I Can Get It for You Wholesale

by Jerome Weidman

  I took his arm and pulled him along with me.

  “Oh, no we’re not,” I said. “We’re going in the right direction. When you eat with me you don’t eat in cafeterias.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s okay with me.”

  As though I didn’t know that.

  “And you can paste this into your hat right now, Tootsie,” I said. “As long as you string along with me, your cafeteria days are over.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “That is,” I added, looking at him out of the corner of my eye, “unless you’re too busy with the revolution to find time for some easy dough.”

  He looked at me and grinned.

  “The revolution can wait,” he said.

  Could I pick them?

  “All right, then,” I said. “Now we eat.”

  At Thirty-Fourth we turned left. I knew a little Hungarian place between Lexington and Fourth where they had regular tablecloths and a couple of waiters. For Tootsie that would be good enough. After cafeterias this would look like the real big time to him.

  I waited until he went through the chopped liver and the soup and the goulash. I wasn’t particularly hungry myself, but I can always eat. From the way Tootsie dug in I couldn’t make up my mind which he needed most, the meal or a haircut. I was willing to buy him the meal, but if I had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t take a haircut for at least another month. He suited me perfectly the way he was, dirty, ragged, unshaved. That was the way I needed him. And that was the way he’d stay. Not that he was such an odd-looking specimen. You can pick dozens like him off Seventh Avenue any day in the week, except Sunday, with your eyes closed. But of all those you can find, show me one that had his point of view. The rest of them are just a bunch of dopes who would consider it an honor and a pleasure to die for dear old Stalin. The only person Tootsie would ever die for is Tootsie Maltz, and even then he’d find a way to wiggle out of it. Which showed that he wasn’t so dumb.

  After a while he pulled his mush away from the plate and sighed.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips.

  “Boy!” he said.

  “I guess you wouldn’t have much objection to eating like that every day, would you?”

  “What do you think?” he said.

  He’d probably drop dead if I told him.

  “Well, maybe I can arrange it for you,” I said.

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Well, if you’re a good little boy, and you pay close attention to what Papa says, and you don’t get snotty, and you answer all questions correctly the first time, and you don’t interrupt—”

  “So? So?”

  “So listen.”

  I took a fresh pack of cigarettes from my pocket, ripped the top off, and put them on the table in front of him.

  “Help yourself,” I said, pointing to them. “Every time you open your yap to say something, take a cigarette instead. Don’t interrupt me. Just listen and answer when you’re asked. The rest of the time, smoke.”

  “Okay,” he said with a grin and reached for one. I lit one myself and settled back to look at him.

  “You working now?” I asked finally.

  “No,” he said, then: “Say, you’re not going to all this trouble just to offer me a job, are you? Because if—”

  “Smoke,” I said.

  “My mistake,” he said, laughing, and drew on his cigarette.

  “Ever been around Seventh Avenue? The garment district?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “You never worked there?”

  “Nope.”

  “That means you don’t know much about it, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “All right, then, Tootsie,” I said. “Hold on to your hat. Besides a good meal, you’re going to get a little education to-night. And personally, I don’t think it’ll hurt you. Just remember to keep your ears open.”

  He lit a fresh cigarette. He should worry. They were free.

  “Now, then, Tootsie, we’ll get down to facts and figures. I don’t know how strong you are between the ears,” I said, “but even if you were a real mental heavyweight, I wouldn’t bother you with too much detail. You know how it is, Tootsie. I want you to save your energy. You probably need a lot of it for those wrestling matches of yours with those red elephants.”

  He started to open his mouth, but I held up my hand for silence. He grinned and I blew smoke in his eyes. We both laughed.

  “All right, then,” I said. “On those few square blocks between Thirty-Fourth Street and Times Square on Seventh Avenue, there are over six thousand firms that manufacture dresses. Exactly how many there are doesn’t matter. Just take my word for it that it runs into the thousands. All right. Now, every one of these firms employs at least one shipping clerk. You know what a shipping clerk is, Tootsie?”

  He shook his head and waved the cigarette to show me why he wasn’t talking. He was all right. He was catching on.

  “Maybe I better explain it to you,” I said. “After all, a gentleman of leisure like you, you know, how would you ever know what a shipping clerk is? See what I mean? Well, Tootsie, a shipping clerk is a kind of two-legged animal, without a hell of a lot of brains, that never sleeps and hardly ever eats. It’s always on the go, chasing over to the contractor with a bundle of cut work, trying to make the post office with a special before the parcel-post division closes, running from one piece-goods house to another to match a swatch that some crazy buyer has brought in, or lugging half the sample line to some buying office on Thirty-First Street so some dizzy broad that must have been a snappy number about the time Dewey sailed into Manila Bay can make one more selection before her train leaves for Cleveland or Chicago or God alone knows where. The reason I know all this, Tootsie, my boy, is that at one time I was just about the world’s champion shipping clerk. Anybody who could hold down a job with Toney Frocks, Inc., the joint I worked for, under the heel that ran it, a certain gent by the name of Schmul, would have to be the world’s champ. If you don’t think that makes me an authority, just go out on Seventh Avenue some day and ask. In the meantime, though, just take my word for it. By the way, Tootsie,” I added, “if this is beginning to bore you, just say the word. I’m only mentioning these things to keep the record straight.”

  He nodded, still grinning.

  “So anyway,” I said, “we’ve gotten to the point where every firm on Seventh Avenue has at least one shipping clerk. A lot of them have more than one. But that doesn’t matter. The only thing to remember is that no matter how dumb a guy is, he can still see that there must be thousands of shipping clerks on Seventh Avenue. You see it, don’t you?”

  Again he nodded. It doesn’t take me long to get them hypnotized.

  “Now, it happens, Tootsie, that the average salary for a shipping clerk is fifteen bucks a week. They even paid me that.” His grin widened a little. “Here’s where I want you to strain yourself a little, Tootsie. Do this bit of mental arithmetic with me. Fifteen times several thousand, I don’t know how many exactly, but several thousand, fifteen times that—gives you what?”

  He opened his mouth, but I put up my hand.

  “Right,” I said. “Right. All those thousands of dollars are paid out every week on Seventh Avenue to shipping clerks.”

  I leaned back in my chair and grinned at him.

  “Now, of course, Tootsie, I don’t know how many steam yachts and butlers they had in your family.” The grin returned to his face. “But me, Tootsie, I’m Grade A presidential timber. I was born on Goereck Street and my old man never made more than fifteen bucks a week in his life, except during the War, when he made twenty, which was no break for me, because all it did was raise the standard of living in the family so damn high that when the old man dropped back to fifteen bucks a week I had to go out and peddle papers after school so the old lady shouldn’t have to sell her ermine wraps.”

  I fit a cigarette and blew sm
oke in his eyes until he blinked.

  “Ever since then, Tootsie, I’ve hated people who make fifteen bucks a week. Which means that I don’t like shipping clerks, see? But if my reasons don’t suit you, then, just to make you feel better, Tootsie, let’s say I don’t like the way they part their hair, or that most of them come from the Bronx, or anything you want. Anyway, I don’t like them. And it makes me twice as sore to think that they’re getting all that money every week. So what have I done? I’ve figured out a way to turn most of that money into my pockets. And, at the same time”—I dropped my voice a shade to make sure he’d understand this was for his benefit—“into the pockets of my partner, whoever he may be.”

  He perked up a little at that. My theory is that a shot in the arm every once in a while keeps the patient interested. I guess I should have studied medicine. I had the right bedside manner.

  “Now, I know what you’re going to ask,” I said. “You’re going to ask ‘How?’ And that’s just what I’m going to tell you.”

  I lit another cigarette and leaned across the table toward him. As I talked, his own cigarette went dead, and his mouth opened. Once or twice he started to say something, but I shut him up quick. Finally he couldn’t hold it any longer. It popped right out of him.

  “But Bogen, where do I come in?”

  Did you ever walk along the street, thinking of nothing in particular and feeling pretty good, when smacko, you stub your toe or you bunk into somebody, and it brings you up cold, right out of that pleasant state of mind? That’s how I felt right then. Here I’d been talking away, sailing through the thing like a dose of salts, with him sitting across the table from me, smoking and nodding his head and looking intelligent. Then, when I hit the climax, he comes out with that crack. Maybe I’d given him credit for more brains than he had. I guess being a radical does things to a person. It had certainly done things to Tootsie Maltz. He was a lot quicker on the uptake when I first knew him.

  “What do you mean, where do you come in?”

  “Just that,” he said, looking like he’d just come out of a table. “This is where you come in.”

  “Right here, you dumb baloney,” I said, smacking the table. “This is where you come in.”

  He looked at me and scratched his head. Well, I guess there was nothing for me to do but roll up my sleeves and sail in.

  “Listen, Tootsie,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and low. “Did you ever take a good look at yourself in the mirror?”

  “What the hell is that got to do with it?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “except that if you ever did, and you saw what a homely puss you had, you’d realize that your chances of winning beauty contests were pretty slim.”

  “So what? I still don’t get it.”

  “Then listen for a change, and you will,” I said. “If you could only see what you look like, you’d realize that I didn’t need you for a front. Unless I was going into the circus business and was trying to get a menagerie together,” I added. If anybody would’ve talked to me like that, I’d’ve rapped him in the puss. But he just sat and listened. “But I’m not getting together a menagerie. I’m trying to make some dough, and if I come to you, you can be pretty sure I need you for a special reason. Understand?”

  He shook his head.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said.

  Can you imagine anybody as dumb as all that?

  I hitched my chair a little closer to the table and leaned forward on it with my elbows, putting my face as close to him as I could get it.

  “Listen, dope,” I said.

  2

  THE THING WAS SET for eight-thirty. Which meant that it probably wouldn’t start before nine. But I was there at eight. I wanted to give everything a last once-over. Not that I was worried about there being a hitch or anything like that. It was just that I had nothing else to do. For the time being my end was clear. And anyway, I got a kick out of it. My brains had thought the thing out. My dough was paying for it. It gave me a feeling of power to stand there and watch and see the whole thing take shape under my nose.

  Across the front of the building, right over the doorway and under the sign that spelled out Pythian Temple in electric lights, was the big sheet of oilcloth lettered in red and black:

  8:30! MASS MEETING TO-NIGHT! 8:30!

  SHIPPING CLERKS

  OF THE GARMENT DISTRICT

  MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE TO YOU

  WILL BE DISCUSSED

  ADMISSION FREE

  8:30 TO-NIGHT

  That sign had set me back five bucks. At first I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was necessary. The circulars that Tootsie had been distributing for over a week had been clear enough. They had Pythian Temple spread all over them. It would take an awfully dumb guy not to be able to find it if he wanted to get there. But you don’t know how dumb shipping clerks can be. With those rummies you couldn’t be too careful. So it would cost me an extra five bucks, so what? After all the dough I’d spent already, it would be stupid to take a chance on spoiling the whole thing because of a little thing like that. So I ordered the sign. It looked good, anyway. It gave the thing a final, business-like touch. Let those mockies see that this thing was being run by people who meant business.

  I looked at my watch. A quarter after eight. And nobody in sight. I was beginning to feel nervous. Suppose nobody showed up? Or suppose only a few of them came? Which would be just as bad. What then? I shook off the feeling of worry and lit a cigarette. What was I getting excited about? It was still early. And anyway, only small-time heels worried before anything happened.

  I crossed the gutter and leaned against the doorway of a building that faced the entrance of the Temple. It certainly was a swell sight. It ought to be. It had cost me plenty. How much? Well, let’s see. First there was the rent for the hall. Fifty bucks. Then five for the sign made it fifty-five. And ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three for mimeographing circulars made it—fifty-five plus twenty-three—made it seventy-eight. Then add all the extras, feeding Tootsie and a couple of other things, and it came pretty close to a hundred. Whew!

  That was a lot of money in any man’s country, especially when you’re drawing on your capital. At that rate I wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long.

  All right, then, I’d just have to make it short and sweet. The faster you work, the better chance you have of succeeding. It doesn’t give those that might have a brain or two a chance to start figuring things out.

  Two or three fellows turned the corner and began to drift up the block. I noticed them immediately. You can tell a shipping clerk a mile away. Three days after pay day every one of them quits eating lunches and borrows carfare. But that doesn’t stop them from trying to dress like the Meadowbrook polo crowd. Every nickel they can beg or borrow is on their backs.

  The ones coming up the block toward me had one other distinguishing characteristic, besides the regulation shipping clerk’s uniform of suede shoes, peg-top pants in a loud check, and Tyrol hat. They walked slowly, as though they were ashamed of what they were doing.

  When they came near the Temple they stopped. One of them pointed to the oilcloth sign.

  “This must be it,” he said. “Look at the sign there.”

  I guess that sign wasn’t such a bad investment after all.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” another one said.

  Just a couple of bright boys.

  “Let’s go in.”

  They went inside and I breathed easier. I knew it would work. It had to. I had planned everything too carefully. At first I wanted to rent a hall up in the Bronx, because that’s where most of them live anyway. But then I figured I’d be losing out both ways. First of all, I’d be losing all those that lived in Brooklyn and down on the East Side or any other place but the Bronx. And then the next thing was that if I called the meeting in the Bronx, they’d have a chance to go home and eat first. Once they had a chance to eat and wash up and get comfortable, maybe they wouldn’t feel so hot about the id
ea of getting dressed and going to a meeting. But like this, by hiring a hall right here in Manhattan, not far from the garment district, those that wanted to come would have to stay downtown.

  And judging from the way they began to arrive now, it looked like there were plenty of those that wanted to come.

  Those circulars Tootsie had been distributing all over Seventh Avenue were honeys. I’d written them myself. Me and Lenin. Shipping clerks attention! Step-children of the garment industry! Come out and fight for your rights! Organize against your exploiters! No more seventy-hour weeks for fifteen dollars! Demand higher wages and fewer hours! And get it, too! Come to the mass meeting at Pythian Temple and learn how!

  And a lot more of the same. But that’s enough to give you the general idea. I could rattle it off for you by the hour, but how do I know you’ve got a strong stomach? My insides aren’t exactly what you’d call delicate, but two and a half minutes of that baloney is enough to make me puke.

  By now they were coming down the block in droves. I hadn’t realized myself that they might be as interested as all this. Maybe conditions were even worse for them than I’d thought? After all, I’d been away from the Avenue for nearly a year. Watching them pour into the Temple, I got a feeling of the power that was there, if they only knew how to use it. Well, here was one guy who knew what that power was, and who knew how to use it, too.

  My watch said twenty to nine. Time to start. As I looked up I saw Tootsie climbing the steps into the Temple with a dame on either side of him. I couldn’t see their faces, but I recognized the one on his right immediately. Or rather, I recognized her can. My bet was that there were only half a dozen like it in captivity. It was big enough to play a game of two-handed pinochle on. Once you see something with those dimensions, you don’t forget it. It began to look like this Tootsie wasn’t such a dope after all. Near the top of my list of things to do, I jotted down a note to look into the situation as soon as I had a little time.

  The crowd in the street had thinned out. I crossed the gutter and entered with the stragglers. The large auditorium was just off a small foyer. I went in and took a seat in the rear. It was the only place where you could get a seat. The rest of the room was jammed. At the front, on a small raised platform, sat Tootsie and the two dames, their heads bent together, reading something spread on the table in front of them. I looked around the room.