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"Uh-huh, Punky, sure," he tried to get his feet under him, but wobbled a
little. Sorokin tried not to snicker. "It has real plunge, real honesty in it,
a bitchofuh lot of depth," Werringer added, lamely.
Sorokin assumed a moue of displeasure, pure faggot: "Too bad it tiptoed
through the bookstores,"
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.txt he said. "It was written to alter the course of Western Civilization, you
know." Werringer paled.
What was happening here? "You do know that, don't you?"
Werringer nodded dumbly, and took the remark at face value. He didn't know why
he should feel as though he had just fallen down the rabbit hole, but the
impression was overwhelming.
"Well, uh, what we'd like, what we want, for Marquis, is the same sort of
ballz--uh, the same sort of highly emotional writing you put into this."
Sorokin felt his stomach tightening, now that the moment was with him. "What
you want me to do, is go back down to Red Hook, to the same place I knew, and
write about the way it is now."
Werringer banged a palm on the desk. "Exactly! The kids, what happened to
them, where they are now. Did they wind up in the slammer, did they get
married, go into the army, the whole story, seventeen years later. And the
social conditions. Have the tenements been cleaned up? What about the low-rent
housing projects? Has the Police Athletic League been of any use? What about
racial tensions down there now, does it make for a different kind of kid gang,
different rumbles, you know, the whole scene."
"You want me to go back down there."
Werringer stared. "Yeah, right, that's what we want. 'Kid Gang Revisited.'
Something in depth."
The tension that had been growing in Sorokin now abruptly tightened like a
fist. Go back down there. Go back to it, seventeen years later. "I was
nineteen years old when I joined that gang,"
Andrew Sorokin said, half to himself. Werringer continued to stare. The man in
front of him seemed to be in some sort of shock.
"I'm thirty-six now. I don't know--"
Werringer bit the inside of his lip. "We only want you to write it from the
outside this time.
You're no kid now, Andy ... Mr. Soro--"
"But you don't want it to be a surface skimming, do you?"
"Well, no--"
"You want it to be guts and balls, right?"
"Yeah, right, we want--"
"You want it told the way it is, right? With realism, all the hip talk the
kids talk?"
"Sure, that's part of--"
"You want me to find out what happened to all those kids I ran with, who
didn't know I was studying them like bugs in a bottle. You want me to go down
there seventeen years later and say, 'I'm the guy finked on you, remember me?'
You want that, in essence that's what you want, isn't it?"
Werringer had the feeling now (sudden shifts with this man) that Sorokin was
furious, was frightened, but furious. What the hell was going on?
"Well, yes, we want the truth, the inside, the way you did it the first time,
but we don't want you to take any chances. We aren't ... hell, we aren't
Confidential or the Enquirer! We want--"
"You want me to go back in and let them take a whack at me!"
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Aggression. Werringer reeled.
"Say, wait a minute we--"
"You expect a helluva story, and all the risks, and you want it now, right,
Mr. Werringer?"
"What's the matter with you, Sorok--"
"Well, how the hell do you expect me to do it unless I go back down there and
sink into it again, up to my GUTS, up to my BALLS, up to my EYEBALLS FOR
CHRISSAKES! YOU DAMN DUMB DEADLINE-MEETER, YOU!"
Werringer shoved back from his desk, as though Sorokin might jump across and
throttle him. His eyes were wide behind the bifocals, all out of shape and
moist.
"It'll be my pleasure, Mr. Werringer," in a tone so soft and warm, relaxed at
last. "How soon do you need it? And what length?"
Walter Werringer fumbled for his Danish coffee mug.
Sorokin had his hand on the door, when it opened inward, and two young men
came through. The moment he saw them, prim and clean-scrubbed in their
almost-identical dark blue suits, he knew they had come from the right
families, had learned to dance at the age of six or seven at Miss
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