The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer Read Free Book Online

of club soda and stepped into the pool.
    I got in after him—the water was piss-warm and motionless. “All right, what’s the story?” I asked.
    â€œFirst, let me ask you something. Do you remember that book I told you to read when we were hangin’ in the Pokes?”
    I remembered. In fact, it surprised me that he remembered; I figured the time we spent together had made more of an impression on me than on him.
    â€œYeah,” I told him. “We were talking about John Le Carré. The Russia House .”
    â€œThat’s right. There was a line in it I told you about. One of my favorites. You remember what it was?”
    I didn’t. In fact, I hadn’t managed to read the book all the way through. I had always found Le Carré’s books dense and slow-going, though I didn’t mind some of the movies and BBC TV series based on his novels.
    â€œThat’s all right,” he said. “It’s something the Russian agent says to Barley, the British publisher—‘Promise me that if ever I find the courage to think like a hero, you will act like a merely decent human being.’”
    Conner repeated those last five words. He lingered over their syllables as if they were part of some prayer he had learned back in Catholic school— a merely decent human being .
    â€œI have a feeling this story may turn out to be kind of like that,” he said.
    â€œWhy?” I asked. “Are you about to become a hero?”
    â€œNot me,” he said. “Maybe the opposite.”
    â€œYou mean a villain?”
    â€œYeah,” Conner said. “Maybe something like that.”

7
    T he sun was beating down hard, and here we were—two forty-year-old guys in swimming trunks and baseball caps sipping club sodas in the shallow end of a pool at a roadside Hilton in West Lafayette with a view out onto the Interstate and the Flying J rest stop. I joked to Conner that we probably looked like a couple of kingpins planning a drug deal, but that was wishful thinking. I’m sure we looked more like a couple of washed-up dads waiting for our kids to come down to the pool. My baseball cap shaded my face, but I could still feel the sunlight reflecting off the water, charring my cheeks. Conner’s skin was already bronzed, which pretty much summed up the differences between him and me—he tanned; I burned.
    â€œHow was Chicago?” I asked.
    â€œNot all that great,” he said. He had taken the first flight out of Indy, and arrived at ten in the morning at the Drake Hotel, where he checked into the Author’s Suite, reputed to be the smallest suite in the hotel—even I had stayed in there when I was touring to support Nine Fathers, which should give you an idea of its modesty. He got a ride to Navy Pier, where he conducted an interview at WBEZ with the daytime host Rick Kogan, who had replaced Steve Edwards, the dude I held partially responsible for ruining my relationship with my mother.
    Conner called Angie a couple of times to check in and see how she and Atticus were doing but, as always seemed to be the case these days, her temper was short and she seemed rushed; all she wanted to discuss was the work she needed to do around the house and what Conner would need to do when he got home—the toilet was backing up again; paint was chipping in the nursery and she sure hoped there wasn’t lead in it; the seventh year on their adjustable rate mortgage was rapidly approaching. So Conner spent most of the day wandering along Lake Michigan, checking out the boats, the swimmers, the sunbathers, and the chess players, seeking inspiration for his next novel. Then he started heading north to his bookstore event.
    â€œThat’s just about when things started getting weird,” he said.
    Conner’s publisher had hired a driver to take him to his reading at the Borders on Clark Street and Diversey Avenue, about three miles from his hotel, but since