The Bookmakers (5 page)

“Michigan,” Wolfowitz repeated, unable to think of anything interesting to add. He was flattered by the guy’s friendliness, but disconcerted and a little distrustful, too. It occurred to him that he might be getting hustled or, worse, laughed at.

“Otto, give this man a drink,” the sandy-haired guy told the bartender. “Anybody who appreciates Nolan Strong and the Diablos deserves a drink.” He extended his hand. “My name’s Mack Green, by the way.”

“Artie Wolfowitz. Are you Mack Green the writer?”

“Yep,” said Mack without affectation. “That’s me. What do you do?”

“I work at Gothic Books,” said Wolfowitz, hoping that Green would mistake him for an editor.

“Ah, so that’s how you know my name,” said Mack. Wolfowitz
took it for false modesty;
Bragging Rights
and its young author were the talk of the publishing world. “What do you do over there?”

“I’m on the, ah, business side,” said Wolfowitz. “Actually, I’m an accountant.” He expected a dismissive reaction but Mack surprised him by slapping him on the back once more.

“The only people I know in this town are editors and writers,” he said. “And girls. I never get a chance to talk to anybody normal. An accountant. That means you know where the ninety cents goes.”

“What ninety cents?”

“The ninety cents out of every dollar I earn that the publisher keeps.”

“You only get 10 percent?”

“Other authors get more?”

Wolfowitz shrugged. “Some do.”

“I knew I was getting fleeced,” said Mack, although he seemed more amused than upset. “Hey, grab your drink and join us. I want you to explain this shit to me.”

Wolfowitz followed Mack to his table, where he was introduced to half a dozen people whose names he didn’t catch. “Artie’s the vice president of the New York City branch of the Nolan Strong fan club,” Green told them. “He also works at Gothic. Be nice to him and he’ll tell you how publishing really operates.”

Artie Wolfowitz never learned why Mack had singled him out that evening, and for a long time he suspected some ulterior motive. Eventually, though, he accepted the friendship and his role in it as Mack’s sidekick. It was a role Artie didn’t mind a bit, especially since Mack was a generous and charming patron. He called Artie “Stealth” in tribute to his supposed business acumen, brought him into the inner circle at the Tiger and included him in his restless midnight pub crawls and pick-up expeditions. Together they careened through the city meeting beautiful women, drinking with celebrities and eccentrics, crashing parties where they were always
welcomed, Mack constantly running and laughing and emanating an aura of joyful exuberance, Wolfowitz trailing happily in his wake.

His friendship with Mack had a galvanizing effect not only on Artie Wolfowitz’s social life, but on his career. The young snobs at Gothic began treating him with respect. Even Douglas Floutie, who had recently acquired a controlling interest in the firm, took notice. One day he stopped the heretofore invisible young accountant in the hall and asked him to tell Mack how much he admired his work. “Let him know that Gothic is the kind of house that appreciates fine writing,” he said.

Wolfowitz debated a long time about delivering the message—he was afraid Mack might think he was exploiting their friendship—but in the end it was Green himself who brought up the subject.

“I’m just about done with
The Oriole Kid
,” he told Wolfowitz one night at the Tiger. “You think Gothic might be interested?”

“What’s the matter with the publisher you’ve got?”

“Not aggressive enough,” said Mack. “Besides, the editor I want is at Gothic.”

“Who’s that?”

“You,” said Mack.

Wolfowitz burst out laughing. “Me? What the hell do I know about editing? I haven’t read ten books since high school.”

“I don’t need Max Perkins,” said Mack. Wolfowitz nodded, although he had no idea who Max Perkins was. “Giving me a literary editor is like giving Willie Mays a batting coach, it’d just mess up my style. I can write the books without any help. What I need is somebody who can sell ’em.”

“What makes you think I could do that? I don’t know anything about marketing or publicity. I’m a bookkeeper.”

“So become a book
maker
. Look, the editor I’ve got now at Marathon takes me to lunch and talks about the goddamn French
existentialists. He told me that great books sell themselves. You think great books sell themselves?”

Wolfowitz shook his head.

“Fuckin’ A,” said Mack. “We’re a couple of smalltown boys, Stealth. You know about money and you’ll pick up the rest as you go along. The main thing is, I trust you. I know you’ll fight for me.”

“Even if I wanted to, they’d never go along at Gothic,” said Wolfowitz.

“They’ll go along,” Mack assured him. “Set me up an appointment with Floutie and you’ll see.”

Much to Wolfowitz’s amazement, Mack was right; Floutie, after reading part of his new manuscript, agreed to the arrangement. He invited his newest editor and his newest author into his wood-paneled office, poured them each a stingy portion of sherry and raised his glass. “My dear Green, my dear Wolfowitz,” he said in his acquired British accent, “let us toast a long and artistically profitable relationship.”

“Floutie’s a real fruit fly,” Mack remarked that evening at the Flying Tiger. “What’d he do, inherit the company?”

“Close,” said Wolfowitz. “His wife’s father is Harlan Fassbinder.”

“Who’s he?”

“You’ve never heard of the Prince of Poultry? He’s the biggest chicken grower in the country.”

“And he bought Gothic for Floutie? He must love his ass,” said Mack.

“I think he just wants to keep him out of the poultry business,” said Wolfowitz. “Floutie’s an ex-prof from Princeton. He knows about money like I do about Shakespeare. The old man probably figured that he couldn’t lose too much publishing books.”

“As long as
we
don’t lose, that’s all I care about,” said Mack with an intensity that surprised Wolfowitz; it was part of Mack Green’s style never to seem too serious about anything, especially
his own career. But there was no mistaking his seriousness now, or his determination. “I’m counting on you to make
The Oriole Kid
a bestseller.”

Wolfowitz remained silent and after a moment Mack grinned. “You missed your line. You were supposed to say, ‘I’ll do my best.’ ”

“Not my best,” said Wolfowitz grimly. “Whatever it takes.”

Wolfowitz kept his promise. He worked twenty-hour days, browbeating the Gothic sales force into pushing
The Oriole Kid
, cajoling bookstores and the chains into increasing their orders, fighting his former colleagues for promotional dollars and constantly screaming at the hapless people in the Gothic PR department to get Mack Green more ink, more TV guest shots, more attention.

Inexperience liberated Wolfowitz from the genteel conventions of the publishing business. Books to him were not literature, not art, not even entertainment—they were gym shoes, breakfast cereal, a commodity in a wrapper to be hawked and hyped. As he worked frenzied days and nights on behalf of
The Oriole Kid
, he found he had an instinct for seeing—or creating—marketing and promotional schemes and gimmicks that older, more traditional editors never would have imagined. His personal favorite was talking
the PR guy of the New York Yankees into letting Mack, the Oriole Kid himself, pitch in an exhibition game and then buying enough drinks and dinners for sportswriters to turn it into a national media event and a segment on
Wide World of Sports
.

The day after Mack’s baseball debut—which consisted of two walks, a wild pitch and a hilarious pick-off move to first that landed in the stands—Wolfowitz got a call from Harlan Fassbinder. “I hear you’re the genius got some book writer of mine on TV last night,” he said without preliminaries.

“It was my idea, yessir,” said Wolfowitz.

“Floutie don’t think it’s dignified,” Fassbinder said.

“He’s probably right, but it’s going to sell a lot of books,” Wolfowitz replied.

“That’s what you think is important, is it?” snapped Fassbinder in a challenging tone.

“Yessir, I do,” said Wolfowitz, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Well, goddamnit Wolfowitz, so do I,” squawked the King of Poultry. “It’s about time I got myself a real rooster up there at Gothic. I’m keeping my eye on you.” The phone went dead and Artie Wolfowitz sat at his desk with the receiver in his hand, feeling the thrill of the old man’s approval. No one had ever called him a rooster before.

Unlike his father-in-law, Douglas Floutie was unhappy with the flurry of unconventional publicity surrounding
The Oriole Kid
. “Gimmicks, as you call them, are all well and good,” he told Wolfowitz, “but you’ll discover that serious reviews ultimately make a book and a writer’s career. Mack Green is a considerable literary talent and with time he may develop into a truly important artist. I don’t want him presented to the public as a buffoon.”

Wolfowitz fought back an urge to tell Floutie about his conversation with old man Fassbinder. There was no point in making an enemy, and besides, he realized that Floutie had a point. The reviews would still be critical to the book’s success.

“How do you fix a review in the
Times
?” he asked Leon Goldman, one of Gothic’s senior editors, over lunch at Antonelli’s.

Goldman stared at him for a long moment through filmy gray eyes and said, “Pardon me?”

“How do you make sure a book gets reviewed the right way over there?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Goldman stiffly.

“In that case, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear myself invite you to lunch,” said Wolfowitz. “Pick up the tab yourself.” He hurried back to his office and called Fred Banner, an occasional drinking buddy who worked in the
Times
accounting department. “Who do you know at the
Book Review
?” he asked.

“You gotta be kidding,” said Banner. “How would I know any of those Ivy League turds?”

“I’m talking about one of us, a secretary, a typist, somebody who would appreciate five hundred dollars.”

“For doing what?”

“For telling me who’s been assigned to review Mack Green’s novel. It’s called
The Oriole Kid
, and it’ll be out in a few weeks.”

“That’s industrial espionage,” said Banner.

“Seven fifty,” said Wolfowitz.

“You’ll be hearing from me,” Banner said.

The Oriole Kid
had been assigned for review to a novelist of good reputation and modest commercial success named Walter T. Horton. Horton was originally from Mississippi, but he now lived in Manhattan, in a dicey neighborhood not far from Columbia. Wolfowitz arranged to meet him in a bar called the Urban Pioneer not far from the campus.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time,” Wolfowitz said. “I’m a fan of yours.”

“That puts you in a small but distinguished company, sir,” said the author in a stagy, effeminate southern drawl that didn’t conceal his delight.

“Not so small,” said Wolfowitz. “There’s a lot of people who admire your books. There ought to be a lot more. Are you working on something now?”

“As a matter of fact I am,” said Horton.

“I imagine you’ve already got a publisher.”

“Several houses are interested,” said Horton. “I really can’t say more than that.”

“Well, I’d like you to consider coming over to Gothic,” said Wolfowitz. “I don’t know what your last advance was”—he paused and scratched his head in a gesture meant to convey his embarrassment at talking to an artist about money—“and I’m not crass enough to ask, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, it was in the fifty-thousand ballpark.” He raised his eyebrows to show that he considered this a shrewd guess and Horton smiled coyly. Actually Wolfowitz was certain that Horton had never gotten half that much. “If the book you’re working on now is as good as the last ones, I might be able to do better than that.”

“I’d be happy to show you the manuscript,” said Horton. “Truly I would.”

“Would you mind if I gave it to someone else, for an opinion?”

“Well …”

“You probably know him. Mack Green?”

A cloud of doubt and suspicion passed over Walter T. Horton’s face. “I’ve seen him at the Flying Tiger from time to time but I don’t really know him.”

“Mack’s the one who put me on to you in the first place,” said Wolfowitz. “He thinks you’re the most unappreciated writer of your generation.”

“Is that a fact?” said Horton, torn between ethics and ego, suspicion and greed.

“Truth is, I’m not really much of a literary expert,” said Wolfowitz. “My thing is selling books and making money. I wouldn’t even be an editor if it wasn’t for Mack.”

Walter T. Horton searched Artie Wolfowitz’s earnest, innocent face and allowed himself to believe that the editor’s sudden interest in him was a coincidence. “I guess it would be all right,” he said slowly, “but I wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

“Mum’s the word,” said Wolfowitz, pressing his index finger to his lips.

The day
The Oriole Kid
came out, five hundred hired street peddlers dressed in Yankee uniforms passed out autographed pictures of the author in front of bookstores around the country. That night Green appeared on the
Tonight Show
with Mickey Mantle, who called him “a major-league scribbler.” Floutie was almost incoherent with anger and embarrassment—until he read Walter T. Morton’s full-page review in the
Times
on Sunday, which included these lines: “It’s probably too early to compare Mack Green with Mark Twain, but in his remarkable new novel, Green has given us a fictional hero, the Oriole Kid, who is a contemporary cousin to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer …”