“And Harry’s written a list of acknowledgments he wants to go in the front,” I said.
“Fine.”
Stanley took a look at it. It was just your standard page of thanks that precedes a life’s work.
I would like to acknowledge my father for giving me a taste for violence, my grandfather for giving my father a taste for violence, who in turn gave it to me. I have no children, so I’ve had to give it to acquaintances and passersby. I would also like to acknowledge the New South Wales criminal justice system for teaching me about injustice, the New South Wales police force for their indefatigable corruption and tireless brutality, violence in cinema for desensitizing my victims so they take longer to say ouch, my victims for losing, my victors for showing me there is no dishonor in a bullet in the thigh, and finally my editor, friend, and brother in isolation, Martin Dean.
“Are you sure you want your name on this?” Stanley asked me.
“Why not?” I asked stupidly, knowing why not. I was practically admitting to a crime: harboring a known fugitive and editing his opus. “I think so,” I said.
“Think about it a second.”
I thought about it. Was I making a mistake? It was obvious there was no real reason my involvement needed to be mentioned in any way. But this was my work too. I had broken my back to get this book this far, and I wanted the world to know it.
“Yeah, leave it in.”
“OK then, well, we’re all ready to go. I’m going to run this down to the printers. Afterward, can I meet him?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a hot idea right now.”
“Why?”
“He’s not well at the moment. He’s a little…on edge. Maybe when the book’s out in the stores. When will that be, by the way?”
“Three weeks.”
“I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“You bet your arse,” he said, and just before he left the office, Stanley turned to me with a strange, far-off look on his face and said, “Tell Harry I think he’s a genius.”
I said that I would.
“What did he say when you told him my name? What was the look on his face? Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out,” Harry said breathlessly from his front door as I headed up the drive.
“He was impressed,” I lied. “He’d heard of you.”
“Of course he’s heard of me. A man doesn’t kill steadily for fifty years without making a name for himself. So when’s it in the stores?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks! Fuck!”
There was nothing left to be done but wait. Everything was sorted. I had that feeling of satisfaction and anticlimax that comes with the completion of a job. Now I knew how all those Egyptian slaves must have felt when the pointy stone was put on top of the pyramid of Giza and they all had to stand around waiting for the cement to dry. Also I felt a sense of disquiet. I had been involved in something meaningful for the second time in my life, after the suggestion box; now what the fuck was I going to do? The ambition rising in my chest had no further outlet. That was annoying.
After a few hours of forecasting our phenomenal success one minute and dismal failure the next, I dragged myself back home to look after my mother. The chemotherapy and regular bombardments of radiation left her fatigued all the time, she had lost weight and some of her hair, and moved around the house by groping the walls. It was clear the body she was inhabiting was fast becoming uninhabitable. The only pleasant surprise was my father, who actually turned out to be not that dissimilar to a human being, and one of the nice ones too. He became kind to my mother, loving, and supportive at a level far deeper and more committed than either she or I had expected of him. So did I really need to linger there all the time? Now that I had been in the world, every fiber of my being revolted at the idea of spending another second in that miserable town. That’s why you should never make an unbreakable bond. You never know what the fibers of your being are going to feel like doing later on down the track.
Those weeks of waiting were an intricate and elaborate torture. I’d always known there are 1,440 minutes in a day, but during those three weeks I felt them, profoundly. I was as jumpy as naked wires. I could nibble, but I couldn’t eat. I could close my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. I could stand under the shower, but I couldn’t get wet. The days stood their ground like monuments to timelessness.
Somehow, magically, the day of publication arrived. At three in the morning, I caught a bus into the city. On the way I had the smug feeling that I was a famous person who had sat down in a public place and was only waiting for someone to turn around and scream, “Hey! There’s so-and-so!” That was me: I was So-and-So. It felt good.
A city is a strange place for dawn. The sun just can’t seem to make any headway in the cold streets, and it took two hours to get sunny. I walked down George Street past a crowd of partygoers falling over each other and kissing and cursing the unwanted arrival of daytime. They sang in my face as they walked by, a drunken song, to which I did a little dance that must have been OK because they all cheered me. I cheered them back. It was cheery.
Dymocks bookshop had promised to put a copy in the window. I was two hours early. I smoked some cigarettes. I smiled, just for something to do. I pushed the crescent moons of my fingernails down into the fingers. A thread from my shirt took me through from eight to eight-thirty. Then, at a few minutes to nine, a woman appeared inside the shop. I don’t know how she got in. Maybe there was a back entrance. Maybe she slept there overnight. But what was she doing in there? She was just leaning against the counter, as if she were a customer. And then, why was she messing around with the cash register? Why was that important now? When bookstores have a new book to put in a window, that should be the first priority. It’s obvious!
She got down on her knees and cut open the lid of a cardboard box with a knife. She took a handful of copies and walked toward the window. This was it! Stepping up on the little podium, she placed the copies on an empty stand. When I saw the books, my heart fell out.
This is what I saw:
The Handbook of Crime, by Terry Dean
What’s this? What’s this? I had to take a closer look. Terry Dean? Terry Dean! How the hell did this happen? I ran to the doors. They were still locked. I banged on the glass. The woman inside the shop peered at me from the other side.
“What do you want?”
“That book! The Handbook of Crime! I have to see it!”
“We don’t open for another ten minutes.”
“I need it now!” I shouted as I pounded on the door. She muttered a cruel insult under her breath. I think it was “book lover.” There was nothing I could do. She wouldn’t open the door. I ran back to the window and pressed my eyeballs against the glass. I could see the front cover. It said, in color with a star around it,
A book by fugitive Terry Dean- written on the lam!
I couldn’t work it out. Nowhere on the cover was there any mention of Harry. Shit! Harry! He’d…A steel door slammed shut inside my head. My brain wouldn’t let me think about Harry. It was too perilous.
On the nose of nine o’clock the store opened and I rushed inside, grabbed a copy of The Handbook of Crime, and flicked through it frenetically. The “about the author” section was entirely different. It was Terry’s life story, and the dedication said simply, “To Martin, my brother and editor.”
Stanley had double-crossed us! But how? I’d never mentioned that I was Terry’s brother! I pushed some money at the clerk and ran out of the store without waiting for change. I ran all the way to Stanley ’s office. When I burst through the front door, he was standing at his desk, talking on the phone, saying, “No, he can’t give an interview. He just can’t. He’s a fugitive, that’s why.”
He hung up and beamed at me triumphantly. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook! There’s a shit storm! It’s better than I ever anticipated!”