I Can Get It for You Wholesale (9 page)

Well, he was interested. That was sure. I lit a cigarette and settled myself to wait.

I thought of Tootsie Maltz and that bunch of radical schmiggeggies he hangs around with and how strikes are supposed to be second nature to them. They run strikes as regularly as they sit on the toilet. But if they had as much luck in the crapper as they had with their strikes, they must’ve been good and constipated. It was a lucky thing I’d come along with a plan that required the running of a successful strike as part of it. They must’ve needed a physic pretty badly.

I had to laugh at the way I can do so easily all the things those other guys have to sweat their eyeballs off trying to do.

The door at the end of the room opened and little Pulvy came hurrying toward me, still watching his ass like he was afraid of putting another crack into it.

“All right, Mr. Bogen,” he said, just the teeniest-weeniest bit excited, “all right. I’ll talk to the Associated Dress Manufacturers this afternoon. Now, then, one thing. How soon can you start delivering for us? I mean, I’ve got to be able to give them some facts and dates this afternoon. How soon can you start delivering?”

“Give me two days,” I said quickly. “Is that too long? Two days?”

“Two days!” he said. I could tell he was surprised, because he forgot that he was supposed to be a Seventh Avenue big shot and, for a few seconds, he looked like an ordinary Avenue C pushcart peddler in a set of trick clothes that all of a sudden didn’t fit. “You can start deliveries in two days?”

“Sure,” I said, getting up. “Two days.”

I
GRABBED TOOTSIE BEFORE
he went inside.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” I said. “You look sick.”

“I’m all right,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.

“Well, you better be,” I said. “I don’t want to have to hire this lousy hall any more. I’m no Rockefeller. Three times is enough, understand? This has to be the last time.”

“Okay, Harry, okay,” he said. “Only—”

“Only what?”

“Well, it’s kind of a tough assignment, you know.”

If that little yellow baloney laid down on me now—

“Sure it’s tough, Tootsie.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I know that. But what the hell, it has to be done, that’s all. Think of all the dough we’re gonna make. You don’t expect it to come climbing up into your lap, do you? You’ve gotta work for it. This just has to be done, that’s all. Just think of it that way, that’s all, and you’ll be all right. Aah, come on,” I gave him a shove, “what the hell are you worrying about?”

“I’m not worried.”

Oh, no, he wasn’t worried! The other times he’d started to cry he’d been doing it just for the exercise.

“Then why don’t you look alive a little, instead of moping like a—”

“Okay,” he said, grinning a little. “I’m all right. I only hope it works.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll work.”

“I mean, I only hope they believe me.”

He was making things clearer for me. Tootsie Maltz was explaining things, so I would understand them!

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll believe you.”

I waited while he went up the steps. I wanted to give him time to get in. I didn’t want anybody to see us going in together. Then I went up after him and into the hall.

He was still walking down the center aisle toward the platform when I came in. All eyes were following him, so nobody paid any attention to me. I leaned against the back wall, near the door, with a lot of others that had been unable to find seats.

Tootsie went up onto the platform and turned to face them. He opened his mouth once or twice, hesitating, but did not begin to speak until the entire room was quiet.

“I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, fellows,” he said in a low voice. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the corners of his mouth. “I hate like hell to have to tell you this, fellows,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to.” He folded the handkerchief carefully, then crumpled it in his fist and shoved it into his hip pocket. “You guys’ve put up a tough fight these last few days. You’ve earned the right to be told you’ve won this strike. And I wish to hell I could be standing here now telling you that, fellows.” He shook his head and began to fish for the handkerchief again. “But I’m afraid I can’t,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you I just come from a meeting of the Associated, this afternoon.” He’d finally gotten the handkerchief out again, and he was rubbing his chin with it as he talked. “They’re not going to meet our demands,” he said slowly. Then, faster: “They laughed at me again. The way they did the first time, before we went out on strike. They just laughed at me.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s all over, fellows,” he said tragically.

My eyes opened a little as I watched him. He was better when he was scared and worried than when he felt all right. It gave the whole thing the right note, sincere and sad.

“Where do you get that stuff, it’s all over?”

Tootsie almost jumped out of his skin. He stared at the big, tough-looking guy in the middle of the room, and everybody else did the same.

“Where do you get that it’s-all-over stuff?” the tough guy said again, his voice hard, but not loud, because the large room was so quiet.

Tootsie recovered himself quickly.

“Will you please do me a favor and sit down, so we can go on with this meeting?” he said in the same low voice.

“I’ll sit down when I get good and ready,” Tough Guy said. “In the meantime I wanna know what’s all this business about it’s all over? Where did you ever get that idea, that’s what I want to know?”

For the first time since the whole thing started I was really worried. No matter how smart you are, you can’t provide for
everything.
This was a delicate situation. I was afraid Tootsie would piss it all up. I wished I was up there on the platform instead of him.

“I get that idea from the meeting of the Associated Dress Manufacturers that I attended this afternoon,” Tootsie said, and I breathed a little more easily. “That’s where. If you’d only sit down instead of standing there holding up the works I’d have a chance to explain the whole thing so everybody would understand what—”

“I’m not worried about explanations,” Tough Guy said, waving his hand at Tootsie. “I know all you guys with your explanations. You guys are lousy with explanations. You can do all that later. I just wanna know one thing. You trying to tell us that this strike is over, that we lost it? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

The whole room leaned forward for his answer.

“That’s right,” Tootsie said quietly, but with his face stuck forward a little, like he was sore at being questioned. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, only you’ve been so—”

“Then all I can tell you is you’re a goddam lotta crap, that’s all.” Tough Guy turned to face the crowd. “You hear what he’s trying to tell us? We lost the strike! Why, we got every damn building on Seventh Avenue sewed up, and he’s trying to tell us we lost the strike! Why, there ain’t a single garment been moved out of any dress house in the whole stinkin’ neighborhood in a week, and he comes bullshittin’ around here with that crap about we lost the strike!” He turned back to Tootsie. “What the hell you think you’re talkin’ to, a kindergarten? We wasn’t born yesterday.”

The second he paused the rest of them broke loose.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right!”

“How the hell can we lose, when we got—?”

“Something’s frigged up around here!”

“If this isn’t a doublecross, then I don’t know what.”

“How the hell can those son of a bitches say we’re losing, when—?”

I was all set to begin edging toward the door, when I took a look at Tootsie’s face. He was just standing there, watching them, with a sort of tolerant half-smile on his map, as though he were waiting for them to pipe down a little before he’d let them in on a little information that would show them what a bunch of dopes they all were. It was so different from the scared, worried look he’d gone in there with, that I knew he’d gotten over it. I decided to stick around and see what happened. I looked at my watch and did a little lightning calculation. If he could only stall them for a little while longer, everything would still be all right. And from the look on his face I had a funny feeling that he could do it, too. Before he even opened his yap, I felt so relieved that I could’ve kissed him. Well, no, not exactly that. That was asking too much. But anyway, Tootsie Maltz’s stock went up a couple of points with me.

“Do you guys mind if I get a word in edgewise?” he said good and loud, as soon as there was a break in the yelling and the noise. They must’ve run out of gas by then, anyway, so they began to quiet down a little, and soon you could hear Tootsie clearly. “I don’t blame you guys for feeling the way you do. I felt the same way when I went to that meeting this afternoon. I went in there all cocky, because I knew we had them up against the ropes. But the minute I opened my mouth to repeat our demands to them, they just laughed at me again. Naturally, I couldn’t understand it.” He was talking so smoothly and seriously, that they couldn’t help listening. I was even listening myself. “We’re winning this strike, I said, but they only laughed again. You mean you
think
you are, they said, and then it didn’t take me long to find out what made them so snotty. You known what they’ve been doing?”

He looked around the room, from side to side, and now there wasn’t a single disturbing noise.

“They’ve been making deliveries at night,” he said. “After we all went home, late at night, after eleven, until three-four in the morning, they’ve been backing up trucks, loading up dresses, and carrying them away. Before I had a chance to tell them what we were gonna do about
that
, they told me they knew what I was thinking and I could save myself a lot of trouble. You know what those wise bastards did? They hired a squad of private police, a couple of hundred of them, regular cops with guns, and these guys keep watch on the trucks while they’re being loaded. You guys can keep on striking till next Christmas, they told me, but it won’t make any difference to us. The dough we used to pay you guys, they said, we’re paying these cops. They admitted it was costing them a little more, but they said they didn’t care about that. They said they were only interested in one thing, fellows; they said they were gonna beat this strike. And they said one more thing,” he added dramatically, “and I believe them, too.” His voice dropped a couple of notches, but in that room the only effect was to make it sound louder when he spoke. “They said these cops had orders to shoot, to shoot anybody that tried to stop those night deliveries.” He straightened up and spoke in a simple, matter-of-fact tone. “That’s what we’re up against—guns. And we can’t fight back. Not that way. That’s why I say it’s all over.”

He stepped back, to rest his can on the edge of the table. The voices started slowly, just a low buzz, then they grew louder and soon they were yapping away as much as ever. They weren’t as violent, as sore, as they’d been before. They were too stunned. After all, they were only kids. It’s one thing to chase another kid down the street in broad daylight and kick his fanny in because he’s pushing a hand truck full of dresses. But it’s another thing to get tough with big bruisers in uniform in the middle of the night, guys with guns and itching trigger fingers. But the disappointment was too great for them to keep their pans shut. They had to let off steam some way. And talk is cheap and safe. Here and there you could still hear somebody yelling “double cross” and “frame-up,” but it wasn’t loud enough or general enough to make any difference, and I would have let it ride.

But not Tootsie! All of a sudden, now that he saw they were licked, he became tough. Ten minutes before, when it was important for him to open up and say something, he had such a stranglehold on his mouth that you’d think he was giving away a pint of blood with each word. And now, when the smartest thing to do was to keep quiet, he became a stinking spellbinder.

“What do you guys mean, frame-up?” he demanded, shoving his scowling puss so far across the platform that you could have hung a kettle on his chin. Even I was startled. They shut up at once. “That’s a hell of a way to talk. Didn’t we work night and day for you guys? Is it our fault that those lousy truck drivers are scabs and that those lousy bosses hire cops with guns? What do you think
we’re
getting out of this, anyway? Did we ask you guys for any dues or any contributions or anything like that? We ran this strike on our own. Who do you think paid for all those circulars and picket signs and for renting this hall and that sound truck and all that stuff? What do you think we do, go around and pick those things up in the street? Those things cost money and plenty of money, too.”

So far as I was concerned, he was ad-libbing. And it wasn’t bad, either. When it came to money, he talked with feeling. But my heart was in my mouth and I had my fingers crossed for fear he’d run away with himself so far that he’d let the cat out of the bag. Besides trying to swallow my heart and keeping my fingers crossed, I was doing another thing too. I was watching that door and praying. But dear old Tootsie was still talking.

“We took all this money and spent it because we figured it was a good cause. We wanted you guys to win that strike. After you won, we figured there was time enough to ask you guys to kick in your share of the expenses. But in the meantime we laid out all that dough. And we’re not getting a cent of it back either. This thing has cost us plenty. We’d be the last ones to admit failure, wouldn’t we? Why, if
you
guys wanted to quit and we thought there was half a chance we wouldn’t let you. We wanted you to win even more than
you
did. What the hell kind of talk is that, frame-up! Why we’d be the last ones in the world to—”

The door in the rear opened with a bang and I breathed such a sigh of relief that my knees knocked together. A blue-uniformed Postal Telegraph messenger was walking down the aisle to the platform. That was the artist in me. Once khaki and Western Union, next time blue and Postal Telegraph. The kid handed the envelope to Tootsie and walked back.