I assume “burley” means “chum”? Bits of dead fish to attract?
Yep, burley has to be what you call chum. And the chum is thrown out of both sides of the boat by Maraniss because what he’s really after is to show you how romantic and how heterosexual his subject is.
How does he do it?
What is the chum? It’s the letters written to a girl that zero never wrote, and a fake photograph of his big head stuck on another man who was with Genevieve.