Button Man

by Andrew Gross

  When they were finished, Leo said, “That’s it, Mr. Raab. Okay, for me and Tommy to leave?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. Take off,” Harry said. “I’m just gonna count it and make double sure it matches up to the picking tickets one more time.”

  “You’re sure? Mr. Morris would be okay?”

  “Don’t you worry, boys. Enjoy your night.” Harry waved them off.

  “See you tomorrow then, Mr. H.”

  Harry liked it when they called him that. The warehouse men left and Harry took the picking tickets and started double-checking the shipment at the front rack. L. S. Ayres. Indianapolis, Indiana. Store 1. Style 2510. In navy. The sizes ranged from small to extra-large: 1-1-2-1.

  It all matched up perfectly.

  He went on to style 2521. Size range, the same. He counted one by one. It checked as well.

  He proceeded to Store 2.…

  Suddenly he heard the freight elevator clatter to a stop on his floor. Harry jumped. Everyone in the firm was on pins and needles these days. He had thought about going to see some of his old friends just to ask them to lay off. Just for old times. But things had gone too far with the men upstairs who actually called the shots for him to have any sway. Still, his time with them all had to count for something, right?

  But he stood with his brothers now.

  He looked out, and to his relief, it was only Silvio, who shuffled out of the elevator in his khaki uniform. He peered through the grating in the gate and saw Harry, the warehouse lights still on, and gave him a wave. “Just checking who’s around. I saw the lights outside.”

  “I’ll be staying.” Harry waved back at him. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, then, have a good night. And let me know if you need some coffee. I got some brewing down there.”

  “I will.”

  Silvio went back in the elevator and pulled the metal cage door down. It clattered loudly as the doors came together, heading back down to the basement.

  Quarter to eight now. Harry went back to checking the count for tomorrow’s shipment. It took another twenty minutes. Six hundred and twenty units between the two stores.

  When he was satisfied, he shut the cage door to the warehouse and made sure the padlock was locked. Then he went down to the second floor, where the offices and factory floor were located. He thought he’d just run out and grab a quick dinner from the automat on Thirty-fourth Street and take it back up. He’d only be gone a few minutes and there was that off-duty cop they’d hired on guard at the door. They had a roast turkey and mashed potatoes special, Tuesdays, and a honey cake that reminded Harry of the lekach his mother made back on Cherry Street.

  He was salivating.

  He looked at his watch—eight fifteen now—and threw on his coat and hat. Everything was calm and secure. He wished he could sneak out tonight, just for a couple of hours. The Furillo-Rosen fight was at the Garden. Lennie Rosen was the middleweight making every Jew proud—18 and 0. Maybe two fights now from the title. Not that he had a ticket or anything, and it would definitely be a packed house. In the old days he would have surely been handed one, likely in the first couple of rows—“Here, Harry, enjoy the fight”—just for picking up the tab of one of the big shots at The Green Parrot.

  But not now.

  He took his key and went up front to make sure the alarm was set and to double-check the outside door, just like Morris had told him.

  He’d only be gone a minute.

  As he flicked off the lights, the phone rang. One ring, then two. For a second Harry thought about not picking up. Then he thought it was probably Morris, or Sol, checking in on him. He had to show them he could handle things without them peering over his shoulder. But if he didn’t answer they’d only be nervous. Hell, knowing them, they’d probably still be nervous after he’d been there twenty years.

  He went to the phone at the front desk and picked up. He was actually glad they would hear his voice here, taking care of things. “Raab Brothers…,” he answered, expecting to hear one of them.

  But it wasn’t.

  “Hey, Harry, glad I caught you,” the familiar voice said. “It’s been a while.”

  It made his heart come to a stop, a torrent cascading back over him, a torrent of the past, a dark part of him he thought he’d put aside.

  “Hey, Mendy…”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I knew from the start I should’ve gone back and checked on him.

  At eight thirty, the dinner over, I toyed with the thought of going back. Making sure Harry had done what I’d told him.

  But at some point, another voice said I had to learn to trust him. Give him some room; he was doing a good job. That’s what Sol told me I had to do. Harry was working hard, handling the warehouse and the receiving department just fine. Like he’d been there from the start. Even Leo seemed to have taken to him. And it seemed he had broken off with his old friends. At least he hadn’t mentioned them in months.

  He was a Raab brother now. Which made me happy. So let him act like one, I reasoned. Besides, we’d stationed a guard at the front entrance. An off-duty cop who’d been vouched for by Irv. He seemed like a stand-up guy. And I hadn’t seen Sammy for days now. Besides, Ruthie would love that I’d snuck home unexpectedly. We hadn’t had an hour for each other in a week.

  She’d love it even more that it was Harry who was holding down the fort.

  So instead I hailed a cab. “Ninety-third and West End,” I said to the driver.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Officer John McGuire braced himself against the chill. It was one of those raw October nights that felt more like the dead of winter, the wind whipping off the Hudson. He’d been in the department for three years now, married to his sweetheart for the past two, with a little one on the way. And had a record that was clean as a whistle. He’d never had as much as a dollar bill put in his hand to look the other way. So when the sarge said some people were looking for after-hours help and pretty much just to stand around, McGuire was quick to raise his hand. Three nights a week. Ten bucks a shift. And it was only for a week or two, he told his wife, Sarah. Who couldn’t use a little extra cash?

  The homeless guy who shared the stoop was huddled in a threadbare coat, muttering to himself. It was after eight, and everyone had gone home. He’d waved good-bye to the last of the Raab Brothers employees about an hour ago. He’d told John he’d be back to check on things in a couple of hours.

  But standing there, virtually alone on the darkened street, the wind knifing through his bones and only the occasional cab going by, McGuire decided it wasn’t worth it, no matter how much it paid. Spending eight hours in the cold. Away from his wife. After a long shift of his own. Catching a couple of hours’ sleep before his next one. He’d fill out the week, what he said he’d cover. Then he was done. He put his hands in his pockets and bobbed up and down on his toes. Must be forty tonight. He checked his watch—six hours to go—then watched as a dark sedan slowly inched its way down the street.

  You hear that, Sarah. Don’t be mad at me. Come Friday, done.

  McGuire kept an eye on the car, figuring it would head on to the light on Sixth, but it stopped, virtually in front of his building, and he stood there, watching it for a minute, wondering if the driver was lost or something. The windows were dark; it was hard to see inside. What did they want here? There were no businesses open other than the Irish bar across the street, where McGuire wished he could be right now, with a hot Irish coffee. Then—

  The front passenger’s door opened. A man in a gray coat and hat pulled down over his eyes stepped out.

  He had his hands in his pockets and came up to him slowly, as if he was about to ask him directions. He seemed to check both ways down the street, then, satisfied, looked up at McGuire. What he said sent a tremor down his spine.

  “You’re an off-duty cop, right?”

  McGuire wasn’t sure how to answer. He put a hand inside his peacoat, searching for the handle of his gun. “Who the hell are you?
”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m just someone passing the time of day. What’s your name, son?”

  “Why don’t you be smart and just move on?”

  “No matter. I already know your name. It’s McGuire, right? Officer John McGuire.”

  McGuire’s eye roamed to the car’s rear passenger window, rolling down.

  He took a firm grip on his gun.

  The man in the coat and hat stepped closer. McGuire had been told what he might expect, but he also knew that the last thing Lepke or anyone in that kind of business wanted was to take down a cop.

  “So here’s how it’s gonna go, Johnnie.” The man took his hand out of his coat. “I can hand you this envelope, which contains two thousand dollars, and you can go take a leak in that bar across the street. A nice, long one. Say twenty minutes. Or I can nod to my friend in the car back there and he can put about a dozen holes in your chest in the next ten seconds.”

  The dark muzzle of a gun appeared in the window, a machine gun.

  McGuire sucked in a breath.

  “So that’s the choice, Johnnie-boy. What do you think? Seems like an easy one to me. Take a twenty-minute leak with two grand in your pocket that no one will ever know about. That’s what, at your level on the force, Johnnie, close to six months’ pay? Or, make your little lady a widow. But you gotta make it now, son.” The man took another step and held the envelope out to him. “You choose.”

  Even in the brisk night air, a stream of cold sweat poured down McGuire’s neck. His dad was a cop and his dad before him had been one. He’d never taken as much as a dime, swore he never would. And he didn’t want to start now.

  “Time’s a-ticking, Johnnie.” The man glanced behind and McGuire saw the dark barrel protrude from the rear window and heard the bolt of the machine gun click. “We can’t stand out here in the cold all night.”

  “Gimme the cash.” McGuire nodded anxiously.

  “Wise choice, Johnnie-boy.” The man grinned, and put the envelope into the young cop’s sweaty hand. “Relax, Officer, your job’s done for the night. Now take a hike. And remember, you have any sudden regrets about this—and you never know when that sort of information comes our way—you and that pretty wife of yours will be lying beside each other at Coleman’s Funeral Hall on Dicker Avenue, instead of having that baby. Understand?”

  McGuire swallowed and nodded. “I understand.”

  “Now go take that leak like I said and come back in say, twenty minutes, okay…?”

  The young cop stuffed the envelope in his coat pocket. Without even glancing at the car or its license plates, he hurried across the street.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The phone was ringing.

  Morris clawed out of sleep and reached across to the night table to pick it up. At twenty past twelve in the morning, whatever it was couldn’t be good news.

  “Morris, it’s me,” his brother Sol said. Sol’s home number was listed as the first to call in the case of an emergency at the office.

  Morris was alert in seconds. “What’s happened?”

  “Bad news. They torched the warehouse, Morris. The fire department is there now. I called Harry. He’s blithering like an idiot, going over and over that he locked up properly; that when he left everything was fine.”

  “Left…?”

  “Morris, listen, everything there, it’s all up in flames. I don’t know how much is salvageable. The fire department’s putting it out now.”

  “Sol, we have over half a year’s inventory in that warehouse,” Morris said. The racks were jammed to the rafters.

  He heard Sol blow out a sobering breath. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” Morris hung up, staring blankly, Ruthie sitting up now. The consequences, what this all meant, came crystal clear to him. September and October, everything they had was in that warehouse. Every bit of cash. Every note to their factors. Every IOU. Tied up in finished stock.

  Harry left?

  Ruthie looked over, seeing Morris’s expression. “Morris, tell me.”

  “It’s our warehouse.” He swallowed, the taste bitter and warm. “Someone torched it. Everything’s up in flames.”

  “Oh, Morris.” She grasped his arm.

  He jumped out of bed and grabbed his slacks, which were hanging over a chair. “I’ve got to get over there, Ruthie.”

  * * *

  It took him a little over twenty minutes, having a little trouble hailing a cab at that time of night. The sight of flames leaping out of their fourth-floor window made his stomach turn, and he felt as helpless and empty as he’d ever felt in his life.

  Sol was in front of the building, looking up, his hands in his pockets. “We’re ruined, Morris.”

  At 2:30 A.M., when the fire department had finally extinguished the blaze, they walked around the smoking third-floor warehouse area, inspecting the damage.

  He didn’t need some fancy accountant to tell him how things stood. This was their biggest season in business to date, and most of what they’d hoped to ship in the next forty-five days was hanging on those racks, now either charred or drenched, but in either result, not worth the hangers they were hanging on. Whatever wasn’t up in flames, the soot and heavy smoke had ruined them just the same.

  “We’ve got insurance,” Morris said to Sol.

  “It might cover the property damage,” Sol nodded, “and rebuild the offices. But all the inventory, where all our cash was, and all our orders to be filled—it’ll only cover a fraction of what that was worth.”

  Even with their success, they were a small company and everything was still run hand to mouth. The kinds of handwritten ledgers they kept gave no idea of the true cost of each garment, exactly how much fabric they had in inventory, all the money sunk into fur collars and trim.

  But it was even deeper than that. Morris saw it in the sobering resignation stamped on his brother’s face as he scanned what remained of their business. The real loss was all the orders that would not be filled. Orders they had borrowed against with their lenders. Inventory they couldn’t properly account for. The work staff, who they wouldn’t be able to pay. Debts that would surely be called in.

  “Is there any way we’re not finished?” Morris said.

  For the first time he could ever remember, he didn’t see light-bulbs of reason trying to make sense of things in his brother’s eyes. Instead they were dim, smoldering, barely flickering. Beaten. And Morris thought he saw something else in them.

  They were tired. Tired of the constant climb. Tired of fighting.

  “There’s no way,” Sol said, rubbing his face. “You know how it works better than me. Our factors have advanced our working capital against our orders. Now we can’t fill them. They’re going to be calling in that money, Morris.”

  “I can call in favors too. If we can get the goods, we can turn around production pretty quick.”

  “A fraction, maybe. And even if we were able to remanufacture a share of it, we’d miss our shipping windows. You know as well as I do, the stores will go out and fill them from someone else. You think we’re the only company making fur-trimmed coats? But it’s worse than that, Morris. Our whole payroll was wrapped up in that stock.” He looked over the rows and rows of singed, dripping coats. “You have any money in the bank?”

  Morris nodded. “Some.”

  “Me too. I guess we could put that up against what we owe. The factors might take it and settle. That might keep us in business. We’d be broke. We’d be a shadow of what we were. And who’s going to keep the plant in Kingston going? They rely on us. It might be best to go into receivership. Our factors may advance us something, against our reputation, to recoup their debt.”

  “Receivership?”

  “It’s the coat business, Morris. You miss your shipping window, your stock’s worth sixty cents on the dollar the next day. A month from now, half. That stock was our company’s blood, Morris. Raab Brothers was just the name on the door. Everything we had was
wrapped up in it.”

  Their whole dream was crashing down on them in those smoldering embers; it might as well have been their building that had collapsed. Or one of them harmed. “It’s my fault,” Morris said. He drew in a deep breath and gravely shook his head. “I pushed them too far.”

  “Maybe we did.” Morris’s older brother looked at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “There’ll be time for all that later. Truth is…” he forced a thin smile, “we’re likely no worse off than if we had signed that union contract in the first place. Only we got here quicker. And we can’t take a dime out.”

  Morris looked over at Harry, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, ashen. “We were fools to trust him, Sollie.”

  “Go easy on him, Morris. The guy’s a mess.”

  “Go easy on him? He was supposed to stay here.”

  “He’s our brother, Morris. He realizes he screwed up.”

  The fire lieutenant whose team had fought the blaze came over, and a police captain, named Burns. “I’m Lieutenant Cade,” the fireman, in a dark blue uniform and a white cap, said. He put out his hand.

  “Thanks for what you could do,” Morris said.

  “A real shame…” The captain took off his cap and ran a hand through his white hair. “My sympathies. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  “Seen what?” Morris looked at him, detecting a tone of falseness in the man’s sympathy.