Killer's Payoff полностью

ISBN: 0-7434-7655-7

This is for Gerry Ash

And for Ingram (in memory)

Are we there yet?

Apparently not.

Ever the slave to the whims of cruel and unusual publishers, I am reluctantly continuing this seemingly incessant string of introductions, each of which is threatening to become as long as the 87th Precinct series itself. How is a mere writer supposed to remember the details of how a novel took shape in the year 1957, when Killer’s Payoff was being written?

I had my instructions.

That much I remember clearly.

Phase out Steve Carella. Carella is not a hero, he is a married man. Instead, give us a handsome hero with whom men can identify and with whom women can fall in love.

This is what I’d been told by the Pocket Books executive whom I prefer calling Ralph lest he turn his goons on me yet another time. Following the gentle persuasion that took place in the offices at 630 Fifth Avenue, I introduced the handsome new hero, Cotton Hawes, in a book titled Killer’s Choice. His debut caused no noticeable critical or popular acclaim. This did not lessen Ralph’s conviction that the series needed the shot-in-the-arm only a character of Hawes’s size and dimension could provide. In fact, and toward that end, Ralph had already concocted a slew of titles with the name “Cotton” in them, hoping to ensnare unsuspecting readers through the use of so-called Instant Newsstand Recognition.

You must remember that none of these books had as yet been published in hardcover. They were all paperback originals, and they sold for a mere twenty-five cents each-about a third of what a hit off a crack pipe will cost you at the time of this writing. In fact, if crack had been around back then, I’m sure Ralph would have suggested Cotton and Crack as one of the new titles in the new approach. As it was, he’d come up instead with such scintillating gems as Cotton and Steel, Cotton and Silk, Cotton and Smoke, and Cotton and God Knows What Else.

Back then, titles were routinely changed by publishers as a matter of course, with little regard for the author’s feelings or the intent of the book. I fought for Killer’s Payoff (which in itself wasn’t such a terrific title) because I’d already written Killer’s Choice, introducing Hawes, and I felt the next novel should echo it somewhat. Besides, I tend to think in terms of three-perhaps because Conan Doyle wrote The Sign of the Four, or perhaps, gee, just maybe because the first Pocket Books contract was for three books, and the second was for another three. Killer’s Payoff was to be the last book in that second contract. After that, Pocket could renew again or not, as they saw fit. I had the feeling that if Hawes didn’t work out as the driving force behind the series, it was goodbye, Charlie.

Upon reflection, it’s interesting to note that the first four books in the series were titled after the sort of criminals a policeman might actually encounter: Cop Hater, The Mugger, The Pusher, and The Con Man. But with the introduction of Cotton Hawes, the titles became sort of…well, private- eye sounding, don’t you think? Killer’s Choice? And then Killer’s Payoff? And I already had the third Killer’s title in mind, which eventually became the book Killer’s Wedge. None of these were as dreadful as the Cotton and titles conjured by Ralph, but they nonetheless had a pulpy, private-eye sound to them, perhaps, gee, just maybe because they were introducing a pulpy, somewhat private-eye character. Let’s face it. Badge or not, Cotton Hawes acted like a private eye!

Well, I hadn’t hired on to do a private-eye series. The series I’d proposed-to reiterate for those of you who haven’t been religiously collecting these remarkable introductions-was to be a realistic look at a squad room of cops who, when put together, would form a conglomerate hero in a mythical city. This meant cops of any stripe or persuasion could come and go, kill and be killed, transfer out or transfer in, without hurting or diluting the overall concept. Ralph seemed to have forgotten the concept (though an innovative television “creator” remembered it only too clearly many years later). Back in 1957, however, I myself seemed in imminent danger of seriously compromising my own vision.