offered him half a million dollars to kill his wife? The theory of rocketry: you go up by pushing down. Wayne Prentice goes up by pushing Bryce Proctorr down.

  It was as though he’d been plotting a story, making something up he could use as part of a book; but not a very good book. Prentice must have thought he was insane, and maybe he was. This sudden little scheme pops into his head, and he acts as though it’s real, for God’s sake. Plays out a scene. Behaves as though fiction could ever be fact. Leave that stuff in your office, he told himself, but it was too late.

  Could he deny it? If Prentice went public, could he say, “What a stupid idea. I’d never make a suggestion like that, and certainly not to somebody I don’t even know, haven’t seen for over twenty years. The man’s just a publicity hound, that’s all, and if he repeats his accusations I’ll have to make a complaint with the police.”

  Be stern, be confident, be outraged. I’m the star, he told himself. Who is Wayne Prentice? Nobody. Less than nobody. Not even Tim Fleet any more.

  When the clock read 5:04, he got up and roamed around the apartment, turning on all the lights. From the spacious living room, decorated by Lucie and Bloomingdale’s, he could look out and down at Central Park, and the buildings of Fifth Avenue over on the other side. The dining room, at the southeast corner of the apartment, had the Central Park view as well, but also had the terrace on the south side of the building, fifteen stories up, looking down toward midtown.

  He stepped out there, dressed only in his gray robe, barefoot, but there was a mean wind coming over from New Jersey, and tonight he didn’t like the sense of height, the proximity of empty air hundreds of feet above the pavement. If I ever kill myself, he thought, I’ll do it here, dive over that rail.

  He wouldn’t kill himself, he had no need to, he never would, but tonight he could feel that draw, almost tidal, the tugging on his arms, the gentle push in the middle of his back. You’d sleep, he found himself thinking, and went back inside.

  It was very bad to be this alone, for this long. It made him afraid of himself on his own terrace, a place he normally loved. It made him blurt out foolishness to a stranger, leaving himself open to God knows what.

  The “study” was what he called the room that was part library and part entertainment center. His big-screen TV was hidden behind antique-looking mahogany doors, flanked by shelves of books, but the giveaway was the leather sofa against the opposite wall. Bryce wandered into the study, after coming in from the terrace, and opened the mahogany doors. Then he stood dull-eyed awhile, exhausted but not sleepy, looking at his dim reflection in the TV screen. Finally, he stooped to pull open one of the drawers under the TV where the tapes were hidden, and chose Singin’ in the Rain.

  Partway through, he fell asleep.

  * * *

  For two nights after his blunder with Way
ne Prentice, the insomnia was worse than ever, so that he roamed around all day feeling logy and sapped of energy. These were the times when he felt, Give her everything, bring it to an end, sign anything, agree to anything, let her have it all, the past and the future, I’ll start over with nothing, what do I care? But it couldn’t work that way, the lawyers and the judges wouldn’t let it work that way. The grindstone had to turn at its own slow pace.

  Then, on the third day, he got two pieces of mail that changed his mood. The first was the manuscript, in a big manila envelope. Wayne had actually sent him the manuscript. Six hundred twenty-three pages, The Domino Doublet, by Tim Fleet. Dedication page: For Susan. That would be the wife. And an unheaded unsigned note on a blank sheet of typewriter paper:

  I have to meet her.

  He’s going to do it.

  Bryce sat at the dining room table with his mail, sunlight on the terrace to his left, which had lost its menace. He’s going to do it, he thought, and saw that he had been astute, he’d chosen his man well, he’d made a brilliant move.

  The other piece of mail that mattered was an invitation to the premiere of a play, off-Broadway, a little theater downtown on Grove Street. The play had been written by Jack Wagner, who was mostly a magazine journalist. He’d interviewed Bryce ten years ago, and they’d been casual friends ever since. This was Jack’s first produced play, about which he was very excited, though it was unlikely that so many as a thousand people would ever see it, and there was certainly no profit to be had from it, not for Jack and probably not for the theater either. But Bryce understood Jack’s pleasure and pride; profit wasn’t why you did it.

  It was nice to get this invitation, but Bryce didn’t at first realize it was significant, nor that it was linked to the manuscript that had also come in today’s mail. Then he noticed that, in addition to the phone number printed on the invitation with its request for an RSVP, there was a hand written different phone number and note: “Bryce, Please call me before you reply. Jack.”