Free The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer Page A

Michigan, but when he saw a small crater in the white wall of the main hallway, he stopped. The hole was about the circumference of a half-dollar and quite deep, revealing gray cement beneath chipped white plaster. Lines radiated out from the hole like legs from the body of a spider. Conner gripped the gun in his pocket.
    â€œAhh, I see you’ve found it,” Dex said.
    â€œFound what?” asked Conner.
    â€œOne of my most prized possessions. Do you know what it is?”
    â€œA bullet hole.”
    â€œExactly. Do you know who made it?”
    Conner shook his head.
    â€œMailer,” said Dex.
    â€œNorman Mailer?”
    Dex nodded. He said that the author had taken the very same walk that Conner had taken and the two of them had conducted a similar conversation. They had met in the cocktail lounge of the Drake Hotel. Dex had told Mailer he wanted to make him a proposal. He gave the man the gun and a check, then brought him here. But Mailer had not believed the gun was real. The moment they entered the apartment, he said, “Let’s see what that baby’s got,” then fired the gun at the wall.
    â€œIt was then that he understood my story was real,” said Dex. “This was years ago now, but I still don’t have the heart to plaster over the hole.”
    Dex led Conner past the hallway and into the next room.
    â€œMy mind was going crazy,” Conner told me. “I thought there might be a body. I thought there might be guns or a suitcase full of drug money, all this stupid shit. I didn’t know what the hell there would be.”
    â€œSo, what was there?” I asked.
    â€œBooks,” Conner said.

14
    D ex had the most beautiful little private library I’ve ever seen,” said Conner. “If I had the cash, I’d build myself one just like it.”
    â€œWhat was it like?” I asked.
    â€œShit, man. I’m not sure I can do it justice.”
    â€œTry.”
    In the center of the room was a long, lacquered ebony table illuminated by green glass desk lamps. Restored eighteenth-century reading chairs were adorned with golden filigree. Against one wall was a small wooden bookcase filled with manuscripts locked behind a plate of glass.
    Conner stood in front of that locked bookcase, trying to determine what sort of manuscripts might have been inside when Dex produced a key, inserted it into the lock, and opened the bookcase’s doors.
    â€œYes, you may look,” Dex said.
    Conner stepped closer.
    Clearly, they were all original manuscripts—either written longhand or typed on a manual typewriter. Many had apparently been written by famous authors, a good deal of whom were among Conner’s favorites, some of whom he had written letters to when he was a young man. J. D. Salinger was one of the authors. So was Jarosław Dudek; there were manuscripts by Thomas Pynchon, Harper Lee, Margot Hetley, B. Traven, Truman Capote, and yes, Norman Mailer. Yet, Conner did not recognize any of the titles. All the manuscripts sounded like crime novels, though these authors were, for the most part, not known for crime fiction—Mailer’s manuscript was Mightier than the Gun ; Dudek’s, An Escape from Warsaw ; Salinger’s was The Missing Glass . On each title page was a simple inscription, the one Conner Joyce had written on more than a dozen Ice Locker title pages—“To Dex.”
    As Dex stood behind him and Pavel lurked in the hallway, Conner stared at the manuscripts, trying to figure out what they might be. He took down the Mailer manuscript, opened it to a random page, glanced at it, put the manuscript back. Then he opened the Dudek. He thought he had read absolutely everything these men had written. But he knew he hadn’t read these.
    â€œAre they real?” he asked.
    â€œHow do you mean?” asked Dex.
    â€œI haven’t heard of any of these titles.”
    Dex took a seat at his table, his back framed by a