Big Money (45 page)

“Higher than a kite,” shouted Charley, bursting out laughing. Eddy had gone. Old Maurice was trying to make him eat the piece of steak he'd taken out to heat up. Charley couldn't eat. “Take it home to the wife and kiddies,” he told Maurice. The speak had cleared for the theatertime lull. “Bring me a bottle of champagne, Maurice old man, and then maybe I can get the steak down. That's how they do it in the old country, eh? Don't tell me I been drinkin' too much . . . I know it. . . . When everybody you had any confidence in has rooked you all down the line you don't give a damn, do you, Maurice?”

A man with closecropped black hair and a closecropped black mustache was looking at Charley, leaning over a cocktailglass on the bar. “I say you don't give a damn,” Charley shouted at the man when he caught his eye. “Do you?”

“Hell, no, got anything to say about it?” said the man, squaring off towards the table.

“Maurice, bring this gentleman a glass.” Charley got to his feet and swayed back and forth bowing politely across the table. The bouncer, who'd come out from a little door in back wiping his red hands on his apron, backed out of the room again. “Anderson my name is. . . . Glad to meet you, Mr. . . .” “Budkiewitz,” said the blackhaired man who advanced scowling and swaying a little to the other side of the table.

Charley pointed to a chair. “I'm drunk . . . beaucoup champagny water . . . have a glass.”

“With pleasure if you put it that way. . . . Always rather drink than fight. . . . Here's to the old days of the Rainbow Division.”

“Was you over there?”

“Sure. Put it there, buddy.”

“Those were the days.”

“And now you come back and over here there's nothin' but a lot of doublecrossin' bastards.”

“Businessmen . . . to hell wid 'em . . . doublecrossin' bastards I call 'em.”

Mr. Budkiewitz got to his feet, scowling again. “To what kind of business do you refer?”

“Nobody's business. Take it easy, buddy.” Mr. Budkiewitz sat down again. “Oh, hell, bring out another bottle, Maurice, and have it cold. Ever drunk that wine in Saumur, Mr. Budkibbitzer?”

“Have I drunk Saumur? Why shouldn't I drink it? Trained there for three months.”

“That's what I said to myself. That boy was overseas,” said Charley.

“I'll tell the cockeyed world.”

“What's your business, Mr. Buchanan?”

“I'm an inventor.”

“Just up my street. Ever heard of the Askew-Merritt starter?”

He'd never heard of the Askew-Merritt starter and Charley had never heard of the Autorinse washingmachine but soon they were calling each other Charley and Paul. Paul had had trouble with his wife too, said he was going to jail before he'd pay her any more alimony. Charley said he'd go to jail too.

Instead they went to a nightclub where they met two charming girls. Charley was telling the charming girls how he was going to set Paul, good old Paul, up in business, in the washingmachine business. They went places in taxicabs under the el with the girls. They went to a place in the Village. Charley was going to get all the girls the sweet pretty little girls jobs in the chorus. Charley was explaining how he was going to take the shirts off those bastards in Detroit. He'd get the girls jobs in the chorus so that they could take their shirts off. It was all very funny.

In the morning light he was sitting alone in a place with torn windowshades. Good old Paul had gone and the girls had gone and he was sitting at a table covered with cigarettestubs and spilt dago red looking at the stinging brightness coming through the worn places in the windowshade. It wasn't a hotel or a callhouse, it was some kind of a dump with tables and it stank of old cigarsmoke and last night's spaghetti and tomatosauce and dago red. Somebody was shaking him. “What time is it?” A fat wop and a young slickhaired wop in
their dirty shirtsleeves were shaking him. “Time to pay up and get out. Here's your bill.”

A lot of things were scrawled on a card. Charley could only read it with one eye at a time. The total was seventyfive dollars. The wops looked threatening.

“You tell us give them girls twentyfive dollar each on account.”

Charley reached for his billroll. Only a dollar. Where the hell had his wallet gone? The young wop was playing with a small leather blackjack he'd taken out of his back pocket. “A century ain't high for what you spent an' the girls an' all. . . . If you f——k around it'll cost you more. . . . You got your watch, ain't you? This ain't no clipjoint.”

“What time is it?”

“What time is it, Joe?”

“Let me call up the office. I'll get my secretary to come up.” “What's the number? What's his name?” The young wop tossed up the blackjack and caught it. “I'll talk to him. We're lettin' you out of this cheap. We don't want no hard feelin's.”

After they'd called up the office and left word that Mr. Anderson was sick and to come at once, they gave him some coffee with rum in it that made him feel sicker than ever. At last Cliff was standing over him looking neat and wellshaved. “Well, Cliff, I'm not the drinker I used to be.”

In the taxicab he passed out cold.

He opened his eyes in his bed at the hotel. “There must have been knockout drops in the coffee,” he said to Cliff who sat by the window reading the paper. “Well, Mr. Anderson, you sure had us worried. A damn lucky thing it was they didn't know who they'd bagged in that clipjoint. If they had it would have cost us ten grand to get out of there.”

“Cliff, you're a good boy. After this you get a raise.”

“Seems to me I've heard that story before, Mr. Anderson.”

“Benton know?”

“I had to tell him some. I said you'd eaten some bad fish and had ptomaine poisoning.”

“Not so bad for a young feller. God, I wonder if I'm gettin' to be a rummy. . . . How are things downtown?”

“Lousy. Mr. Benton almost went crazy trying to get in touch with you yesterday.”

“Christ, I got a head. . . . Say, Cliff, you don't think I'm gettin' to be a rummy, do you?”

“Here's some dope the sawbones left.”

“What day of the week is it?” “Saturday” “Jesus Christ, I thought it was Friday.”

The phone rang. Cliff went over to answer it. “It's the massageman.”

“Tell him to come up. . . . Say, is Benton stayin' in town?”

“Sure he's in town, Mr. Anderson, he's trying to get hold of Merritt and see if he can stop the slaughter. . . . Merritt . . .”

“Oh, hell, I'll hear about it soon enough. Tell this masseur to come in.”

After the massage, that was agony, especially the cheerful German-accent remarks about the weather and the hockey season made by the big curlyhaired Swede who looked like a doorman, Charley felt well enough to go to the toilet and throw up some green bile. Then he took a cold shower and went back to bed and shouted for Cliff, who was typing letters in the drawingroom, to ring for the bellhop to get cracked ice for a rubber icepad to put on his head.

He lay back on the pillows and began to feel a little better.

“Hey, Cliff, how about lettin' in the light of day? What time is it?”

“About noon.” “Christ. . . . Say, Cliff, did any women call up?” Cliff shook his head. “Thank god.”

“A guy called up said he was a taxidriver, said you'd told him you'd get him a job in an airplane factory . . . I told him you'd left for Miami.”

Charley was beginning to feel a little better. He lay back in the soft comfortable bed on the crisplylaundered pillows and looked around the big clean hotel bedroom. The room was high up. Silvery light poured in through the broad window. Through the A between the curtains in the window he could see a piece of sky bright and fleecy as milkweed silk. Charley began to feel a vague sense of accomplishment, like a man getting over the fatigue of a long journey or a dangerous mountainclimb.

“Say, Cliff, how about a small gin and bitters with a lot of ice in it? . . . I think that 'ud probably be the makin' of me.” “Mr. Anderson, the doc said to swear off and to take some of that dope whenever you felt like taking a drink.” “Every time I take it that stuff makes me puke. What does he think I am, a hophead?” “All right, Mr. Anderson,
you're the boss,” said Cliff, screwing up his thin mouth. “Thataboy, Cliff. . . . Then I'll try some grapefruitjuice and if that stays down I'll take a good breakfast and to hell wid 'em. . . . Why aren't the papers here?”

“Here they are, Mr. Anderson . . . I've got 'em all turned to the financial section.” Charley looked over the reports of trading. His eyes wouldn't focus very well yet. He still did better by closing one eye. A paragraph in News and Comment made him sit up.

“Hey, Cliff,” he yelled, “did you see this?”

“Sure,” said Cliff. “I said things were bad.”

“But if they're goin' ahead it means Merritt and Farrell have got their proxies sure.”

Cliff nodded wisely with his head a little to one side.

“Where the hell's Benton?” “He just phoned, Mr. Anderson, he's on his way uptown now.” “Hey, give me that drink before he comes and then put all the stuff away and order up a breakfast.”

Benton came in the bedroom behind the breakfast tray. He wore a brown suit and a derby. His face looked like an old dishcloth in spite of his snappy clothes. Charley spoke first, “Say, Benton, am I out on my fanny?”

Benton carefully and slowly took off his gloves and hat and overcoat and set them on the mahogany table by the window.

“The sidewalk is fairly well padded,” he said.

“All right, Cliff. . . . Will you finish up that correspondence?” Cliff closed the door behind him gently. “Merritt outsmarted us?”

“He and Farrell are playing ball together. All you can do is take a licking and train up for another bout.”

“But damn it, Benton . . .”

Benton got to his feet and walked up and down the room at the foot of the bed. “No use cussing at me. . . . I'm going to do the cussing today. What do you think of a guy who goes on a bender at a critical moment like this? Yellow, that's what I call it. . . . You deserved what you got . . . and I had a hell of a time saving my own hide, I can tell you. Well, I picked you for a winner, Anderson, and I still think that if you cut out the funny business you could be in the real money in ten years. Now let me tell you something, young man, you've gone exactly as far as you can go on your record overseas, and that was certainly a hell of a lot further than most. As for this invention racket . . . you know as well as I do there's no money in it unless you have the genius
for promotion needed to go with it. You had a big initial success and thought you were the boy wizard and could put over any damn thing you had a mind to.”

“Hey, Nat, for Pete's sake don't you think I've got brains enough to know that? . . . This darn divorce and bein' in hospital so long kinder got me, that's all.”

“Alibis.”

“What do you think I ought to do?”

“You ought to pull out of this town for a while. . . . How about your brother's business out in Minnesota?” “Go back to the sticks and sell tin lizzies . . . that's a swell future.” “Where do you think Henry Ford made his money?” “I know. But he keeps his dealers broke. . . . What I need's to get in good physical shape. I always have a good time in Florida. I might go down there and lay around in the sun for a month.”

“O.K. if you keep out of that landboom.”

“Sure, Nat, I won't even play poker . . . I'm goin' down there for a rest. Get my leg in real good shape. Then when I come back we'll see the fur fly. After all there's still that Standard Airparts stock.”

“No longer listed.”

“Check.”

“Well, optimist, my wife's expecting me for lunch. . . . Have a good trip.”

Benton went out. “Hey, Cliff,” Charley called through the door. “Tell 'em to come and get this damn breakfast tray. It didn't turn out so well. And phone Parker to get the car in shape. Be sure the tires are all O.K. I'm pullin' out for Florida Monday.”

In a moment Cliff stuck his head in the door. His face was red. “Are you . . . will you be needing me down there, sir?” “No, I'll be needin' you here to keep an eye on the boys downtown. . . . I got to have somebody here I can trust. . . . I'll tell you what I will have you do though . . . go down to Trenton and accompany Miss Dowlin' down to Norfolk. I'll pick her up there. She's in Trenton visitin' her folks. Her old man just died or somethin'. You'd just as soon do that, wouldn't you? It'll give you a little trip.”

Charley was watching Cliff's face. He screwed his mouth further to one side and bowed like a butler. “Very good, sir,” he said.

Charley lay back on the pillows again. His head was throbbing, his stomach was still tied up in knots. When he closed his eyes dizzy red
lights bloomed in front of them. He began to think about Jim and how Jim had never paid over his share of the old lady's money he'd put into the business. Anyway he ain't got a plane, two cars, a suite at the Biltmore and a secretary that'll do any goddam thing in the world for you, and a girl like Margo. He tried to remember how her face looked, the funny amazed way she opened her eyes wide when she was going to make a funny crack. He couldn't remember a damn thing, only the sick feeling he had all over and the red globes blooming before his eyes. In a little while he fell asleep.

He was still feeling so shaky when he started south that he took Parker along to drive the car. He sat glumly in his new camelshair coat with his hands hanging between his knees staring ahead through the roaring blank of the Holland Tunnel, thinking of Margo and Bill Edwards the patent lawyer he had to see in Washington about a suit, and remembering the bills in Cliff's desk drawer and wondering where the money was coming from to fight this patent suit against Askew-Merritt. He had a grand in bills in his pocket and that made him feel good anyway. Gosh, money's a great thing, he said to himself.