What's in It for Me?

by Jerome Weidman

  “Have one?”

  “No, thanks. I just finished a whole pack outside while waiting for you.”

  “Well,” he said brightly, “I suppose you want to know what I been able to do for you on that deal, eh?”

  “That’s right. What have you been able to do?”

  “Nothing,” he said simply.

  “Nothing, eh?”

  “Not a damned thing.”

  “Well,” I said finally, “what are you telling me, Mr. Terkel? You telling me it’s all right with you if I go out and try to get me another agent? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  He shook his head.

  “Another agent is gonna help you on this thing, Mr. Bogen, like draught in the neck is gonna do you good if you got a cold.”

  “I haven’t got a cold, Mr. Terkel. I’ve got a client for you with talent that—”

  “All the talent she’s got, Mr. Bogen, you can—” He stopped and looked at me over the glasses. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Bogen,” he said carefully. “This Miss Mills and you. It’s something that—? Well, I don’t exactly know how to say it. Here’s what I mean, though. Now don’t get me wrong, Mr. Bogen. This is purely hypothetical, what I call. You follow me?”

  I’d followed smarter guys than he was.

  “Don’t worry about my feelings, Mr. Terkel. When I’m talking business I’m talking business.”

  “Here’s what I mean. With some guys a thing like this is purely a, you know, a little boffing proposition. You follow me? And with some other guys, some guys a thing like this is serious. They got it here.” He smacked where his heart should have been. “Now before I can go on, Mr. Bogen, it would help me a lot if you’d tell me which it is with you, so I can—”

  “I’m in the dress business, Mr. Terkel,” I said simply.

  “Oh, well, in that case I can talk freely, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, then, freely and confidentially, Mr. Bogen, selling this here Miss Martha Mills to Hollywood is like selling, I don’t know, like selling the King of England a due bill on a hotel in Bermuda. You know what I mean?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t know what you mean. What’s the matter, hasn’t she got any talent?”

  He squinted at me comically.

  “For some things, yes. But for pictures, hell, I could make a better actor myself.”

  “She’s good enough to be singing in Smile Out Loud for almost a full year,” I snapped.

  “You call that singing, Mr. Bogen?”

  “Never mind what I call it. I’m not one of these music lovers with a box at the opera and I gotta break my neck to get over to Carnegie Hall because Toscanini or somebody like that is waving a stick around. For my part you can take Smile Out Loud and you can put it in the same ash can with grand opera. But facts are facts, Mr. Terkel. She’s good enough to be in Smile Out Loud for close to a year, and you tell me she’s not good enough for—”

  He sighed and shook his head.

  “Oh, Mr. Bogen, Mr. Bogen,” he said wearily, “if I could’ve only paid the producers of that crap to buy him off from putting it on, I’d be a much happier man today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He leaned toward me across the desk.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m an agent. The more people I sell to the Coast, the more money I make. I love to sell people. I’m dying to sell people. It’s to my interest to sell people. Christ, if I could sell Louis Mayer the lions in front of the Public Library I’d do it. Kidding aside, though, this Smile Out Loud. They got no talent there. They haven’t even got a show. You know what they got?”

  “You tell me.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you. They got a collection of tits and asses and every night and Wednesday and Saturday matinees they come out and shake them around for two hours, and the customers love it so much they keep coming back and bringing friends. They got clubs already, people saw it six times and over. Every burlesque in town they closed up, they took away their licenses, you’d think, my God, it was 1917 again and somebody in the cast had a German name. Everything they closed up. But this God damn Smile Out Loud, because it’s a legitimate theatre, it’s got a regular producer, it’s got a four-forty top, so they let it keep running!”

  “What difference does that make to you?” I demanded.

  He held up his hand and put on a pained expression.

  “Please, Mr. Bogen. I’m talking from a full heart. Let me finish.”

  “Okay,” I said, “finish.”

  “Every other show on Broadway I’ve been able to snatch out talent and sell it to the Coast. Even the flops, they run two-three nights, I can pick out a kid with something on the ball and convince the boys on the Coast they’re getting another Garbo. But Smile Out Loud? Talent they got there? Tits they got! Asses they got! Go sell tits and asses! What am I, a meat supply house for boff joints? I’m a talent agent! And it isn’t bad enough that there’s absolutely nothing worth selling in the cast, it has to keep running for a year yet! A whole year! Every night, for a year, like clockwork, some beer baron from Milwaukee or some garter manufacturer from Chicago, he takes in the show, he falls for a hundred and thirty pounds of the meat they got on display there, he pulls strings to get an introduction, and before he goes back to his hotel the next morning he’s promised some big-chested zipper from Tenth Avenue he’s gonna get her into pictures. And then what happens?”

  “You tell me,” I said crisply.

  I was asking him for a Hollywood contract for Martha, not for a sketch of my recent movements.

  “All right, I’ll tell you. They go running to their friends to find out who’s the biggest and best Hollywood agent. By them it’s gotta be the biggest and the best yet. So what do you think their friends tell them?”

  I got up and put on my hat.

  “To take a cold shower,” I said sarcastically.

  He shook his head seriously.

  “No. They tell them go get Kermit Terkel. So they come running to me like they’re giving me an annuity for the rest of my life, and they tell me they want me to handle a tomato for them.”

  “You ought to plant some lettuce in back of your house,” I said. “Then you could put in a side line of salads.”

  He shook his head again. My jokes weren’t impressing him.

  “As soon as they say that, right away I ask what’s she done in the past, what show’s she in now? And the minute they tell me Smile Out Loud, you know what I do?”

  “You tell them to come back tomorrow. And then you let them wear out their pants on your waiting room chairs.”

  He smiled quickly.

  “No,” he said. “That’s only for the guys who come about dames that at least have a figure, a cute face, a something that gives you a little tickle in the pants, like this Martha Mills.”

  First she’d been responsible for the temperature of my pants. Now she was responsible for my wearing out their seats.

  “But the others?”

  “The others, the minute they tell me Smile Out Loud, I take two aspirins in a glass of water, quick, and I tell them I’m quitting the talent business and I’m going in for manufacturing brassieres and girdles with a two-way stretch.”

  That was probably where he belonged.

  “The way you talk, you must have a regular chain of factories already.”

  He waved his hand at me.

  “Believe me, by this time I coulda had a world monopoly on the underwear business.”

  “I can sympathize with your ambitions along the manufacturing line,” I said, “but answer me one thing, Mr. Terkel.”

  “Even a dozen.”

  He didn’t seem to be so awfully busy any more.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that right away?”

  He grinned and popped a fresh cigarette into his mouth.

  “Because when a dame is got a figure like that girl friend of yours has, Mr. Bogen, it’s worth looking into even if you know in advance you can’t
do anything along business lines.”

  “What do you mean?”

  All of a sudden I was playing dumb.

  “You look like the sort of guy that knows when he’s got hold of a good thing, Mr. Bogen,” he said with a shrug, “but say, even you might get tired.”

  I wasn’t there to listen to his compliments on my taste in women. If I didn’t know what I had, I would have tossed her out on her ear a long time before.

  “I’m not tired yet, Mr. Terkel,” I said with great care.

  He sighed and shook his head regretfully.

  “That’s what I thought. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “I can blame you for wasting my time,” I snapped.

  He grinned understandingly.

  “You know damn well, Mr. Bogen, that if I’d’ve told you this right at the start, you would’ve just gone to another agent, that’s all.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe nothing. When I say something, I’m positive.”

  I leaned over to drop my ashes in the tray under his nose.

  “Let me ask you another thing, Mr. Terkel.”

  “I told you even a dozen. You got eleven more tries.”

  “If you think she’s got such a hot figure, why don’t you try selling her just as an actress? She doesn’t have to sing.”

  “For two reasons.”

  “What are they?”

  “First of all, she can’t act.”

  “Stop kidding me, will you? Since when is that a reason for not getting to Hollywood?”

  “All right. Well let that reason go.”

  “What’s the other one?”

  “You told me she wants to sing? You told me she’s nuts about getting out there and becoming another Betty Grable, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged and grinned at him.

  “Listen, Mr. Terkel. I like chicken. I’m crazy about chicken, especially the white meat. But if I can’t get white meat, I take dark, that’s all.”

  He smiled knowingly.

  “Maybe because you’re willing to take dark meat when you can’t get white, that doesn’t mean everybody else is the same. Maybe Miss Mills she doesn’t like dark meat?”

  “You’re just the waiter, Mr. Terkel. You’re not the customer. You dish up what you can. If she doesn’t like the dark meat, let her send it back herself.”

  “Sometimes they don’t send it back. Sometimes they just throw it in my face.”

  “For ten per cent it seems to me it’s worth taking a plate of chicken in the face once in a while.”

  He grinned quickly.

  “If you ever want that job. Mr. Bogen, I’ll give it to you.”

  I gave him a grin of my own.

  “Throwing it?” I asked.

  “No, taking it.”

  “Sorry, but it’s not in my line.”

  “I could teach you quick.”

  “When it comes to things like that, I’m dumb. I just want to know one thing, Mr. Terkel.”

  “All right, but after this one, you’ll only have nine left.”

  “Well, here goes all nine in one shot. Do you want to handle Miss Mills for me and see if you can get her in pictures as an actress, not as a singer? Yes or no? What do you say? It’s crap or get off the pot.”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ll try, Mr. Bogen. But I make no promises.”

  “That’s all I ask,” I said. “Try.”

  “For a girl with a figure like that, all right, I will.”

  I looked at him carefully.

  “Just remember, Mr. Terkel, you’re doing it for the ten per cent, not for her figure.”

  “Listen,” he said with a grin, “this is one time when I’d rather let the ten per cent ride.”

  “Don’t let it ride,” I said calmly. “Unless you want to be working for nothing. Because that’s all you’ll be getting out of it.”

  “All right, Mr. Bogen,” he said sharply. “I’ll try. But you might just as well know here and now that it’s practically hopeless.”

  “But of course,” I said pointedly, “you’ll try.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said airily, “I’ll try.”

  I took one of his cigarettes and lit it.

  “I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “If you want to,” he said indifferently.

  19.

  I HUNG MY HAT AND coat in Yazdabian’s room and walked into the office. Miss Eckveldt didn’t look up, but she handed me a slip of paper. “Miss Mills called,” it said, “at ten-thirty. Call her back.”

  “Give me a wire in the showroom.”

  She dropped a couple of keys on the switchboard and I walked out to make the call.

  “Hello, Charlie,” I said. “Connect me with Miss Mills.”

  “Who’s this? Mr. Bogen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a moment, Mr. Bogen.”

  There was a pause and then her voice was on the wire.

  “Hello, Harry?”

  “Yeah, Martha. This is Harry. You called me?”

  “Yes. I wanted to know how that—?”

  “I just came from there, Martha. I spent almost all morning with him. That’s why I’m calling you so late. I just got in and saw your message.”

  The way I reported my movements, you’d think I was under contract to her on a piece-work basis.

  “What he say?”

  “Well, Martha, it didn’t look like anything definite yet. But he was pretty hopeful.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen,” I said briskly, “that’s only one angle. I’m working a couple. I’m going up to see a few more people today. I’ll have a lot of them working on it and you’ll be there before the year is up, like I told you.”

  “I know what you told me.”

  “Then you’re on the right road.”

  “I know, Harry. The road gets a little boring, though. Maybe we ought to get some place after a while, huh?”

  “You’ll get some place. In fact, you can go out and buy yourself some sunburn lotion right now.”

  “Sunburn lotion?”

  “Yeah, for that California sun. I hear it’s fierce.”

  “You know what I just did a little while ago?”

  “What?”

  “I turned down a lunch invitation from Teddy Ast,” she said proudly. “Aren’t I a good little girl?”

  “That’s the spirit, kid. Next time you can do better than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can hang up on him as soon as you recognize his voice.”

  “If I remember, I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks.”

  The curtains at the far end of the showroom parted and Yazdabian came in.

  “Oh, Mr. Bogen,” he said.

  “Listen, Martha,” I said into the phone, “I’ve got a customer now. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “All right, Harry. Good-by.”

  “Good-by.”

  I hung up and took out a cigarette as Yazdabian approached me.

  “Good-morning, Mr. Yazdabian,” I said quickly. “Sit down. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “What is it that you have to tell me, Mr. Bogen?”

  “Got a great idea, and want to hear what you think of it.”

  “I trust it will have something to do with sales.”

  “Well, yeah, in a way it has.”

  “Suppose you tell it to me.”

  “Here’s the idea, Mr. Yazdabian. I think it would be a swell idea if I took a quick trip to Europe, say for two or three weeks or a month, to pick up some new style ideas. In that way we’d have the jump on the rest of the—”

  “Why should you want to pick up new ideas, Mr. Bogen? We haven’t even disposed of the styles we have on the racks now.”

  “That’s exactly why we need new ones. With all due respect to you as a designer, Mr. Yazdabian, I think the ones we have now are a little, well, they’re not exactly what I’d call real hot. You know what I mean? But if I hopped ove
r to Europe for a short trip, I’d get a good chance to pick up some nifties and we’d be able to knock the buyers’ eyes out.”

  “I don’t care to defend my reputation as a designer, Mr. Bogen. Even though it has been, well, let us say adequate, even though it has been adequate for a good many years, that is not the point.”

  “The designs that were adequate twenty years ago are not adequate today,” I said gently.

  He nodded and shrugged.

  “Perhaps. But as I say, that’s not the point. The point is that we don’t need more styles, Mr. Bogen. We need more sales.”

  I looked at him sharply.

  “Just what do you mean by that, Mr. Yazdabian?”

  His expression didn’t change.

  “I’m doing nothing but quoting you, Mr. Bogen. When you joined me in this firm you said we needed sales. Now you tell me we need styles. And I—”

  “And I tell you again now we need styles. What I said about sales still goes. But you can’t have sales until you have styles. And the styles we have now—”

  “The styles we have now are adequate for a good salesman. If we need more styles we can get them from the agencies.”

  I pushed my jaw forward.

  “Are you implying that I’m not a good salesman, Mr. Yazdabian?”

  “I am implying nothing. I simply want to show you the facts.” He handed the papers across to me. “Mr. Satten was in this morning while you were—”

  “While I was visiting the buying offices.”

  “Did you get an order?”

  “Well, no. But the buyer I wanted to see wasn’t—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Mr. Satten was in and he left the report for the three-month period that we have been in business together, Mr. Bogen.”

  “Time flies, doesn’t it?”

  “Money flies even faster.”

  “So they tell me.” I dropped the report on the table between us without looking at it. “What about Mr. Satten?”

  He didn’t pick up the report.

  “Mr. Satten’s figures are interesting,” he said slowly. “They show that for the three-month period that we have been in business together, Mr. Bogen, our sales have not exceeded those of any three-month period during the past two years.”

  “If you’re trying to demonstrate to me that Mr. Satten is a good accountant, Mr. Yazdabian, you can spare yourself the trouble. I’ve heard of him before.”