Reinhart in Love (52 page)

“Look,” he said to Reo, who was really too unshaven for one to see a reaction anyway, “why does Cosmo have to buy materials that you will use exclusively for your own purposes?”

Reo had no more patience than others of his ilk of semiliterate specialists. He simply shoved the requisition at the president of Cosmo and said:
“I
done know.
I
done know, Mitter Reinhart. Just sign.”

There was an old schoolboy retort that you made to the over-officious fellow: Who was your nigger last year? Of course with Splendor behind him Reinhart did not pronounce this, but it expressed his attitude: weak irony of the sort he wished to, and thought he had, got over. You can't afford irony if you are seriously interested in acquiring power. Lucky that Splendor was there. Once again his presence inspired Reinhart to rise above himself—
as it always did
. Reinhart suddenly understood the significance of the Negro in the human condition—but like all great pieces of knowledge this appeared at a moment when it could not immediately be exploited, and by the time it could, Reinhart decided he was guilty of bigotry towards the majority in characterizing as peculiar to a segment of mankind that which should distinguish the entire species from the other animals.

First, though, Reinhart told Reo: “I'll have no insubordination here. Be so good as to remember your place. I am the contractor, you are the subcontractor—not to mention that your honesty is seriously in question, while I am a man of integrity.”

Reo's mouth fell open at this heresy. “Kid, you know Claude Hum-bold? He ain't gone like this.” Both secretaries looked up from their typing, frightened little geese, and back of him Reinhart heard Splendor say: “Don't go too far.” But he would never have started it at all without the hope of being excessive, and brought forth the rest of the cards for his grand slam.

“Furthermore,” he announced to Reo, “don't think I am ignorant of those manholes without mains underneath them. By God, we're going to have a real sewer or you're going to the penitentiary.”

At that, Reo fled as fast as his hipboots would carry him, the girls threw on their outer clothes and followed him out the door, and when Reinhart, with thrills of pride chasing up and down his spine, turned back into the inner office, he saw Splendor at the closet—

“Mainwaring,” he commanded, “put your coat back on that hanger or I'll have you shot. As I recall, you maintain your Army court-martial was unjust. Here's a chance to clean the blot from your shield. Damn the torpedoes till you see the whites of their eyes! Full speed ahead and send us more Japs!”

“I don't know, Carlo,” said Splendor, sitting down but leaving one arm in his topcoat, as a fervent Mormon does with his ritual underwear while taking a bath. “You just don't have any sense.”

“Well damn me,” swore the president and commander in chief. “Wasn't it you, not more than five minutes ago, who goaded me into doing the honorable thing? What the hell do I care whether or not this town has an efficient drainage system? I'm just motivated by a need to be adequate, like everybody else.”

“But surely you won't deny a tendency toward quixotism,” said Don Quixote Mainwaring, with a typical deficiency of self-knowledge: Dr. Goodykuntz! Herman Melville!

But Reinhart answered him quietly: “I take it you don't think we'll win.”

“On the other hand,” said Splendor, at last removing his arm from the coat, “what have I got to lose?” One thing, he always had plenty of self-pity.

“Bud,” said Claude, “I see right off I won't get nowhere with you by mentioning God, Mother, and the U.S.A. I do believe you turned atheist and traitor behind my back. All I can say is, I truly hope your tortures in Hades are as short as your ingrate's memory, for I never bear a grudge, buddy boy, you know that. Nevertheless I got a bite like a adder, whatever that is. Kindly inform me what a adder is, Mr. Splendor Mainwaring.”

He spun around to face the vice-president, who quailed. However, Claude himself was none too potent there in the inner office for the first time since he had vacated it in favor of Reinhart. Thus he now had to take a position on Reinhart's ground, and the fact that he had come to his protégé, rather than vice versa, showed who held the reins. He was surrounded, standing in the center of the room with an executive behind a desk on either side of him. Yet he was far from out.

And Splendor wasted no time in proving himself of dubious value to the good fight. Claude seemed to have the same effect on him as heroin, with the decent difference that he did not assume the coon accent.

“I don't know, sir.” He displayed some extra white of eye, and Reinhart, who would rather have punched him, said: “It's a type of organism that crawls upon its belly.”

Taking this personally, Claude faced Reinhart again and gestured with his cavalry hat. “Bud, nobody in my long history of human relations ever turned on me the way you have. I never thought I'd have my own crown of thorns and Judas to taunt me for my big flaw: love of people.”

“Claude,” said Reinhart, “why don't you cut it out? All we are going to do is insist that a real sewer be built to serve the citizens of this town. You can even take pride, since it actually represents your own idea before the crooks took over.” He made that excuse available if Claude wished to take it, for he really was sensitive to the charge of ingratitude.

With a wave of his magic hat towards the windows, Claude transformed the gravel waste outside into a cemetery. “Here lies C. Hum-bold,” he read from the nearest tombstone, “Done to Death Most Foul by the Hand of—here's a buck to go buy a cold-chisel, bud, and chip in your John Hancock. I won't say your name: the Lord has paralyzed my tongue in that area.”

“You never did.”

“Awright then, I will:
Benedick Arnold.”
Claude gave a so-there nod to his head, and strutted some. With renewed self-respect, he turned again on Splendor.

“Just when, may I ask, did you get this idea to defy me, my
dear sir?
I always knew your principles was very high indeed and your record to match, but I never knew they was suicidal, if you grab my meaning”

“Yes sir, Mr. Humbold, I understand,” Splendor responded in the quick-syllabled, thick-lipped (though his were thin) mode used by slaves trying to avoid a whipping—Reinhart had seen that in the movies and historical fiction and assumed those also were Splendor's sources because nobody hereabout ever took a hand to a darky.

Reinhart addressed the back of Claude's checkered topcoat: “Think of it this way: as a success of yours, because you trained me.”

The ex-boss came slowly around, saying: “Benedick, I hope you know what it means to be all by your lonesome behind six foot of rock and steel. Ben boy, you'll have only the Almighty to talk to where you're going. Think about it, Arnie, and don't come sniffling to me when it's too late and you are already up the river. What is it, ten to twenty for fraud? And then when you get out, Ben, all the good folk spit on the ex-con. Am boy, you lose your franchise, the sanctified privilege and obligation to vote for the man of your choice whatever his creed, code, or color.” At the last word he did a sort of bump and grind for the benefit of Splendor behind him. “And don't show up at the Presbyterian Church, they don't want a worshiper bearing the smell of the hoosegow.”

“You can sit down if you like, Claude.”

“Never in the presence of the heathen and dissolute, Ben. You know that. Nor will I bare my head before an atheist.” He pulled his hat down so far that his ears were horizontal projections.

To cap his heresy, Reinhart at this point lighted an enormous green cigar. He said: “I just wanted you to be comfortable while I give you a bit of data.”

Claude put his features through venomous calisthenics, hissed, and then endeavored to strike like the notorious reptile whose name he had cited—except that the American puffing adder is more properly called the hognose snake and, though it can swell to more than its natural size, altogether harmless.

“Ben you make me merciless,” he said. “I got them contracts you signed, and likewise your scribble on all them orders, requisitions, invoices, checks, statements, bills of lading, agreements to buy, eminent domains,
no! prosses, jus primae noctises
, not to mention
sub specie aeternitatis
and
circumspices
. Amie, your goose is reamed, steamed, and dry cleaned. The things you done with public moneys would grow fur on a fish! Misrepresentation, Benny, fraud, malfeasance, mayhem, etcetera. Sections 1 through 285 of the charter of every decent municipality in Christendom, violated. Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, Ben. Don't monkey with it!”

“That's what I wanted to point out to you, Claude.” Reinhart seized one of the documents from the litter on the desk, turned it over, and wrote upon it:
CARLO
B
.
REINHART
. “There you have my legal signature, as used on various Army records which can be found in the files of the Adjutant General's Office in Washington.”

“One second, Benny boy,” said Claude, leaning over to study the hen tracks. There was some dampness in the crown of his sombrero. “I would say that was the work of a five-year-old imbecile, didn't I know any such sympathy was wasted.”

“Be that as it may,” answered Reinhart, “in point of law I think you will find that signifies me. Now then, here is what I put at the bottom of all those papers you speak about.”

He wrote
CARL
L
.
REINHART
, slanting left, letters tall and thin, whereas the genuine were short and fat, went rightwards, and towards the end of the name grew giddy and eventually fell off the line to the next below.

Claude drew from his pocket the contract Reinhart had signed on accepting the presidency, and compared signatures, lowering his face almost to the paper.

“What got me,” said Reinhart, “is how you never noticed the missing o.” He looked to Splendor for a little appreciation and saw the vice-president refuse to meet his eye.

“You say that is an o there?” asked Claude.

Reinhart grinned. “It really couldn't be clearer, and you know it. And I call your attention to the middle initial.”

Great black circles were forming around Claude's eyes, and his lips were cracking in a kind of instant fever. It was astonishing to Reinhart that he was beating the boss so easily. But it went to show that entrepreneurs were not so tough as alleged. All it takes is a little counteraggression, of course supported with a certain intelligence.

“Ben,” said Claude in a voice that broke, “I ain't the one to lead the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death when the Russkies hold the overwhelming odds, and I only mind when someone beats me fair and square, whereas I admire you for winning mean and dirty. As a bidnissman, you are rotten to the core, and God bless you.” He reached across and patted Reinhart's shoulder with his left hand while reaching for the desk set with his right. The set was the one he had left behind, offering pen, mechanical pencil, and between them a little brass clock, all on a slab of green onyx into which was sunk a silver tablet engraved with his name and the compliments of the Southern Ohio Realtors Assn.

Claude chose the pen, which as a matter of fact Reinhart had used to sign every document at Cosmo, including the original contract.

“The ony trouble is,” he stated, still lugubrious, “you are so darn dumb, if you will excuse the French.” Then, snorting away his crocodile tears, he spread out the contract and made the necessary improvements in Reinhart's signature thereon: adding the o to “Carl,” and converting the L to a B by means of two tiny loops.

“I suppose,” said Reinhart, keeping his chin up, “that you are hardly serious, performing this forgery in the presence of witnesses.”

“Eggs-actly,” Claude answered ruthlessly. “It is a joke, like what you wrote in front of Honorable Bob J. and C. Roy.” The balloon of his face was again inflated smooth. He replaced the pen in its socket, put the contract inside his suit, and smiled but failed to jeer. “It's swell to work with fellows who will stand up like a man and admit it when they're wrong. Bud, I wish you a happy Halloween and Mr. Splendor Mainwaring, Your Honor, the same goes to you.” He fluttered his fingers at the V.-P., who had begun to grin toothily. “And I am sure glad, bud, that with a baby coming soon you won't have to leave that nice home on Buena Vista.”

Reinhart remained in a state of shock for some time after Claude left. To Splendor's credit, the vice-president did what he could in the way of consolation.

“You see, Carlo,” he said, “your trick would never have stood up in a court of law, anyway. Whatever name you wrote, it was definitely you who signed it, and not, I believe, under any type of duress. Perhaps if you had arranged for some other evidence that you intentionally used a pseudo-signature so as to gain the confidence of the guilty parties to a swindle—say a registered letter to some individual not involved….”

“Ah,” said Reinhart, “what do you know about it?”

Splendor winced. “If I were as rude as you, I could point out that it might have helped if I had been taken into your confidence.” Reinhart's failure to alter expression offended him further, and he expanded his charges: “Why did you give me this job if I was not to have a function? It destroys a man to sit here day after day, accepting money for doing nothing. You talk of the big swindle, but ignore the little frauds of which—”

“No,” Reinhart at last interrupted, “no, that's not what concerns me this moment…. I am just struck by the realization that for the sake of my own pride I almost got my wife and unborn child turned out into the cold. You can talk all you want to about a man's honor, but it is different things to different people, or even the same person in different situations.”