JC1 The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

  "But if the study David made is correct," Dan continued, "we won't be halfway through our first picture before we'll be unable to meet our weekly payroll. I don't know what got into Jonas. You can't make million-dollar pictures without money."

  "Who says we have to make million-dollar pictures?" David asked quietly.

  Suddenly, the whole pattern was very clear. Now he was beginning to understand what Jonas had done. At first, he had felt a disappointment at not being put in charge of the studio. He would have liked the title of President on his door. But Cord had cut through the whole business like a knife through butter. In reality, the studio was only a factory turning out the product of the company. Administration, sales and theaters were under his control and that was where the money came from. Money always dictated studio policy and he controlled the money.

  "For a million bucks, we can turn out ten pictures. And be taking in revenue from the first before the fifth goes into production."

  "Not me," Dan said quickly. "I haven't come this far in the business just to make quickies. That's for Republic or Monogram."

  "Columbia, Warners and RKO aren't too proud," David said, a new hardness coming into his voice.

  "Let them if they want to," Dan snapped. "I’ve got a reputation to maintain."

  "Don't give me that crap," David exploded. "The only thing this business respects is success. And they don't care how you get it so long as it adds up at the box office. The whole industry knows you maneuvered Cord into buying the company so you could become a producer. You won't have any reputation left if you walk out."

  "Who said anything about walking out?"

  David relaxed in his chair. A new feeling of power came over him. Now he understood why his Uncle Bernie had found it so difficult to let go. He shrugged his shoulders. "You heard what Cord said. If you won't do it, somebody else will."

  Pierce stared at him for a moment, then looked at McAllister. The attorney's face was impassive. "That's all very well for you to say," Pierce grumbled. "But while I’m out there getting my brains kicked in, what're you going to be doing?"

  "Seeing to it that we survive long enough for you to get your production program working," David answered.

  "How?" McAllister asked, an interested look coming over his face.

  "Tomorrow I'm laying off forty per cent of personnel throughout the company."

  "That's pretty drastic," McAllister said. "Will you be able to function under those conditions?"

  David watched the attorney's face. This was another kind of test. "We'll be able to function," he said quietly.

  "That's no way to make friends," Pierce injected.

  "I couldn't care less," David replied caustically. "I’m not trying to win a popularity contest. And that will be only the beginning. I don't care who gets hurt — the company is going to survive."

  For a moment, the attorney stared at him. Then David saw a frosty glimmer of a smile lurking deep in his eyes. McAllister turned to Dan. "What do you think?"

  Dan was smiling. "I think we'll make it. Why do you think Jonas wanted him to stick around?"

  McAllister reached into his brief case. "There's your contract," he said to David. "Jonas wants you to sign it tonight."

  David stared at the lawyer. "What about Dan?"

  McAllister smiled. "Dan signed his the day of the board meeting."

  For a moment, David felt anger climbing up inside him. The whole thing had been an act. They had put him through the wringer just to see what would happen. Then he drew in his breath. What difference did it make? He reached for the fountain pen the attorney held out toward him.

  This was only the beginning. They were still outsiders and it would be a long time before they knew as much about the company as he did. And by that time, it wouldn't matter any more.

  Once he signed the contract, he was in charge.

  * * *

  The connecting door between his room and his uncle's opened and light spilled through into the darkness. "Are you in there, David?"

  He sat up on the bed and swung his feet to the floor. He reached out and turned on the lamp next to the bed. "Yes, Uncle Bernie."

  Norman came into the room. "Nu?" he said. "You saw him?"

  David nodded, reaching for a cigarette. "I saw him." He lit the cigarette. "He looks terrible. Rina's death must have hit him pretty hard."

  The old man laughed. "Sorry for him I can't feel," he said bitterly. "Not after what he's done to me." He took a cigar from his pocket and stuck it into his mouth unlit. "He offered you a job, no?"

  David nodded.

  "What job?"

  "Executive vice-president."

  His uncle raised his eyebrows. "That so?" he asked interestedly. "Who's president?"

  "Dan Pierce. He's going to make the pictures. I'm to run everything else — administration, sales and theaters."

  The cigar bobbed up and down excitedly in the old man's mouth. A broad smile came over his face. "My boy, I'm proud of you." He clapped his hand on David's shoulder. "I always said someday you'd amount to something."

  David looked at his uncle in surprise. This wasn't the reaction he had expected. An accusation of betrayal would have been more like it. "You are?"

  "Of course I am," Bernie said enthusiastically. "What else did I expect of my own sister's son?"

  David stared up at him. "I thought— "

  "Thought?" the old man said, still smiling. "What difference does it make what you thought? Bygones is bygones. Now we can really put our heads together. I'll show you ways to make money you never dreamed about."

  "Make money?"

  "Sure," Bernie replied, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. "A goyishe kopf is always a goyishe kopf. With you in charge, who will know what's going on? Tomorrow, I'll let all the suppliers know the old deal is still on. Only now you get twenty-five per cent of the kickback."

  "Twenty-five per cent?"

  "What's the matter?" Bernie asked shrewdly. "Twenty-five per cent isn't enough for you?"

  David didn't answer.

  "So your Uncle Bernie ain't a chazer. All right. Fifty, then."

  David ground out his cigarette in the ash tray. He got to his feet and walked silently to the window. He looked down into the park across the street.

  "What's the matter?" his uncle said behind him. "Fifty-fifty ain't fair? You owe me something. If it wasn't for me, you'd never have got this job."

  David felt his bitterness rise up into his throat. He turned and looked at the old man. "I owe you something?" he said angrily. "Something for all those years you kept me hustling my tail off for a lousy three fifty a week? Every time I asked you for more money you cried about how much the company was losing. And all the time, you were siphoning off a million bucks a year into your own pocket."

  "That was different," the old man said. "You don't understand."

  David laughed. "I understand all right, Uncle Bernie. What I understand is that you've got fifteen million dollars free and clear. If you live to be a thousand, you couldn't spend all you've got. And still you want more."

  "So what's wrong with that?" Bernie demanded. "I worked for it. I'm entitled to it. You want I should let go everything just because some shlemiel screwed me out of my own business?"

  "Yes."

  "You take the side of that— that Nazi against your own flesh and blood?" the old man shrieked at him, his face flushing angrily.

  David stared at the old man. "I don't have to take sides, Uncle Bernie," he said quietly. "You yourself have admitted it's not your company any more."

  "But you're running the company."

  "That's right." David nodded. "I’m running the company. Not you."

  "Then you're keeping everything for yourself?" the old man said accusingly.

  David turned his back on his uncle, without speaking. For a moment, there was silence, then his uncle's voice. "You're even worse than him," Bernie said bitterly. "At least, he wasn't stealing from his own flesh and blood."
/>   "Leave me alone, Uncle Bernie," David said without turning around. "I'm tired. I want to get some sleep."

  He heard the old man's footsteps cross the room and the door slam angrily behind him. He leaned his head wearily against the side of the window. So that was why the old man hadn't gone back to California right after the meeting. He felt a lump come into his throat. He didn't know why but suddenly he felt like crying.

  The faint sound of a clanging bell came floating up to him from the street. He moved his head slightly, looking out of the window. The clanging grew louder as an ambulance turned west on to Fifty-ninth from Fifth Avenue. He turned and walked slowly from the window back into the room, the clanging growing fainter in his ears. All his life it had been like that, somehow.

  When he rode up front on the junk wagon, with his father sitting next to him on the hard wooden seat, it had seemed that was the only sound he'd ever heard. The clanging of a bell.

  2

  The cowbells suspended across the wagon behind him clanged lazily as the weary horse inched along through the pushcarts that lined both sides of Rivington Street. The oppressive summer heat beat down on his head. He let the reins lay idle in his fingers. There wasn't much you could do to guide the horse. It would pick its own way through the crowded street, moving automatically each time a space opened up.

  "Aiyee caash clothes!" His father's singsong call penetrated the sounds of the market street, lifting its message high to the windows of the tenements, naked, blind eyes staring out unseeing into the hungry world.

  "Aiyee caash clothes!"

  He looked down from the wagon to where his father was striding along the crowded sidewalk, his beard waving wildly as his eyes searched the windows for signs of business. There was a certain dignity about the old man — the broad-brimmed black beaver hat that had come from the old country; the long black coat that flapped around his ankles; the shirt with its heavily starched but slightly wilted wing collar; and the tie with the big knot resting just below his prominent Adam's apple. The face was pale and cool, not even a faint sign of perspiration dampened the brow, while David's was dripping with sweat. It seemed almost as if the heavy black clothing provided insulation against the heat.

  "Hey, Mister Junkman!"

  His father moved out into the gutter to get a better look. But it was David who saw her first — an old woman waving from the fifth-floor window. "It's Mrs. Saperstein, Pop."

  "You think I can't see?" his father asked, grumbling. "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Saperstein!"

  "Is that you, Mr. Woolf?" the woman called down.

  "Yes," the old man shouted. "What you got?"

  "Come up, I’ll show to you."

  "I don't want winter clothes," the old man shouted. "Who's to buy?"

  "Who said about winter clothes? Come up, you'll see!"

  "Tie the horse over there," his father said, pointing to an open space between two pushcarts. "Then come to carry down the stuff."

  David nodded as his father crossed the street and disappeared into the entrance of a house. He nudged the horse over and tied it to a fire hydrant. Then he slipped a feed bag over its weary muzzle and started after his father.

  He felt his way up through the dark, unlit hallway and staircase and stopped outside the door. He knocked. The door opened immediately. Mrs. Saperstein stood there, her long gray hair folded in coils on top of her head. "Come in, come in."

  David came into the kitchen and saw his father sitting at the table. In front of him was a plate filled with cookies. "A gluz tay, David?" the old woman asked, going to the stove.

  "No, thanks, Mrs. Saperstein," he answered politely.

  She took a small red can from the shelf over the stove, then carefully measured two teaspoonfuls of tea into the boiling water. The tea leaves immediately burst open and spun around madly on the surface. When she finally poured the tea into a glass through a strainer and set it in front of his father, it was almost as black as coffee.

  His father picked up a lump of sugar from the bowl and placed it between his lips, then sipped the tea. After he swallowed the first scalding mouthful, he opened his mouth and said, "Ah!"

  "Good, isn't it?" Mrs. Saperstein was smiling. "That's real tea. Swee-Touch-Nee. Like in the old country. Not like the chazerai they try to sell you here."

  His father nodded and lifted the glass again. When he put it back on the table, it was empty and the polite formalities were over. Now it was time to attend to business. "Nu, Mrs. Saperstein?"

  But Mrs. Saperstein wasn't quite ready to talk business yet. She looked over at David. "Such a nice boy, your David," she said conversationally. "He reminds me of my Howard at his age." She picked up the plate of cookies and held it toward him. "Take one," she urged. "I baked myself."

  David took a cooky and put it in his mouth. It was hard and dry and crumbled into little pieces. "Take another," she urged. "You look thin, you should eat."

  David shook his head.

  "Mrs. Saperstein," his father said. "I’m a busy man, it's late. You got something for me?"

  The old woman nodded. "Kim shayn."

  They followed her through the narrow railroad flat. Inside one room, on the bed, were a number of men's suits, some dresses, shirts, one overcoat and, in paper bags, several pairs of shoes.

  David's father walked over and picked up some of the clothing. "Winter clothing," he said accusingly. "For this I came up four flights of stairs?"

  "Like new, Mr. Woolf," the old woman said. "My son Howard and his wife. Only one season. They were going to give to the Salvation Army but I made them send to me."

  David's father didn't answer. He was sorting out the clothing rapidly.

  "My son Howard lives in the Bronx," she said proudly. "In a new house on Grand Concourse. A doctor."

  "Two dollars for the ganse gesheft," his father announced.

  "Mr. Woolf," she exclaimed. "At least twenty dollars this is worth."

  He shrugged. "The only reason I’m buying is to give to HIAS. Better the Salvation Army don't get."

  David listened to their bargaining with only half a mind. HIAS was the abbreviation that stood for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His father's statement didn't impress him one bit. He knew the clothing would never find its way there. Instead, after it was carefully brushed and cleaned by his mother, it would turn up in the windows of the secondhand clothing stores along the lower Bowery and East Broadway.

  "Ten dollars," Mrs. Saperstein was saying. The pretense was gone now; she was bargaining in earnest. "Less I wouldn't take. Otherwise, it wouldn't pay my son Howard to bring it down. It costs him gas from the Bronx."

  "Five dollars. Not one penny more."

  "Six," the old woman said, looking at him shrewdly. "At least, the gasoline money he should get."

  "The subways are still running," David's father said. "I should pay because your son is a big shot with an automobile?"

  "Five fifty," the old woman said.

  David's father looked at her. Then he shrugged his shoulders and reached under his long black coat. He took out a purse, tied to his belt by a long black shoestring, and opened it. "Five fifty," he sighed. "But as heaven is watching, I'm losing money."

  He gestured to David and began counting the money out into the old woman's hand. David rolled all the clothing into the overcoat and tied it by the sleeves. He hefted the clothing onto his shoulder and started down the stairs. He tossed the bundle of clothing up into the cart and moved around to the front of the wagon. He lifted the feed bag from the horse, and untying the reins from the hydrant, climbed on the wagon.

  "Hey, Davy!"

  He looked down at the sidewalk. A tall boy stood there looking up at him and smiling. "I been lookin' for yuh all day."

  "We been in Brooklyn," David answered. "My father will be here in a minute."

  "I’ll make it quick, then. Shocky'll cut yuh in for ten bucks if yuh bring the horse an' wagon tonight. We got to move a load uptown."

  "But it's Friday night."
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br />   "That's why. The streets down here will be empty. There won't be nobody to wonder what we're doin' out at night. An' the cops won't bother us when they see the junky's license on the wagon."

  "I'll try," David said. "What time, Needlenose?"

  "Nine o'clock back of Shocky's garage. Here comes your ol' man. See yuh later."

  "Who were you talking to?" his father asked.

  "One of the fellers, Pop."

  "Isidore Schwartz?"

  "Yeah, it was Needlenose."

  "Keep away from him, David," his father said harshly. "Him we don't need. A bum. A nogoodnik. Like all those other bums that hang around Shocky's garage. They steal everything they can get their hands on."

  David nodded.

  Take the horse to the stable. I’m going to the shul. Tell Mama by seven o'clock she should have supper ready."

  * * *

  Esther Woolf stood in front of the Shabbas nacht lichten, the prayer shawl covering her head. The candles flickered into yellow flame as she held the long wooden match to them. Carefully she blew out the match and put it down in a plate on the small buffet table. She waited until the flame ripened into a bright white glow, then began to pray.

  First, she prayed for her son, her shaine Duvidele, who came so late in life, almost when she and her husband, Chaim, had given up hope of being blessed. Then she prayed that Jehovah would give her husband, Chaim, a greater will to succeed, at the same time begging the Lord's forgiveness because it was the Lord's work at the shul that kept her husband from his own. Then, as always, she took upon herself the sin for having turned Chaim away from his chosen work.

  He had been a Talmudical student when they'd first met in the old country. She remembered him as he was then, young and thin and pale, with the first soft curl of his dark beard shining with a red-gold glint. His eyes had been dark and luminous as he sat at the table in her father's house, dipping the small piece of cake into the wine, more than holding his own with the old rabbi and the elders.

  But when they'd been married, Chaim had gone to work in her father's business. Then the pogroms began and the faces of Jews became thin and haunted. They left their homes only under the cover of night, hurrying about like little animals of the forest. Or they sat huddled in the cellars of their houses, the doors and windows barred and locked, like chickens trying to hide to the pen when they sense the approach of the shochet.