The Shark-Infested Custard

by Charles Willeford

  “No, Ed, I won’t get caught. I’m going to work on this plan, get it all together, and with your help, pull it off.”

  “You can count on me, Don.”

  Eddie was genuinely happy to see Don’s face so animated, with his dark eyes shining and wearing the superior elevated smile of the blind. It had been a long time since he had seen such an exultant look on Don’s face. Of course, he had no intention of helping Don rob his own company, but it didn’t hurt to let Don think that he would. Look how happy it made Don now. The present is all a man has anyway, and Eddie had managed to make Don feel good three times today already. First, by taking him out of his dreary office for a flight to Fort Myers; second, by telling Don about his promotion; and third, by giving Don the impression that he would help him in his foolish plan to steal $20,000 worth of silverware from his company.

  They ordered desserts and coffee. Eddie got the apple pie, and Don asked for strawberry jello. Unable to eat the tough crust, Eddie merely ate the apple-and-cornstarch filling as he watched Don put away all of the rubbery jello. It was the worst lunch Eddie had had in months.

  On the flight back to Opa-Locka, Eddie skimmed along at 200 feet in an effort to make the trip more exciting for Don. But Don was no longer interested in looking out the window. Smiling, he spent most of the flight in jotting notes and writing down figures in his black leather notebook with a silver ballpoint.

  After promising each other that they would get together very soon, they parted at the Opa-Locka airport at two p.m.

  29

  When Eddie left the Opa-Locka airport, after settling his bill for the rental of the plane, he drove directly to Mel’s Foreign Car Exchange on West Flagler, and sold his M.G. to Mel for the prearranged price. The sum wasn’t as much as he could have gotten for the car on a trade-in, but it was above the book price and more than he had expected to get. The forty thousand miles on the M.G. were very hard miles, but Mel didn’t know that.

  “Look, Mel,” Eddie said, after he signed the papers and got his check. “If I’d taken the radio out before I brought in the M.G., would you have knocked anything off the purchase?”

  “Of course not. But what good is a car radio without a car?”

  “It’s worth thirty or forty bucks, isn’t it?”

  “If you could find someone to buy it, I suppose. But a car is expected to have a radio in it.”

  Eddie grinned. “I’m trying to make a point. If the radio’s worth thirty bucks, let’s say, and I gave it to you free, absolutely free, you ought to have one of your salesman give me a free ride home. A cab from here to Miami Springs’ll run five or six bucks.”

  “Sure,” Mel laughed, “you cheap bastard. I’ll run you home myself. You’ve been a good customer, Eddie. I’ll even let you take the radio.”

  “I don’t want the fucking radio,” Eddie said, grinning, “I just want a ride home.”

  Gladys Wilson’s house, set on a jungly one-acre lot, prompted Mel to whistle when he turned into the semi-circular pebbled driveway and stopped in front of the copper-screened porch.

  “You airline drivers live pretty high,” Mel said.

  “It’s only got three bedrooms,” Eddie shrugged. “It just looks big because of the screened pool and the way the garden sections are separated.”

  “Right,” Mel grinned. “One full acre of deception.”

  The two men shook hands and Eddie thanked Mel for the ride.

  Eddie still had plenty of time, and he took it in packing. If possible, he wanted to get everything into his old U.S.A.F. valpack, and that took careful planning and arrangement. The two new, unworn tailormade suits presented him with a dilemma. Gladys, on several occasions, had wanted to take him to a tailor for some suits and jackets, but he had always refused. She had then, without his knowledge, taken his oldest uniform, his favorite, to a tailor, and had the two suits—a blue gabardine, and a dark gray whipcord—made from the uniform measurements. It had taken three weeks. Every time Eddie had wanted to wear the uniform she had told him it was at the cleaners and that she had forgotten to pick it up. The tailor had taken the uniform apart to make his measurements, but when he sewed it back together again the worn material had ripped under the arms. The uniform had only been good for another month or so of wearing anyway, but Eddie had raised hell with Gladys. He was irritated by the gift of the suits, not by the destruction of the old uniform (he had three other uniforms), and he hadn’t even tried on the new suits. He decided now to take them. After all, they were tailored for him, he would need some suits in Chicago, and if he didn’t take them, what would Gladys do with them?

  There wasn’t too much to pack after he got his uniforms and the two suits arranged in the valpack. His shirts, his jeans, and extra black silk socks went into the outside pockets with a little squeezing. He had his dark blue melton-cloth bathrobe and two pairs of black flight boots left over, however, and he had to put these into a brown paper grocery bag. His other personal possessions, what little he had, including his banjo and his Vietnam souvenirs, were still stored at his mother’s house in Lauderdale. He could send for that stuff later, after he was settled.

  Finished, he mixed a light scotch and water, with one ice cube, and took the drink into the living room. There was a color photo of Gladys in a silver frame on the Yamaha grand piano, and he deliberated, as he sipped his drink, whether to take it, too. The photo was his, Gladys had given it to him, and he had bought the expensive frame himself. It was an arty photo, self-consciously posed. Gladys, with her coal black hair tossed back, and smiling with her teeth exposed, reminded Eddie of a Gypsy. It’s the looped gold earrings, he thought. But no one, he concluded, could tell from the photograph that her lower front teeth, the entire row, was a removable plate.

  Eddie knew, from experience, if he didn’t see Gladys for a couple of years, in person, her face would gradually fade from his memory. He would always remember what she looked like, of course, but not exactly, and perhaps that was the better way. The photo was several years old already, and she didn’t look that fresh even now, so there was really no point in taking the photo with him. Gladys wouldn’t live alone for long, and she could give the photo, with the expensive silver frame, to her next lover. If she could find him, she could find someone else.

  Eddie had removed his leather jacket while he packed, but now he found himself shivering. He checked the thermostat. Sixty-five degrees. Jesus. He moved the needle up to 75 degrees, and slipped his jacket on again. He unpinned his inside pocket, and took out his savings and loan company passbook. $73,583.14. He had gone down the day before to draw out the money and to get a cashier’s check, but the teller reminded him that there was another dividend due in ten days, and he would lose the interest if he took the money out before that date. So Eddie had decided not to withdraw his savings. But he would have to eventually, after he found a better way to invest the money. He should be getting better than five and three-quarter percent interest on that much money, but he had been too lazy, or too cautious, in looking around for a better investment. But he still didn’t need any money at the moment. There were still two paychecks in Chicago that he hadn’t picked up and cashed. Perhaps it would be best just to leave the $73,000 in Miami until the sum built up to $100,000 or so, and start over with a savings account in Schiller Park. His savings would build up—eventually—in a few years, and he wouldn’t have to worry about checking on investments. He returned the passbook to his inside pocket, and refastened the safety pin.

  Eddie looked forward to seeing Hank again. Old Hank would certainly be surprised to see him in his apartment when he got home to Schiller Park, but Eddie felt bad about leaving Don all alone in Miami.

  He took Don’s business card out of his wallet, and telephoned Don’s office.

  “Miss Peralta,” he said, when the secretary answered the phone, “this is Captain Eddie Miller—from this morning, remember? I’ve got a message for Mr. Luchessi. Have you got a pencil? Good. Tell him that I’ve been transferred
unexpectedly to Chicago. Yes. Chicago. That’s right. I’m going to be flying from Chicago to Seattle now, and the airline wants me to make Chicago my home base. That’s right. Anyway, I’ll be staying with Mr. Norton in Schiller Park. Mr. Luchessi has his address and phone number. I’m sure he has it, so there’s no use in me giving it to you again. I’ll write or call him from there about the business deal we discussed today. Okay? You’re a good girl, Miss Peralta, and you take good care of your boss, d’you hear? Thank you. And good luck to you.”

  He racked the phone. That was that. If Don called him in Chicago, and really bugged him about the stupid plan to rob his company and use the plane and so on, he would offer to lend Don $10,000—at eight percent interest. Don would be good for it, in time, and eight percent interest would be a lot better than the five and three-quarters he was getting from the savings and loan company. Even if Don only paid him back at the rate of $108.00 a month, he would get the $10,000 back eventually, and anyone, nowadays, could scape up $108 a month. He had a hunch, however, that Don would stay put right where he was—in his dead-end $30,000-a year job, In the long run, even living with Clara, Don would be better off. Besides, some people are born, or programmed, to be unhappy. Like Don. Like Gladys Wilson. Like his widowed mother.

  Eddie took out the report on Gladys Wilson’s handbag that Hank had sent to him, mixed another scotch and water, and then put the lp soundtrack album of 2001: A Space Odyssey on the hi-fi record player before settling down to read.

  He read the report twice, chuckling at the same place both times. Hank, when he wanted to, could be funnier than hell. But Hank’s report had saved him from a painful task. Eddie hated to write letters, and he had been putting off writing a letter to Gladys telling her that he was leaving and wouldn’t be seeing her again. There was no good way to write such a letter anyway, but now, all he had to do was to leave Hank’s report on the coffee table, and Gladys could read that instead of a farewell letter from him.

  Pleased with this tidy solution, Eddie called a cab and took his valpack and bulging paper sack out to the front porch. He re-entered the house, took the house keys and the extra keys to Gladys’ Cadillac off his ring, and put them on top of the report. When Gladys read the report, she would probably have a hot flash, Eddie thought. He thoughtfully re-set the thermostat to fifty degrees, and went outside to sit in the afternoon sun and wait for the cab that would take him to the Miami International Airport.

  30

  In 1967, puzzled by the static state of their sales in the United States in a time of burgeoning prosperity, the board of directors, of Gunnersbury Silversmiths, Ltd., engaged the Reinsberg Research Institute, in Baltimore, Maryland, to make a national survey. In addition to fifteen pounds of unwieldy computer printout sheets filled with binary statistics, the board received a report of twenty-four single-spaced typed pages outlining a few valid and several specious suggestions based upon the statistics.

  A conservative firm, but a practical one, the board acted somewhat reluctantly on some of the suggestions with, of course, its own modifications. As a consequence, Gunnersbury Silversmiths’ silver flatware sales, by the end of 1969, rose almost twenty percent in the United States.

  Young American couples did not, the Reinsberg researchers reported, entertain more than two other couples at dinner, except on very rare occasions; therefore, the complete silver service for twelve, which was quite expensive for newlyweds, was hard to sell because at least half of it was rarely, if ever, on the table.

  New and much more attractive leather silverware boxes were then designed, and the sets of twelve were divided and reduced to two smaller boxes of six service sets. Sales zoomed. Four sets were not quite enough, and eight sets were still too many, but six sets were just about right for young and newly affluent middle-class American brides.

  During its 127 years in business, enterprising and artistic silversmiths had designed and developed sixty-eight different flatware patterns. Some of these patterns, heavy and grotesquely Baroque, were seldom purchased by the young, and, when grandparents bought them for their granddaughters, the young brides, more often than not, returned them to the jewelers and exchanged them for lighter, simpler, and more “modern” patterns. The vote was five to four, with the twenty-four-year-old family descendant chairman of the board casting the deciding vote, but fifty-seven patterns were discontinued abruptly and the extant sets retired to the vaults. The retired sets were then cannibalized for replacements, as replacements were ordered, and each implement of each retired pattern was doubled in price.

  A new patternless plain pattern was developed, at the suggestion of the chairman of the board, with just enough room on each “streamlined” handle for a single, narrow intaglioed initial letter; and this beautiful and purely functional pattern was named, at the insistence of the young chairman of the board, “English Danish.” In spite of the ambiguity, or perhaps because of it, the “English Danish” pattern, within two years, became the most popular flatware pattern in the history of Gunnersbury Silversmiths, Ltd.

  Other minor changes were adopted, as suggested by the Reinsberg Report, but they were not as radical as the discontinuance of the fifty-seven patterns. A few implements, for example, were eliminated from the complete sets. Americans were trained, when they received any table manners at all, to place their knife, when it was not in use, on the edge of their plates. The intricate and difficult to manufacture cut glass-and-silver kniferests were not used by American housewives because these puzzled young women did not know their purpose, and were either too intimidated or too embarrassed to ask their jewelers. It was easier, and cheaper, to eliminate items such as kniferests and gherkin prongs from each set than it was to prepare an accompanying booklet—as the Reinsberg Report suggested—explaining their function. If someone demanded kniferests, however, they could be ordered separately—and dearly.

  The tax-deductible Reinsberg Report was worth every cent the United Kingdom and the United States did not receive in taxes in 1967, and a good deal more to Gunnersbury Silversmiths, Ltd.

  Don Luchessi, as he disengaged the burglar alarm, prior to opening the walk-in safe in his rented warehouse, was thinking about the Reinsberg Report. As a consequence, he selected eight boxed sets of “English Danish,” two sets of “Wheat,” and two sets of “Victoria” to load into the trunk of his Mark IV Continental, which he had backed into the warehouse alongside the safe. The wholesale value of the twelve sets was approximately $10,550 (the value of a “Victorian” set was at least a third more than that of the cheaper “English Danish” set), but Don expected to get, when he sold these sets, one at a time, and as he needed to sell them, a good deal more than the wholesale price recommended by Gunnersbury Silversmiths in England.

  Don locked the trunk, drove his car outside and parked in the yellow zone in front of the outside office door. He opened the glove compartment, removed the .45 caliber U.S. Army semiautomatic pistol, checked the magazine, pulled back the slide, and released it to let a round enter the chamber. Without pushing up the safety, he placed the pistol, butt first, back into the glove compartment and closed the little door without locking it. Don had carried a pistol in his glove compartment ever since that night, but he only kept it loaded and ready to fire when he was carrying silver in his car.

  It was seven-thirty a.m. when he closed and locked the warehouse door, and opened the front door to his offices. George, Don’s black warehouseman and general handy man, who had his own key to the warehouse double door, would show up at—or about—eight-thirty. Nita Peralta would appear promptly at eight-forty-five. Ordinarily, when Don arrived at nine-fifteen, the coffee would be ready, and Nita would serve him his coffee, already creamed and sugared, together with a small plate of sobre mesas in his private office.

  But today was the day, and so far, everything was on schedule and according to his plan. He reread the three-by-five card, as he sat at his desk, and checked off 1 and 2. Number 3 was to fire Robert C. Matlock, his salesman in Jacks
onville, a man he had never liked, but had hired because he was a conscientious salesman. He wrote out the letter for his secretary to type and then added a note to Nita, telling her to predate the letter by two days, to sign his name, and to send a carbon copy of the letter to Gunnersbury Silversmiths, Ltd., in England. With a little luck, Don thought hopefully, the embittered Matlock, fired without cause or reason, would steal some of the flatware he had on hand in Jacksonville, and disappear with it. Perhaps and probably not, but Don had never liked Matlock, and as long as he was absconding, it wouldn’t hurt anything to throw some suspicion on Matlock while he was at it.

  He crossed out No. 4 on his card, and then unlocked the file cabinet in Nita’s office. He removed the inventory folder, ripped it into four sections, and placed the quartered sheets of graph paper into a brown paper sack he had brought to the office for that purpose.

  Don sat at Nita’s desk and wrote her another short note telling her that he would be in Tampa for the next three days with Henry Messinger—checking out his sales talks. As an afterthought, he told Nita to have George sweep the warehouse and to give the handy man two days off and a salary advance of ten dollars for doing such a good job. If she needed to contact him, which he doubted, she could call him after eight p.m. at the Ramada Inn in Tampa.

  Don picked up the paper sack containing the trashed inventory file, locked the office, and left the warehouse area. He ate the breakfast special at the Biscayne Boulevard Hojo’s, drove to the back parking lot of Jordan Marsh and parked his Mark IV. He locked his car, dumped the paper sack into a trash can beside the back entrance, and entered the door just as the floorwalker opened it from inside with his key.

  In the children’s department he purchased three pairs of blue denim bell jeans, size ten, a red wool topcoat, size ten, three long-sleeved cotton T-shirts (one with “Marlins” printed on the front, and two with “Dolphins” printed on the back), size ten, and two pairs of cowboy boots, one black and one white, size six-D.