The Carpetbaggers (58 page)

In less than five minutes, David had the four racks loaded on the elevator. "O.K.," he said to the operator. "Let's take her up." He was smiling as the doors clanged shut on the scowling face of the platform boss.

The men looked up from their packing tables as the elevator door swung open. "Wait a minute," he said to the elevator operator. "I’ll go ask Wagner where he wants these."

He walked down the aisle to the foreman's empty desk. He turned and saw the men watching from their tables. "Where's Wagner?"

They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. Finally, the Sheriff answered him. "He's in the can, sneaking a smoke."

David thanked him and walked down the back aisle to the washroom. The foreman was talking to another man, a cigarette in his hand. David came up behind him. "Mr. Wagner?"

Wagner jumped. He turned around, a strange expression on his face. "What's the matter, David?" he asked angrily. "Can't you get those heralds up?"

David stared at him. The foreman was in on it, all right. They were all in on it. He laughed bitterly to himself. And Uncle Bernie had said it was going to be a secret.

"Well," the foreman said irritably, "if you can't do it, let me know."

"They're up here now. I just want to know where to put them."

"You got them up here already?" Wagner said. His voice lost the faint note of sureness it had contained a moment before.

"Yes, sir."

Wagner threw his cigarette in the urinal. "Good," he said, a faintly puzzled look on his face. "They go over on Aisle Five. I'll show you which bins."

It was almost ten thirty by the time David had the racks empty and the bins filled. He pushed the last package of heralds into place and straightened up. He felt the sweat streaming through his shirt and looked down at himself. The clean white shirt that his mother had made him wear was grimy with dust. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve and walked down to the foreman's desk. "What do you want me to do next?"

"Were there five hundred bundles?" the foreman asked.

David nodded.

The foreman pushed a sheet of paper toward him. "Initial the receipt slip, then."

David looked over the paper as he picked up a pencil. It was the bill for the heralds: "500 M Heralds @ $1.00 per M $500.00." Expensive paper, he thought, as he scribbled his initials across the bottom.

The telephone on the desk rang and the foreman picked it up. "Warehouse."

David could hear a voice crackling at the other end, though he could not distinguish the words. Wagner was nodding his head. "Yes, Mr. Bond. They just came in."

Wagner looked over at David. "Get me a sample of one of those heralds," he said, shielding the phone with his hand.

David nodded and ran down the aisle. He pulled a herald from one of the bundles and brought it back to the foreman. Wagner snatched it from his hand and looked at it. "No, Mr. Bond. It's only one color."

The voice on the other end of the telephone rose to a shriek. Wagner began to look uncomfortable, and shortly afterward, put the receiver down slowly. "That was Mr. Bond in purchasing."

David nodded. He didn't speak.

Wagner cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Those heralds we just got. It was supposed to be a two-color job."

David looked down at the black-and-white handbill. He couldn't see what they were so excited about. After all, they were only throw-aways. What difference did it make whether it was one color or two?

"Mr. Bond says to junk 'em."

David looked at him in surprise. "Junk 'em?"

Wagner nodded and got to his feet. "Get them out of the bins and downstairs again," he said. "We'll need the space. The new ones will be here this afternoon."

David shrugged. This was a screwy business, when something could be junked even before it was paid for. But it was none of his concern. "I’ll get right on it."

It was twelve thirty when he came out on the loading platform, pushing the first rack of heralds. The platform boss yelled. "Hey, where yuh goin' with that?"

"It's junk."

The platform boss walked over and looked into the elevator. "Junk, eh?" he asked. "All of it?"

David nodded. "Where shall I put it?"

"You ain't puttin' it no place," the boss said. "Beat it right back upstairs an' tell Wagner to shell out five bucks if he expects me to get rid of his junk."

Again David could feel his anger rising slowly.

Wagner was at his desk when David got back upstairs. "The platform boss wants five bucks to get rid of that junk."

"Oh, sure," Wagner said. "I forgot." He took a tin box out of his desk and opened it. He held out a five-dollar bill.

David stared down at it. "You mean you really got to give to him?" he asked in disbelief.

Wagner nodded.

"But that's good newspaper stock," David said. "My father would haul that away all day long. It's worth a dime a hundredweight. That batch would bring fifty bucks at any junk yard."

"We haven't the time to bother with it. Here, give him the five bucks and forget about it."

David stared at him. Nothing in this business made any sense to him. They junked five hundred dollars' worth of paper before they'd paid for it, then didn't even want to salvage fifty bucks out of it. They'd rather pay five bucks more just to get rid of it.

His uncle couldn't be as smart as they said he was if he ran his business like this. He must be lucky. If it wasn't luck, then his father would have been a millionaire. He took a deep breath. "Do I get an hour for lunch, Mr. Wagner?"

The foreman nodded. "Sure. We all do."

"Is it all right if I start my lunch hour now?"

"You can start right after you take care of the heralds."

"If it's all right with you," David said, "I’ll get rid of them on my lunch hour."

"It's O.K. with me, but you don't have to. You get a full hour off for lunch."

David looked at the telephone. "May I make a call?"

Wagner nodded and David called Needlenose at Shocky's garage. "How quick can you get here with a truck?" he asked, quickly explaining the deal.

"Twenty minutes, Davy," Needlenose said. There was a moment's silence, then Needlenose came on again. "Shocky says he'll only blast yuh ten bucks for the truck."

"Tell him it's a deal," David said quickly. "And bring along a pair of dusters. We might have a little trouble."

"Gotcha, Davy," Needlenose said.

"O.K., I’ll be out in front."

Wagner looked at him anxiously as he put down the telephone. "I don't want any trouble," he said nervously.

David stared at him. If they were all so afraid of him they wouldn't let him do his job, he might as well give them something to be afraid of. "You'd know what trouble is, Mr. Wagner, if Uncle Bernie ever finds out you've been spending five dollars to lose fifty."

The foreman's face suddenly went pale. A faint beading of perspiration came out on his forehead. "I don't make the rules," he said quickly. "I just do what purchasing tells me."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about."

Wagner put the five-dollar bill back in the tin box, then put the box back in his desk and locked the drawer. He got to his feet. "I think I'll go to lunch," he said.

David sat down in the foreman's chair and lit a cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking sign. The men at the packing tables were watching him. He stared back at them silently. After a few minutes, they began to leave, one or two at a time, apparently on their way to lunch. Soon the only one left was the Sheriff.

The old man looked up from the package he was tying. "You take my word for it," he said. "It ain't worth you getting killed over. That Tony downstairs, he's a Cossack. You tell your uncle to give you a different job."

"How can I do that, pop?" David asked. "It was tough enough talking him into this one. If I come cryin' to him now, I might as well quit."

The old man walked over toward him. "You know where they went?" he asked in a shrill voice. "All of them? They didn't go to lunch. They're downstairs in the street. They're waiting to see Tony kill you."

David dragged on his cigarette thoughtfully.

"How come five bucks is that important?"

"From every tenant in the building he gets a little payoff. He can't afford to let you off the hook. Then he loses everybody."

"Then he's a
shmuck
," David said, suddenly angry. "All I wanted to do was my job. Nothing would have happened; he could still have gone on collecting his little graft."

David got to his feet and threw the cigarette on the floor. He ground it out under his heel. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. The whole thing was stupid. And he was no smarter than the rest; he let himself fall right into the trap they'd prepared for him. He couldn't back down now even if he wanted to. Neither could he afford to lose the fight downstairs. If he did, his uncle sure as hell would hear about it. And that would be the end of the job.

Needlenose was waiting for him downstairs.

"Where's the truck?" David asked.

"Across the street. I brought the dusters. Which ones do you want — plain or spiked?"

"Spiked."

Needlenose's hand came out of his pocket and David took the heavy set of brass knuckles. He looked down at them. The round, pointed spikes shone wickedly in the light. He slipped them into his pocket.

"How do we handle the guy?" Needlenose asked. "Chinee style?"

It was a common trick in Chinatown. A man in front, a man behind. The victim went for the man in front of him and got clipped from the rear. Nine times out of ten, he never knew what hit him. David shook his head. "No," he said. "I gotta take care of this one myself if it's going to do any good."

"The guy'll kill yuh," Needlenose said. "He's got fifty pounds on yuh."

"If I get into trouble, you come and get me out."

"If you get into trouble," Needlenose said dryly, "it'll be too late to do anything except bury yuh."

David looked at him, then grinned. "In that case, send the bill to my Uncle Bernie. It was all his idea. Let's go."

They were waiting, all right. The Sheriff had been right. The whole building knew what was going to happen. Even some girls from the cosmetic company and Henri France.

It was hot and David felt the perspiration coming through his clothing. The platform had been a clatter of sound — people talking, pretending to eat their sandwiches or packed lunches. Now the pretense was gone, conversations and lunches forgotten.

The wave of silence rolled over him and he felt their curious, almost detached stares. Casually he looked over the crowd. He recognized several of the men from the packing tables upstairs. They averted their eyes when he passed by.

Suddenly, he was sick inside. This was madness. He was no hero. What purpose would it serve? What was so big about this lousy job that he had to get himself killed over it? Then he saw the platform boss and he forgot it all. There was no turning back.

It was the jungle all over again — the streets down on the East Side, the junk yards along the river, and now a warehouse on Forty-third Street. Each had its little king who had to be ever ready to fight to keep his little kingdom — because someone was always waiting to take it away from him.

A great realization came to David and with it a surge of strength and power. The world was like this; even his uncle, sitting way up on top there, was a king in his own way. He wondered how many nights Uncle Bernie stayed awake worrying about the threats to his empire.

Kings had to live with fear — more than other people. They had more to lose. And the knowledge was always there, buried deep inside them, that one day it would be over. For kings were human, after all, and their strength would lessen and their minds would not think as quickly. And kings must die and their heirs inherit. It would be that way with the platform boss and it would be that way with his Uncle Bernie. Someday, all this would be his, for he was young.

"Get the truck," he said, out of the corner of his mouth.

Needlenose walked down the ramp and across the street to where the truck was parked. David turned and pushed the big jack over to the nearest wooden rack. He pumped the handle and the rack lifted off the floor. He came to the edge of the loading platform just as Needlenose backed the truck to a stop.

Needlenose came down from behind the wheel. "Want a hand, Davy?"

"I’ll manage," David said. He pushed the loaded jack onto the open platform of the truck and pulled the release. The wooden platform sank to the truck floor. He sneaked a look at the platform boss as he went back for the next rack of heralds. The man hadn't moved.

A faint hope began to stir inside David. Maybe he'd been wrong, maybe they'd all been wrong. He rolled the last rack onto the truck and pulled the release. There wasn't going to be a fight after all.

He heard a faint sigh come from the people on the platform as he turned the jack around to wheel it off the truck. He looked up. The platform boss was standing there, blocking the end of the truck. Stolidly David pushed the jack toward him. As he neared the platform boss, he put his foot on the front of the jack and stared at David silently. David looked down at his foot. The thick-soled, heavy-toed work boot rested squarely on the front of the jack.

David looked up at the man and tried to push the jack up onto the loading platform. The platform boss's foot moved quickly. The handle of the jack was torn from David's grasp and the jack itself skidded to the side, the front half completely off the truck. Its wheels spun in the narrow space between the loading platform and the truck. The nervous sigh came again from the crowd.

The platform boss spoke in a flat voice. "It'll cost yuh five bucks to get off that truck, Jew boy," he said. "If yuh ain't got it, jus' stay there!"

David slipped his hand into his pocket. The metal was icy cold against his fingers as he slipped the brass knuckles over his hand. "I got something for you," he said quietly, as he walked toward the man, his hand still in his pocket.

"Now you're getting smart, Jew boy," the boss said, his eyes turning away from David toward the crowd. It was at that moment David hit him. He felt the shock of pain run up his arm as the duster tore into the man's face. A half scream of pain came from his throat as the metal spikes tore his cheek open like an overripe melon.