I looked at the night watchman. “Is there anyone with Mr. Gordon?”
A faint flicker of a smile appeared on the man’s face. “His secretary came back with him.”
I nodded without replying. His smile had told me enough. If I knew anything, Sam’s secretary would be a good-looker, and Sam wouldn’t have changed.
I stepped out of the elevator and walked down the hall toward Sam’s office. His name was spelled out in impressive gold lettering across two large glass doors. I could see clear through into the reception room. A single light glowed there. The doors were unlocked.
There was a door near the receptionist’s desk in the lavishly furnished waiting-room. I opened it and found myself in a large general office. There were about twenty desks scattered through the room. On the far side of the room there was another door. I walked toward it.
Again the gold letters spelling out his name gleamed faintly at me in the dim light. I put my hand lightly on the knob and turned it. The door swung gently open. The office was dark. I put my hand out and found the light-switch on the right-hand wall. I pressed it and light poured into the room. There was a muttered curse as I blinked my eyes in the light, and I heard a faint, frightened woman’s cry. Then my eyes adjusted and I was staring down at her. I turned to Sam with a knowing smile. His face was flushed, almost purple. I didn’t speak, just backed out of the door, pulling it closed after me. I sat down in a chair just outside his office, lit a cigarette, and waited for him to come out. I had been right. Sam hadn’t changed a bit.
I had been waiting for almost fifteen minutes before the door opened again. I looked up expectantly.
I was disappointed. It wasn’t Sam who came out; it was the girl. From the way she looked, it was hard to believe that just a few minutes ago I had caught her rocking the cradle. She looked down at me. “Mr. Gordon will see you now,” she said formally.
I got to my feet. “Thank you.” I went into his office. I could hear the clatter of a typewriter begin as I closed the door behind me.
Sam was sitting behind his desk. “Yuh find yuh get better work from ’em if yuh relax ’em first?” I smiled.
He ignored my attempt at humour while he held a match to a cigar clamped in his teeth. The light flickered coldly in his eyes. At last he put the match down and stared at me. “What d’yuh want?” he barked.
I could feel a respect for him growing in me. He was tough. Not one word about my walking in on him. There was no use playing games with him. I walked up to his desk and looked down at him. “I need help,” I said simply. “I’m in trouble.”
The pupils of his eyes were hard and black. “Why come to me?” he asked.
“I got nobody else,” I said quietly.
He put the cigar down gently on an ashtray and stood up behind his desk. His voice was low, but it filled the office. “Blow, bum,” he said flatly. “You ain’t gettin’ no handouts from me.”
“I ain’t lookin’ for a handout,” I said desperately. “I’m in trouble an’ I need help.” I stood there stubbornly, staring at him. He wasn’t going to chase me this time.
He walked menacingly around the desk toward me. “Get out!” he snarled.
“For God’s sake, Sam, listen to me,” I pleaded. “Everything’s gone wrong! The cops are after me an’——”
His voice cut me off as if I hadn’t spoken. “Yuh’re no good!” he snapped, his flushed and angry face close to mine. “Yuh never been any good, yuh’ll never be any good! I done enough fer you. Get out before I throw you out!” He raised his fist.
I went cold and hard inside. There was only one language this guy understood. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you, Sam,” I said coldly, watching his hands. “You ain’t in condition.”
“I’ll show yuh who’s in condition!” he growled, swinging at me.
I picked off his blow with my forearm. “Remember your own lesson, Sam?” I taunted. “Snap—don’t swing like a ballet dancer!” I moved away from him without trying to return his blow.
He came after me, both arms swinging. But he was heavy on his feet and I kept away from him easily. One thing I could say in favour of my diet: I never got a chance to roll up the fat like he did. For a few minutes he kept up the chase. There was only the puffing sound of his breath breaking the silence of the office. At last he sank exhaustedly into his chair, breathing heavily.
I stood on the other side of his desk and looked at him. His face was flushed with the exertion, and perspiration was running down his heavy jowls. “Now will yuh listen to me, Sam?” I asked.
He picked up his cigar and stuck it in his mouth. He didn’t look at me. “Go away,” he said in a low, disgusted voice.
“I ain’t goin’ no place,” I said. “Yuh’re gonna help me.”
“I had enough of you,” he said, looking up at me wearily. “Ever since you were a kid you been puttin’ it over on me. Up in the country with Ceil, then in the Gloves that time you made a deal with Maxie Fields. How many times you think I’m gonna bite?”
He had a memory like an elephant. He didn’t forget anything. “This ain’t gonna cost you no dough,” I said. “All I need is a little help an’ a job till I can straighten things out.”
He shook his head. “I got no job for you. You ain’t trained for nothin’.”
“I can still fight,” I said.
“Uh-uh,” he answered. “Yuh’re too old to start in that. You been away too long. Yuh’ll never make a nickel as a pro.”
There was no arguing about that. Twenty-three was too old, especially after a six-year lay-off. “Then how about a job here?” I asked. “You got a big place.”
“No,” he answered flatly.
“Not even if I promise never to tell Mimi what I seen here tonight?” I asked.
I knew from the expression on his face I had scored. “She wouldn’t like that,” I followed up.
He sat there silently chewing on his cigar. I watched him patiently. This was the kind of language he could understand. I was through begging, through grovelling, through asking for anything. There was only one way to get along in this world: that was to take what you wanted. That was the way he operated in everything, and if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
His eyes were veiled and blank as he looked at me. “Still the same snot-nosed punk who thinks the world owes him a living, eh, Danny?” he asked coldly.
I shook my head. “Not the same, Sam,” I answered bitterly. “This is a new Danny Fisher yuh’re lookin’ at. I been through too much to ever be the same. I put in a year an’ a half on relief, crawlin’ on my belly in order to have enough to eat. This afternoon I socked a Welfare agent because he wanted to know where I got the dough to bury my child an’ he came after me with the cops. My wife is home sick an’ wonderin’ where I am. I’m not the same any more, Sam, I’ll never be the——”
There was a shocked sound in his voice. “What happened, Danny?”
“You heard me,” I answered, staring at him coldly. “I’ll never be the same. Now do you help me or do I tell Mimi what I saw?”
His gaze dropped to his desk and he stared at it for a moment. Then he spoke without looking up. “Okay, kid,” he said in a peculiarly gentle voice. “Yuh got me.”
Chapter Five
AS soon as I had pushed my way through the glass doors, the receptionist looked at me and smiled. “Good morning, Danny,” she said, shifting the wad of gum to a corner of her mouth. “The boss is lookin’ for you.”
“Thanks, baby.” I smiled back at her.
I went through the other door into the large office. Everybody was at work already. The quiet hum of business came to my ears. I walked through the office to my desk, in a corner of the room near a window. I sat down behind it and began looking through some papers stacked neatly in the in-coming basket on the desk.
I had been seated only a few minutes when a shadow fell across my desk. I looked up.
“Danny——” Kate started to say.
> I held up an interrupting hand. “I know, baby,” I said quickly. “The boss wants to see me.”
She nodded her head.
“Well, I’m here,” I told her.
“Then what’re you waitin’ for?” she snapped sarcastically. “An engraved invitation?” She turned on her heel and huffily went back to her desk.
Kate was an all-right kid even if I liked to tease her. I guess she wasn’t the first secretary that had ever been jumped by the boss, and she wasn’t going to be the last. But she had been edgy with me ever since the first time we met.
I smiled to myself as I thought about it. It was over three and a half years ago. A lot of things had happened in that time. A war was on. A lot of guys had gone away. But when the draft board got to me they found something I never knew I had: punctured eardrums. I was out—4F, a highly personalized kind of abbreviation of the four freedoms.
I shuffled through the papers on my desk again and found the one I wanted. As I got to my feet the phone on my desk rang and I picked it up.
It was Nellie, calling from the war plant on Long Island where she worked. “I forgot to tell you to take the laundry down to the Chink’s,” she said.
“I remembered, honey,” I said. She left early in the morning—six o’clock, before I woke. “How are things going out there?” I asked.
“Hot, Danny,” she answered. “It’s over ninety in the plant.”
“Why don’t yuh quit that dump?” I asked. “We don’t need the dough now. I’m makin’ out all right.”
Her voice was patient but firm. We had been through this before. “What else have I got to do?” she asked. “Stay home all day an’ go nuts? I’m better off out of the house. At least I keep busy this way.”
I knew better than to argue with her. Since Vickie had died, she had changed. I don’t know in just what way, but she had become more silent. Some of the starlight had gone out of her eyes.
“We eatin’ out tonight or home?” I asked.
“Out, I reckon, Danny.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at the house at six.”
I grinned at Kate as I opened Sam’s door. She made a face at me and bent down over her typewriter, her fingers flying. I smiled to myself as I went in the door. I think Kate liked me despite everything.
Sam looked up from his desk. “So yuh finally got here,” he growled.
I wasn’t worried about what he said. I knew that in the few years I had been here, I had learned enough to carry my weight. This was a tricky business, but it was for me. It was made up of the kind of intangibles that only a few guys could turn into money. Guys like Sam and me. And Sam knew it too. “If it wasn’t for the air-conditioning I wouldn’t have come in at all,” I said, dropping into a chair in front of his desk. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
Sam’s face flushed. He didn’t look good like that, he was packing too much weight. He had two double chins. He looked just like the Central Park South papa of three boys that he was. “Mimi says for me to ask you an’ Nellie up for dinner tonight,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Was that what all the fire was about?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said shortly. “I want yuh to come off that slot-machine grab.”
I stared at him. “What for?” I asked. “I thought you were hot for it.”
“I changed my mind,” he said gruffly. “The upkeep on them machines is murder. When they go, they go; that’s all there is to it. Yuh can’t get replacement parts or nothin’ on account a’ the war.”
“Is that the reason, Sam,” I asked, “or is it because I hear Maxie Fields is interested in them too?”
He flushed again. I wondered whether Sam was developing a high blood-pressure. He was at the dangerous age now. “I don’t give a damn about Maxie Fields!” he said. “It’s just I don’t like that racket. Give me a nice clean concession in a hotel or a night club. Checking, souvenirs, photographs—something with people running it. I can understand people; I can run ’em. But I can’t figger machines.”
“But I just spent a week casin’ this set-up,” I protested. “For fifteen grand it’s a steal.”
“So let Maxie steal it, then,” he snapped. “I ain’t interested. I ain’t goin’ for no kick I can’t savvy. Fifteen G’s is too much spec.”
I leaned forward. I thought Sam was missing a good thing. This was the first time I had ever really disagreed with him. “You’re missin’ the boat, Sam,” I said earnestly. “I been all through the set-up, an’ what they can do with these machines is real sky stuff. Post-war they’ll be sellin’ everything in those machines from hot coffee to condoms.”
“So let ’em,” he said definitely. I could see that his mind had been made up. “Right now all they’re good for is cigarettes and Coca-Cola and I ain’t buyin’.” He riffled through some papers on his desk. “I got somethin’ else for yuh to look at. The concessions at the Trask in Atlantic City are on the block. I want yuh to run down there an’ have a look-see.”
I stared at him for a moment. “You mean it about them vending-machines?” I asked.
“You heard me,” he said. “Now forget it an’——”
“I like it, Sam,” I said softly, the beginnings of an idea growing in my mind.
His gaze was sharp and penetrating. “So you like it,” he said sarcastically. “But it’s my dough an’ I say no dice. So be a good boy an’ stop hokkin’ me. Now, I——”
I interrupted him again. “I’d like to buy in, Sam,” I said.
He let out a deep breath. “Yuh got the dough?” he asked shrewdly.
I met his eyes across the desk. He knew as well as I that I didn’t have the dough. “Yuh know I can’t raise that kind’a money on the big seventy-five per you pay me.”
He grinned happily. He felt he was going to score. I knew the look. “But what about yer expense account on out-of-town trips? Yuh ever look at ’em? Yuh don’t think I know you grab a few bucks there?”
I grinned back at him. “You’re right about that, Sam,” I admitted. “It’s a few bucks, though. You never send me out with enough to make it a real take.”
“Then where yuh gonna get the dough?” Sam shot at me.
I thought for a minute. “I got about fifteen hundred dollars in our savings account. The bank ought to give me half the deal on a chattel mortgage. The rest I can get from you.”
Sam was on his feet. “From me?” he roared angrily. “What kinda stupe yuh think I am? What chance I got to collect from you?”
I looked at him calmly. “Yuh got my word.”
He sneered. “I sunk five grand once’t on your word. Yuh think I’d sucker for that again?”
I could feel my eyes grow cold. “That was a kid you bought, Sam. That wasn’t me; that was your grab outta a hat for glory. I never saw any of it. The only pay-off in it for me would have been a punchin’ around.”
His face was red. “Well, I ain’t buyin’,” he said flatly, sitting down behind his desk again.
My mind was made up. “But I am,” I said, “an’ you’re comin’ in after me.”
“What makes yuh think so?” he asked.
“Remember how I got my job here? Since then I been around. I never really knew how good you were until I ran into a certain little blonde dancer yuh got stashed in a hotel across town.”
I thought he’d burst a blood vessel. His face turned a heavy purplish colour. “How d’yuh know about her?” he managed to ask.
“I get around, Sam,” I smiled. “I’m a big boy now.”
He cleared his throat embarrassedly. His fingers picked up a pencil and toyed with it. “Yuh know how those things are, kid,” he said awkwardly, not looking at me. “I’m nuts about your sister, but she’s got a screwy idea that every time I come near her she’s knocked up. A guy’s gotta let off steam some place.”
“I’m not criticizing you, Sam,” I said tolerantly. “Maybe I’m even a little envious. But I don’t think Mimi could appreciate that. She�
��s an awful proud girl, you know.”
Sam stared at me, then relaxed in his seat. The rancour had gone from his voice. “Ain’t it enough, kid, I come through for yuh when yuh’re in trouble an’ got no place else to go? Ain’t it enough I keep yuh out of the can, go your bail, an’ square the rap against yuh, then give yuh a job to boot. Ain’t yuh satisfied?”
I got out of the chair and leaned across his desk. I meant every word I said. “I owe you more’n I owe anybody in the world, Sam. Believe me, I’m very grateful for everything you done. I don’t like havin’ to put the boot to yuh, anymore’n you do. But there’s more’n just a job to livin’ in this world. A guy’s gotta have a buck he can call his own. Yuh never get that on a job, Sam. There’s only one way yuh can get it. That’s go after the big buck for yourself. You found that out, the first year up in the country, an’ you did all right by yourself. Now I want a crack at it. Sure, I’m satisfied, but now I want a chance at the big buck for myself.”
He looked up into my eyes for a long moment; then a smile slowly spread across his face. He knew when he was licked. But it didn’t keep him from making one more try. “Supposin’ Fields tries to cut in on yuh?”
“He won’t,” I said confidently. “I found that out while I was checkin’ around for you. It’s not big enough for him.”
He leaned back in his chair and took out his cheque-book. “Okay, Danny,” he said in a quiet voice. “How much do yuh need?”
“Six grand,” I answered.
“For how long?”
“A year post-war,” I said quickly. “I’m not takin’ any chances.”
“But the war may go on ten years!” he exploded.
I was smiling. “If it does, then you’ll be out your dough. I figger these machines’ll hold up another three years. Then I ought to be able to get new ones.”
Sam was figuring. “Usual rates, Danny?” he asked shrewdly.
Usual rates in this business were usury—generally six for five. “Take it a little easy, Sam,” I said. “After all, it’s in the family.”
A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) Page 31