Free The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer

and the other time keeping house in South Central Indiana, but I did remember 680 Lake Shore. It had once been the Furniture Mart and its original address was 666. The building’s developers, fearing the satanic associations of 666 might scare off buyers, changed the address to 680. On the lobby floor when I lived in the city, there used to be a cocktail lounge called the Gold Star Sardine Bar, featuring cabaret singers, dishes of free cigarettes at every table, and, most important, no cover charge. It was reputed to be a good place to take a date, but not a date I was interested in seeing for more than one night; cocktail lounges with free smokes and cabaret tunes may have been my mom’s favored venues when she was my age, but I didn’t feel comfortable in them. During the few years when I was working at CBS, writing radio news copy and fetching sandwiches from the White Hen Pantry for John Cody and the rest of the news reporters and anchors, I took interns and desk assistants from DePaul and Loyola to the Gold Star. I paid for their drinks, lit their cigarettes, then watched them go home with older, wealthier men. I never took Sabine; she would have found the place pompous and the music boring as hell.
    Six-Eighty Lake Shore was the sort of building that was ubiquitous on the Upper East Side of Manhattan—uniformed doorman out front; marble floors and brass fixtures in the lobby; crystal chandeliers; a late-night, luxury grocery store on the first floor; a health club with splendid views of the city. But in Chicago, it was something of a rarity, a throwback to a previous age, like the Coq d’Or or Dex Dunford himself.
    The doorman, in a dark-red jacket and pants with gold stripes and matching epaulets, was a short man in his early seventies with prominent front teeth. He greeted both Dex and Pavel—“Good evening, Mr. Dunford”; “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. Bilski.” He had an understated, professional manner, which suggested a man capable of maintaining the confidences of tenants. But when Dex introduced Conner, using his full name, the man smiled broadly.
    â€œConner Joyce?” he asked. “The writer?”
    The doorman told Conner how much he had enjoyed Devil Shotgun . “That was a seismic work, Mr. Joyce,” he said. “Absolutely seismic. Did you ever write anything else?”
    â€œI did and I didn’t,” Conner said, then followed Pavel and Dex into the lobby.
    As the men approached the elevators, Conner watched himself in the walls of mirrors. To his surprise, his reflection portrayed a man a great deal more confident than he felt. He could see that he was taller than Dex, his body fitter and seemingly more agile than Pavel’s. As they rode the elevator to the penthouse, Conner tried not to feel tense—he reminded himself of the note he had left with the desk clerk at the Drake, of the gun he had in his pocket as he stepped out of the elevator and approached the door to Dex’s apartment. He was leaving a trail. He had witnesses. In a book he might write, all this knowledge would have helped a character, given that character confidence, though it didn’t do much for Conner himself—all he truly wanted was to return to his hotel, sleep, board his plane, then get back together with Angie and Atticus.
    â€œSo, what was Dex’s place like?” I asked Conner.
    â€œLovely, and yet …”
    â€œAnd yet what?”
    â€œAnd yet it was so strange.”
    â€œNot what you expected?”
    â€œWell, no,” said Conner. “But at the same time it was exactly what I should have expected if I’d been paying attention. And, let me tell you something, my friend, what I found there—I think you’re the one guy who would really appreciate this.”
    When they entered the apartment, Conner was taken with its elegance. He noted the Oriental carpets in the main room, the views that gave out onto Lake