Page 23 of The Lie Maker

“Oscar Laidlaw might be the name on the cover,” Gwen said, “but the tax forms you get from your publisher are in your name. You think we don’t have friends at the IRS?”

“Okay. Why didn’t you just get in touch with me directly? Why go through Harry?”

She smiled slyly. “I thought it best if you were approached by someone you trust. And I won’t lie. I thought the way I went about it would pique your interest. Tell me it didn’t.”

“It did. Does Harry—”

“Just a sec,” she said, and then she turned to the guy whose knee hadn’t stopped pistoning since I’d sat down and said, “Excuse me.”

The guy didn’t realize she was talking to him at first. So, raising her voice, she said, “Hey!”

He took his eyes off the screen and looked at Gwen. “Yes?”

“Could you stop doing that?” she said. “With your knee? It’s very annoying.”

He was dumbstruck. “Uh, sorry.” He went back to whatever he was doing, and his knee stopped bobbing. Just as well, I thought. This woman was a U.S. marshal. If his knee didn’t stop she might shoot him.

“Drives me crazy,” she whispered to me. “Sorry, go on.”

“I was asking whether Harry knows what this is all about.”

“Much less than you do now. What else?”

“Why me?”

“I told you. You’re a good candidate.”

“There are lots of writers.”

“I’m aware. If you wanted to do this, you wouldn’t be the only one. We have several published novelists doing this kind of work on the side. Names you’d recognize if I were at liberty to reveal them to you.”

“So no other reason,” I said.

Her brow furrowed. “Like what?”

“Just wondered.”

“No, nothing else. Look, if you don’t think this is for you, that’s fine. Some authors we approached turned it down. It was an ego thing. They liked to see their name in print. This is, needless to say, uncredited work.”

“Of course.”

“But seeing as how you already write under an assumed name, I figured that wouldn’t be an issue.” She eyed me suspiciously. “Why do you do that, anyway?”

“I like to keep a low profile,” I said.

The suspicious gaze remained. “And why’s that?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never been in the limelight, and don’t think I would enjoy it.”

She thought about that for a moment while I considered my employment status and my destroyed car and my nearly empty bank account as the knee bopper left his station to go to the bathroom or maybe find someplace where he could engage in his nervous tic without getting scolded.

Gwen stopped looking at me like I was a suspect in a bank robbery and moved on. “Look, if you’re not interested, you probably don’t care what it pays.”

I said, “I’d at least be interested to know.”

“A thousand dollars a day.”

I did a very good job at not letting my jaw drop. In ten days I could make more than I got for my first book, which took me a year to write.