I Can Get It for You Wholesale (22 page)

I didn’t have time to let out the sigh of relief that I should have let out. And I didn’t waste any time complimenting myself, either. Because this was nothing. This was easy. The hard part was yet to come. I just leaned back in my chair and let my joints ease up a little. But in a moment they tensed up again. Because as I leaned back I saw two things. The clock on the restaurant wall, and that said twenty-five to three. And Teddy Ast, dressed to kill, bouncing across the restaurant toward us.

There were times when, seeing him as I did just then, my feelings toward Teddy Ast amounted almost to admiration. With all the handicaps of a body shaped like a toothpick and a face that had about as much distinction in it as a spoonful of mashed potatoes, he was still a snappy number. He was wearing a draped herringbone topcoat with a fly front and a gray velvet collar, tab shirt with a black knitted tie, peg-top pants, suede shoes, and a brown pork-pie hat with a black band and a tricky little feather stuck into it. I took it all in at a glance and filed it away for future reference.

“Here comes Mr. Ast now,” Babushkin said. But I didn’t have time to be astonished at the fact that he should have noticed something all by himself. I was too busy reminding myself that for the next few minutes I would be talking to Teddy Ast and not to Meyer Babushkin.

“Yeah,” I said, “That’s him all right.”

Right about—
face
!

“Hello, Bogen,” he said, nodding briskly, and, “Hello, Babushkin.”

He slipped out of his coat and handed it to the waiter with his hat. The suit was a pepper-pot tweed, rough and shaggy-looking, but double-breasted. I marked that down on my list, too.

“Hello, there, Ast,” I said. You have to put the “there” in. You can’t say “Hello, Ast.” It sounds dopey. “How’s the boy?”

“Pretty good,” he said, studying the menu. “Can’t kick. Say, waiter,” he said, tossing the menu down. “Just bring me a tongue on rye and a glass of beer. But the bread has to be thin, remember, and I don’t want any of that lungy stuff on the tongue. Tell him to cut all that stuff away, understand?”

The waiter nodded. They were all doing it. I guess it was an epidemic.

“Okay, then,” he said, dismissing him. “Step on it. I’m in a hurry.”

Then he turned to us and rubbed his skinny hands.

“Well, gentlemen? What’s the good word?”

“Pussy,” I said, and grinned. “That’s always the good word, isn’t it?”

“Right, my friend,” he said, jerking his face into a smile. “You getting much?”

I shrugged my shoulders and ducked my head and gave an imitation of a Seventh Avenue grease ball.

“End iff I go around makink complaindts, so it’ll help me maybe?”

He laughed and showed his teeth. They weren’t so hot. They were even and strong-looking, but they were yellow and sloped inward, so that his mouth looked like that of an old man, without teeth, sucked in.

“Well,” he said, “any time you run short, just call on Uncle Teddy, and I’ll get you fixed up.”

He
was going to get
me
fixed up!

“That’s a promise?” I said.

“A promise,” he said.

The waiter brought the sandwich and set it before him. He dug in. I lit a cigarette and watched him. Babushkin just looked worried.

“Did you ever hear about the way they catch fish up in Alaska?” I asked.

He pushed the food into a corner of his mouth, and said, “Not since I stopped wearing diapers, I didn’t hear it.”

“No, this one is new,” I said.

He washed down the lump of food with a swallow of beer.

“They’re all new,” he said.

A wise guy. Well, that was all right. He was sure of himself. I liked them that way.

“I know,” I said. “But this one is new.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Like my girl friend.”

“See, it’s this way,” I said. “First they cut a hole in the ice. Then they—”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another bite of the sandwich and examining it to see how much damage he’d done. “Try again, Bogen,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “they can’t
all
be new.”

“No,” he said, “but they don’t have to be
that
old.”

He swallowed some beer and attacked the sandwich again.

“How about the he-virgin and the nurse?” I said. “Hear that one?”

“Probably,” he said.

But when I finished and said, “Get it?” he squinted his eye and stopped chewing for a second.

“No,” he said.

That was the wise guy that knew all of them. They were
all
new!

“Lemme explain,” I said, and did.

“Oh, yeah, sure!” he said. “That’s right.”

Yeah, sure, that’s right! He knew it all the time!

“Not bad, eh?” I said, laughing.

He finished the sandwich and lit a cigarette.

“Say, that’s pretty good, you know?”

No, I didn’t know. He was telling me.

“When you get to the gag line,” I said, “You have to get the break in when you say the second ‘cheap.’ Like this: ‘Cheap is
chea-
eap!’ˮ

“Cheap is cheap,” he said to himself, memorizing the words. “That one’s pretty good, all right. Wait’ll I tell that to a couple of the buyers. They’ll die laughing when—say, that reminds me.” He looked from me to Babushkin and then back at me. “I hate to rush out on you like this, gentlemen, but I’ve got a couple of important buyers coming in, and, well, you know how those things are—”

“Sure,” I said, “we know.”

What the hell, I figured, Babushkin might have known, too. Maybe I wasn’t lying when I spoke for both of us.

“So how do we stand, gentlemen?” he asked.

“We stand okay,” I said. “It all depends on you now. Mr. Babushkin here and I, we’re all set. We’ve got our money ready, both of us, and we’re all set. Any time you say okay, all we have to do is make an appointment to go down to the lawyer and we’re all set to go. We’re just waiting to hear from you.”

“Then you don’t have to wait any longer,” he said, spreading his skinny fingers out like a fan. “I’m all set any time you are. My money is ready now.”

“Then we’re all set?” I looked at Babushkin, who nodded, and then at Ast, who jerked his head up and down. “Fine. Let’s see. To-day is Monday. Suppose we make it for Wednesday? Wednesday all right with you? All right, then. Wednesday at Golig’s office. I don’t know exactly what time, but I’ll call you both up to let you know. Then it’s Wednesday at Golig’s office?”

They nodded. Ast stood up and shoved his arms into the sleeves of his coat that the waiter was holding for him. I got up, too, and Babushkin followed.

“How’s my old friend Mr. Schmul of Toney Frocks?” I asked.

“You know Schmul?” Ast said, surprised.

“Do I know him?” I laughed. “I’ve been trying to forget him for over a year. I
worked
for the punk.”

“You
worked
for him?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“About a year ago.”

“A
year
ago? That’s funny. I’ve been with him over two years already, and I don’t remember you.”

“That’s because you never go into the back,” I said with a laugh. “No salesman ever goes into the back.”

“What do you mean, in the back?”

I figured I might as well give him a little jolt. It might shake a little of the cocksureness out of him and make him realize that he wasn’t dealing with a schmoogie.

“I was one of his shipping clerks,” I said.

He stared at me. It isn’t every shipping clerk that can dig up ten thousand bucks with which to go into the dress business.

“You mean that?”

“I sure do,” I said.

“A
year
ago?”

“You bet.”

I bent down for the check, but I could feel the look of surprise he had trained on me, and I fumbled a little with the tip on purpose to give him a chance to recover. I didn’t want him to get sore or anything. I just wanted him to think about it.

On the sidewalk, in front of the restaurant, we stopped.

“Which way you headed?” I asked.

“This way,” they both said, pointing down.

“I’m going up,” I said. I wasn’t, but I said it anyway. No anticlimaxes for me. “Then it’s Wednesday at Golig’s office. I’ll call you both up and give you the exact time. Okay?”

“Okay,” they said, and walked off together.

I laughed a little to myself as I saw them go down the block, and I hoped they wouldn’t get themselves run over or killed. They didn’t know it, but they were worth their weight in—well, no, not even
they
were that valuable, but they were worth a lot to me. Two men make a dress business. A designer and a salesman. I was neither, but that didn’t stop me. I took it easy. I picked and chose. And out of all of Seventh Avenue, I picked them. I hoped they would have brains enough to feel properly honored.

I grinned when I thought of what Pulvermacher’s face would look like when he found out I’d taken away his factory man. But when I thought of that son of a bitch Schmul, and what
his
face would look like when he found that Toney Frocks, Inc. had lost the services of Theodore (Teddy to his pals and partners) Ast to me, I laughed out loud. A couple of people looked at me, but I didn’t care. Meal or no meal, this called for a drink.

I went into Schrafft’s for a soda.

When I got out I felt pretty good. I walked down Broadway slowly, whistling a little and window-shopping. A black and white tie in Gillette’s window looked good to me, so I went in and bought it. On the corner of Thirty-Eighth Street I saw a women’s accessory shop and I remembered that I’d promised Mother a purse to go with her new brown suit. I went in and bought her a good large one, the kind she liked. As I turned to leave the shop, a blue bag in a stand on the counter struck my eye.

It was made of soft blue suede, with a white leather border and two large white metal stars, one in each corner, for ornaments. Looking at it reminded me of Ruthie, and the dress she had worn to Totem Manor over the week-end. For a moment I couldn’t think what the bag she had carried had looked like. And this one, aside from the color that matched her dress, seemed to have been made for her. Before I knew it, I had put my hand out and touched it, squeezing the soft sides gently.

“Did you want to see this purse?” the salesgirl said, moving down the counter toward me.

“Why, yes,” I said. “Sure, you can wrap it up for me.”

It was not until I reached the street and had walked half a block or so that I began to feel sore. It wasn’t the money. It was just the feeling that I must have been going soft in the head. What the hell was the sense of buying things for a dame when you knew you weren’t going to get anything back in exchange? What was I all of a sudden, Santa Claus? Where the hell did I get off playing around with a kike broad like that, anyway? Go buy her eight dollar purses! What the God damn hell for? Because my own mother had introduced her to me? The hell with that crap. If I was going around buying gifts, at least I ought to know enough to buy them for people who knew what was expected of them in return. A dame like Miss Marmelstein, for instance. She wasn’t making any of the members of the Harvard faculty worry about their jobs. But she was smart enough to know that if I gave her a purse it wasn’t because I all of a sudden thought it would be a good idea for her to have something that would match the color of her eyes.

I stopped walking and looked at my watch. Five-thirty. She
should
have been there yet. She’d been hanging around till after six for over a week. But it would be just my luck for her to skip out early this one night when I didn’t want her to. Suddenly I began to walk quickly, and soon I was almost running.

I burst into the office breathlessly, and stopped short. She looked up at me from behind the switchboard in surprise.

“Why, Mr. Bogen!” she said. “What in the world—?”

I felt relieved and after I’d had a second or so to catch my breath I said, “I’m in a terrible hurry to get some very important letters out, Miss Marmelstein. I hope you don’t mind staying a little later to-night.”

“Why, of course not, Mr. Bogen,” she said, smiling quickly. That was a dame for you! “I’m not doing anything special to-night, anyway.”

It began to look like she did special things very seldom. Well, I’d see what I could arrange for her. After all, it wouldn’t make any difference after to-night. But she didn’t have to know about that.

“I’ll tell you,” I said, scratching my chin and looking at my watch. “It’ll take me about a half hour or so to get my papers in shape before I’ll be ready to dictate. I’ll tell you what you do. You go down and have a bite, or go out and buy yourself a new brassiere or something. And say you get back here about six-thirty. That’ll give me plenty of time.”

She was all smiles.

“Okay,” she said, and got up quickly.

“By the way,” I said, holding out the package with the blue and white purse in it, “Here’s a little trinket I picked up for you during the day.”

She took it quickly and tore the wrapper off.

“Oh, Mr. Bogen, how am I ever going to thank you?”

I’ll give you one guess, sister.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Just don’t disappoint me. Six-thirty to-night.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t.”

As though I didn’t know that.

“I’ll be all ready by the time you get back,” I said.

“That’ll be good,” she said.

Good my eye. This was going to be lots better than just plain good. This was going to be my swan song.

I went into my private office and began to clean out my desk and put the things I wanted to take with me aside. When I finished, my watch said twenty after six. Which meant I had ten minutes to think about how Miss Marmelstein was going to look on the couch in my private office as she performed her last official act as a salaried employee of the departing president of the Needle Trades Delivery Service, Inc.

T
HE BUILDING HAD TWO
entrances. One on Thirty-Eighth Street and one on Broadway. I walked in through the Broadway entrance, slowly, then out the Thirty-Eighth Street side. I did it a few times, maybe five or six. Each time I got the same brisk, excited feeling that the place was full of people moving, working, coining money. I was glad now I’d had the fight with Ast. Even though it had meant taking a chance on his getting sore and walking out while I still needed him, I was glad I’d insisted on this building over the one he had wanted. The hell with what he wanted. The sooner he learned who was boss, the better. I was in the right place.