by Orrie Hitt
You keep right on selling a sucker. You never let up, not even after you’ve gotten the money. When you start your campaign you do it subtly, and always through a relative or friend. You never directly hit the sucker first. With the sucker you’re always light and gay about things. If he has a daughter like Sally you put the prong in that way. You let her in on the phone bills, the help and once in a while you give a check that bounces. Eventually the sucker gets the story and because you’ve stayed away from him with your troubles he takes on a new respect for you. Pretty soon he gives you an offer for help. You tell him, thanks, you’ll think it over. You think it over and decide how far up the lollypop he’ll go. Once in a while you get a guy like Grafton, a guy who swallows it stick and all.
“Well, it’s for a good cause,” Grafton said, as I got up to go. “As you suggested, Mr. Fulton, this just means I’m acting as banker for the League. As they sell the books they’ll pay me for them. By the time the books are all gone the League will have a nice profit and I’ll have my money back.”
“That with the fifteen hundred I turned over to them ought to do a nice job,” I agreed. I smiled. “It’s a start, anyway.”
He held out his hand.
“It’s been nice knowing you, Mr. Fulton.”
“The pleasure’s been mine.”
Six grand worth of pleasure, I thought. Six grand and he could have those six thousand damned books. When the League went out to sell the books from door to door they’d think the books we had sold had had litile books. Naturally, they wouldn’t be aware of the fact that we had sold twenty-seven hundred more books than we’d reported and if they felt like checking it they’d all be dead before they finished the job.
“Your truck picked up the books this morning,” I told Grafton. “The count was correct.”
He walked with me to the door.
“Where are you going from here, Mr. Fulton?”
“I don’t know.”
He winked at me.
“But no more books?”
I grinned.
“No more books. I almost took a bath on this one.”
“Let me hear from you,” he said. He gave me his card. “And stop out and say goodbye to Sally and Mrs. Grafton.”
I left the office and drove back downtown. I took the check into the bank, depositing it to my account, and told the guy at the window I might be sending for it by draft.
“We’re always at your service,” he said.
I started away from the window and then went back. I’d almost forgotten the number-one rule. You always cry.
“I wish all that dough was mine,” I told him. “Or I wish I was a printer. The printers make all the money.”
He smiled and I walked away. I’d made my point. If Grafton ever wondered why I had so much money in the bank he’d get the story without any trouble at all. Hell, it’s not Fulton’s money, he’d be told; it’s the printer’s money. Why, the poor slob acted like he didn’t have a dime to his name, or two nickels to make change for it.
To hell with them, I thought. To hell with the dizzy bastards. They wanted those books, so they got their books. So who had time to cry over that?
I went down the street and into a liquor store, got a couple of fifths and returned to the car.
I drove over toward the South Side, wondering if Al would get to town for the party in Madeline’s apartment or if I’d have to mail his check to his home in Scranton.
And I wondered something else, too.
I wondered if I should tell them that this was the last pitch, that I was sick of it, or if I shouldn’t tell them anything, not even see them and just keep on driving.
I turned off Center Street, cut over to Waymart and headed for the South Side. I couldn’t do a thing like that, not to Al and Madeline. Well, maybe to Al but not to Madeline. After all, this was the end of another deal and Madeline always gave me a present when we finished a deal. Sometimes she cried and sometimes she didn’t.
Once, a long time ago, we had both cried.
Read more of Pushover
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Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-3980-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3980-0
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