Even the king of Sweden, congratulating him on the first of two Nobel prizes, raising his voice a little to be sure the right people could hear, had called him “Jig”—or rather “Yig,” because of the problems Scandinavian pronunciation had with the letter “J,” and after that, for half a year, people had called out to him in bars and named him “Yig.” Whatever. It was a sign of just how badly off he was that he was thinking about bars and 1974, instead of the 140 things he had on his mind these days, instead of the problem with Drew Harrigan. If there was one thing Jig Tyler knew, it was that the problem with Drew Harrigan was not about to go away. This was the calm before the storm. This was every cliché that had ever been written in every third-rate novel about the McCarthy era. This was idiocy, because Drew Harrigan himself was idiocy. This was— Delmore Krantz had opened the office door and switched on the lights and stepped back a little to let Jig pass first.
