The Bookmakers by Zev Chafets Read Free Book Online

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 …”
    The Oriole Kid
hit the bestseller list in its first week, rose to number one and stayed there for four months. The day Mack’s picture appeared on the cover of
Time
, Douglas Floutie promoted Wolfowitz to senior editor and Harlan Fassbinder sent Mack and Artie each a crate of frozen chickens. To Wolfowitz’s he appended a handwritten note: “Goddamn,” it said, “I knew you were a rooster.”
    A few weeks after the
Time
cover, an article on Artie “Wolfwitz” was published in
The Wall Street Journal
. It hailed him as “a new-breed editor who knows how to read a balance sheet as well as a manuscript.” It was the first time that Wolfowitz had ever seen his name in the newspaper and even the fact that it had been misspelled didn’t detract from his pleasure.
    That night Mack arrived at the Tiger with a woman named Louise Frank. “I thought you two ought to get to know each other,” he said. “Louise is a writer, too.”
    Wolfowitz tried to smile, but he felt as though his face was frozen. Louise Frank was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He stared at her and Mack, trying to figure out their relationship. With Mack it was never clear. He flirted with every good-looking woman he met, slept with most and refused to take any ofthem seriously. He would go to great lengths to charm and seduce a woman, but he was completely unpossessive about his conquests. “There’s plenty to go around,” he often told Artie. “If you see someone you want, just help yourself.”
    It was an offer that Wolfowitz had never accepted. He had a straitlaced, secretly romantic attitude toward sex and found the idea of swapping women like sweaters distasteful. Besides, he was sure that the kind of women attracted to Mack wouldn’t be interested in him. Artie had accepted this as a fact,