The Salinger Contract (15 page)

C
onner didn't try to make Angie stay. In the gathering darkness, he sat on his porch swing and watched her drive the Subaru Outback that contained his entire life toward the highway. He went back into the house to get a sleeping bag so he could sleep in the woods; he didn't care how cold it was, he didn't want to spend the night in the house.

Angie had said she was driving back to the city to stay with her mom. He figured he would give her a couple of days to calm down. Then he would try to tell her the story again and make her believe it. But during the time he spent by himself, he felt less inclined to believe that story. Everything that had happened suddenly seemed like a fiction he had dreamt up for Dex. He still had the MAH flash drive to prove the story was true and that he hadn't imagined it, but that didn't matter much. The ride in the toilet had permanently damaged the drive; when he tried plugging it into the USB port of his computer, an error message appeared on his screen.

He spent days brooding, considering, reconsidering, wondering if he should call the police and then wondering how he could possibly do something as foolish as make that call. He wondered if he should do anything he could to get Angie and Atticus back or if he no longer deserved to be with them. He wondered why he had honored his contract with Dex but violated the one he had with Angie.

When enough time had passed for Conner to fool himself into thinking Angie might have forgiven him or would at least be willing to talk, he rode the motorcycle into the city. He deposited his final check. He loitered in front of police stations, even the Twenty-Fourth Precinct, where he had first met Angie. He considered making a confession, but couldn't go through with it.

From the precinct headquarters, he wandered all the way up Amsterdam Avenue to 145th Street, remembering the walks and rides he and Angie had taken when they were young and in love, when they would have done anything to spend just one more moment together. He stood outside the grimy walk-up where he had once waited for her to come running down. He buzzed her apartment, heard Angie's mother's voice on the intercom—she sounded older than he had remembered. When he asked if he could come up, Gladys De La Roja said no, her daughter was not there. The first time, he left a message; the next time, he didn't. He returned several times throughout the day and the evening, but each time he buzzed the apartment, he got the same response—“No, Conner, she's not here, but I'll tell her you came by.” She never invited him up, not even to see his son.

Conner wandered through the city, amazed at how many people he could see and still feel so empty. He kept waiting for Angie to call. He kept checking his phone to make sure that it was charged, and that he hadn't shut off the ringer. But when the phone did ring and Conner picked up, he didn't hear Angela's voice.

“What is it?” Conner asked.

“You have violated our agreement, sir,” said Dex. “We need to talk.”

C
onner agreed to meet Dex and Pavel at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, and as he approached the establishment, Conner couldn't escape the notion that this would be a perfect spot to take out a hit on somebody. All Dex and Pavel would have to do would be to open fire, then blend into the crowds before boarding a train and rolling out of town. He sat down on the bench across from them as they were finishing their meals, and tried to determine whether Pavel was packing a weapon. He probably was. Maybe Dex was too. For all Conner knew, there may well have been a poisoned blade hidden in that walking stick.

As Conner joined the men, he noted their demeanors—Dex's stern, Pavel's more apologetic, yet no more helpful, as if Conner's imminent death was little more than an unfortunate fact he could do nothing to reverse. No one offered to buy Conner a meal or a drink.

“You disappoint me, Conner. Truly, you do,” said Dex.

“What're you talking about?” Conner tried to deny that he had violated his contract, but he lost patience with himself even before Dex did. Why tell lies if you could no longer bother to believe them yourself? He had violated the agreement, so what punishment would Dex and Pavel exact? Margot Hetley had violated her agreement and she was still alive.

“Why don't I just pay you back? I still have a lot of the money,” said Conner. “I haven't spent it all. Far from it.”

But Dex knew all about that. “Yes, that is true about the money,” he said. “You have spent only perhaps fifteen percent of what we have paid you.”

Pavel nodded. “Fifteen percent, sixteen percent, yes, something like
thees
.”

“But that sixteen percent would be difficult for you to get a hold of quickly,” Dex said. “And the contract does stipulate that the money be paid back immediately and in full.”

“Or else what?” Conner asked.

“Do you really need me to tell you?” asked Dex.

“Yes,” said Conner. “Actually, I do.”

“Think, Mr. Joyce.” All pleasantries were gone, replaced by cold formalities. “You're the writer; you have a far more vivid imagination than I do.”

“Is that what you told Salinger?” asked Conner. “Is that what you told Dudek?”

“These were men of their word,” said Dex.

Conner was about to ask if Dex was implying he was not a man of his word, but he knew that he wasn't anymore. Yes, there had been a time when he had been that sort of fellow—Eagle Scout, Navy man, all that—but Dex knew he had changed. Dex had made Conner what he was today, or at least made him see what he had always had the potential to become, what every man had the potential to become, what Angie had seen him becoming. Conner shifted his gaze from Dex to Pavel and back again, the former drinking the last of the juice from an oyster shell, the latter daubing his lips with a white cloth napkin, and he understood once again that Dex was right; he did have a vivid imagination. At that very moment, he could imagine all sorts of horrific punishments.

“Look,” Conner said. “This was my deal. You made it with me. I fucked it up. OK. Please,
please
, whatever you do, leave my wife and son out of it.”

Dex smiled. “You see,” he said. “I told you that you had a better imagination than I. What crime did I commit? The one you wrote. What punishment might I inflict? The one you now imagine. Take the worst you can imagine; that is what will happen.”

Conner's anger collapsed into desperation. “But you already know I can't repay you immediately,” he said. “Not all at once.”

“Then we will need to make another arrangement,” said Dex.

“Which arrangement?”

“Listen to your imagination. What does your imagination tell you?”

“Oh, fuck your games,” Conner shouted.

“I am not playing a game,” said Dex. “I have never been playing a game. I have told you what I wanted and you have played games with me. I will ask you again. What does your imagination tell you?”

There was a steak knife beside Dex's plate. How easy it would be to grab that weapon and plunge it into Dex's heart; how easy it would be to chase down Pavel. The criminals in Conner's novels, even in
The Embargoed Manuscript
, had never wanted or intended to be criminals; they were merely men pushed beyond their limits, men who had begun to believe they had no other choice. Conner had never killed a man; he had never thought he could; but the Navy had taught him how, and his time working the crime beat at the
Daily News
had taught him how easy it was to get away with. One crime—wasn't that what his characters always thought? One crime and you'd never have to pay for it. The trouble came when you got cocky and tried to do more. He could do it, he thought, as long as it meant he could keep his wife and son safe.

But just at that moment, when Conner was contemplating murder in the Grand Central Oyster Bar, an idea occurred to him, an idea he sensed Dex had been leading him to all this while. A volt of understanding surged through him. His eyes brightened slightly and he could see just a bit more clearly.

“Oh,” Conner said. “Oh, I get it now.”

“Yes,” said Dex. “I thought you might.”

Dex smiled, and so did Conner.

“You mean another book,” said Conner.

Dex nodded.

“Another story of a perfect crime,” Conner said.

Pavel smiled too. “Something like
thees
, yes,” he said.

“A story that will pay back the money I owe you,” said Conner.

“Yes, that's it exactly,” said Dex. “And everything I make over and above that will be yours.”

Pavel produced a contract and handed it to Conner, who didn't bother reading it this time, just signed the damn thing and gave it back to Dex. Dex offered to buy Conner a drink, but Conner said no; he wanted to get to work as soon as he could.

“But how could you do that?” I asked Conner in the Coq d'Or, where the pianist was playing “Naima,” by John Coltrane. How could he still work for Dex, given everything that happened, given the threats Dex had made?

Maybe, I thought, this was where I came in. Maybe this was where I could prove my decency or my heroism. Maybe he'd had trouble writing another crime novel for Dex; maybe he could no longer stomach the idea of writing a crime he knew would become reality, and now he was going to call upon me to help him because I wouldn't suffer the same moral conflict. Plan a heist, have someone else carry it out, keep the money left over, tell everyone that I had only written a story, so it wasn't my fault—sounded like a good plan to me.

“I imagine it must have been hard,” I said.

“What was?”

“Writing a novel for a man like that, I mean, now that you knew who he really was and what he was after. I don't know how you could square it with your principles.”

“Maybe that's how it would be for you,” said Conner. “For me, it was easy.”

“Then what was hard?” I asked.

“Making Dex think it was hard.”

Because, Conner explained, he knew exactly the sort of novel he would write, and he knew how it might solve all his problems—getting Dex and Pavel out of his life and bringing Angie and Atticus back into it. He could have everything he wanted as long as he wrote the right sort of novel.

“What sort of novel would that be?” I asked.

“A novel about a crime destined to fail,” he said. “I'd write something that looked like the perfect crime, but when Dex and Pavel tried it, they'd get nailed.”

As he sat across from the men in the Oyster Bar, Conner tried to keep himself from acting too cocky, tried to pretend he was still furious with Dex and Pavel. He swore at the men, told them he wanted them out of his life and, once he had written this last book, he was through with them.
For good!
He kicked a chair and threw over a few saltshakers before he exited the restaurant. And then he disappeared into the crowds of Grand Central Station as if he had just committed a hit.

W
riting a novel about a crime that wouldn't pan out was easy enough—Conner had breezed through enough airport crime novels that weren't remotely plausible, and made assumptions about criminals and law enforcement apparently without ever having done any research. Every James Patterson and David Baldacci novel he had skimmed
en diagonale
seemed ridiculous, and so did every episode of
Law & Order
he had ever watched. The hard part was writing a crime good enough to convince Dex it would work. Conner would have to employ his customary level of detail; he would have to provide enough of it to make Dex believe the story, yet at the same time, create a transition from truth to fiction so seamless Dex wouldn't see it happening.

Conner spent his days brainstorming as he walked along the Delaware River or rode Angie's motorcycle over the back roads of the Pokes. He tapped on his manual Smith-Corona, hoping all his bad ideas would lead to a good one. The urgent need to devise an appropriate idea didn't make the process of finding it any easier. Each day, he considered then rejected dozens of scenarios; by the time the first ice storm of autumn arrived, he had generated enough ideas to fill a small library, and he still hadn't settled on one that felt right.

By now he was on speaking terms with Angie again. She let him take Atticus out for walks whenever he came into the city, walks that were always far shorter than Conner would have liked. He didn't tell her about the plan he had hatched, and she didn't advise him to turn himself in to the police. For the time being, she just wanted to keep her distance. Once Conner had written the book that would get Dex and Pavel out of the way, and he figured he could reveal his story to the police without fear of retribution, he would tell her everything.

Before the ice storm hit, Conner took Atticus for a sled ride through Riverside Park, and returned the boy to Angie right after sleet started mixing with the snow. He wanted to get back to the Poconos while it was still safe to drive. But by the time he got on the road, it was already too slippery—as it turned out, he couldn't make it past East Stroudsburg. He exited the highway, sliding and spinning over the asphalt at barely five miles per hour.

He skidded through downtown East Stroudsburg, in search of a bar or coffee shop where he could wait out the storm. He parked on Courtland Street in front of the main branch of the East Stroudsburg Credit Union, which had closed early because of the weather. He was walking past the bank, heading for a sports bar called the Diggity Lounge, when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his own image in one of the video monitors in the bank's security booth.

Hail pinged against his cheeks as he paused to look at himself on the screen—there were flecks of ice in his beard, shadows under his eyes. He looked gaunt. He then watched the image switch from one of himself to one of snow-dusted Courtland Street to one of an empty teller booth. The TV monitor scrolled through more than a dozen images, all being taken at that very moment by the security cameras in the bank. At the bottom of the screen was a black band with a digital readout of the date and time. But the readout was wrong. Where the time should have been, zeroes were strobing. He wondered what would happen if someone robbed a bank when the date and time were wrong. How would that affect the admissibility of evidence? This may not have seemed like much to base a story on—no doubt the digital readout would be fixed by the time the bank reopened in the morning—but it gave Conner an idea.

He waited out the storm in the Diggity Lounge, eating stale pretzels, drinking flat sodas, and jotting down ideas on napkins before returning home to his typewriter to write. The key, he knew, was not to take the story too fast. No matter how much he ached to finish so he could return to the important business of reuniting with his family and ridding himself of Dex and Pavel, he worked in the same methodical fashion with which he had approached every one of his books. He did not skimp on detail. He wanted to get so many details right that Dex wouldn't be able to recognize the ones he got wrong.

He wrote one thousand words per day and spent the rest of his time revising those words and walking through East Stroudsburg, trying to imbue his novel with the town's ambience. He strived for pinpoint accuracy, particularly when writing about the bank. He included the model numbers of each of its dozen cameras, researched the manufacturing processes used to produce its Mosler security vault. He wrote down the names of each of the bank's security guards, managers, loan specialists, and tellers, whom he greeted every morning when he withdrew cash—so much so that he began to worry the bank's employees might suspect he was planning to rob the joint himself. He introduced himself to Hunter Leggett, the bank's regional manager, gave Leggett copies of
Devil Shotgun
and
Ice Locker
, both now available for 50 percent off, and got a tour of the bank vaults and a crash course in the bank's security systems. He even watched Hunter Leggett type in his own security access codes. It had always amazed Conner how much purportedly confidential information he could get merely by identifying himself as an author or journalist. Without even having to show a business card or pass through a metal detector, he had gotten access to runways at LaGuardia and JFK just weeks after 9/11, had sat seatbelt-less on a day's worth of runs on a Brink's truck, had gotten within easy shooting distance of governors, senators, and even one time the vice president of the United States.

Conner made sure to write a genuine novel, not just a blueprint for a crime. If he wrote only the heist and not the story behind it, Dex might concentrate too fully on the details and come to identify the flaws. So when Conner saw Rosie Figueroa, one of the bank's tellers, alone at the Diggity Lounge one night after the East Stroudsburg Credit Union had closed, he bought her a beer and learned her story—single mom, divorced, undergraduate degree in finance from East Stroudsburg U. She didn't want to talk much about her ex-husband, but Conner was still good at getting people to tell him their stories, and from what the woman said, he was able to concoct a suitable biography for a thief. He imagined Rosie's ex to be a convict just out of the joint, seeking to take advantage of his ex-wife's position at the bank. Rosie's ex-husband would force her to ingratiate herself with the bank's security director, from whom she would learn the pass codes, security protocols, and remote video procedures Conner himself had learned through his research. He called Rosie's husband Chet Davila, a name he picked out of an old phone book.

In the novel Conner was writing, Rosie and Chet conspired to commit a robbery at midnight on February 29. He had chosen the date carefully. During the course of his research, he had learned that the East Stroudsburg bank was protected by two major computer systems, but that each system was manufactured and serviced by a different company. The video cameras were manufactured and maintained by DGA Security Systems in Manhattan. The German-based multinational P. B. G. Krenz, whose American headquarters were located in Tallahassee, Florida, maintained the locks to the doors, the vault, and the keypads. The systems had been installed at different times, and whenever there was some sort of malfunction, which usually took place during a particularly brutal storm, such as the one Conner had experienced when he first concocted his story idea, both systems broke down and Hans Plitsch, the bank's security director, had to coordinate the schedules of repair people from both DGA and Krenz.

The difficulty of coordinating schedules was harder to address if anything happened to go wrong during a leap year on February 29, since DGA and Krenz had different, arcane methods for dealing with the extra day. Every four years, at the end of February, the two systems would stop talking to each other, forcing them to shut down, leaving the bank essentially unguarded, without either functional locks or security cameras during the ten minutes it took the systems to reboot. For those ten minutes between midnight and 12:10 a.m., the only thing keeping a thief—in this case Rosie's ex-husband, Chet Davila, but in real life Dex Dunford and Pavel Bilski—was the overnight security guard, Lyle Evans. Once Pavel and Dex had overpowered Lyle Evans, they would have ten minutes to take everything they could carry.