“Call him back and tell him the son and heir wants half a million firm and see what he says.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Then tell him the son and heir’s lined up some offshore development money and plans to write, direct and star in a feature based on his father’s unpublished manuscript.”
Mott stared at Haynes, not bothering to conceal the rapid reassessment his mind was making. “I thought you were a homicide cop.”
“I was but now I’m an actor.”
“I also believe you’re serious.”
“An actor’s job is to make you believe.”
“Steady could usually do that—make me believe almost anything. Note my stress on ‘almost.’ ”
“Then obviously I’ve inherited not only a car and a copyright but also a talent.”
“Take the hundred thousand,” Mott said. “That’s my best advice. If you try to squeeze them, you could be out a whole lot of money.”
“I already have a whole lot of money,” Haynes said.
“For some strange reason, I believe that, too.”
Mott fished a small key from his pants pocket and used it to unlock the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. From the deep drawer he removed a package wrapped in heavy brown paper that was bound with twine. The package was sealed in three places with red wax. Mott handed the package to Haynes, who read the hand-printed label that bore his dead father’s name and Berryville, Virginia, address. The package also bore $3.61 worth of stamps. The words FIRST CLASS had been printed on the brown paper wrapping in red ink.
“He went to a lot of trouble to mail it to himself,” Haynes said.
“Check the seals?”
“Unbroken.”
“It’s one of our enduring myths that to copyright something you’ve written you have to mail it to yourself,” Mott said. “In fact, anything anyone writes is automatically copyrighted. If you want to announce it to the world, all you need to do is write the word ‘copyright’ on whatever you’ve written, followed by the year it was written and your name. Want to know anything else about copyrights?”
“That’ll do,” Haynes said.
“Then you might as well open it and take a look.”
Borrowing a pair of scissors from Mott, Haynes cut the twine, broke the wax seals and removed the brown paper that concealed a Keebord stationery box. He lifted off the box’s lid. Inside were what happened to be three or four hundred sheets of twenty-five percent cotton bond. Haynes read the first page, which was the title page, and noticed that its letters had been formed by an electric typewriter, probably an IBM Wheelwriter. He handed the first page to Mott, who read it silently:
MERCENARY CALLING
by Steadfast Haynes
At the bottom of the page was a line that read: “Copyright 1989 by Steadfast Haynes.”
“You’re sure it’s valid—the copyright?” Haynes asked.
“Absolutely,” Mott said.
Haynes read the second page and handed it to Mott. This page read:
—A. E. HOUSMAN
While Mott was reading Housman, Haynes quickly leafed through the rest of the pages. Mott looked up from the lines of poetry to accept the manuscript’s third page. It read: “For my son, Granville Haynes, with faint hope that he will find it of great profit.”
When Haynes silently handed over the fourth page, Mott saw that it was numbered page one. Not quite halfway down the page and centered was: CHAPTER ONE. Below that was a sentence that read: “I have led an exceedingly interesting life and, looking back, have no regrets. Or almost none.”
Mott looked up from the page, his eyes puzzled, his mouth opened by surprise. “That’s it—the whole fucking thing?”
Haynes smiled and nodded. “Except for three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, all carefully numbered. Of course, he might’ve written the rest in invisible ink. Maybe even lemon juice.” He held a page up to the light from a window. “But I don’t think so.” He put the page down and looked at Mott. “You’re sure about the copyright?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then let’s see whether they still want to buy it.”
“You’re asking me to help perpetrate a fraud, right?”
“I didn’t say I’d sell it to them. I said let’s see whether they really want to buy it and, if so, how high they’re willing to go.”
