The Thieves of Manhattan - By Adam Langer Page 0,26

of taking A Thief in Manhattan out of its drawer. After he saw the name on my Morningside Coffee badge and remembered it from the few stories of mine he had read, he made a habit of coming into the café during my shifts, ostentatiously reading Blade by Blade and leaving large tips, waited to see what, if anything, I’d do. He said he hadn’t been sure of his plan or that I was the right one to execute it. In my stories, the protagonists were too ineffectual; they always preferred to wait for events to take advantage of them than to seize them and create their own destinies. But when he saw me charging toward him at the café, when I grabbed his book out of his hands and whipped it down Broadway, he knew I could do it.

“You must think I’m pretty desperate,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say. We both knew I was desperate. Roth didn’t contradict me.

“Anyway, what’s in it for you?” I asked.

“Revenge, of course,” said Roth.

“On Merrill?” I asked.

Roth nodded. “Merrill, Rowell Templen, Geoff Olden, the whole pack of ’em. Take your pick.”

And when Roth could see that I wasn’t completely satisfied with his answer, he added, “I could make up something more romantic, Ian, something that might appeal more to your Midwestern sensibilities. But that’s it, really. If this works the way I know it will, Blade Markham might well survive it. He will probably thrive. And so will you, Ian. But Jim Merrill? No. That little bastard Rowell Templen? Not him either. Because once people look more closely at the other ‘true stories’ Merrill has been publishing, no one will trust their word again. And then people will start looking at what other publishers have been putting out.”

Roth’s idea was funny in a sick sort of way, but I still felt there was something he wasn’t telling me, still felt that all this seemed like a whole lot of trouble to go through just for a bit of revenge, no matter how detestable or gullible the Merrill Books crowd was—sure, they believed Blade Markham’s book, but Roth’s was even more far-fetched. Roth must have been reading my mind again because he said, “Oh, one other thing I should mention, Ian. If we do this together, I’ll also be taking twenty-five percent.”

“Of the book?” I asked.

“Of both books,” Roth said. “My book and your stories. Call it a gamble. If I’m right, both of us come out with quite a bit of money.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” said Roth. “It’s not high crime. It’s not politics. No one’s going to be breaking any laws. Only ethical ones, perhaps, but those don’t come with prison terms. It’ll just be a little publishing scandal, and outside of that tiny universe of authors, editors, agents, and readers, no one will give a damn.”

But A Thief in Manhattan had been rejected years ago, I said; no one had wanted to publish it when Roth had first written it.

“Ancient history,” said Roth. Besides, he added, it was a different book now.

How much had he changed, I asked.

“Just the word novel,” he said. “That’s all I needed to change.”

I looked at the manuscript again. I looked at Roth. He seemed so confident that I would say yes. I wasn’t sure if I felt more frightened by the thought that his scheme would work or the thought that it wouldn’t, that I would ruin whatever reputation and self-respect I might have had for nothing, or that lying would make me as successful as Blade Markham.

“No,” I finally said—there was no way it would work and no way I’d try it. I stood up, grabbed Roth’s manuscript, and thrust it back at him. I thought I was flinging it hard, but he caught it and smiled, then set the manuscript back on the table as if I’d lobbed him a Frisbee.

“Why don’t you do it if it’s such a killer idea?” I asked.

“I’m too old for the part,” said Roth. “No one would look at me and think I’d be chasing girls and hopping freight trains. Besides, the publishers all know me. And I’m not a writer anymore anyway. I’m not the one writing stories that everyone on the planet is rejecting while my Bulgarian girlfriend gets her stories published.”

“She’s not my girlfriend anymore,” I said, getting angrier now, “and she’s Romanian. And you probably know that. And you probably just said that to get