Big Money (44 page)

There were roses in the drawingroom, and Cliff had bought her
Theatre
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Zits Weekly
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Town Topics
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Shadowland.
“My, this is grand,” she said.

He winked. “The boss said to send you off in the best possible style.” He brought a bottle out of his overcoat pocket. “That's Teacher's Highland Cream. . . . Well, so long.” He made a little bow and went off down the corridor.

Margo settled herself in the drawingroom and almost wished Cliff hadn't gone so soon. He might at least have taken longer to say goodby. My, that boy was fresh. The train had no sooner started when there he was back, with his hands in his pants pockets, looking anxious and chewing gum at a great rate. “Well,” she said, frowning, “now what?”

“I bought me a ticket to Richmond. . . . I don't travel enough . . . freedom from office cares.”

“You'll get fired.” “Nope . . . this is Saturday. I'll be back bright and early Monday morning.”

“But he'll find out.”

Cliff took his coat off, folded it carefully and laid it on the rack, then he sat down opposite her and pulled the door of the drawingroom to. “Not unless you tell him.”

She started to get to her feet. “Well, of all the fresh kids.” He went on in the same tone of voice. “And you won't tell him and I won't tell him about . . . er . . .” “But, you damn fool, that's just my exhusband.” “Well, I'm lookin' forward to bein' the exboyfriend. . . . No, honestly, I know you'll like me . . . they all like me.” He leaned over to take her hand. His hand was icycold. “No, honest, Margo, why's it any different from the other night? Nobody'll know. You just leave it to me.” Margo began to giggle. “Say, Cliff, you ought to have a sign on you.” “Sayin' what?” “Fresh paint.”

She went over and sat beside him. Through the shaking rumble of the train she could feel him shaking. “Why, you funny kid,” she said. “You were scared to death all the time.”

High high high

    
Up in the hills

         
Watching the clouds roll by

 

genius, hard work, vast resources, and the power and will to achieve something distinctive, something more beautiful, something more appealing to the taste and wise judgment of the better people than are the things which have made the Coral Gables of today, and that tomorrow may be better, bigger, more compellingly beautiful

 

High high high up in the hills

 

GIANT AIRSHIP BREAKS IN TWO IN MIDFLIGHT

 

here young and old will gather to disport themselves in fresh invigorating salt water, or to exchange idle gossip in the loggias which overlook the gleaming pool, and at night the tinkle of music will tempt you to dance the hours away

 

Shaking hands with the sky

 

It Is the Early Investor Who Will Share to the Fullest Extent in the Large and Rapid Enhancement of Values That Will Follow Such Characterful Development

 

Who's the big man with gold in his mouth?

    
Where does he come from? he comes from the south

 

TOWN SITE OF JUPITER SOLD FOR TEN MILLION DOLLARS

 

like Aladdin with his magic lamp, the Capitalist, the Investor and the Builder converted what was once a desolate swamp into a wonderful city linked with a network of glistening boulevards

 

Sleepy head sleepy head

    
Open your eyes

         
Sun's in the skies

              
Stop yawnin

                   
It's mornin

 

ACRES OF GOLD NEAR TAMPA

 

like a magnificent shawl of sapphire and jade, studded with a myriad of multicolored gems, the colorful waters of the lower Atlantic weave a spell of lasting enchantment. The spot where your future joy, contentment and happiness is so sure that to deviate is to pass up the outstanding opportunity of your lifetime

 

MATE FOLLOWS WIFE IN LEAP FROM WINDOW

 

BATTLE DRUG-CRAZED KILLERS

 

Lulu always wants to do

    
What we boys don't want her to

 

A detachment of motorcycle police led the line of march and cleared the way for the white-clad columns. Behind the police rose A. P. Schneider, grand marshal. He was followed by Mr. Sparrow's band and members of the painters' union. The motion picture operators were next in line and the cigar workers, the glaziers, the musicians, the signpainters and the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen followed in the order named. The meat cutters brought up the rear of the first division.

The second division was composed of more than 3,500 carpenters. The third division was led by the Clown Band and consisted of electricians, blacksmiths, plasterers, printers, pressmen, elevator constructors, postoffice clerks and plumbers and steamfitters.

The fourth division was led by ironworkers, brick masons, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, steam and operating engineers, the Typographical Union, lathers, composition roofers, sheet-metal workers, tailors and machinists

 

Don't bring Lulu

    
I'll bring her myself

“You watch, Cliff. . . . We'll knock 'em higher than a kite,” Charley said to his secretary, as they came out of the crowded elevator into the humming lobby of the Woolworth Building. “Yessiree,” said Cliff, nodding wisely. He had a long face with a thin parchment skin drawn tightly from under his brown felt hat over high cheekbones and thin nose. The lipless mouth never opened very wide above the thin jaw. He repeated out of the corner of his mouth, “Yessiree, bobby . . . higher than a kite.”

They went through the revolving doors into the fiveo'clock crowd that packed the lower Broadway sidewalks to the curbs in the drizzly dusk of a raw February day. Charley pulled a lot of fat envelopes out of the pockets of his English waterproof and handed them to Cliff. “Take these up to the office and be sure they get into Nat Benton's personal safe. They can go over to the bank in the mornin' . . . then you're through. Call me at nine, see? You were a little late yesterday. . . . I'm not goin' to worry about anythin' till then.” “Yessir, get a good night's sleep, sir,” said Cliff and slid out of sight in the crowd.

Charley stopped a cruising taxicab and let himself drop into the seat. Weather like this his leg still ached. He swallowed a sigh; what the hell was the number? “Go on uptown up Park Avenue,” he yelled at the driver. He couldn't think of the number of the damn place. . . . “To East Fiftysecond Street. I'll show you the house.” He settled back against the cushions. Christ, I'm tired, he whispered to himself. As he sat slumped back jolted by the stopping and starting of the taxi in the traffic his belt cut into his belly. He loosened the belt a notch, felt better, brought a cigar out of his breastpocket and bit the end off.

It took him some time to light the cigar. Each time he had the match ready the taxi started or stopped. When he did light it it didn't taste good. “Hell, I've smoked too much today . . . what I need's a drink,” he muttered aloud.

The taxi moved jerkily uptown. Now and then out of the corner of his eye he caught grey outlines of men in other taxis and private cars. As soon as he'd made out one group of figures another took its place. On Lafayette Street the traffic was smoother. The whole stream of metal, glass, upholstery, overcoats, haberdashery, flesh and blood was moving uptown. Cars stopped, started, shifted gears in unison as if
they were run by one set of bells. Charley sat slumped in the seat feeling the layer of fat on his belly against his trousers, feeling the fat of his jowl against his stiff collar. Why the hell couldn't he remember that number? He'd been there every night for a month. A vein in his left eyelid kept throbbing.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” said the plainclothes doorman. “How do you do, mon capitaine,” said Freddy the rattoothed proprietor, nodding a sleek black head. “Monsieur dining with Mademoiselle tonight?” Charley shook his head. “I have a feller coming to dinner with me at seven.” “Bien, monsieur.” “Let's have a scotch and soda while I'm waitin' and be sure it ain't that rotgut you tried to palm off on me yesterday.”

Freddy smiled wanly. “It was a mistake, Mr. Anderson. We have the veritable pinchbottle. You see the wrappings. It is still wet from the saltwater.” Charley grunted and dropped into an easychair in the corner of the bar.

He drank the whiskey off straight and sipped the soda afterwards. “Hay, Maurice, bring me another,” he called to the greyhaired old wrinklefaced Swiss waiter. “Bring me another. Make it double, see? . . . in a regular highball glass. I'm tired this evenin'.”

The shot of whiskey warmed his gut. He sat up straighter. He grinned up at the waiter. “Well, Maurice, you haven't told me what you thought about the market today.” “I'm not so sure, sir. . . . But you know, Mr. Anderson. . . . If you only wanted to you could tell me.”

Charley stretched his legs out and laughed. “Flyin' higher than a kite, eh. . . . Oh, hell, it's a bloody chore. I want to forget it.”

By the time he saw Eddy Sawyer threading his way towards him through the faces, the business suits, the hands holding glasses in front of the cocktailbar, he felt good. He got to his feet. “How's the boy, Eddy? How's things in little old Deetroit? They all think I'm pretty much of a sonofabitch, don't they? Give us the dirt, Eddy.”

Eddy sighed and sank into the deep chair beside him. “Well, it's a long story, Charley.”

“What would you say to a bacardi with a touch of absinthe in it? . . . All right, make it two, Maurice.”

Eddy's face was yellow and wrinkled as a summer apple that's hung too long on the tree. When he smiled the deepening wrinkles shot out from his mouth and eyes over his cheeks. “Well, Charley old man, it's
good to see you. . . . You know they're calling you the boy wizard of aviation financing?”

“Is that all they're callin' me?” Charley tapped his dead cigar against the brass rim of the ashtray. “I've heard worse things than that.”

By the time they'd had their third cocktail Charley got so he couldn't stop talking. “Well, you can just tell J. Y. from me that there was one day I could have put him out on his ass and I didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? Because I didn't give a goddam. I really owned my stock. They'd hocked everythin' they had an' still they couldn't cover, see. . . . I thought, hell, they're friends of mine. Good old J. Y. Hell, I said to Nat Benton when he wanted me to clean up while the cleanin' was good . . . they're friends of mine. Let 'em ride along with us. An' now look at 'em gangin' up on me with Gladys. Do you know how much alimony Gladys got awarded her? Four thousand dollars a month. Judge is a friend of her old man . . . probably gets a rakeoff. Stripped me of my children . . . every damn thing I've got they've tied upon me. . . . Pretty, ain't it, to take a man's children away from him? Well, Eddy, I know you had nothin' to do with it, but when you get back to Detroit and see those yellow bastards who had to get behind a woman's skirts because they couldn't outsmart me any other way . . . you tell 'em from me that I'm out to strip 'em to their shirts every last one of 'em. . . . I'm just beginnin' to get the hang of this game. I've made some dust fly . . . the boy wizard, eh? . . . Well, you just tell 'em they ain't seen nothin' yet. They think I'm just a dumb cluck of an inventor . . . just a mechanic like poor old Bill Cermak. . . . Hell, let's eat.”

They were sitting at the table and the waiter was putting different-colored horsd'œuvres on Charley's plate. “Take it away . . . I'll eat a piece of steak, nothing else.” Eddy was eating busily. He looked up at Charley and his face began to wrinkle into a wisecrack. “I guess it's another case of the woman always pays.”

Charley didn't laugh. “Gladys never paid for anythin' in her life. You know just as well as I do what Gladys was like. All of those Wheatleys are skinflints. She takes after the old man. . . . Well, I've learned my lesson. . . . No more rich bitches. . . . Why, a goddam whore wouldn't have acted the way that bitch has acted. . . . Well, you can just tell 'em, when you get back to your employers in Detroit . . . I know what they sent you for. . . . To see if the old boy could still take
his liquor. . . . Drinkin' himself to death, so that's the story, is it? Well, I can still drink you under the table, good old Eddy, ain't that so? You just tell 'em, Eddy, that the old boy's as good as ever, a hell of a lot wiser. . . . They thought they had him out on his can after the divorce, did they, well, you tell 'em to wait an' see. An' you tell Gladys the first time she makes a misstep . . . just once, she needn't think I haven't got my operatives watchin' her . . . Tell her I'm out to get the kids back, an' strip her of every goddam thing she's got. . . . Let her go out on the streets, I don't give a damn.”

Eddy was slapping him on the back. “Well, oldtimer, I've got to run along. . . . Sure good to see you still riding high, wide and handsome.”