The Hook

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Yeah.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!”

  “I thought he could have this one little moment—”

  “No, no, Bryce, that’s the whole point with Billy, that’s how I use him later on, with him it’s all internal, he never translates it into real-world action, that’s not who he is.”

  “Well, I made the change,” Bryce said, “and Joe caught it that it was a glitch—”

  “Of course he did.” Wayne sounded very upset over this.

  “But now, the problem is,” Bryce says, “he agrees with both of us. He agrees with me that we need more drama at that point, an event, but then he feels we have to have a scene to show Billy go back to what he was before.”

  “You mean, he violates character, then notices it, then rushes back.”

  “I guess so. Anyway, that turnaround scene is what Joe feels it needs. The book needs.”

  “You can’t just put it back the way it was?”

  “You can’t take a dramatic scene out of a book after the editor’s seen it.”

  “Shit. Goddam it, Bryce, I wish you’d talked to me about that move. Are there other things like that?”

  “I made little changes, you know I did, but that’s the only one Joe had problems with.”

  “So you’ve got this internal guy suddenly makes an external act, and then what? I mean, the way you have it.”

  “Then the next time we see them, they’re back together. Like you had it.”

  “No explanation.”

  “No.”

  “Jesus, Bryce, what are you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know, I was hoping you’d have an idea.”

  “I had an idea. You replaced it.”

  “I just can’t think of a scene,” Bryce admitted, “where Billy undoes it.”

  “Neither can I,” Wayne told him. “I can’t imagine Billy outside that diner, alone.”

  “Let’s,” Bryce said, “both sleep on it, and I’ll call you again tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Wayne said, but he sounded doubtful.

  * * *

  That evening, eating dinner at Gaylord’s with Isabelle, Bryce said, “I was thinking, once the editing of Two Faces in the Mirror is done, I’d like to leave town for a while, leave my whole life for a while.”

  She looked at him with some amusement. “Leave your whole life?”

  “All except you,” he assured her. “In fact, what I was thinking about, what if you and I moved to Spain for a couple of years?”

  She reacted with astonishment, but not, he thought, with pleasure. “Spain! For God’s sake, why?”

  “It’s a beautiful country,” he said. “I could set my next novel there. I don’t like the city right now, the reminders, or Connecticut either. Just to take a break from all this. And maybe I could help you to get your children back, it might make a difference if you were there.”

  She turned very cold at that. “I think we leave that to my father,” she said. “I don’t believe I should mess in it, and I don’t think you should get into things you don’t understand.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “So you don’t want to go to Spain.”

  “I left Spain,” she said. “I like New York.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “And you know, Bryce,” she went on, “this would not be a good time for you to leave the country, don’t you realize that?”

  He had no idea what she was driving at. “No. Realize what?”

  “You’re a suspect!”

  “What? You mean in—”

  “I mean,” she said, “the husband is always the main suspect, and you were in the middle of a very bitter divorce, and wasn’t it a nice coincidence you just happened to be in Los Angeles when Lucie was murdered?”

  “But I was there.”

  “You’re a rich man,” she told him. “You could have hired somebody. Don’t you think the police are investigating that? To see if you spent any extra money recently, if you had any meetings with strange people.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” he said. “Neither of those.”

  “If you try to leave the country,” she said, “they will be sure you paid to have Lucie murdered, and they will harass you unmercifully.”

  “The point is,” Bryce said, not at all wanting to think about what she was telling him, “you don’t want to go back to Spain.”

  “Not for one minute.”

  “Fine. We’ll stay here.”

  And, irrelevantly, he thought, this is where Henry got up and left Eleanor. Wayne was right, and I was wrong.

  * * *

  In the morning, he called Wayne, but Wayne had no suggestion for him on how to smooth over the glitch in the story. Bryce said, “Normally, if I have a problem like this, I go in and do a head-banging session with Joe, and we’d come up with something, but this time, I just don’t think that’s gonna work. I’m realizing, those people are yours more than they’re mine. You can tap into them, keep them consistent.”

  “Not once Billy is off the rails, Bryce, I’m sorry.”

  “I had a brainstorm this morning,” Bryce said. “You could meet with Joe, the three of us meet, I know for sure we’d work it out.”

  “Me? How could I meet with your editor?”

  “I have a story I can tell him,” Bryce said. “You and I knew each other years ago, you were a successful novelist, he’s probably heard of your name, but then it all kind of dried up for you. I was having a hell of a time with the book, couldn’t concentrate on it, because of the divorce, and then we ran into each other again, and I hired you to be my editorial consultant.”

  “Editorial consultant. That’s what it says in that contract.”

  “Exactly. I’ll tell Joe, I want to keep it quiet, because it could be publicly humiliating if there was any suggestion I couldn’t do my own books all by myself.”

  “Jerzy Kosinski,” Wayne said.

  “That’s just precisely it,” Bryce said. “Kosinski never got his reputation back, not completely, after all those rumors that other people wrote his books.”

  “So I’m your undercover editorial consultant,” Wayne said. He sounded a little insulted. “How does that get me into a meeting with your editor?”

  “You understand these characters,” Bryce told him. “Better than I do myself sometimes. And in fact, and I’ll explain this to Joe, when I was working on that part of the book, you argued against Billy walking out of the diner. You can tell Joe all that internalizing stuff you told me, I couldn’t tell that to Joe and get it right.”

  Wayne said, “But haven’t you switched the book around since I saw it? Changed the character names, moved some chapters, all that? How could I talk about the book?”

  “I’ll messenger a copy of the manuscript down to you this morning.”

  “Messenger. That’s nice. Who are Billy and Janice now?”

  “Henry and Eleanor.”

  “Henry and Eleanor,” Wayne echoed, as though tasting the names on his tongue. “Sure. Why not?”

  “You’ll see when you get the manuscript, I tried to keep your ideas, not do a Frankenstein’s monster here, I think this is the only real glitch.”

  “Fine. So I’ll read it, and you’ll set up this appointment, and I’ll go in with you as your sort of pre-editor editor—”

  “The guy who helped me through the bad patch caused by the divorce.”

  “I certainly did. But then the three of us all sit around and solve the . . . Henry problem, and then I go back into the shadows, like the Phantom of the Opera.”

  Bryce was reluctant to say this, but he thought he had to: “If you and Joe get along,” he said, “and I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t, you might pitch him a story idea of your own.”

  “Oh.” A short word, but quick with interest.

  “Not right away,” Bryce said. “When we get this book put to bed, then take your shot.”

  “I will,” Wayne said. “Thank you, Bryce.”

  Fourteen


  It was very strange to read your own book after it had been taken over by somebody else. It wasn’t even a matter of whether Wayne thought the changes made the book better or worse, it was simply the otherness of it. Like a dream in which you’re in your own house, but the details are all wrong, the furniture’s different or in the wrong place and the doors lead to rooms you don’t know. Disorienting, disturbing, almost frightening; and yet, fascinating. A parallel universe.

  He had to read it through twice before he could see it clearly; the first time had been just too through-the-looking-glass. With the second run-through, though, he saw that this was a valuable learning experience, a wake-up call for some sloppy habits he’d developed over the years. Also, some of Bryce’s changes struck him as brilliant. Moving the third chapter up to begin the book was just exactly the right thing to do, for instance. Other changes Bryce had made, though, struck him as pointless. What was wrong with “winced”?

  Susan read Two Faces in the Mirror as well, and insisted she liked the original better, which he knew was more loyalty than critical comment. She did agree with Wayne that the Henry-Eleanor scene was a mistake, but had no more idea than he did how to solve the problem.

  Susan had always been his first reader, and had been valuable to him just because she was not a literary or artistic type, but was a solid realist. She didn’t admire good writing or clever plotting for themselves, but enjoyed his books for their approximation to the truth. Whenever she did find fault with his work, it was because some striving for effect had left plausibility behind. A more artistic type, say another writer or a painter, would have forgiven such flaws or not even seen them, but Susan needed to feel solid ground beneath her feet, and he’d come to rely on her judgment to give his work ballast.

  They joked sometimes about opposites attracting and absolute opposites attracting absolutely, but they knew it was true. They were devoted to one another and dependent on one another because they were so foreign to one another, so close together because they were so far apart. It was the very depth of their differences that made her his perfect reader; she admired his ability to create entire worlds out of the merest air, and he admired her ability to find the real world not boring.

  The appointment with Bryce’s editor, Joe Katz, had been set for ten-thirty Thursday morning. Bryce’s publisher, Pegasus-Regent, was one of those who’d moved their offices down to the Madison Square Park area in the early eighties, when midtown office rents went through the roof. The firm had most of an old building now, on Twenty-sixth Street off Park, with a ground-floor luncheonette as the only other tenant. It was an easy walk from Wayne’s apartment, though the early December day was cold and windy and overcast. But Wayne liked the weather, it gave him the impression of having a little struggle on the way to victory.

  That other struggle, last month, he seldom thought about any more, though during the half-hour walk across and uptown the scene did keep coming into his mind; probably because this meeting was one more result of it. But these days, when he remembered that night in Lucie’s apartment, it wasn’t as though it had been anything he himself had done, but more like a scene from a particularly grisly movie. He remembered the experience the way you remember something you’ve seen, not something you participated in. It was as though, in his memory, he were three or four feet behind the attacker, observing from up close, but not a participant. However, like a scene from a particularly powerful movie, the memory did stay with him.

  The entrance to Pegasus-Regent was unprepossessing; the loss of elaborate office-building lobbies was one of the trade-offs when the publishers moved south. A glassed door with the firm’s name on it stood to the right of the luncheonette. Inside were a narrow hall with an old mosaic-tile floor, a steep metal staircase leading back and up, and two elevators.

  Editorial was on six, the top floor, the closest hope to a view in this neighborhood. Wayne rode up, and when the elevator door opened he might as well have been in midtown after all. Editorial had a very modern, very elaborate large reception area with two separate clusters of sofas and magazine-laden coffee tables to left and right, and a receptionist at a broad multimedia desk straight out of Star Trek.

  Wayne was two or three minutes early, but Bryce was already there, reading a recent Economist on a sofa to the right. He jumped up when Wayne walked in, waved to him, and called to the receptionist, “Okay! Tell Joe we’re ready.” Then, as she turned to her control panels, he came over toward Wayne, hand out, smiling, saying, “Good to see you, Wayne.”

  He looks feverish, was Wayne’s first thought. Then Bryce was shaking his hand, and Wayne felt electric tension in Bryce’s hand, and saw that the feverishness was deep in Bryce’s eyes. And he’s lost weight, Wayne thought.

  This was the first they’d actually seen each other since that day in the library, the day Bryce had suggested this substitution plot. It was strange to think about that, to realize how much had happened since then. They’d talked a number of times on the phone, Bryce had arranged for him to go see that play, he’d signed the contract, he’d done . . . what was required of him, now he’d read Bryce’s version of The Domino Doublet—he didn’t care for the title change, but let it go—but in all that time they hadn’t actually been in the same room together. A month, a little more than a month.

  “Mr. Proctorr,” the receptionist called, “Mr. Katz says to please give him ten minutes.”

  “Okay, fine, fine,” Bryce said, and to Wayne, “Come on, sit over here.”

  They sat catty-corner on the sofas, and Wayne said, “Good, I wanted to talk to you about something else today anyway, this gives us time to do it.”

  Why did Bryce look so worried? Though all he said was, “Sure. What?”

  “Well, money,” Wayne said.

  Relief from Bryce; what had he expected? “Oh, sure,” he said. “It’ll be coming to my accountant as soon as Joe puts through the okay, and that’ll be after I do the changes based on the meeting today.”

  “So in a week or two.”

  “At the longest,” Bryce said. “You know, it isn’t even a check any more, it’s an electronic transfer straight to my accountant. Then he pays my agent’s commission, pays my bills, puts money in my checking account every month, and takes care of everything else. He can transfer your part to your accountant or however you want to do it.” With a shaky grin, he said, “It’s going to be a little too much to just deposit in your checking account.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Wayne assured him. “What I was thinking, Bryce, I’m not all that tied to my accountant, I’ve changed accountants three times the last eight or nine years, I’m never a big enough deal for them. If you wouldn’t mind, why don’t I switch over to your guy? You could introduce me, and then they just keep the whole thing in the one firm. Fewer people to know about it.”

  “That would be perfect,” Bryce said. “My guy there is Mark Steiner, I’ll give him a call this afternoon, explain the situation, tell him you’ll call.” He pulled out a pen, ripped off part of a page of The Economist, and wrote “Mark Steiner” and the phone number on it. “Wait till tomorrow,” he advised, “so I’ll be sure to have talked to him.”

  “Thanks, Bryce,” Wayne said, and pocketed the scrap of paper.

  Bryce gave him piercing sidelong glances, faintly disturbing. “Well?” he said. “What did you think of it?”

  “Oh, the book?” Wayne felt awkward all at once. How do you react to the man who ate your book and regurgitated it as his own? “I liked a lot of the stuff you did,” he said. “The new opening is absolutely right.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Bryce said. “I really think the Henry-Eleanor thing is the only time I thoroughly messed it up.”

  “Absolutely,” Wayne assured him. “It’s fine.”

  “Mr. Proctorr, could you go in now?”

  “I sure could,” Bryce said, and jumped to his feet, then waited for Wayne.

  They went down what would have been a wide corridor, except that secretaries’ desks sto
od out perpendicular from the left wall, next to office entrances, and crammed bookcases covered the right wall; there was not quite room left for two people to walk abreast. Wayne followed Bryce to the end, where a half-open door showed part of a window showing sky.

  This end room was Joe Katz’s office, he being the senior editor. It was a large corner space, with big windows facing north and east; buildings and a bit of Madison Square Park to the east, building roofs and a bit of sky to the north. In addition to a massive dark-wood desk and four large soft armchairs—no sofas—the room was as cluttered as an attic. An Exercycle, a pinball machine, a doctor’s office balance scale, an English-pattern dartboard, a spinet, a TV plus VCR, all elbowed one another for space along the walls.

  Joe Katz came smiling around the desk to greet them. A short man, he was slender except for a surprising potbelly, as though he’d swallowed a lightbulb. Above a hawknosed face he’d mostly borrowed from Leon Trotsky was a tangle of black-and-white Brillo hair. His glasses were rectangular, black-framed, and halfway down his nose, so that usually he looked over them rather than through them. His hand was already out in greeting.

  “Joe Katz,” Bryce said, “may I introduce the skeleton in my closet, Wayne Prentice.”

  “I knew you had one,” Katz said, grinning, grasping Wayne’s hand. His handshake was strong, affirmative. “Everybody does.” Peering over his glasses at Wayne, he said, “Don’t tell me yours.”

  “I won’t,” Wayne promised.

  Katz released his hand and patted Bryce on the shoulder, having to reach up to do so, and the gesture reminded Wayne of somebody patting a favorite horse. “Come on and sit down,” Katz said. “What have you and your alter ego figured out? No, first—Sit, sit.”

  They all sat in the armchairs, turning them to make a group, Katz ignoring his desk. Leaning forward, hands clasped together, elbows on knees, small feet just touching the gray carpet, he said to Wayne, “I don’t think I ever read anything of yours, remiss of me.”

  “You’re not alone,” Wayne assured him.

  “Well, I looked you up, found The Bracket Polarity.”

  The fourth of Wayne’s novels under his own name, and the beginning of the downhill slide. The first downhill slide. “Oh?”