The Bookmakers Read Online Free PDF Page A

still 1975. I don’t care how good the idea is, it’s worthless if he doesn’t produce.”
    “He’ll produce,” promised Tommy. “Look, I’m asking you as a favor. I’ll give it to you for seventy-five thousand—”
    “Plus how much for you?”
    “Nothing,” said Tommy waving his hand. “Just the regular 10 percent commission.”
    “Nothing?” said Wolfowitz. “This must mean a lot to you.”
    “It means a lot to him. He won’t admit it, but he’s desperate. He knows this is his last chance.”
    “He said that?”
    “Not in so many words, but yeah, basically that’s what he said.”
    Wolfowitz stared down at the snowy white tablecloth, lost in thought. “If I agree,” he finally said, “it’s on two conditions. First, I want to see his pages as he goes along, make sure he’s actually working.”
    “Mack doesn’t like to show his work until it’s finished,” said Tommy. “You know that.”
    “In that case—”
    “No, no,” said Russo quickly. “He’ll agree this time. What else?”
    “I don’t want him telling anyone what he’s working on.”
    “He probably wouldn’t anyway, but why not?”
    “Because I want to do it as a surprise. The return of Mack Green. Great media. Besides, if it’s no good and we decide not to publish it, I don’t want him humiliated.”
    Russo looked at Wolfowitz and saw a tight smile on his lips. He thought he knew the editor’s full repertoire of fake expressions, but the hungry satisfaction he saw now was new and disconcertingly authentic. Tommy chose to interpret it as the look of a man happy to help out an old friend.
    “I’m glad you’re doing this,” he said to Wolfowitz. “When you come down to it, neither one of us would be here if it wasn’t for Mack. I owe him, you owe him. It’s sort of our chance to pay Mack back.”
    “You’re absolutely right,” said Wolfowitz, taking a sip of water and wiping his mouth daintily with his crisp napkin. “Now I think about it, that’s exactly what it is.”

Four
    One sweltering August afternoon in the summer of 1959, when Artie Wolfowitz was fifteen years old, he walked into Mike’s Corner Grocery and asked Mike Stanislaw, a grumpy old immigrant in a dirty white apron that smelled of herring, for a vanilla Drumstick.
    Mike thrust his left arm into the freezer and came out with a paper-wrapped Drumstick. “Cost you ten cents,” he said, his right hand outstretched. The store was just down the street from the tiny clapboard house where Artie lived with his widowed mother; he had been shopping there ever since he was a small boy, but the old guy didn’t care—he had an inflexible policy of holding on to the goods until he was paid.
    Artie dug into his jeans, came up with a dime, all the money he had on him, and tossed it on the Formica counter. He took the Drumstick, began unwrapping it and saw that it was solid ice cream.
    “Hey, Mike, there’s no cone,” he said, as the Drumstick began melting on his hand.
    Mike shrugged. “That’s the way it come,” he said.
    “There’s supposed to be a cone. Look, I can’t even hold it this way,” said Artie. “Give me a different one.”
    “Another ten cents,” said Mike, watching impassively as the ice cream dripped through Artie’s fingers. “You got a problem, write to the factory, they give you the money back.”
    Artie stood facing the grocer, literally speechless with anger and frustration. Then he tossed the glob of ice cream on the counter and ran out of the store. He tried to tell himself it was only an ice-cream cone, but as the day wore on he grew more and more enraged that Mike, whom he had known all his life, would cheat and humiliate him for a dime.
    The next day Artie got a small brown notebook and began a private boycott. He walked blocks out of his way to the Woolworth’s in the shopping center to buy what he needed. When he passed Mike’s, looked through the dirty windowpane and saw Mike inside, it warmed him to realize