The Salinger Contract (22 page)

I asked her what I should do with the manuscript, and she gave the same answer Dex would have given: “Burn it.”

I should probably tell you I felt guilty about violating my agreement with Shascha. After all, I had taken her money. I should probably tell you I had some reservations about accusing Margot Hetley of a crime without any actual proof. But I felt a greater responsibility to Conner; one time, long ago when he was just a boy, he wrote a letter to my father and never got a response, which was in some way how I had spent my life—asking questions and waiting for answers that I finally gave up hoping would ever come.

I knew that one day it might all catch up with me, but I didn't hide. I didn't pack up my family and move out of the country. I didn't change my name; I even kept my phone number listed. I took our house off the market, figuring we would hunker down and wait to sell until the end of the global depression or whatever it was that we seemed to be going through. I knew wherever I went, someone could find me. And I knew whatever I wrote, someone might use it for reasons I never intended. Maybe they would use it to find Conner, or maybe they would use it to find me, or maybe my story would give them an idea for a crime. I didn't really give a damn. If someone wanted to track me down and confront me, I would deal with all that when the time came.

It happened at my father's gravesite. I had gone there not so much to pay my respects as to try to make manifest a story that still seemed to exist only in my own mind. But as far as that was concerned, visiting the New Hampshire cemetery didn't do much good—the name engraved on the headstone was just one more name in a cemetery full of them. Whether the name was J. D. Salinger­ or Sid J. Langer or something totally different didn't matter. Some of the gravesites had flowers on them, but his didn't and I hadn't brought any, just a manuscript completed right around the time I was born.

I was laying the manuscript atop the earth before the gravestone when I saw Dex approaching. He wore a pinstriped navy-blue suit with a pale-yellow pocket square. He looked scrawnier and older than Conner had described. But I recognized him by the long, wide scar on his neck and the yellow-eyed falcon atop his walking stick. Conner had made that walking stick seem like an affectation, but now Dex seemed to need it. Pavel Bilski was gone, taking Jarosław Dudek along with him; maybe that's why Dex looked so alone.

“Mr. Dunford,” I said, and he smiled, perhaps surprised I already knew who he was. We talked by the grave, and he told me of all the trouble Conner and I had caused him. I was not surprised when he told me I would have to devise some way to compensate him. And I had already prepared my response.

“Why don't I write you a book?” I said.

“A book?”

I nodded.

“What sort?” he asked.

“A perfect crime,” I said.

“Just one copy?” he asked.

“Manual typewriter,” I said. “No copies, no carbons.”

“Yes,” said Dex, “that's it exactly.”

He held my glance for quite some time.

“What would you like me to write about?” I asked.

“I'm not the writer,” said Dex.

“I know,” I said. “But why don't you try anyway?”

“All right,” he said. And after he had considered for a while, he said, “Why don't you start with this? Somewhere in this world, there is a very rich, very ruthless, very powerful woman who stole some priceless manuscripts from me and nearly killed me in the process. Those manuscripts are very dear to me, and I would very much like to get the damned things back.”

He then gestured to the manuscript on my father's grave. “You can start by giving that one back to me, Adam. It's mine, you know.”

And so I handed it to him.

Conner Joyce had told me he felt some compunction about writing that first novel for Dex. He said he wouldn't have done it save for the fact that he had no other choice. I did have choices, but I wanted to do it anyway. I already had an idea for a story that would get Dex what he wanted. And I knew that, at least for me, inspiring one person was just as good as inspiring thousands. I didn't really care who that person was or what I would or wouldn't inspire him to do. I really didn't mind that I would be working for Dex now; a man does what he has to do in order to protect and provide for his family. And as one of Conner's favorite writers told him, in one way or the other, we all wind up working for Dex.

Acknowledgments

T
hanks to everyone who helped me in one way or another to create this book, especially the Langer, Sissenich, and Langer-Sissenich families. My heartfelt thanks also go out to Maria Braeckel, Campus View Child Care Center, Thomas Conner, Beth Dembitzer­, Laura De Silva, Gina Fattore, Jane Friedman, Terry Govan and Mark Leuschner, Richard Green, Amy Hackenberg and Erik Tillema­, Harmony School, Julianne Hausler, the
Jewish Daily Forward
, Cynthia Joyce, Gretchen Koss, Jerome Kramer, Hana Landes, the Lahn family, the Macy Family, Nicholas Meyer, Nicole Passage, Tina Pohlman, Michael Radulescu, Marly Rusoff, Martha Sharpe, Anjali Singh, Corinne Smith, Cindy Spiegel, Amy Watts, and Michelle Weiner. And, of course, many, many thanks for the inspiration provided by the Chicago Public Library, the Coq d'Or Lounge of the Drake Hotel, Feast Bakery Café, the Hungarian Pastry Shop, the Monroe County Public Library, and the Uptown Café of Bloomington, Indiana.

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