Roadwork (7 page)

His feet whispered up the walk and he rang the bell. The maid opened the door.

“Mr. Dawes,” he said.

“Of course, sir. I’ll just take your coat. Mr. Ordner is in the study.”

“Thank you.”

He gave her his topcoat and walked down the hall past the kitchen and the dining room. Just a peek at the big table and the Stephan Ordner Memorial Highboy. The rug on the floor ended and he walked down a hallway floored with white-and-black waxed linoleum checks. His feet clicked.

He reached the study door and Ordner opened it just as he was reaching for the knob, as he had known Ordner would.

“Bart!” Ordner said. They shook hands. Ordner was wearing a brown cord jacket with patched elbows, olive slacks, and Burgundy slippers. No tie.

“Hi, Steve. How’s finance?”

Ordner groaned theatrically. “Terrible. Have you looked at the stock market page lately?” He ushered him in and closed the door behind him. The walls were lined with books. To the left there was a small fireplace with an electric log. In the center, a large desk with some papers on it. He knew there was an IBM Selectric buried in that desk someplace; if you pressed the right button it would pop out on top like a sleek-black torpedo.

“The bottom’s falling out,” he said.

Ordner grimaced. “That’s putting it mildly. You can hand it to Nixon, Bart. He finds a use for everything. When they shot the domino theory to hell over in Southeast Asia, he just took it and put it to work on the American economy. Worked lousy over there. Works great over here. What are you drinking?”

“Scotch-rocks would be fine.”

“Got it right here.”

He went to a fold-out cabinet, produced a fifth of scotch which returned only pocket change from your ten when purchased in a cut-rate liquor store, and splashed it over two ice cubes in a pony glass. He gave it to him and said, “Let’s sit down.”

They sat in wing chairs drawn up by the electric fire. He thought:
If I tossed my drink in there, I could blow that fucking thing to blazes.
He almost did it, too.

“Carla couldn’t be here either,” Ordner said. “One of her groups is sponsoring a fashion show. Proceeds to go to some teenage coffeehouse down in Norton.”

“The fashion show is down there?”

Ordner looked startled. “In
Norton?
Hell no. Over in Russell. I wouldn’t let Carla down in the Landing Strip with two bodyguards and a police dog. There’s a priest ... Drake, I think his name is. Drinks a lot, but those little pick’ninnies love him. He’s sort of a liaison. Street priest.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

They looked into the fire for a minute. He knocked back half of his scotch.

“The question of the Waterford plant came up at the last board meeting,” Ordner said. “Middle of November. I had to admit my pants were a little loose on the matter. I was given ... uh, a mandate to find out just what the situation is. No reflection on your management, Bart—”

“None taken,” he said, and knocked back some more scotch. There was nothing left in there now but a few blots of alcohol trapped between the ice cubes and the glass. “It’s always a pleasure when our jobs coincide, Steve.”

Ordner looked pleased. “So what’s the story? Vin Mason was telling me the deal wasn’t closed.”

“Vinnie Mason has got a dead short somewhere between his foot and his mouth.”

“Then it’s closed?”

“Closing. I expect to sign us into Waterford next Friday, unless something comes up.”

“I was given to understand that the realtor made you a fairly reasonable offer, which you turned down.”

He looked at Ordner, got up, and freshened the blots. “You didn’t get that from Vinnie Mason.”

“No.”

He returned to the wing-back chair and the electric fire. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me where you did get it?”

Ordner spread his hands. “It’s business, Bart. When I hear something, I have to check into it—even if all my personal and professional knowledge of a man indicates that the something must be off-whack. It’s nasty, but that’s no reason to piss it around.”

Freddy, nobody knew about the turn-down except the real estate guy and me. Old Mr. Just Business did a little personal checking, looks like. But that’s no reason to piss it around, right? Right, George. Should I blow him out of the water, Freddy? Better be cool, George. And I’d slow down on the firewater.

“The figure I turned down was four-fifty,” he said. “Just for the record, is that what you heard?”

“That’s about it.”

“And that sounded reasonable to you.”

“Well,” Ordner said, crossing his legs, “actually, it did. The city assessed the old plant at six-twenty, and the boiler can go right across town. Of course, there isn’t quite as much room for expansion, but the boys uptown say that since the main plant had already reached pretty much optimum size, there was no need for the extra room. It looked to me as if we might at least break even, perhaps turn a profit ... although that wasn’t the main consideration. We’ve got to locate, Bart. And damn quick.”

“Maybe you heard something else.”

Ordner recrossed his legs and sighed. “Actually, I did. I heard that you turned down four-fifty and then Thorn McAn came along and offered five.”

“A bid the realtor can’t accept, in good faith.”

“Not yet, but our option to buy runs out on Tuesday. You know that.”

“Yes, I do. Steve, let me make three or four points, okay?”

“Be my guest.”

“First, Waterford is going to put us three miles away from our industrial contracts—that’s an average. That’s going to send our operating overhead way up. All the motels are out by the Interstate. Worse than that, our service is going to be slower. Holiday Inn and Hojo are on our backs now when we’re fifteen minutes late with the towels. What’s it going to be like when the trucks have to fight their way through three miles of crosstown traffic?”

Ordner was shaking his head. “Bart, they’re
extending
the Interstate. That’s why we’re moving, remember? Our boys say there will be no time lost in deliveries. It may even go quicker, using the extension. And they also say the motel corporations have already bought up good land in Waterford and Russell, near what will be the new interchange. We’re going to improve our position by going into Waterford, not worsen it.”

I stubbed my toe, Freddy. He’s looking at me like I’ve lost all my marbles. Right, George. Kee-rect.

He smiled. “Okay. Point taken. But those other motels won’t be up for a year, maybe two. And if this energy business is as bad as it looks—”

Ordner said flatly: “That’s a policy decision, Bart. We’re just a couple of foot soldiers. We carry out the orders.” It seemed to him that there was a dart of reproach there.

“Okay. But I wanted my own view on record.”

“Good. It is. But you don’t make policy, Bart. I want that perfectly clear. If the gasoline supplies dry up and all the motels fall flat, we’ll take it on the ear, along with everyone else. In the meantime, we’d better let the boys upstairs worry about that and do our jobs.”

I’ve been rebuked, Fred. That you have, George.

“All right. Here’s the rest. I estimate it will take two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for renovations before the Waterford plant ever turns out a clean sheet.”

“What?”
Ordner set his drink down hard.

Aha, Freddy. Hit a bare nerve there.

“The walls are full of dry rot. The masonry on the east and north sides has mostly crumbled away to powder. And the floors are so bad that the first heavy-duty washer we put in there is going to end up in the basement.”

“That’s firm? That two-fifty figure?”

“Firm. We’re going to need a new outside stack. New flooring, downstairs and up. And it’s going to take five electricians two weeks to take care of that end. The place is only wired for two-forty-volt circuits and we have to have five-fifty loads. And since we’re going to be at the far end of all the city utility conduits, I can promise you our power and water bills are going to go up twenty percent. The power increases we can. live with, but I don’t have to tell you what a twenty percent water-cost increase means to a laundry.”

Ordner was looking at him now, shocked.

“Never mind what I said about the utility increase. That comes under operating overhead, not renovations. So where was I? The place has to be rewired for five-fifty. We’re going to need a good burglar alarm and closed circuit TV. New insulation. New roofing. Oh yeah, and a drainage system. Over on Fir Street we’re up on high ground, but Douglas Street sits at the bottom of a natural basin. The drainage system alone will cost anywhere from forty to seventy thousand dollars to put in.”

“Christ, how come Tom Granger hasn’t told me any of this?”

“He didn’t go with me to inspect the place.”

“Why not?”

“Because I told him to stay at the plant.”

“You did
what?”

“That was the day the furnace went out,” he said patiently. “We had orders piling up and no hot water. Tom had to stay. He’s the only one in the place that can talk to that furnace.”

“Well Christ, Bart, couldn’t you have taken him down another day?”

He knocked back the rest of his drink. “I didn’t see the point.”

“You didn’t see the—” Ordner couldn’t finish. He set his glass down and shook his head, like a man who has been punched. “Bart, do you know what it’s going to mean if your estimate is wrong and we lose that plant? It’s going to mean your
job,
that’s what it’s going to mean. My God, do you want to end up carrying your ass home to Mary in a basket? Is that what you want?”

You wouldn’t understand, he thought, because you’d never make a move unless you were covered six ways and had three other fall guys lined up. That’s the way you end up with four hundred thousand in stocks and funds, a Delta 88, and a typewriter that pops out of a desk at you like some silly jack-in-the-box. You stupid fuckstick, I could con you for the next ten years. I just might do it, too.

He grinned into Ordner’s drawn face. “That’s my last point, Steve. That’s why I’m not worried.”

“What do you mean?”

Joyously, he lied:

“Thom McAn had already notified the realtor that they’re not interested in the plant. They had their guys out to look at it and they hollered holy hell. So what you’ve got is my word that the place is shit at four-fifty. What you’ve also got is a ninety-day option that runs out on Tuesday. What you’ve
also
got is a smart mick realtor named Monohan, who had been bluffing our pants off. It almost worked.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting we let the option run out. That we stand pat until next Thursday or so. You talk to your boys in cost and accounting about that twenty percent utility hike. I’ll talk to Monohan. When I get through with him, he’ll be down on his knees for two hundred thousand.”

“Bart, are you sure?”

“Sure I am,” he said, and smiled tightly. “I wouldn’t be sticking out my neck if I thought somebody was going to cut it off.”

Shut up, shut up, don’t bother me now.

“What we’ve got here,” he said, “is a smart-ass realtor with no buyer. We can afford to take our time. Every day we keep him swinging in the wind is another day the price goes down when we do buy.”

“All right,” Ordner said slowly. “But let’s have one thing clear, Bart. If we fail to exercise our option and then somebody else
does
go in there, I’d have to shoot you out of the saddle. Nothing—”

“I know,” he said, suddenly tired. “Nothing personal.”

“Bart, are you sure you haven’t picked up Mary’s bug? You look a little punk tonight.”

“I’ll be fine when we get this settled. It’s been a strain.”

“Sure it has.” Ordner arranged his face in sympathetic lines. “I’d almost forgotten ... your house is right in the line of fire, too.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve found another place?”

“Well, we’ve got our eye on two. I wouldn’t be surprised if I closed the laundry deal and my personal deal on the same day.”

Ordner grinned. “It may be the first time in your life you’ve wheeled and dealed three hundred thousand to half a million dollars between sunrise and sunset.”

“Yes, it’s going to be quite a day.”

 

On the way home Freddy kept trying to talk to him—scream at him, really—and he had to keep yanking the circuit breaker. He was just pulling onto Crestallen Street West when it burnt out with a smell of frying synapses and overloaded axons. All the questions spilled through and he jammed both feet down on the power brake. The LTD screeched to a halt in the middle of the street, and he was thrown against his seat belt hard enough to lock it and force a grunt up from his stomach.

When he had control of himself, he let the car creep over to the curb. He turned off the motor, killed the lights, unbuckled his seat belt, and sat trembling with his hands on the steering wheel.

From where he sat, the street curved gently, the streetlights making a graceful fish hook of light. It was a pretty street. Most of the houses which now lined it had been built in the postwar period 1946-1958, but somehow, miraculously, it had escaped the Fifties Crackerbox Syndrome, and the diseases that went with it: crumbling foundation, balding lawn, toy proliferation, premature aging of cars, flaking paint, plastic storm windows.

He knew his neighbors—why not? He and Mary had been on Crestallen Street almost fourteen years now. That was a long time. The Upslingers in the house above them; their boy Kenny delivered the morning paper. The Langs across the street; the Hobarts two houses down (Linda Hobart had baby-sat for Charlie, and now she was a doctoral student at City College); the Stauffers; Hank Albert, whose wife had died of emphysema four years ago; the Darbys’ and just four houses up from where he was parked and shaking in his car, the Quinns. And a dozen other families that he and Mary had a nodding acquaintance with—mostly the ones with small children.