The Carpetbaggers (57 page)

"So it is my fault his father dies before he can finish school?" Uncle Bernie said angrily. "Let him get a job and go nights if he wants to go so bad."

David sat on the edge of his chair and looked at his mother. He didn't speak. "It's not charity I'm asking, Bernie," she said. "David wants a job. That's all I'm asking you for."

Norman turned and looked down at his nephew suspiciously. "Maybe a job you'd like in my company as a vice-president, hah?"

David got to his feet angrily. "I’m going out, Ma," he said. "Everything they said about him is true."

"Say about me?" his uncle shouted. "What do they say about me?"

David looked at him. "Down at the
shul
when I went to say
Yiskor
for Papa, they told me about you. They said you didn't come to the funeral because you were afraid somebody might ask you for a few pennies."

"From California I should come in one day?" Norman shouted. "Wings I ain't got."

He started for the door. "Wait a minute, David," his mother said quietly. She turned to her brother. "When you needed five hundred dollars before the war for your business, who did you get it from?"

She waited a moment before answering herself. "From your poor
schnorrer
of a brother-in-law, Chaim, the junkman. He gave you the money and you gave him a piece of paper. The piece of paper I still got but did we ever see the money?"

"Paper?" Bernie said. "What paper?"

"I still got it," she said. "In the box Chaim put it in that night, the night he gave you the money."

"Let me see." Bernie's eyes followed her as she left the room. He was beginning to remember now. It was a certificate promising his brother-in-law five per cent of the Norman Company stock when he bought out the old Diamond Film Company. He had forgotten all about it. But a smart lawyer could make it worth a lot of money.

His sister came back into the room and handed him a sheet of paper. It was faded and yellow but the date on it was still bright and clear. September 7, 1912. That was fourteen years ago. How time had flown.

He looked at his sister. "It's against my policy to hire relatives," he said. "It looks bad for the business."

"So who's to know he's your nephew?" Esther said. "Besides, who will do more for you than your own flesh and blood?"

He stared at her for a moment, then got to his feet. "All right. I’ll do it. It's against my better judgment but maybe you're right. Blood is thicker than water. Over on Forty-third Street, near the river, we got a warehouse. They'll put him to work."

"Thank you, Uncle Bernie," David said gratefully.

"Mind you, not one word about being my nephew. One word I hear and you're finished."

"I won't say anything, Uncle Bernie."

Norman started for the door. But before he went out, he turned, the paper in his hand. He folded it and put it into his pocket. "This I'm taking with me," he said to his sister. "When I get back to my office, they'll send you a check for the five hundred dollars with interest for the fourteen years. At three per cent."

A worried look came over his sister's face. "Are you sure you can afford it, Bernie?" she asked quickly. "There is no hurry. We'll manage if David is working."

"Afford it, shmafford it," Norman said magnanimously. "Let nobody say that Bernie Norman doesn't keep his word."

* * *

It was a dirty gray factory building down near the Hudson River, which had fallen into disuse and been converted into lofts. There were two large freight elevators in the back and three small passenger elevators near the front entrance, scarcely large enough to handle the crowd of workers that surged in at eight o'clock each morning and out at six o'clock each night.

The building was shared by five tenants. The ground floor housed an automobile-parts company; the second, a commercial cosmetic manufacturer; the third, the pressing plant for a small record company; the fourth, the factory of the Henri France Company, the world's largest manufacturer of popular-priced contraceptives and prophylactics. The fifth and sixth floors belonged to Norman Pictures.

David arrived early. He got off the elevator on the sixth floor and walked slowly down the wide aisle between rows of steel and wooden shelves. At the end, near the back windows, were several desks, placed back to back.

"Hello," David called. "Anybody here?" His voice echoed eerily through the cavernous empty floor. There was a clock over one of the desks. It said seven thirty.

The freight-elevator door clanged open and a white-haired man stuck his head out and peered down the aisle at David. "I thought I heard somebody calling," he said.

David walked up to him. "I'm supposed to see the foreman about a job."

"Oh, are you the one?"

David was confused. "What d'yuh mean?"

"The new boy," the elevator operator replied. "Old man Norman's nephew."

David didn't answer. He was too surprised. The elevator operator got ready to swing shut the doors. "Nobody's here yet. They don't get in till eight o'clock."

The steel doors closed and the elevator moved creakingly down out of sight. David turned from the elevator thoughtfully. Uncle Bernie had told him not to say anything. He hadn't. But they already knew. He wondered if his uncle knew that they knew. He started back toward the desks.

He stopped suddenly in front of a large poster. The lettering was in bright red —
Vilma Banky and Rod LaRocque
. The picture portrayed Miss Banky lying on a sofa, her dress well up above her knees. Behind her stood Mr. LaRoque, darkly handsome in the current Valentino fashion, staring down at her with a look of smoldering passion.

David studied the poster. A final touch had been added by someone in the warehouse. A milky-white condom hung by a thumbtack from the front of the male star's trousers. Next to it, in neat black lettering, were the words:
Compliments of Henri France
.

David grinned and began to walk up the aisle. He looked into the steel bins. Posters, lobby cards, displays were stacked there, each representing a different motion picture. David looked them over. It was amazing how much each looked like the next one. Apparently, the only thing the artist did was to change the names of the players and the title of the picture.

He heard the passenger elevator stop, then the sound of footsteps echoed down the aisle. He turned and waited.

A tall, thin man with sandy-red hair and a worried look on his face turned the corner near the packing tables. He stopped and looked at David silently.

"I'm David Woolf. I'm supposed to see the foreman about a job here."

"I'm the foreman," the man said. He turned away and walked over to one of the desks. "My name is Wagner. Jack Wagner."

David held out his hand. "I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Wagner."

The man looked at the outstretched hand. His handshake was soft and indecisive. "You're Norman's nephew," he said accusingly.

Suddenly, David realized the man was nervous, more nervous even than he was himself. He wondered why. It didn't make sense that the man should be upset because of his relationship to Uncle Bernie. But he wasn't going to talk about it, even though it seemed everyone knew.

"Nobody is supposed to know that but me," Wagner said. "Sit down here." He pointed to a chair near the desk, then took out a sheet of paper and pushed it over to David. "Fill out this personnel application. Where it asks for the name of any relatives working for the company, leave that one blank."

"Yes, sir."

Wagner got up from behind the desk and walked away. David began to fill out the form. Behind him, he heard the passenger-elevator doors open and close. Several men walked by. They glanced at him furtively as they walked over to their packing tables and began to get out equipment. David turned back to the form.

At eight o'clock, a bell rang and a faint hum of activity began to permeate the building. The day had begun.

When Wagner came back, David held out the application. Wagner looked it over carelessly. "Good," he said vaguely, and dropping it back on his desk, walked away again.

David watched him as he talked to the man at the first packing table. They turned their backs and David was sure they were discussing him. He began to feel nervous and lit a cigarette. Wagner looked over at him and the worried look on his face deepened.

"You can't smoke in here," he called to David. "Can't you read the signs?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," David answered, looking around for an ash tray. There wasn't any. Suddenly, he was aware that work had stopped and everyone was looking at him. He felt the nervous perspiration breaking out on his forehead.

"You can smoke in the can," Wagner called, pointing to the back of the warehouse. David walked down the aisle to the back, until he found the men's room. Suddenly he felt a need to relieve himself and stepped up to a urinal.

The door behind him opened and he sensed a man standing beside him. "
Khop tsech tu
," he said.

David stared at him. The man grinned back, exposing a mouth filled with gold teeth. "You're Chaim Woolf's boy," he said in Yiddish.

David nodded.

"I'm the Sheriff. Yitzchak Margolis. From the Prushnitzer Society, the same as your father."

No wonder the word had got around so quickly. "You work here?" David asked curiously.

"Of course. You think I come this far uptown just to piss?" He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper. "I think it's very smart of your uncle to put you in here."

"Smart?"

The Sheriff nodded his bald head. "Smart," he repeated in the same stage whisper. "Now they got something to worry about. Too long they been getting way with murder. All you got to do is look at the tickets."

"Tickets?" David asked.

"Yeah, the shipping tickets. I pack three times in a day what it takes any of them a week. Me, I don't have to worry. But the loafers, let them worry about their jobs."

For the first time, David began to understand. The men were afraid of him, afraid for their jobs. "But they don't have to worry," he burst out. "I'm not going to take their jobs."

"You're not?" Margolis asked, a puzzled look in his eyes.

"No. I'm here because I need the job myself."

A disappointed look came over the Sheriff's face. Suddenly a shrewd look came into his eyes. "Smart," he said. "A smart boy. Of course you won't take away anybody's job. I'll tell 'em."

He started out. At the door, he stopped and looked back at David. "You remind me of your uncle," he said. "The old fart never lets his left hand know what his right hand is doing."

The door closed behind him and David flipped his cigarette into the urinal. He was half way down the aisle when he met Wagner.

"You know how to work a fork lift?"

"The kind they use to lift bales?"

The foreman nodded. "That's the kind I mean."

"Sure," David answered.

The anxious look left Wagner's eyes for a moment. "Good," he said. "There's a shipment of five hundred thousand heralds downstairs on the platform. Bring it up."

The elevator jarred to a stop at the ground floor and the heavy doors opened on the busy loading platform. Several trucks were backed up to the platform and men were scurrying back and forth, loading and unloading. Along the back wall of the platform were stacks of cartons and materials.

David turned to the elevator operator. "Which is the stuff I'm supposed to bring up?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Ask the platform boss. I jus' run the elevator."

"Which is the platform boss?"

The elevator operator pointed at a heavy-set man in an undershirt. Thick black hair spilled out from his chest and sprouted furiously from his forearms. His features were coarse and heavy and his skin had the red flush of a heavy drinker. David walked over to him.

"What d'yuh want?" he asked.

"Mr. Wagner sent me to pick up the heralds."

The platform boss squinted at him. "Wagner, huh? Where's Sam?"

David stared at him. "Sam?"

"Sam the receiving clerk, yuh dope."

"How the hell do I know?" David asked. He was beginning to get angry.

The platform boss looked over his head at the elevator operator. "They didn't can Sam to give this jerk a job, did they?" he yelled.

"Naw. I seen him workin' upstairs at one of the packing tables."

The platform boss turned back to David. "Over there." He pointed. "Against the wall."

The heralds were stacked on wooden racks in bundles of a thousand. There were four racks, one hundred and twenty-five bundles on each. David rolled the fork lift over to one and set the two prongs under it. He threw his weight back against the handles, but his one hundred and thirty pounds wasn't enough to raise the rack off the floor.

David turned around. The platform boss was grinning. "Can't you give me a lift with this?"

The man laughed. "I got my own work to do," he said derisively. "Tell ol' man Norman he hired a boy to do a man's job."

David was suddenly aware of the silence that had come over the platform. He looked around. The elevator operator had a peculiar smirk on his face; even the truck drivers were grinning. Angrily he felt the red flush creep up into his face. They were all in on it. They were waiting for the boss's nephew to fall flat on his face. He pulled a cigarette absently from his pocket and started to light it.

"No smoking on the platform," the boss said. "Down in the street if yuh want to smoke."

David looked at him a moment, then silently walked down the ramp to the street. He heard a burst of laughter behind him. The platform boss's voice carried. "I guess we showed the little Jew bastard where to get off!"

He walked around the side of the building and lit his cigarette. He wondered if they were all in on it. Even the foreman upstairs, Wagner, hadn't been exactly happy to see him. He must have given him the job knowing he didn't have the weight to swing a fork lift.

He looked across the street. There was a garage directly opposite and it gave him an idea.

Fifty cents to the mechanic and he came back, pushing the big hydraulic jack the garage used for trucks. Silence came over the platform again as he jockeyed the jack under the wooden rack. Quickly he pumped the handle and the rack lifted into the air.