Big Money (28 page)

A great black Lincoln was just coming to a soundless stop at the hotel entry when the four of them, Charley and Andy Merritt and Savage and the fat senator, came out into the Washington night that smelt of oil on asphalt and the exhausts of cars and of young leaves and of wisteriablossoms. The senator's house was a continuation of his car, big and dark and faintly gleaming and soundless. They sprawled in big blackleather chairs and an old whitehaired mulatto brought around manhattans on an engraved silver tray.

The senator took each of the men separately to show them where to wash up. Charley didn't much like the little pats on the back he got from the senator's small padded hands as he was ushered into a big oldfashioned bathroom with a setin marble tub. When he came back from washing his hands the folding doors were open to the diningroom and a halelooking old gentleman with a white mustache and a slight limp was walking up and down in front of them impatiently. “I can smell that terrapin, Bowie,” he was saying. “Ole Horace is still up to his tricks.”

With the soup and the sherry the general began to talk from the head of the table. “Of course all this work with flyin'machines is very interestin' for the advancement of science . . . I tell you, Bowie, you're one of the last people in this town who sets a decent table . . . perhaps it points to vast possibilities in the distant future. . . . But speakin' as a military man, gentlemen, you know some of us don't feel that they have proved their worth. . . . The terrapin is remarkable, Bowie. . . . I mean we don't put the confidence in the flyin'machine that they seem to have over at the Navy Department. . . . A good glass of burgundy,
Bowie, nothin' I like so much. . . . Experiment is a great thing, gentlemen, and I don't deny that perhaps in the distant future . . .”

“In the distant future,” echoed Savage, laughing, as he followed Merritt and Charley out from under the stone portico of Senator Planet's house. A taxi was waiting for him. “Where can I drop you, gentlemen? . . . The trouble with us is we are in the distant future and don't know it.”

“They certainly don't know it in Washington,” said Merritt as they got into the cab. Savage giggled. “The senator and the general were pricelessly archaic . . . like something dug up. . . . But don't worry about the general . . . once he know she's dealing with . . . you know . . . presentable people, he's gentle as Santa Claus. . . . He believes in a government of gentlemen, for gentlemen and by gentlemen.”

“Well, don't we all?” said Merritt sternly.

Savage let out a hooting laugh. “Nature's gentlemen . . . been looking for one for years.” Then he turned his bulging alcoholic eyes and his laughing pugface to Charley. “The senator thinks you're the whiteheaded boy. . . . He asked me to bring you around to see him . . . the senator is very susceptible, you know.” He let out another laugh.

The guy must be pretty tight, thought Charley. He was a little woozy himself from the Napoleon brandy drunk out of balloon-shaped glasses they'd finished off the dinner with. Savage let them out at the Waldman Park and his taxi went on. “Say, who is that guy, Andy?” “He's a wild man,” said Merritt. “He is one of Moorehouse's bright young men. He's bright enough, but I don't like the stories I hear about him. He wants the Askew-Merritt contract but we're not in that class yet. Those publicrelations people will eat you out of house and home.”

As they were going up in the elevator Charley said, yawning, “Gee, I hoped those pretty girls were comin' to dinner.” “Senator Planet never has women to dinner. . . . He's gota funny reputation. . . . There are some funny people in this town.” “I guess there are,” said Charley. He was all in, he'd hardly got his clothes off before he was asleep.

At the end of the week Charley and Bill flew back to New York leaving Andy Merritt to negotiate contracts with the government experts. When they'd run the ship into the hangar Charley said he'd wheel Bill home to Jamaica in his car. They stopped off in a kind of hofbrau for a beer. They were hungry and Bill thought his wife would be through
supper so they ate noodlesoup and schnitzels. Charley found they had some fake rhinewine and ordered it. They drank the wine and ordered another set of schnitzels. Charley was telling Bill how Andy Merritt said the government contracts were going through and Andy Merritt was always right and he'd said it was a patriotic duty to capitalize production on a broad base. “Bill, goddam it, we'll be in the money. How about another bottle? . . . Good old Bill, the pilot's nothin' without his mechanic, the promotor's nothin' without production. . . . You and me, Bill, we're in production, and by God I'm goin' to see we don't lose out. If they try to rook us we'll fight, already I've had offers, big offers from Detroit . . . in five years now we'll be in the money and I'll see you're in the big money too.”

They ate applecake and then the proprietor brought out a bottle of kummel. Charley bought the bottle. “Cheaper than payin' for it drink by drink, don't you think so, Bill?” Bill began to start saying he was a family man and had better be getting along home. “Me,” said Charley, pouring out some kummel into a tumbler, “I haven't got no home to go to. . . . If she wanted she could have a home. I'd make her a wonderful home.”

Charley discovered that Bill Cermak had gone and that he was telling all this to a stout blonde lady of uncertain age with a rich German accent. He was calling her Aunt Hartmann and telling her that if he ever had a home she'd be his housekeeper. They finished up the kummel and started drinking beer. She stroked his head and called him her vandering yunge. There was an orchestra in Bavarian costume and a thicknecked man that sang. Charley wanted to yodel for the company but she pulled him back to the table. She was very strong and pushed him away with big red arms when he tried to get friendly, but when he pinched her seat she looked down into her beer and giggled. It was all like back home in the old days, he kept telling her, only louder and funnier. It was dreadfully funny until they were sitting in the car and she had her head on his shoulder and was calling him schatz and her long coils of hair had come undone and hung down over the wheel. Somehow he managed to drive.

He woke up next morning in a rattletrap hotel in Coney Island. It was nine o'clock, he had a frightful head and Aunt Hartmann was sitting up in bed looking pink, broad and beefy and asking for kaffee und schlagsahne. He took her out to breakfast at a Vienna bakery. She ate a great deal and cried a great deal and said he mustn't think she
was a bad woman, because she was just a poor girl out of work and she'd felt so badly on account of his being a poor homeless boy. He said he'd be a poor homeless boy for fair if he didn't get back to the office. He gave her all the change he had in his pocket and a fake address and left her crying over a third cup of coffee in the Vienna bakery and headed for Long Island City. About Ozone Park he had to stop to upchuck on the side of the road. He just managed to get into the yard of the plant with his last drop of gas. He slipped into his office. It was ten minutes of twelve.

His desk was full of notes and letters held together with clips and blue papers marked
IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.
He was scared Miss Robinson or Joe Askew would find out he was back. Then he remembered he had a silver flask of old bourbon in his desk drawer that Doris had given him the night before she sailed, to forget her by she'd said, kidding him. He'd just tipped his head back to take a swig when he saw Joe Askew standing in front of his desk.

Joe stood with his legs apart with a worn frowning look on his face. “Well, for Pete's sake, where have you been? We been worried as hell about you. . . . Grace waited dinner an hour.”

“Why didn't you call up the hangar?”

“Everybody had gone home. . . . Stauch's sick. Everything's tied up.”

“Haven't you heard from Merritt?”

“Sure . . . but that means we've got to reorganize production. . . . And frankly, Charley, that's a hell of an example to set the employees . . . boozing around the office. Last time I kept my mouth shut, but my god . . .”

Charley walked over to the cooler and drew himself a couple of papercupfuls of water. “I got to celebratin' that trip to Washington last night. . . . After all, Joe, these contracts will put us on the map. . . . How about havin' a little drink?” Joe frowned. “You look like you'd been having plenty . . . and how about shaving before you come into the office? We expect our employees to do it, we ought to do it too. . . . For craps' sake, Charley, remember that the war's over.” Joe turned on his heel and went back to his own office.

Charley took another long pull on the flask. He was mad. “I won't take it,” he muttered, “not from him or anybody else.” Then the phone rang. The foreman of the assemblyroom was standing in the door. “Please, Mr. Anderson,” he said.

That was the beginning of it. From then everything seemed to go
haywire. At eight o'clock that night Charley hadn't yet had a shave. He was eating a sandwich and drinking coffee out of a carton with the mechanics of the repaircrew over a busted machine. It was midnight and he was all in before he got home to the apartment. He was all ready to give Joe a piece of his mind but there wasn't an Askew in sight.

Next morning at breakfast Grace's eyebrows were raised when she poured out the coffee. “Well, if it isn't the lost battalion,” she said.

Joe Askew cleared his throat. “Charley,” he said nervously, “I didn't have any call to bawl you out like that . . . I guess I'm getting cranky in my old age. The plant's been hell on wheels all week.”

The two little girls began to giggle.

“Aw, let it ride,” said Charley.

“Little pitchers, Joe,” said Grace, rapping on the table for order. “I guess we all need a rest. Now this summer, Joe, you'll take a vacation. I need a vacation in the worst way myself, especially from entertaining Joe's dead cats. He hasn't had anybody to talk to since you've been away, Charley, and the house has been full of dead cats.” “That's just a couple of guys I've been trying to fix up with jobs. Grace thinks they're no good because they haven't much social smalltalk.” “I don't think, I know they are dead cats,” said Grace. The little girls started to giggle some more. Charley got to his feet and pushed back his chair.

“Comin', Joe?” he said. “I've got to get back to my wreckin'crew.”

It was a couple of weeks before Charley got away from the plant except to sleep. At the end of that time Stauch was back with his quiet regretful manner like the manner of an assisting physician in a hospital operatingroom, and things began to straighten out. The day Stauch finally came to Charley's office door saying, “Production is now again smooth, Mr. Anderson,” Charley decided he'd knock off at noon. He called up Nat Benton to wait for him for lunch and slipped out by the employees' entrance so that he wouldn't meet Joe in the entry.

In Nat's office they had a couple of drinks before going out to lunch. At the restaurant after they'd ordered, he said, “Well, Nat, how's the intelligence service going?”

“How many shares have you got?”

“Five hundred.”

“Any other stock, anything you could put up for margin?”

“A little. . . . I got a couple of grand in cash.”

“Cash,” said Nat scornfully. “For a rainy day . . . stuff and nonsense. . . . Why not put it to work?”

“That's what I'm talkin' about.”

“Suppose you try a little flyer in Auburn just to get your hand in.”

“But how about Merritt?”

“Hold your horses. . . . What I want to do is get you a little capital so you can fight those birds on an equal basis. . . . If you don't they'll freeze you out sure as fate.”

“Joe wouldn't,” said Charley.

“I don't know the man personally but I do know men and there are darn few who won't look out for number one first.”

“I guess they'll all rook you if they can.”

“I wouldn't put it just that way, Charley. There are some magnificent specimens of American manhood in the business world.” That night Charley got drunk all by himself at a speak in the Fifties

By the time Doris landed from Europe in the fall Charley had made two killings in Auburn and was buying up all the Askew-Merritt stock he could lay his hands on. At the same time he discovered he had credit, for a new car, for suits at Brooks Brothers, for meals at speakeasies. The car was a Packard sport phaeton with a long low custombody upholstered in red leather. He drove down to the dock to meet Doris and Mrs. Humphries when they came in on the
Leviathan.
The ship had already docked when Charley got to Hoboken. Charley parked his car and hurried through the shabby groups at the thirdclass to the big swirl of welldressed people chattering round piles of pigskin suitcases, patentleather hatboxes, wardrobetrunks with the labels of Ritz hotels on them, in the central part of the wharfbuilding. Under the H he caught sight of old Mrs. Humphries. Above the big furcollar her face looked like a faded edition of Doris's, he had never before noticed how much.

She didn't recognize him for a moment. “Why, Charles Anderson, how very nice.” She held her hand out to him without smiling. “This is most trying. Doris of course had to leave her jewelcase in the cabin. . . . You are meeting someone, I presume.” Charley blushed. “I thought I might give you a lift . . . I got a big car now. I thought it would take your bags better than a taxi.” Mrs. Humphries wasn't paying much attention.” There she is. . . .” She wave dag loved hand with an alligatorskin bag in it. “Here I am.”

Doris came running through the crowd. She was flushed and her
lips were very red. Her little hat and her fur were just the color of her hair. “I've got it, Mother . . . what a silly girl.” “Every time I go through this,” sighed Mrs. Humphries, “I decide I'll never go abroad again.”