A few moments later there was a soft tapping on the door, and Al walked in carrying two ledgers and a sheaf of production schedules in a manila envelope. Jay had his back to him.
“You wanted these, Mr. Lee?” Al said, holding up the books.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Al walked over to the desk, and his eyes bulged when he saw Jay. He stood riveted by the side of the desk, his mouth slightly open.
“Why, if it isn’t . . .”
“You can go now,” Jay said without looking up.
Al picked up the books and started to take them away when Harry grabbed his arm.
“You’re supposed to leave them not take them away,” he said.
“Don’t confuse him, Harry. He confuses easy.”
“Yes, Mr. Lee,” Al said with a quiver in his voice and closed the door softly behind him.
“So that’s the way it is,” Harry said. “Funny, I didn’t get that impression when he asked for a job.”
“We’re not the best of friends . . . never have been. It’s like that with brothers - sometimes.”
Harry’s face screwed itself into something that might be called a smile; it was more a rearrangement of the deep sun-encrusted lines.
“I could give him the push, if you like.”
For a violent man, Jay exercised some restraint in the face of this open invitation. Revenge is mine, he thought. He’d build up Al before he cut him down. A strange expression of puzzlement crossed Jay’s lips for a fleeting moment. Perhaps Al hadn’t known about him and Eva - perhaps he had told her about Neal innocently? The possibility existed. He and Al were brothers, after all, flesh and blood of the same union. Why should he be the one to stick his knife in when he could not be quite sure? Hadn’t Al abandoned his pride and self-esteem by using him to get a job, by riding along on his coattails? Wouldn’t he have done the same thing, if their positions had been reversed? There was also his mother to consider. She would be sure to ask him to help Al, and if Al lost his job suddenly, she would know that Jay had interfered.
“He’s all right,” Jay said. “I don’t love him, that’s all.”
“You’ve got my sympathy . . .”
“Why? I don’t get it. Isn’t he doing his job?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. Pretty good bookkeeper in fact. Conscientious. It’s only that I had a brother, dead now, and I can appreciate your position. We started out together in business. He was older, by four years, and the only reason we joined forces was because neither of us had enough money to start on his own. It lasted two years.”
“What happened?” Jay asked. He had never suspected that Harry had ever had a problem in his life.
“I drove him out of the business. I got what I wanted and I got rid of him. He ran the production side, and very well at that, but he didn’t know the first thing about selling or design, and he was colorblind. So for this he got fifty percent. Who needs a partner to run a factory? You get yourself a manager, pay him a salary and fartig. He started telling me what to do, what to buy. An absolute idiot in business . . . he kept trying to pull his money out after the first six months.
“All he could think about was that his thousand dollars was outside a bank. It cost me money to get rid of him, much too much. I raised five thousand dollars from the bank and gave him twenty-five percent of the net profits for five years.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knew I was gonna make a quarter of a million in my first five years? Almost seventy grand, the sonovabitch cost me. He never worked a day in his life after he left. Put it in the stock market and got out with half a million in 1928 on my advice. I told him to put it in government bonds or else he’d lose it in 1929. He thought it was God talking, so he did it. The crazy thing was that when the crash came he was sitting on the sidelines with all his gelt while brokers were jumping out of windows. But the market was in his blood, and he used to go down there every day to watch the tape and keep on top of the prices. You’d think he’d be laughing, but it aggravated him to death. He’d hustle into the Corn Savings Bank every day to find out if they were going broke - he had a small savings account there, and the manager would reassure him, even offer to give him his money back to put in a safety deposit box, but my brother wouldn’t have the nerve to ask him, especially when the manager knew he had half a million. Finally, he went down, the Monday after Black Friday, and found out that the bank had folded up.
“That night he went home and told his wife about it and she said: ‘So you lost five thousand dollars, does it matter? Harry gave you good advice. We’re still rich. We’ll never want for anything.’ He flopped down in a chair, white as a ghost, and said: ‘It don’t matter that I’ve got a half million, my luck’s changed, I’m jinxed. You see it’s Harry’s five thousand that I lost, the money he gave me when we broke up. I never even touched the money, and everything I made was because of that money. It don’t mean a thing that I’m rich . . . the five thousand was everything.’ The same night he had a stroke and died in bed.
“My sister-in-law and I became friendly again and I put her into a few special situations in 1932. I hate to tell you what she’s worth today. The brokers wait for her to buy before telling their other customers. When she goes short, Dow Jones is down a point on the day. She’s got a seat on the exchange, and she’s a silent specialist in steel. Brothers . . . partners, they’re a joke.” He sighed philosophically. “What do I need a partner for, tell me, Jay?”
“Because you like to make money, and I can make it for you. When I get through, I’m gonna have the biggest retail combine in the country, and I have to get into your end of it now. It’s a pattern I’m building: stores, factories, property, and then when we’re nice and big, we go public and open at fifty on the market.”
“It sounds very nice . . . it sounds possible too. But I’m sixty-two. I’m tired of knocking my brains out. I don’t have to, but this showroom is me. If I can’t have a place to hang my hat, I’d wind up in the bughouse. So I come in every day and work . . . not as hard as I used to, but a decent few hours. I can’t stay in Miami all winter, cause the sun fries my brains. California bores me, Europe I been to three times. So I may as well spend the time here.”
“Six factories you’ve got that are busy all the time. The one in Syracuse’s a dog. You let me do what I want to with it, and you’ll see a dream come true. Right before your eyes.”
“You want to buy it?”
“You know goddam well that I haven’t got the capital.”
“I get fifty-one percent of everything from the factory.”
“You get forty, and you can’t make an executive decision without my say-so.”
“I’ll say one thing for you, Jay. What you don’t have in brains, you make up in nerve.”
“Forty percent . . .”
“For a year.”
“Two. I’ve got to have two years.”
“Eighteen months.”
Jay extended his hand and shook Harry’s.
“Two years, it’s a deal.”
“Okay. I must be getting old. I give you my factory on your terms, and all I get is a handshake.”
“And youth.”
“I’m a gambler.”
“An investor.”
“Can’t even win an argument with you.”
He and Jay chinked glasses. The scotch warmed Jay and made him slightly dizzy. He had been in over his depth, and he had not merely survived, but won. The elation he felt turned a bit bitter in his mouth when he thought about Eva.
“One other thing. Eva’s on five thousand a year, as of now.”
“Are you paying, or am I?”
“We both are, partner.”
“Oooh, I hate the sound of the word,” Harry said, as though he had been burned with a match.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“You want me to do anything about that little family matter?”
“No, leave it to me.”
Jay spent the rest of the morning visiting the far-flung
outposts of his embryonic empire. He noted with satisfaction the progress made on each site. What had formerly been wild tracts of uncultivated land, and in the case of Hempstead a swamp that had to be filled in, now loomed in the distance, in the guise of concrete façades, new pillars of civilization. Prophets brought the Word, Jay the Dress . . . thou shalt not live by silk alone was his message to the underpaid and drably accoutred women, victims of America’s black decade of depression. Like a beaten giant given a magical balm, the country slowly shook off its economic wounds and throbbed with new life. Jay, the heir to the Phoenician traders, brought the possibility of glamour to America’s glamour-starved women.
When he reached the site in Great Neck, a complex of shops and office buildings, he observed a large truck with dredging equipment near the outer perimeter of the center. A man wearing a wide-striped gray suit turned when he blew the horn to get past. When the man saw it was Jay, he opened his arms expansively. Jay pulled over, then got out.
“Hiya, Jaya,” Topo shouted, as though greeting the prodigal. “I ain’t seen yuh for a munt.”
“Been pretty busy, trying to lick everything into shape . . . I expect to be open in six weeks.”
“You a magician.” He put his arm affectionately round Jay’s shoulder. “C’mon let’s have a coffee.”
They walked across the main highway to a shiny steel-shelled diner and sat down in a booth. Topo ordered iced coffees for them and offered Jay a stogie. The diner was empty, and the air was heavy with cooking oil.
“How the hell you smoke that cheap rope is a mystery to me.”
“It’s what yuh get used to. Like at home. I ohways drink coffee with chicory. Not trying to save money. It’s the way I been brought up.” He sipped the coffee noisily through a straw. “We’re all pretty grateful to yuh for what yuh done.”
“I don’t think I’ve done very much. Getting you the contract was just good business. Your boys are better than the other thieves. They would’ve held us up for at least six months.”
Topo appeared puzzled; he removed his glasses and peered at Jay through icy gray fish slits. His straw squelched at the ice cubes in his glass, and he flicked his wrist to the waitress for another one.
“That’s not the whole story,” he said finally. “The work’s bein’ done strictly legit and very fast for a different reason. What we make here is peanuts. It’s the new locations that’s so important to people.”
Jay had a sudden feeling of fear and revulsion.
“I don’t get it. I’m not giving pieces of my business away.”
Topo blinked disbelievingly.
“Hey, you got the wrong enda the stick. We don’t want no dress stores. We got our own stores on the locations. Electrical, huh.”
“You mean, Fredericks rented you stores?”
“Sure he did. It’s a shopping center, ain’t it? People gotta buy plugs, and radios and things, don’t they? We open up smart stores with all the latest things on the market. Strictly legit. Our joints are gonna give the public a service. We don’t want nothing from you . . . we just want you to know you got favors coming to yuh. Whenever you want to collect ‘em.”
“I’m still in the dark.” Jay breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hey, Jaya baby. You’re a big boy now. We don’t care about no radios or batteries or crap like that. You got an electrical store. You got lots of aerials and mains and hook-ups, right? It’s for the wire service. This means we got places right near Jamaica, Aqueduct, and Belmont. And in Jersey we can cover Philly, from Passaic, which means Garden City, and Monmouth direct. In White Plains we get Terry Haute, Detroit and Chicago’s on a direct line. I got the clear from the people to tel yuh, because they got a very high opinion a yuh.”
“The wire service?” Jay rolled the phrase on his tongue. Everyone had heard of obscure big business gambling that was illegal in America. But no one knew who ran it, or what the profits were. Occasionally one read about a crusading district attorney who had a line on a gambling setup, but the story always drifted out of the papers in a day or two. Topo slid a long brown envelope across the table. His sweating hand had imprinted three fingers across its belly. He stared at it with rapt fascination and smiled.
“That’s the first time my prints’ve been on anything. Collector’s item. To show our appreciation, but has nothin’ to do with favors that we still owe, You’re a lucky guy to have people in your debt.”
The short-order cook emerged from the kitchen and sat at the counter, and the waitress served him an iced drink. They looked aimlessly at Topo and Jay sitting in the booth. It was hot, and they were bored, and they weren’t particularly curious about the young dark-haired man who opened the envelope.
Jay put the envelope on his lap out of sight when he noticed two people at the counter looking at him. He opened the flap and gasped when he saw a thousand-dollar bill sticking out of the corner. His head suddenly began to ache, and there were spots before his eyes. He saw Topo sitting in a cloud of gray smoke, the corners of his mouth spread out in a smile.
“There’s ten of those in the envelope.”
“You must be crazy.”
“It’s a shock, huh? You deserve it, Jay. The setup’s worth millions. People have long memories, and if you ever get in a jam, you know where you got friends.” He got up abruptly and called to the waitress: “My friend’s paying for the coffees. It’s his treat. See yuh, Jay, and don’t forget.”
Eva had a particular dread of Thursday, for it had become the last night she and Jay could spend together. With religious promptness he would leave at eight every Friday morning for Lieberman’s farm to see his mother and Neal, and of course, Rhoda. Her week ended, therefore, every Thursday night, and she was left in a void, a universe with no center. When Jay came in later that evening, she barely turned her head. She could see that he was excited, but she could not shake off the depression that had set in early that morning. He kissed her with exuberance and clutched her in his arms.
“What makes you so happy? Glad to get rid of me? I’ll bet you’re getting sick to death of me.”
“Eva, what’s wrong with you? What have I got but you?”
She gave him an abashed smile that conceded the point, but his mood, like the flick of a dial on the radio, had altered. When he was with her, he always had the sensation of walking on eggs. It exhausted him, but he was drawn to her, and he reflected with some detachment that the link between people who share joy is weaker and more transitory than between those who have lived through a tragedy. Herbie’s death had established a treacherous concatenation of emotional ties that imposed itself completely on their relationship. It had become for them both a form of bondage so that what they were, who they were, to each other was reduced to a variation of a single charade, its subject their roles in the death of a man who was unloved and now almost forgotten, save for the silent grief of a few thin-lipped relatives who had never been very close to him in life and who had only a nodding acquaintance with Eva. Responsibility is as much a quirk of memory as of action; to be responsible one has first to remember, and Jay and Eva remembered with clarity. They could no longer live with the quiet, the unspoken - now nothing could be left unsaid, for imagination might take over; human inventories were continually being made and adjusted so that nothing between them could reside in obscurity.
“I’m gonna make you happy,” Jay said.
“That’s nice.”
“Everything’ll be changed . . .”
“Isn’t it already?”
He paused in mid-sentence -
“Don’t get me sidetracked ‘cause that means one thing: too much to drink, going to bed and waking up with nightmares.”
“You’ve got something to show for the nightmares.”
“Aw, Eva, give me a chance to tell you. I’ve made a deal with Harry.” In a breathless voice he outlined his plans to her, explained her role in the new hierarchy, and spent a few minutes eulogizing his one-man army. She was not quite overcome with deligh
t at the suggestion, so he was forced to reveal what he had intended to conceal.
“Here,” he said, handing her a bill, “I want you to buy something for yourself and Lorna . . . something that you don’t really need.”
She looked at the bill with surprise and gasped when he showed her the rest of his bankroll.
“Christ.”
“I did somebody a favor. The crazy thing was that I thought I was doing it for myself.”
“There’s a fortune there . . . You shouldn’t be carrying it around in cash.”
“I can’t put it in the bank either. Safety deposit, first thing tomorrow.”
“Should I ask: how?”
“Better if you didn’t.”
They had dinner at the Monte Carlo, and Jay felt deflated and drank too much. He had expected her to react differently to the news he brought her, the new opportunity, but she just sat sulkily picking at her steak as though it was unpalatable. The floor show was about to begin, and the waiter asked them if they wanted to order anything. Jay insisted on a bottle of scotch even though he knew he should not have any more. A group of men on a night out without their wives cackled when a dozen showgirls kicked up their heels to the can-can. They walked provocatively through the gauntlet of men and threw roses at them. One of the men got up and followed the girls. The bandleader escorted him off with a smile and a cry for audience applause for this “good sport.” Jay studied the man through a haze of smoke and bleary eyes. Eva looked at Jay critically, and he felt his irritation rise uncontrollably to the surface.
“Well, what do you want? Everything I give you . . . tell me what more?”
“Divorce Rhoda!”
“I’ve thought about it,” he lied, “but I can’t do it just like that.”
“Let her divorce you. She’s got grounds.”
“Grounds?” he said drunkenly. “What kinda grounds?”
“Adultery . . . the only kind they recognize in New York State.”
“What about the kid? Neal?” he said with a kind of desperation.
“They give visiting privileges.”
Seventh Avenue Page 23
