Big Money (46 page)

They came out of the tunnel into a rainygrey morning and the roar and slambanging of trucks through Jersey City. Then the traffic gradually thinned and they were going across the flat farmlands of New Jersey strawcolored and ruddy with winter. At Philadelphia Charley made Parker drive him to Broad Street. “I haven't got the patience to drive, I'll take the afternoon train. Come to the Waldman Park when you get in.”

He hired a drawingroom in the parlorcar and went and lay down to try to sleep. The train clattered and roared so and the grey sky and the lavender fields and yellow pastures and the twigs of the trees beginning to glow red and green and paleyellow with a foretaste of spring made him feel so blue, so like howling like a dog, that he got fed up with being shut up in the damn drawingroom and went back to the clubcar to smoke a cigar.

He was slumped in the leather chair fumbling for the cigarclipper in his vest pocket when the portly man in the next chair looked up from a bluecovered sheaf of lawpapers he was poring over. Charley looked into the black eyes and the smooth bluejowled face and at the bald head still neatly plastered with a patch of black hair shaped like a bird's wing, without immediately recognizing it.

“Why, Charley ma boy, I reckon you must be in love.” Charley
straightened up and put out his hand. “Hello, senator,” he said, stammering a little like he used to in the old days. “Goin' to the nation's capital?” “Such is my unfortunate fate.” Senator Planet's eyes went searching all over him. “Charley, I hear you had an accident.”

“I've had a series of them,” said Charley, turning red, Senator Planet nodded his head understandingly and made a clucking noise with his tongue. “Too bad . . . too bad. . . . Well, sir, a good deal of water has run under the bridge since you and young Merritt had dinner with me that night in Washington. . . . Well, we're none of us gettin' any younger.” Charley got the feeling that the senator's black eyes got considerable pleasure from exploring the flabby lines where his neck met his collar and the bulge of his belly against his vest. “Well, we're none of us getting any younger,” the senator repeated. “You are, senator. I swear you look younger than you did the last time I saw you.”

The senator smiled. “Well, I hope you'll forgive me for makin' the remark . . . but it's been one of the most sensational careers I have had the luck to witness in many years of public life.”

“Well, it's a new industry. Things happen fast.”

“Unparalleled,” said the senator. “We live in an age of unparalleled progress . . . everywhere except in Washington. . . . You should come down to our quiet little village more often. . . . You have many friends there. I see by the papers, as Mr. Dooley used to say, that there's been considerable reorganization out with you folks in Detroit. Need a broader capital base, I suppose.”

“A good many have been thrown out on their broad capital bases,” said Charley. He thought the senator would never quit laughing. The senator pulled out a large initialed silk handkerchief to wipe the tears from his eyes and brought his small pudgy hand down on Charley's knee. “God almighty, we ought to have a drink on that.”

The senator ordered whiterock from the porter and mysteriously wafted a couple of slugs of good rye whiskey into it from a bottle he had in his Gladstone bag. Charley began to feel better. The senator was saying that some very interesting developments were to be expected from the development of airroutes. The need for subsidies was pretty generally admitted if this great nation was to catch up on its lag in air transportation. The question would be of course which of a number of competing concerns enjoyed the confidence of the Administration. There was more in this airroute business than there ever
had been in supplying ships and equipment. “A question of the confidence of the Administration, ma boy.” At the word confidence, Senator Planet's black eyes shone. “That's why, ma boy, I'm glad to see you up here. Stick close to our little village on the Potomac, ma boy.”

“Check,” said Charley.

“When you're in Miami, look up my old friend Homer Cassidy. . . . He's got an iceboat . . . he'll take you out fishin'. . . I'll write him, Charley. If I could get away I might spend a week down there myself next month. There's a world of money bein' made down there right now.”

“I sure will, senator, that's mighty nice of you, senator.”

By the time they got into the Union station Charley and the senator were riding high. They were talking trunklines and connecting lines, airports and realestate. Charley couldn't make out whether he was hiring Senator Planet for the lobbying or whether Senator Planet was hiring him. They parted almost affectionately at the taxistand.

Next afternoon he drove down through Virginia. It was a pretty, sunny afternoon. The judastrees were beginning to come out red on the sheltered hillsides. He had two bottles of that good rye whiskey Senator Planet had sent up to the hotel for him. As he drove he began to get sore at Parker the chauffeur. All the bastard did was get rakeoffs on the spare parts and gas and oil. Here he'd charged up eight new tires in the last month, what did he do with tires anyway, eat them? By the time they were crossing the tollbridge into Norfolk Charley was sore as a crab. He had to hold himself in to keep from hauling off and giving the bastard a crack on the sallow jaw of his smooth flunkey's face. In front of the hotel he blew up.

“Parker, you're fired. Here's your month's wages and your trip back to New York. If I see your face around this town tomorrow I'll have you run in for theft. You know what I'm referrin' to just as well as I do. You damn chauffeurs think you're too damn smart. I know the whole racket, see. . . . I have to work for my dough just as hard as you do. Just to prove it I'm goin' to drive myself from now on.” He hated the man's smooth unmoving face.

“Very well, sir,” Parker said coolly. “Shall I return you the uniform?”

“You can take the uniform and shove it up your . . .” Charley paused. He was stamping up and down red in the face on the pave
ment at the hotel entrance in a circle of giggling colored bellboys. “Here, boy, take those bags in and have my car taken around to the garage. . . . All right, Parker, you have your instructions.”

He strode into the hotel and ordered the biggest double suite they had. He registered in his own name. “Mrs. Anderson will be here directly.” Then he called up the other hotels to find out where the hell Margo was. “Hello, kid,” he said when at last it was her voice at the end of the wire. “Come on over. You're Mrs. Anderson and no questions asked. Aw, to hell with 'em; nobody's goin' to dictate to me what I'll do or who I'll see or what I'm goin' to do with my money. I'm through with all that. Come right around. I'm crazy to see you. . . .”

When she came in, followed by the bellhop with the bags, she certainly looked prettier than ever. “Well, Charley,” she said, when the bellhop had gone out, “this sure is the cream de la cream. . . . You must have hit oil.” After she'd run all around the rooms she came back and snuggled up to him. “I bet you been giving 'em hell on the market.” “They tried to put somethin' over on me, but it can't be done. Take it from me. . . . Have a drink, Margo. . . . Let's geta little bit cockeyed you and me, Margo. . . . Christ, I was afraid you wouldn't come.”

She was doing her face in the mirror. “Me? Why I'm only a pushover,” she said in that gruff low tone that made him shiver all up his spine.

“Say, where's Cliff?”

“Our hatchetfaced young friend who was kind enough to accompany me to the meeting with the lord and master? He pulled out on the six o'clock train.”

“The hell he did. I had some instructions for him.”

“He said you said be in the office Tuesday morning and he'd do it if he had to fly. Say, Charley, if he's a sample of your employees they must worship the ground you walk on. He couldn't stop talking about what a great guy you were.”

“Well, they know I'm regular, been through the mill . . . understand their point of view. It wasn't so long ago I was workin' at a lathe myself.”

Charley felt good. He poured them each another drink. Margo took his and poured half of the rye back into the bottle. “Don't want to get too cockeyed, Mr. A,” she said in that new low caressing voice.

Charley grabbed her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth.
“Christ, if you only knew how I've wanted to have a really swell woman all to myself. I've had some awful bitches . . . Gladys, God, what a bitch she was. She pretty near ruined me . . . tried to strip me of every cent I had in the world . . . ganged up on me with guys I thought were my friends. . . . But you just watch, little girl. I'm goin' to show 'em. In five years they'll come crawlin' to me on their bellies. I don't know what it is, but I got a kind of feel for the big money . . . Nat Benton says I got it . . . I know I got it. I can travel on a hunch, see. Those bastards all had money to begin with.”

After they'd ordered their supper and while they were having just one little drink waiting for it, Margo brought out some bills she had in her handbag. “Sure, I'll handle 'em right away.” Charley shoved them into his pocket without looking at them. “You know, Mr. A, I wouldn't have to worry you about things like that if I had an account in my own name.” “How about ten grand in the First National Bank when we get to Miami?”

“Suit yourself, Charley . . . I never did understand more money than my week's salary, you know that. That's all any real trouper understands. I got cleaned out fixing the folks up in Trenton. It certainly costs money to die in this man's country.”

Charley's eyes filled with tears. “Was it your dad, Margery?”

She made a funny face. “Oh, no. The old man bumped off from too much Keeley cure when I was a little twirp with my hair down my back. . . . This was my stepmother's second husband. I'm fond of my stepmother, believe it or not. . . . She's been the only friend I had in this world. I'll tell you about her someday. It's quite a story.”

“How much did it cost? I'll take care of it.”

Margo shook her head. “I never loaded my relations on any man's back,” she said.

When the waiter came in with a tray full of big silver dishes followed by a second waiter pushing in a table already set, Margo pulled apart from Charley. “Well, this is the life,” she whispered in a way that made him laugh.

Driving down was a circus. The weather was good. As they went further south there began to be a green fuzz of spring on the woods. There were flowers in the pinebarrens. Birds were singing. The car ran like a dream. Charley kept her at sixty on the concrete roads, driving carefully, enjoying the driving, the good fourwheel brakes, the easy whir of the motor under the hood. Margo was a smart girl and
crazy about him and kept making funny cracks. They drank just enough to keep them feeling good. They made Savannah late that night and felt so good they got so tight there the manager threatened to run them out of the big old hotel. That was when Margo threw an ashtray through the transom.

They'd been too drunk to have much fun in bed that night and woke up with a taste of copper in their mouths and horrible heads. Margo looked haggard and green and saggy under the eyes before she went in to take her bath. Charley made her a prairie oyster for breakfast like he said the English aviators used to make over on the other side, and she threw it right up without breaking the eggyolk. She made him come and look at it in the toilet before she pulled the chain. There was the raw eggyolk looking up at them like it had just come out of the shell. They couldn't help laughing about it in spite of their heads.

It was eleven o'clock when they pulled out. Charley drove kind of easy along the winding road through the wooded section of southern Georgia, cut with inlets and saltmarshes from which cranes flew up and once a white flock of egrets. They felt pretty pooped by the time they got to Jacksonville. Neither of them could eat anything but a lambchop washed down with some lousy gin they paid eight dollars a quart for to the colored bellboy who claimed it was the best English gin imported from Nassau the night before. They drank the gin with bitters and went to bed.

Driving down from Jax to Miami the sun was real hot. Charley wanted to have the top down to get plenty of air but Margo wouldn't hear of it. She made him laugh about it. “A girl'll sacrifice anything for a man except her complexion.” They couldn't eat on the way down, though Charley kept tanking up on the gin. When they got into Miami they went right to the old Palms where Margo used to work and got a big ovation from Joe Kantor and Eddy Palermo and the boys of the band. They all said it looked like a honeymoon and kidded about seeing the marriagelicense. “Merely a chance acquaintance . . . something I picked up at the busstation in Jax,” Margo kept saying. Charley ordered the best meal they had in the house and drinks all around and champagne. They danced all evening in spite of his game leg. When he passed out they took him upstairs to Joe and Mrs. Kantor's own room. When he began to wake up Margo was sitting fully dressed looking fresh as a daisy on the edge of the bed. It
was late in the morning. She brought him up breakfast on a tray herself.

“Look here, Mr. A,” she said. “You came down here for a rest. No more nightclubs for a while. I've rented us a little bungalow down on the beach and we'll put you up at the hotel to avoid the breath of scandal and you'll like it. What we need's the influence of the home. . . . And you and me, Mr. A, we're on the wagon.”

The bungalow was in Spanishmission style, and cost a lot, but they sure had a good time at Miami Beach. They played the dograces and the roulettewheels and Charley got in with a bunch of allnight pokerplayers through Homer Cassidy, Senator Planet's friend, a big smiling cultured whitehaired southerner in a baggy linen suit, who came round to the hotel to look him up. After a lot of talking about one thing and another, Cassidy got around to the fact that he was buying up options on property for the new airport and would let Charley in on it for the sake of his connections, but he had to have cash right away. At poker Charley's luck was great, he always won enough to have a big roll of bills on him, but his bankaccount was a dog of a different stripe. He began burning up the wires to Nat Benton's office in New York.