“By heavens! What was he like?”
“The greatest one I ever seen,” he went on, ignoring the question and enjoying the fact he had hooked his fish, “the chief of them, is a fellow named Whiskey Bill. You’ve heard of him?”
I said I had.
“It’s said he near invented the profession single-handedly. Surely he’s too humble to admit it. He is not to be crossed, or quarreled with—of course that goes without saying when it comes to those hardened book pirates. The publishers who try to empty the pockets of readers quake at the sound of Bill’s name more than any other. But he rewards his friends richly and opens paths for them.”
“What do you mean ‘paths’?”
“Paths to great fortune and glory.” He added, somewhat hastily, “they say.”
“What does the man look like?”
“What should the man look like?”
Before I could object to the absurdity of the question, he pushed his chair out and hurry-scurried away. Disappointed that the exchange had ended almost as soon as it became interesting, I then felt his noxious breath return on my neck.
“A head of fire,” he said.
I spun around. As my eyes followed this imp strutting across the tavern on his way to the piano, they landed on another figure—the redheaded man who had dropped the mysterious book at my feet in the street. He was taking his high hat down from a hook, and as he fixed it on his head, Whiskey Bill—for I realized who he was at one fell swoop—tipped it in my direction, meeting my eye and offering that condescending, satisfied, double-gap-toothed smile that would become so familiar.
I had an urge to follow after him as he ascended the stairs, and a competing urge to run out the back door. But I did not budge. However distant my own life was from the bookaneers, I correctly surmised that any attempt to question him would run counter to what had just transpired. Whiskey Bill was ready to tell me who he was on his terms. It could not come from his own lips, and I knew enough to understand that nothing ought to come from mine. I remained seated for a long time, contemplating the peculiar situation and my position as an accomplice to a prominent bookaneer. I might have been filled with more qualms than I was, but the fact was, the longer I thought of it the more thrilled I was for it. The secrecy and potential danger—at least as I imagined the life I was entering—was enormously gratifying. I realized in an instant, as though struck in the face, that I did not have everything I wanted and hoped for—that I wanted this, wanted to be inducted into this realm. I actually prayed to God that night not to make a misstep that would strip the chance.
Apparently pleased by what had already passed at my bookstall, and my discretion at the Crown, Whiskey Bill began delivering books at irregular intervals. He never came to my stall. He’d pass me the package in a crowded street or sidewalk, on an omnibus or a ferry, with no explanation of how he’d found me and no conversation beyond the most basic greeting. Then a customer, different each time, always a stranger to me, would purchase the volume at my bookstall, leaving a too-large sum of money in my hands and never waiting for change.
My general interest in the bookaneers had given me some advance knowledge about Whiskey Bill. Despite what the printer’s devil proclaimed to me, Bill was not the greatest example of his field; in fact, had there ever been a Professor Agassiz to work out a classification of the literary pirates, Bill would have been placed in the second tier, forever trying to push up his rankings. Then at the bottom rung were the so-called barnacles, those who had some experience in bookaneering but no patience, resorting to careless thefts and inevitably spending time in and out of jails; as the name suggests, these were parasites of the trade, acting on intelligence purloined from better and more successful practitioners.
The legends of bookaneers’ deeds passed around Pfaff’s Cave in the old days would inevitably include dramatic circumstances and intrigue, breathless chases through streets and buildings, confrontations with celebrated authors and battles of will with ruthless printers of wealth and power. As usual the truth is a source of disappointment. The commonplace bookaneer usually did little more than sit in dingy taverns to negotiate sundry transactions, act as a courier avoiding customs, and submit poems and stories plagiarized from an obscure magazine to other obscure magazines under false names, with the ambition of pilfering a few dollars here and shillings there. No heavily armed authors waiting in ambush, no sudden betrayals by trusted associates, no hidden passageways aiding an escape.
But if so many representatives of the craft were drudges and Jeremy Diddlers, a small and unofficial guild of professional, expert bookaneers rose to the pinnacle of greatness. They moved frequently between both sides of the Atlantic. I believe I could count the ones operating at a given time on one hand. They grew beyond the control of the publishers, who came to fear as much as rely on them. Each was a king.