Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (17 page)

           
DEWEY Heffernan
is
a menace.
Fortunately, so far, he’s mostly a menace to himself.

           
He phoned me yesterday, and at first
I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. He said, “Tom, we’ve got a
problem here with the bosses.”

           
“We do? What problem?” But what I
was thinking was,
What
bosses?
Tell me
who you’re having trouble with, and I’ll tell you if it’s serious or not.

           
But Dewey answered the question I’d
asked, rather than the one left unspoken. He said, “Well, they’re dragging
their feet on this idea we talked about at lunch. Now, I have an artist that
has to be paid, and Accounting just kicked the voucher back to me, says it
isn’t
authorized.
Can you imagine?”

           
“Not yet,” I said. “What artist?”

           
“You know,” he said.
“The one to replace the Diirer.”

           
Diirer.
There was in the book—page 173, as I recalled—an Albrecht Diirer woodcut called
“The Adoration of the Magi,” which I had chosen partially because in it St.
Joseph looks like John Ehrlichman, but also because Diirer didn’t have to be
paid.
You don’t pay an artist who’s been dead since 1328.

           
But wait a minute;
replace
the Diirer? I said, “What do you mean, replace?”

           
“Well, I knew you felt strongly
about the color stuff,” he said, “and Korban-agreed he could give me a good
page in black-and-white, so the Diirer just seemed the obvious thing to come
out. I didn’t see any point bothering you with a detail like
that,
I mean we have so
much
old stuff.”

           
“Korban,” I said, reaching out at
random for something that might be forced to make sense. “What is a Korban?”

           
“He’s fantastic!” Dewey told me.
“He did the most fantastic freaked-out space trip with Santa Claus and the
reindeer and this
wild
nun with an Afro and—”

           
“Dewey,” I said.

           
“—the sled’s like a low-rider, and
—”

           
“Dewey!”

           
“—they go—
What
?”

           
“Heavy Metal,"
I said,
remembering our lunchtime conversation.

           
“Sure!”

           
“You want to commission a
Heavy
Metal
artist to do a drugged Santa Claus and—”

           
“It’s
done
, Tom! You ought to
come into the office, look at it, it’s fantastic!”

           
“I’m sure it is,” I said.

           
“But now I got to get this poor guy
paid,” Dewey said. “And Accounting’s making all this trouble.”

           
I said, “Dewey, are you telling me
you went out all on your own and commissioned an illustration for
The
Christmas Book?"

           
“The one we talked about at—”

           
“Not me,” 1 said.

           
“What?” The sound was so baffled, so
lost and hopeless, that I knew this was merely another example of Dewey’s
ignorance and that he hadn’t been trying to pull a fast one at all. I don’t
think Dewey would know a fast one if he fell over it, which he most likely would.
“What, Tom?” this innocent asked.

           
I said, “Dewey, at that lunch I did
not agree that we should add the work of a
Heavy Metal
cartoonist to
The
Christmas Book."

           
“Tom, you did!”

           
“I did not, I would not, and I will
not.”

           
“Tom, I distinctly remember—”

           
“You do not,” I said. “You do not
distinctly remember
anything
from that lunch. / distinctly remember the
lunch, and I remember you talked about pop-up books for adults, and I remember
you talked about the
Heavy Metal
artists, and I remember the conversation
remained theoretical.”

           
“Tom, you thought it was a good
idea!”

           
“I thought it was a rotten idea. I
also thought it was something you couldn’t possibly do in July for a book to be
published in October, so there was no reason to argue.”

           
“But we
talked
about it!”

           
“Who else did you talk to?”

           
“Korban!
The artist!”

           
“Who did you talk to at Craig?”

           
“Nobody,” he said, and for the first
time a trace of doubt—or perhaps fear—entered his voice.

           
I said, “So you just went out,
without my approval or any permission from anybody at Craig, and offered some
clown—
How
much did you offer him?”

           
“Fifteen hundred dollars,” he said.
Now he was definitely scared.

           
“Where did you come up with the
number?”

           
“I looked to see what we paid the
other artists,” he said. “So I offered him the same. Tom, it’s a really
wonderful—”

           
“And then you put in two vouchers to
Accounting,” I said, being deliberately mean, “and they bounced them back at
you.”

           
“Two vouchers?
No,
just one.”

           
“What about my thousand dollars?” I
asked him.

           
“Tom? What are you talking about?”

           
“Dewey,” I said, “you’re the editor
on this book. Haven’t you read the contract? Haven’t you read the
correspondence? Haven’t you talked with
anybody
about this book?”

           
“There’s nobody here to talk to,” he
said miserably. “Everybody’s gone away for August.”

           
“According to the terms of the
contract,” I told him, “the contributors receive sixty per cent of the advance,
and I receive forty per cent. Everybody has been paid and that part of the deal
is done and finished with, but if Craig is now going to pay an additonal
fifteen hundred dollars to a contributor, then they must pay an additional
thousand to me.”

           
“But they won’t
pay
him,
that’s the problem!”

           
“Dewey, I hate to tell you this,” I
said, “but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that you gave an unauthorized
assignment to an artist. Did you make the proposal in a letter?
On Craig letterhead?”

           
“Why?”

           
“Because if Craig refuses to pay,” I
said, “and I imagine they will refuse to pay, your artist probably has a good
lawsuit on his hands.”

           
“A lawsuit?”
He did sound more and more like a mountain climber who’s just seen the end of
the rope fall past.

           
But I was pitiless. “Against Craig,”
I said. “But then Craig would naturally recover the money by suing you. Whether
I’d sue for my thousand or
not I’m not sure at this point
.”

           
“Tom, you don’t mean that!”

           
“I don’t mean I’m not sure?”

           
“Tom, listen. If we use the strip in
the book, they
have
to pay.”

           
“We will not use the strip in the
book.”

           
“I already sent the original to the
printer,” he said. “I already told him to pull the Diirer.”

           
“Oh, you bastard,” I said. “Oh, you
baby asshole.”

           
“Tom, we talked about this at
lunch!
We
did!"

           
“You call that printer right now,
tell him—”

           
“Tom Tom Tom!
Please
, Tom, you have to be on my side!”

           
“The hell I do.”

           
“You have to
see
this strip!”

           
“Not in the book, I don’t.”

           
“We have to use it or they won’t
pay
!”

           
“You have to clear it first before
you offer money!”

           
“I talked about it with
you!”

           
“I don’t disburse Craig’s money!
I imburse Craig’s money!”
I yelled, inventing new languages
in my aggravation.

           
“Tom, it’s only one
page!"

           
“In MY BOOK,
schmuck!"

           
There was a little silence, in which
we both breathed heavily, and then he said, in a small voice, “Tom, I need your
help. You’re the only one I can turn to.”

           
Jesus. Now I’m supposed to feel
guilty because
he's
a buffoon. I’m supposed to feel guilty because the
people nominally in charge left him running the candystore and he’s been giving
away the candy. I said, “Dewey, let me give you some advice. How well do you
know this Koben?”

           
“Korban,” said the small voice.
“Not very well.”

           
“All right.
The first thing you do, you phone the printer and countermand your first
instruction. The Durer goes in, the—”

           
“Tom, please! Please!”

           
“The other goddam thing goes
out.
Now, the second thing you do, there must have been
somebody
in that
organization who talked to you when you were hired. Find that person. If he’s
away on vacation, get somebody to give you the phone number, and call him. Tell
him what you’ve done, say you’re sorry, say it was a mistake,
throw
yourself on his mercy. ”

           
“Tom—”

           
“Third,” I insisted, “call the
artist,
tell him exactly what happened—”

           
“I’m not sure I know what happened.”

           
“You exceeded your authority,” I
told him. “Is that clear enough?”

           
“I didn’t know I— I didn’t realize—”

           
“I’ve got that. Anyway, ask the
artist if he can sell the work somewhere else; maybe for the
Heavy Metal
Christmas issue. If he wants, you know, he can still stick you for the fifteen
hundred. If you’re lucky, maybe you can talk him out of it.”

           
“Tom, if we use it we won’t have
to—”

           
“We will not use it
.“

           
“You haven’t even
seen
it!
You’re just throwing your weight around because you
can!"

           
“Weight?
What weight? I can’t even keep
you
from fucking around with my book.”

           
“I thought— I thought we
liked
each other!”

           
“Dewey, Dewey, Dewey,” I said, and
broke the connection because there really was absolutely nothing more to say,
and called Annie. I described the situation to her, and she sighed and said
she’d see what she could do, and I said, “The Durer goes back in the book,
Annie.”

           
“Oh, I agree,” she said. “It’s just
how much trouble there is along the way.”

           
Oh, how
much
trouble there is
along the way, after
all.
I am sitting here in my
air-conditioned office, away from the August heat and humidity, putting the
finishing touches on the presentation for the history of greeting cards, and
that total jerk over at Craig is turning
The Christmas Book
into
Zap
Comics!

           
I do feel sorry for him, in a way.
He knows so little about anything that he doesn’t even know how much he doesn’t
know. His employers turned him loose without a thought, figuring the only
people he could hurt were the writers, and now he’s hurt himself and possibly
them. Will they fire him? Am I about to have my
fourth
editor?