future novelist, if never a hugely successful one, Eddie O’Hare was a young man with an instinct for spotting closure; as such, he was happy to see the clam-truck driver again. Eddie explained to the driver the task at hand: having “forgotten” to ask Ted Cole for his autograph, the boy didn’t want to disappoint his mom and dad. “Let me try,” the clam-truck driver said. Thus, in the lee of the pilothouse on the wind-blown upper deck, the driver of a clam truck rendered a flawless imitation of the best-selling author’s signature. After only a half-dozen attempts in the notebook,
