Reinhart in Love (45 page)

“Well sir, bud,” said Claude. “I see you are almost dry. Therefore go get a chair from the outer office and park your carcass on it while I check you out on that opportunity I promised I would open up for you if you did good by me, and you have.”

Reinhart fetched a seat and put it down near the window, where he noticed for the first time a rear-vision mirror of the motorcar type, angled to reflect what would otherwise have been the blind spot along the outside wall: thus had Claude discovered him. Nor did the boss fail to characterize the event.

“Bud, I never blame a man for trying to make it no matter how. I don't give a hoot if you tried to sell me out so long as you ain't got no stronger idea than to sneak outside the winda.” Claude smirked at Bob J., who sat chin on chest, ruminating on a wad of tongue.

Reinhart decided not to protest further, realizing that it was to everybody's benefit that he be judged as sinister as possible. He was learning all the time. One day Gen would be proud of him.

“Now I don't care what the other side gave you for the goods on me,” Claude went on. He wore a green bowtie today, and the points of his sports-shirt collar fell almost to his waist, which admittedly was drawn high. “When you hear my proposition you'll tell them to go buy a cesspool and jump in.” This elicited a beastly guffaw from C. Roy, who also smacked his corded fists together.

“Well sir, bud,” said Claude. “You are in a pretty position up at Vetsville where I got you a nice hut to live in with your lovely Mrs., the former G. Raven who used to be secketary to Your Uncle Dudley—name one after me, bud, and he'll get a silver cup. Well sir, I guess the kind of monkey you are—in all fairness I believe your best friend would say you was a bit dopey, bud—I guess it ain't likely you heard of a sanitary improvement that we're gonna run through.”

Reinhart was pleased to say: “Yes, I have, Claude. I—”

Claude metaphorically impaled him on a finger. “Never mock sewers, bud. If you read your history you'll know that before they had them, the gutters was knee-high with filth—doo-doo floating in plain sight and suchlike.”

C. Roy belched a laugh. On the epaulets of his uniform were six gold stars, one better than MacArthur; and his cap, which lay on Humbold's desk, was white on top and blue towards the bottom, with a big oval badge, reading
CHIEF
, in between.

“I'm not mocking, Claude. I—”

“Fine, fine, fine, bud! Show what you learned from me.” The boss told the Gibbons: “You won't find one cleaner-cut. This boy takes a shower as often as you'n I wash our hands, and his brainpower speaks for itself.”

“Son,” at last said the mayor, his rheumy eyes rising from their toadlike bags, “ambulate into my vicinity in order that I can discern you.” He revved the corroded motor of his throat, and spat in excruciating slow motion into Humbold's blond wastebasket. Claude, a fastidious man, averted his eyes.

Like a sissy schoolboy, Reinhart rose and went to stand where he was told. He had an impulse to announce himself in falsetto: “Carlo Reinhart, age 10.” However, he knew that satire would be out of order.

“Yasss,” said the mayor, a bead of spit winking at the brim of his lower lip. “Son, did you ever entertain this concept? Cooperation with a venture which would not only benefit your fellow men bearing their grievous yoke of life down the pathway to eternity which we all must in our own good time traverse, but result in the accrual of lucre for yourself as a person as well.”

“No sir,” said Reinhart. “If I have followed you correctly.”

C. Roy rubbed his own nose with a hairy fist and said: “You say no to His Honor once more and I'll put a shoe through your belly.”

“Easy, Chief,” cried Claude. “This is Georgie Reinhart's boy. You now Georgie never taught him no sarcasm. He meant No, he never entertained the concept, etcetera, not No to the cooperation with a venture.”

“I say they gotta learn respect,” growled the chief.
“All
of them: ids, punks, and wiseguys.”

“Chiefy, who's fighting ya?” asked Claude. He nodded at Bob J. Bud would like you to kindly proceed, Your Honor.”

“Bub—is that your appellation?” asked the mayor, his eyes appearing once again. “Bub, arriving at the conclusion that your probity, integrity, and personal honor are above reproach, like the partner in holy matrimony of the late great Julius Caesar, the committee here assembled, directors of Cosmopolitan Sewers, Limited, hereinafter deferred to as the Firm, quorum present, do hereby elect you as president of said firm and immediately dissolve themselves as a body. Those in favor say Aye; opposed, No; and so order.”

“Ink in the old John Hancock, bud,” said Claude, handing Reinhart a pen. He pointed to the spread of documents on his desk.

Had Reinhart not recognized the Gibbon boys—who had been n office since 1928!—he would have taken it for an impractical joke.

“Gentlemen,” he protested. “I am of course honored by your expression of … uh … but you see, I don't know the first thing about sewers. Therefore, in all respect, I must—”

“Listen here, you little snot,” shouted the police chief, threatening to rise. “When your superiors tell you to do a thing, you do it, or by Jesus H. Christ, I'll rip your tongue right out of your mouth and throw it to the pigs.”

“Boys,” said Claude, his round face shining like a new ball, “boys, boys, boys. Let's take a raincheck on the old clowning, fellas, huh, till we do this nice piece of bidniss.” He pressed the pen on Reinhart.

It seemed terrible to the ex-corporal that C. Roy's foul mouth should be protected by a badge, and that anybody would talk that way to a veteran.

“I wanted to ask, bud,” stated Claude, “if I could keep the pen that signed this historic agreement, like them flunkeys around the White House when the Prez signs a law.” He was trying too hard.

“I'm sorry,” said Reinhart. “I'll have to think it over.”

“You know what I'm thinking over,” said C. Roy, “is cutting out your liver.”

“Gents, gents!” cried Claude. “Let's have a moratorium on the jokes for maybe five sees. Bud, you sure make a big thing of signing on the dotted. I never knowed you to be so bullix.”

Reinhart went back to his chair, sat, and endeavored to comport himself as a company president would, though he had not changed his attitude. But there was no point in insulting them in their choice by appearing as less than what they had taken him for.

“It's only fair,” he said, “to express my doubts. Frankly, gentlemen, I think you are pulling my leg. I happened to come to the office today just by accident. You couldn't have expected me. Thus how could you have the papers ready for me to sign? And furthermore, what's a mayor and police chief doing with a construction company that is to build a public project in the very town where they hold office?”

“Are you, sir,
barrrroooommm”
—Bob J. cleared his throat—“are you, good sir, making charges of malfeasance?” A cigar ash fell onto the plateau of his vast belly. He used the end of his tie to whisk it off. “Abuze of public trust? Betrayal of civic confidence?” He sought to light his cigar-end, but it was too soggy.

“Certainly not, Your Honor,” answered Reinhart, discreetly lowering his eyelids. “I'm just saying that as evidence you are kidding me.”

Claude plunged in. “Bud, if you washed your ears today, you just heard Hizzoner dissolve himself, his honorable brother, and yours sincerely from the
organization
committee. Get that important term, bud!
Organization
. Where would we be without it? If our public men don't channel our efforts in the right directions, buddy boy, we'd be no better than them poor benighted coons in darkest Africa, with only a little rag around their tail. Recall
Trader Horn
, bud, or uz that before your time?
Yeaou, roaaaaaarrr, screeeeeech”
—he simulated the cries of certain wild animals—“life in the raw, bud: it ain't no laugh.

The Holy Word is that the lion will lay down with the lamb, but who knows the schedule, bud, that's the question. Nobody but the Big Boy Upstairs. Remember that and you'll never get too big for your britches.”

“Claude,” said Reinhart. “In all respect, what's that got to do with the subject at hand?”

“You little snot,” snarled C. Roy. “Let him have that paperweight right in the mouth, Claude.”

“Bud, to put it in a walnutshell, if the smart boys like you and me don't take a hand now and again to keep the boobs on the rails, I don't know what this country will come to. God bless America, bud. I'll defend it with every drop of my blood and I know I speak for you when I state that no Hitler nor any other dirty Wop is going to march in here and tell us what to do!” He was shouting now, with awful fangs. “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute! Fifty-four forty or fight, bud! Wait till you see the whites of their eyes! My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country! Send us more Japs! Bud, you must have ice water in your veins if you ain't thrilled by the music of John Philip Sousa!”

“Claude,” said Reinhart, “that patriotic stuff is swell, but seriously, what does it have to do with being president of a sewer company?”

Humbold's face cleared, as if it were a stage after the curtain calls, with the players scurrying off.

He asked without prejudice: “All right, bud. What's your price?”

Reinhart smiled and said: “Just as I suspected, Claude. You'd rather even pay out money than answer a question.”

The boss's bowtie jumped with his dirty little chuckle. “Can't say, bud, I don't recall ever doing either one.”

The mayor gargled and spat, then said: “Bub—have I gotten your appellation correct? Bub, to put it succulently, the duly constituted legislative body of this municipality in Janooary of Nineteen hundred and forty-six voted in the affirmative to bring before the people a special bond issue, which was, pursuant to that decision of the counsel in deliberative session assembled, in the month of Febooary, same year—we are still in that year, incidentally”—he stopped, put a new cigar between his lips, puffed, removed it, and struck a kitchen match on the edge of Claude's desk, leaving behind a long superficial wound. When its job was done, the match dropped from his limp fingers to the floor. Claude stabbed out desperately with a black-and-white oxford and killed the flame before it did more than scorch the hardwood in approximately the diameter of a nickel.

The mayor's head suddenly fell upon his chest. Somewhere inside him stayed the smoke from his second drag.

C. Roy laid a big clamshell of a hand on his brother's arm.

“Bob, I didn't think you was through.”

It took more than that to stir the mayor, whose cigar was burning a hole in his vest. But at last he was shaken awake and, beating out the embers with the paddle-end of his necktie, he resumed: “In the due course of events, said special bond issue was brought to the polls in Murch of Nineteen hundred and forty-six, aforesaid year, carried to the citizens of this great town, who exercising their franchise, approved it to a degree characterized by the Fourth Estate as, I believe, overwhelming.”

“There's your data, bud,” said Claude, getting ready to thrust the papers at Reinhart again.

“I guess that was about the time I got out of the Army,” Reinhart noted.

“Ah,” exclaimed the mayor, and the cigar fell from his teeth into his lap. “You are a veteran of the late unpleasantness! Claude Hum-bold, you never told us that. We got a medal down at the town hall for you then, Bub, and will arrange for a public investiture. Never say our ‘umble community balks before recognition of the vast and massive debt—excuse me. C. Roy, was I not smoking?”

“You was,” answered the chief. “And your stogie is at present laying on your lap, underneath your belly.”

“Hear, hear!” shouted Claude. Every time Reinhart looked his way, he shoved the papers and pen at him.

“It has been decided,” Bob J. went on, “most expeditious and advantageous to run the main adjacent to the veterans' community, thereby servicing the needs of those heroes and their families as the obeisance of this municipality to the late example they set for all Americans by trouncing the Heinie and stemming the Yellow Tide. It is the least we can do to flush away their wastes.”

C. Roy sniggered: “Shee-at.”

“But what about this company that won the contract?” naively asked Reinhart.

The mayor pointed the cigar at him. “No individooal can level the finger of calumny at that award. Cosmopolitan Sewers, Inc.—”

“Limited!” shouted Claude.

“—had the low bid, my friend, and I refer you to the record.”

“But Your Honor,” said Reinhart, “and please don't take offense, I just want to understand. You and your brother are on the board of Cosmopolitan Sewers.”

“I tole you I would ream out your guts, and I sure will,” said C. Roy, extending his bristling jaw.

But the mayor nodded benevolently. “A fair question, Bub, the fairest of queries. Precisely as you have remarked. But we are resigning. I refer you to the documents which your employer is striving to hand you. We made a mistake, and are big enough to amend same. Bub, what more can we do?”

“Why,” asked Claude, “are you—” And the chief joined him in objection, but Bob J. overruled them with his three chins.

“No, gentlemen and colleagues, let us admit our misendeavors. We have nothing to conceal.” He solemnly chewed his tongue, having once again mislaid the cigar.

“Nevertheless, bud,” said Claude, “only a dirty skunk would reveal a confidence, and you was made this offer mainly because of your integrity.” He succeeded in forcing the papers on Reinhart.

“I don't see my name here anywhere,” Reinhart said after a onceover. “You seem to be resigning in favor of Blank Blank. And why are
you
quitting, Claude? You aren't a civic official.”