The Getaway Car Read online

  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

  The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

  © 2014 by The University of Chicago

  Foreword © 2014 by Lawrence Block

  All rights reserved. Published 2014.

  Printed in the United States of America

  23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-12181-9 (paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-226-12195-6 (e-book)

  DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226121956.001.0001

  Most of Donald E. Westlake’s writings in this volume are published by permission of Abigail Westlake. For additional credits, please see page 215.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Westlake, Donald E., author.

  [Works. Selections. 2014]

  The getaway car : a Donald Westlake nonfiction miscellany / edited by Levi Stahl ; with a new foreword by Lawrence Block.

  pages ; cm

  Summary: “Collection of published and unpublished gems: a memoir about learning to write, an imaginary interview between Westlake’s various identities, essays on writing, introductions, and letters to writers like Stephen King and Brian Garfield. A true miscellany, this includes a piece by Abigail Westlake, a recipe for ‘May’s Famous Tuna Casserole’ and a ‘Midnight snack.’”—From the publisher.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-0-226-12181-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-12195-6 (e-book)

  I. Stahl, Levi, editor. II. Block, Lawrence, writer of foreword. III. Title.

  PS3573.E9A6 2014

  813'.54—dc23

  2014003017

  This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  THE GETAWAY CAR

  A DONALD WESTLAKE NONFICTION MISCELLANY

  Edited by Levi Stahl

  With a new Foreword by Lawrence Block

  THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

  CHICAGO AND LONDON

  Donald Westlake at home, with Max. Photo by permission of Abigail Westlake.

  BOOKS BY DONALD E. WESTLAKE

  Crime Novels

  The Mercenaries (also published as The Cutie) (1960)

  Killing Time (1961)

  361 (1962)

  Killy (1963)

  Pity Him Afterwards (1964)

  The Comedy Is Finished (2012)

  Comic Crime Novels

  The Fugitive Pigeon (1965)

  The Busy Body (1966)

  The Spy in the Ointment (1966)

  God Save the Mark (1967)

  Who Stole Sassi Manoon? (1968)

  Somebody Owes Me Money (1969)

  Cops and Robbers (1972)

  Help I Am Being Held Prisoner (1974)

  Two Much (1975)

  Dancing Aztecs (1976)

  Enough (1977)

  Castle in the Air (1980)

  High Adventure (1985)

  Trust Me on This (1988)

  Baby, Would I Lie? (1994)

  Smoke (1995)

  Put a Lid On It (2002)

  Dortmunder Novels

  The Hot Rock (1970)

  Bank Shot (1972)

  Jimmy the Kid (1974)

  Nobody’s Perfect (1977)

  Why Me (1983)

  Good Behavior (1986)

  Drowned Hopes (1990)

  Don’t Ask (1993)

  What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (1996)

  Bad News (2001)

  The Road to Ruin (2004)

  Thieves’ Dozen: Stories (2004)

  Watch Your Back! (2005)

  What’s So Funny? (2007)

  Get Real (2009)

  Novels

  Up Your Banners (1969)

  Adios, Scheherazade (1970)

  I Gave at the Office (1971)

  Brothers Keepers (1975)

  Kahawa (1981)

  A Likely Story (1984)

  Sacred Monster (1989)

  Humans (1992)

  The Ax (1997)

  The Hook (2000)

  Money for Nothing (2003)

  Memory (2010)

  Western

  Gangway! (with Brian Garfield) (1973)

  Juvenile

  Philip (1967)

  Short Stories

  The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution and Other Fictions (1968)

  Levine (1984)

  Tomorrow’s Crimes (1989)

  A Good Story and Other Stories (1999)

  Nonfiction

  Under an English Heaven (1972)

  The Getaway Car (2014)

  Anthology

  Once against the Law (coedited with William Tenn) (1968)

  Murderous Schemes (coedited with J. Madison Davis) (1996)

  Writing as Richard Stark

  Parker Novels

  The Hunter (1962)

  The Man with the Getaway Face (1963)

  The Outfit (1963)

  The Mourner (1963)

  The Score (1964)

  The Jugger (1965)

  The Seventh (1966)

  The Handle (1966)

  The Rare Coin Score (1967)

  The Green Eagle Score (1967)

  The Black Ice Score (1968)

  The Sour Lemon Score (1969)

  Deadly Edge (1971)

  Slayground (1971)

  Plunder Squad (1972)

  Butcher’s Moon (1974)

  Comeback (1997)

  Backflash (1998)

  Flashfire (2000)

  Firebreak (2001)

  Breakout (2002)

  Nobody Runs Forever (2004)

  Ask the Parrot (2006)

  Dirty Money (2008)

  Grofield Novels

  The Damsel (1967)

  The Dame (1969)

  The Blackbird (1969)

  Lemons Never Lie (1971)

  Writing as Tucker Coe

  Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death (1966)

  Murder among Children (1967)

  Wax Apple (1970)

  A Jade in Aries (1970)

  Don’t Lie to Me (1972)

  Writing as Samuel Holt

  One of Us Is Wrong (1986)

  I Know a Trick Worth Two of That (1986)

  What I Tell You Three Times Is False (1987)

  The Fourth Dimension Is Death (1989)

  Writing as J. Morgan Cunningham

  Comfort Station (1973)

  Writing as Judson Jack Carmichael

  The Scared Stiff (2002)

  Writing as Curt Clark

  Anarchaos (1967)

  Writing as Timothy J. Culver

  Ex Officio (also published as Power Play) (1970)

  No matter where he was headed,

  Don always drove like he was

  behind the wheel of the getaway car.

  ABBY ADAMS WESTLAKE

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Lawrence Block

  Editor’s Introduction

  1. My Second Life: Fragments from an Autobiography

  2. Donald E. Westlake, a.k.a. . . .

  Hearing Voices in My Head: Tucker Coe, Timothy J. Culver, Richard Stark and Donald E. Westlake

  Living with a Mystery Writer, by Abby Adams

  Writers on Writing: A Pseudonym Returns From an Alter-Ego Trip, With New Tales to Tell

  3. So Tell Me about This Job We’re Gonna Pull: On Genre

  The Hardboiled Dicks

  Introduction to Murderous Schemes

  Introduction to The Best American Mystery Stories, 2000

  Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You

  4. Ten Most Wanted: Ten Favorite Mystery Books

  5. Returning to the Scene of the Crime: On His Own Work

  Introduction to Levine

  Tangled Webs for Sale: Best Offer

 
; Introduction to Kahawa

  Light

  Hooked

  Letter to Howard B. Gotlieb, Boston University Libraries

  6. Lunch Break: May’s Famous Tuna Casserole

  7. The Other Guys in the String: Peers, Favorites, and Influences

  Lawrence Block: First Sighting

  On Peter Rabe

  Playing Politics with a Master of Dialogue: On George V. Higgins

  On Rex Stout

  Introduction to Jack Ritchie’s A New Leaf and Other Stories

  Foreword to Thurber on Crime

  Introduction to Charles Willeford’s The Way We Die Now

  On Stephen Frears

  John D. MacDonald: A Remembrance

  8. Coffee Break: Letter to Ray Broekel

  9. Anything You Say May Be Used against You: Interviews

  An Inside Look at Donald Westlake, by Albert Nussbaum, 81332-132

  The Worst Happens: From an Interview by Patrick McGilligan

  10. Midnight Snack: Gustatory Notes from All Over

  11. Side Jobs: Prison Breaks, Movie Mobsters, and Radio Comedy

  Break-Out

  Love Stuff, Cops-and-Robbers Style

  Send In the Goons

  12. Signed Confessions: Letters

  To Judy?

  To Peter Gruber

  To James Hale

  To Stephen and Tabitha King

  To Brian Garfield

  To David Ramus

  To Pam Vesey

  To Gary Salt

  To Henry Morrison

  To Jon L. Breen

  13. Jobs Never Pulled: Title Ideas

  Crime Titles

  Comic Crime Titles

  14. Death Row (Or, The Happily Ever Afterlife): Letter to Ralph L. Woods

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  Index of Names and Titles

  FOREWORD

  Sometime in the early spring of 1959 I plucked a book from a shelf in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and paid thirty-five cents for it. The title was All My Lovers, by Alan Marshall, and I bought it because I noted that it had been published by Midwood. Back in August I had sat up late in my parents’ house in Buffalo writing a book for Midwood, and I’d since returned to Antioch College, where I was assiduously neglecting my studies while writing a couple more books for the same publisher, all of them examples of what we’ve since learned to call Midcentury Erotica.

  And now I’d actually found a Midwood title offered for sale. I took it home and read it, and realized right away that Alan Marshall, whoever he might be, was pretty good. I kept reading and encountered a scene I still recall. A principal character was a cad who had, in the manner of his tribe, behaved badly with a young woman from el barrio. Her brothers responded by paying him a visit and beating the crap out of him. And then they left, and I’ll quote the scene’s closing words from memory: “They did not take anything. They were not thieves.”

  Damn. This guy Marshall was good.

  He was, as you’ve probably worked out on your own, Donald E. Westlake, whom I was yet to meet. He, however, had already met me, when I turned up in New York during Christmas vacation and dropped in at the Scott Meredith office. That was where I had worked from August 1957 to May 1958, and it was where Don was working that December. I had a brief conversation with Henry Morrison, my agent, and Don will share his recollection of the moment later in this volume.

  So he met me, but it was one-sided; his was just a face in the background. Come summer, I’d finished the year at Antioch and taken a room at the Hotel Rio on West 47th Street; I planned to spend the summer writing more Midcentury Erotica before returning to Yellow Springs for a final year. (Shows what I knew. The school had other ideas, and while I was at the Rio, they sent me a letter, informing me that they felt I’d be happier elsewhere. Boy, were they ever right.)

  One of the Rio’s charms (and they were thin on the ground) was its proximity to the Scott Meredith offices, then at Fifth Avenue and 47th Street. I was a frequent visitor—to drop off a manuscript, to sign a contract, to pick up a check—and at one such visit I met Don. The workday was ending, and we introduced ourselves, and he suggested we go get a beer.

  Why not?

  One beer led to another, and we wound up at the Westlake apartment on West 46th between Ninth and Tenth. That’s a desirable address nowadays, which just shows what a difference half a century can make. Don was living there with his wife, Nedra, and their infant son, Sean. (Don was given to introducing Nedra as “the first Mrs. Westlake,” which turned out to be unintentionally prophetic.) I stayed for dinner, and we talked far into the night. As we were apt to do for the next fifty years.

  On three occasions, back in the Midcentury Erotica days, we collaborated, and the resultant books (A Girl Called Honey, So Willing, and Sin Hellcat) were as much fun as I’ve ever had at a typewriter. They bore a joint byline (“by Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall”), and the first carried a dedication: “To Don Westlake and Larry Block,” it read, “who introduced us.”

  Indeed.

  Speaking of introductions—

  Once, four or five years before Don’s death, I spotted a hand-lettered sign on the wall over his desk. NO MORE INTRODUCTIONS, it proclaimed. That struck me as bizarre. Here was this wonderfully personable fellow, always a genial and eager host; what made him resolve at this late date to quit introducing his guests to one another?

  What he meant, I soon learned, was that he’d resolved to stop responding favorably to requests that he write an introduction to someone’s new collection, or a review of someone’s book, or indeed any of the occasional pieces that one is constantly being invited to turn out.

  Pieces, in fact, which make up a substantial portion of this present volume. Don enjoyed this sort of writing, and as you’ll soon see, he was superb at it, but what made him forswear the pursuit was the amount of time and energy it took. He had books to write, and that’s where he wanted to focus his efforts.

  Well, I get the point. I receive a fair number of similar requests myself—one such has me writing the words you’re now reading—and it sometimes strikes me that I could put my time to more productive use. But, see, I wouldn’t; I’d spend those hours playing computer solitaire, or posting inanities on Facebook, or hopscotching my way through Wikipedia.

  So what the hell.

  As for Don’s labor in this varietal vineyard, I’m grateful for it; to it we owe this book’s existence. I’d read most of these pieces, but read them again as preparation for this foreword. (And that’s another way introductions drain one’s batteries. You don’t just have to write a thousand words. First, you have to read fifty or a hundred times as many words of the material you’ve agreed to introduce. In this instance it was a pleasure. That, alas, is not always the case.) It has been my delight to count as friends a couple of people who’ve never written a bad sentence, a clumsy paragraph, or a dull page. Evan Hunter was one. Donald E. Westlake was another.

  Levi Stahl has done a superb job of sifting through Don’s miscellaneous effort, separating the best of the wheat from the rest of the wheat—Don didn’t do chaff—and organizing and notating the result. If I’m to take issue with anything, it’s with a word he uses.

  Jokes.

  In his introduction, Levi describes these selections as being replete with jokes, and says Don found it almost impossible to write a page without putting in a joke. Now I read the entire book, and I can’t recall a single joke.

  A joke is something a comic tells. A joke generally starts with a guy walking into a bar. Or two guys, or even three.

  This is a joke: A Frenchman, a German, and a Jew walk into a bar. The Frenchman says, “I am tired and thirsty. I must have wine!” The German says, “I am tired and thirsty. I must have beer!” The Jew says, “I am tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes.” There. That’s a joke, and as far as I can tell, it’s the only one you’ll find in this book.

  What you will find, however, and I suspect you’ll fin
d it on every page, is wit. Don was a wonderfully witty man, a fellow of infinite jest, and he took pains to make what he wrote amusing. Wit enlivened his conversation, even as it brightened his writing, fiction and nonfiction alike. In his fiction, his goal was to tell a story; in his other writing, he strove to relate an incident or convey information or make a point. In either case, it was second nature for him to do so with wit and humor.

  The Getaway Car. It’s an inspired title, and Abby’s epigraph is dead accurate. While aspects of their author found their way into every one of his characters, when Don settled himself behind the wheel (and settled may not be le mot juste here), he became Stan Murch, ace wheelman of the Dortmunder gang. Like another of his characters, Don’s ideal car was one that would get you from point A to point B in zero seconds.

  When I met him, Don’s New York State driver’s license had been suspended; this happens when you’ve drawn enough speeding tickets, and he was always good at that. He wouldn’t have wanted a car anyway on West 46th Street, but that changed when he moved out to Canarsie. And the day came when the three-year suspension was up, and his license was restored.

  Whereupon he bought a car, and applied for insurance. And was astonished when the insurance company gave him a safe driver discount because he hadn’t had an accident or a speeding ticket in the past three years.

  There’s a word for that sort of thing. Westlakean.

  An interviewer once asked John O’Hara if he missed the old days of the Algonquin Round Table.

  “No,” he said. “When Benchley died, the party was over.”

  I know what he meant.

  Lawrence Block

  Greenwich Village

  EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

  If this is the first book by Donald E. Westlake you’ve ever held in your hands, stop right here. Put it down and walk away . . . straight to the crime section of your bookstore, where I’d suggest you start with The Hunter, the first book in his classic series about Parker, the heister’s heister; or The Hot Rock, the first misadventure of hapless thief John Dortmunder and his crew; or The Ax, Westlake’s painfully acute dissection-through-crime of contemporary economic pain; or the brilliantly funny stand-alone Somebody Owes Me Money, whose opening line—“I bet none of it would have happened if I wasn’t so eloquent”—tells you all you need to know about the voice of its put-upon cabbie narrator. When you’ve run through those, and the couple dozen more they’ll lead you to, we’ll gladly welcome you back here.