The cold in New York City wasn't just weather; it was a personal insult.
It was December in Manhattan, 1966, and the air was an aggressive, metallic freeze that bypassed the skin entirely and found the gaps in the cheap wool of his only suit, a charcoal gray thing he'd bought at a thrift store in Echo Park and it settled deep into the bones of his bad right leg.
Duke stood on the corner of 277 Park Avenue, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked up and his gaze just keep going up and up
The building that housed Doubleday & Company was a sheer, impersonal cliff face of steel and glass, vanishing into the gray of the sky.
He'd spent his last few days on bus rides across the country.
Three days of stale air, crying babies, and a seat that smelled like old cigarettes and stale pee.
He adjusted his tie in the reflection of a shop window.
He looked tired, and also looked older than nineteen.
'Good.' He needed to look older so that people take him more serious.
He felt the faint, reassuring ache in his hip, gripped the handle of his cane until his knuckles turned white, and pushed through the heavy revolving doors.
The lobby of the building was a different planet.
The noise of the street, the honking, shouting, wind was instantly stopped, replaced by a hushed, calm silence.
The air inside was warm and it even felt expensive.
Duke checked in at the front desk.
The secretary looked at his cane, her eyes lingering for a second too long on the cane then up at his face.
"I'm Mr. Hauser, here to see Mr. Aldrich," Duke said, his voice sounded raspier than he intended.
"Elevator B. 34th floor," she said, handing him a visitor's badge that looked very official.
He was ushered down a hallway lined with framed book covers, bestsellers.
He saw names he recognized from history class and also from his own reading experiences.
Steinbeck, Wouk, Asimov, and soon, if he played his cards right, maybe Hauser.
The office he was led into was massive. It overlooked a canyon of skyscrapers, a view that probably cost more than his entire building on Echo Park.
Two people were waiting for him.
The senior editor, Mr. Aldrich, a man in his fifties, wearing a three-piece suit that fit him, he had a carefully trimmed salt-and-pepper beard was standing behind a desk.
Flanking him was a younger woman. Miss Reacher.
She sat with a notepad on her lap, a pencil on top of it. She was pretty in an general way, with glasses perched on the end of her nose.
"Mr. Hauser," Aldrich said, his voice a bit deep. He came around the desk, hand extended.
"A pleasure. Truly. We've been immensely enjoying your… Jaws."
"I been enjoying the attention," Duke replied. He didn't rush.
He moved with a controlled descent, hooking his cane onto the edge of a leather chair before sitting down. He gave them a small, tight smile. "I'm glad it made the trip."
The meeting began with some small chat with pleasantries on it.
Comments on the weather. How was the trip? Did you find the building okay?
He did notice them checking him out several times.
They saw the big frame, a Texas farm-boy build, but they also saw the limp. And they probably also noticed the cheap suit.
He let them talk. He let them fill the silence. He had always had a gift for patience even in his past life.
Letting people talk, was a trick he learned from his old life, from dealing with loudmouthed people.
They start talking to fill the void, and they usually tell you more than they planned to.
Aldrich did most of the talking. He tented his fingers, leaning back in his leather throne.
"The narrative pace is undeniable," Aldrich said, nodding at the manuscript that sat on the center of his desk like a holy relic.
"It moves. It holds you by the throat and makes you interested. And the character work specifically Quint. It's rare to see that kind of character in a debut thriller."
"Startling verisimilitude," Miss Reacher added. She didn't look up from her notepad.
"The technical details regarding the oceanography, the shark... it feels researched to a very high standard, almost academic, yet never boring."
"I did my homework," Duke said simply. He didn't tell them his 'homework' involved watching a Spielberg movie fifty times in 4K resolution in his mind.
"It's a remarkable piece of work for a debut," Aldrich concluded. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. The air in the room shifted. "We'd like to make you an offer, Hauser."
This was the moment.
In his old life, Duke would have been grateful.
He would have been the guy just happy to be in the room, nodding his head, saying 'thank you' too many times, taking whatever scraps they threw at him.
But Duke wasn't that guy anymore.
He was in the past, had a crippling injury, a head full of memories of the future, and absolutely nothing to lose and everything to win.
"Before we discuss numbers," Duke said. He cut Aldrich off mid-breath.
His voice was low, even, and devoid of any friendliness. "I have a few points of my own."
Aldrich's eyebrows twitched upwards. Just a millimeter.
Authors, especially kid authors from nowhere with no agent, didn't have "points." They had "thank yous."
Aldrich exchanged a quick, unreadable glance with Miss Reacher.
"I'm listening," he said, leaning back again.
Duke took a breath. He channeled every tough-guy negotiation he'd ever seen in a movie.
"The advance needs to be significant," Duke began. "Twenty-five thousand dollars."
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a car.
He saw Miss Reacher's eyes widen. Her pencil actually stopped moving.
Twenty-five grand in 1966 was a house, a fleet of cars. A fortune.
Duke didn't blink.
"I need to know you're invested in this. Money is how you show faith. If you pay me peanuts, this book ends up in the mid-list graveyard. If you pay me twenty-five, you have to sell it to make your money back. That's point one."
He continued before they could object.
"Second, I expect a marketing push. Regional advertising, specifically on the East Coast and California. Review copies sent to every major paper."
"This isn't a quiet literary novel. It's a thriller and it needs noise. Most people right now think of sharks as just big goldfish. We need to teach them about them through the promotion."
Aldrich was smiling now. A small, bemused smile. He looked like a man watching a dog try to perform a card trick.
"You're ambitious, Mr. Hauser," Aldrich said softly.
"I admire that. Truly. Gall is in short supply these days, but twenty-five is… a substantial amount. It's unprecedented to say the least, we were thinking more in the neighborhood of five thousand."
Five thousand. It was still good money. But it wasn't enough for him.
"The neighborhood of twenty-five is where I live," Duke countered.
His voice didn't waver. "And finally, and this is non-negotiable, I will be retaining all film, television, and dramatic rights. One hundred percent. Doubleday gets the book. I keep that."
There was a beat of silence.
This was the part Duke had sweated over. This was the part where he thought the table would get flipped.
In 2025, Intellectual Property was everything.
The movie rights were worth millions.
Merchandise, the sequels, theme park rides. The book was just the advertisement for the franchise.
He braced himself for the fight.
But Aldrich just chuckled. He actually waved a dismissive hand, like he was swatting away a fly.
"The subsidiary rights?" Aldrich looked at Miss Reacher and laughed.
"My boy, that's hardly the point of contention. Please, be realistic. No one is going to make a motion picture out of a fish movie."
Duke kept his face stone still, but inside, his brain was doing backflips.
'Say that again', he thought.
'This is going straight into my memoir, my editor laughed at the idea of a Jaws movie.'
"It's a book about a fish, Hauser," Aldrich explained, his tone shifting to a patronizing, fatherly warmth.
"Think of the logistics. To film this, you'd need to shoot on the open ocean. You'd need a mechanical invention to play the monster. Hitchcock wouldn't touch it. It's unfilmable."
He leaned in. "If keeping the dramatic rights makes you feel secure, by all means, keep them. We don't want them. They're worthless."
"It's the advance that's the issue. Let's both take a step back into reality and go for ten, you go away happy and I also stay happy."
Duke felt a surreal sense of dislocation. It was like watching someone use a winning lottery ticket to wipe a coffee spill.
They were handing him the crown jewels the keys to the future first Blockbuster.
"The advance is the signal of your faith," Duke countered, forcing himself to focus on the money.
He shifted his weight, and his leg flared with pain. Good. The pain kept him sharp.
"This book will sell. It won't just sell to readers; it will sell to people who don't read. Fifteen thousand, you can consider it a down payment on your own Christmas bonus next year."
The negotiation stretched on for an hour.
It was a battle of attrition. The room got hotter. The cigar smoke got thicker.
They went back and forth, trading numbers like punches.
Duke was implacable. He wasn't angry; he was just a wall. He just refused to be moved.
He played his ace card carefully.
"I believe in this house," Duke lied, his face a mask of sincerity. "I think Doubleday understands the commercial appeal better than anyone."
"But... I have interest from Random House. And my business sense requires me to consider the best overall offer."
He saw the flicker in Aldrich's eyes.
Finally, Aldrich sighed. It was a theatrical, heavy sound. The sound of a man who decided he was tired of arguing and wanted his lunch.
"Twelve-five," Aldrich said flatly. "Twelve thousand, five hundred dollars. That is the ceiling. That is the roof. Take it, or walk out the door."
Duke looked from Aldrich to Miss Reacher. She was watching him intensely, her pen hovering.
He let the silence hang in the air for a slow three-count. One. Two. Three.
He knew he could maybe grind another grand out of them, but he also knew the value of letting the other guy feel like he won the last hand.
Plus, his leg was killing him.
"I want the marketing commitment in the contract," Duke said. "Specifics. Regional buys. Not just 'best efforts'."
"Agreed," Aldrich said, and a genuine smile finally broke through his beard. He looked relieved.
"Then we have a deal," Duke said.
He stood up, grabbing his cane. He shook Aldrich's hand, then Reacher's. Her hand was cool and dry, and she gave him a nod that felt like respect.
A week later, Duke sat in a cramped lawyer's office in midtown, signing his name on the dotted line.
Connor Hauser.
The pen scratched against the paper. It was done.
He had signed a 3 book deal with Doubleday, with an scaling royalty step.
10% on the first 5,000 copies sold.
12.5% on copies sold between 5,000 and 10,000.
15% on all copies sold after the 10,000 milestone.
The check for the first half of the advance, six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars sat on the desk.
To a guy who had been scraping by on army pay and pulp magazine scraps, it looked like a phone number.
But as he walked out of that office, tucking the copy of the contract into his battered briefcase, he didn't feel elation.
He didn't feel like jumping in the air and clicking his heels.
He felt heavy.
This wasn't prize money. This wasn't a lottery win. This was an opportunity.
He walked out onto the bustling New York street, the cold wind hitting him again, but this time he didn't feel it. He was already planning the next move.
One day he was shivering in a gray atmosphere in Manhattan, and the next he was back in the sprawling, sun bleached weather of LA.
He didn't go back to his apartment in Echo Park. Not yet.
He still had his "good" suit on, though it was wrinkled from the flight. He had the check in his pocket.
He took a cab straight to downtown Los Angeles, to the financial district.
He walked into a brokerage firm on Spring Street.
The place was chaos. It was a whirl of ringing phones, shouting men in shirtsleeves, and the rhythmic sound of the ticker tape machines spitting out endless streams of paper.
Duke stood near the entrance, leaning on his cane, watching the madness.
In his past life, he was a gamer and a movie buff. He didn't know nothing about finance. He wasn't a "Wolf of Wall Street" guy.
But he knew history, and he remembered what brands won in the end.
A young broker spotted him and hustled over. He couldn't have been older than twenty-five, with slicked-back hair and a tie that was too wide. His name tag said David.
David looked at Duke at the cane, the wrinkled suit, the intense look and tried to turn on the charm.
"Can I help you, sir? Looking to get into the market? It's a bull run right now. We see a lot of opportunity in aerospace, Walt Disney is flying high or maybe some of the new electronics firms. The future is plastics, my friend."
Duke cut him off. He didn't have time for the sales pitch.
"Coca-Cola," Duke said.
David blinked. His smile faltered. "Coca-Cola? The soda pop company?"
"Yes."
"Well... it's a solid blue-chip, sir, very stable, I suppose. But the growth is... well, it's not exactly sexy. If you're looking for returns, you want to be in tech. You want to be in Xerox. You want—"
"I'm not looking for sexy," Duke said. "I'm looking for boring. I want something that people are going to drink when they're happy, when they're sad, and when the world is burning down."
David looked confused. "Sir, with all due respect, the market is hot on—"
"How much of it can I get for ten thousand dollars?"
David's jaw nearly hit the floor. "T-ten thousand? That's... that's an incredibly concentrated position. The prudent thing would be to diversify. A mutual fund, perhaps? Or a spread of industrial bonds?"
Duke sighed. He was tired. His leg hurt. He just wanted to buy the stock and go home.
"David," Duke said, his voice dropping an octave.
He locked eyes with the kid. "The prudent thing is to follow orders. I'm not asking for advice. Can you follow my lead, or do I need to find someone in this room who wants a commission?".
The young broker swallowed hard, flushed, and nodded rapidly. "Yes, sir. Of course, Coca-Cola. Ten thousand. I'll... I'll write up the ticket right now."
Duke watched him scramble away toward the trading desk.
He knew it seemed crazy. In 1966, the smart money was chasing the Space Age.
But Duke knew something they didn't. He knew about Warren Buffett. He knew that in fifty years, Coke would still be Coke, while half these "electronics firms" wouldn't be rememberd.
As Duke turned to leave the brokerage, the winter sun of Los Angeles hit his face through the plate glass window.
He allowed himself a single, tight smile.
He walked out onto the street, his cane tapping a steady rhythm on the pavement. Tap. Tap.
He was walking into his future, one day at a time and his plans were just getting started.
---
RIP Rob Reiner, I only learned about it today, Im planning on rewatching Stand by Me.