What's in It for Me?

by Jerome Weidman

  Neither had I.

  “Well, let’s not waste time celebrating. Let’s get them out in a hurry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He swung the batch of orders up on his staple and began to read the top one for the numbers to be selected for the shipment from the racks.

  “Let me ask you, Eric. How long you think it’ll take you to finish charging out these shipments?”

  He scratched the back of his neck and scowled at the orders.

  “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Bogen. But a bunch of orders like this, I guess it’ll take me the rest of the day, easy.”

  “All right, Eric. Ship them out as quick as you can and get them all signed properly by the express company. I want those express receipts watched carefully.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you get them signed up by the express company, hold them for me. Don’t put them through in the office. I want to look at these myself first. I’ll be back tonight. You wait for me and give them to me.”

  “All right, Mr. Bogen, but—”

  “But what—?”

  “You think you’ll be back very late?”

  “What’s that to do with you?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Bogen. I didn’t mean anything. But I go to school at night, and I thought if you were getting back late, I’d be—”

  “What school?”

  “City U.”

  “Twenty-third Street?”

  He nodded quickly.

  “Yes, Mr. Bogen. What makes you—?”

  I waved my hand at him.

  “Aah, what’s the matter with you? You look like a smart kid. What do you wanna waste your time with that crap for?”

  He seemed embarrassed.

  “Well, Mr. Bogen, you don’t know—”

  “The hell I don’t I used to go there myself.”

  His mouth opened slightly.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. What the hell can they teach you down there? Those dumb baloney benders down there? Christ, you stick around and watch me for a while, Eric, and you can learn more here than—”

  “Well,” he said awkwardly, “I don’t know, Mr. Bogen. I—”

  “Don’t listen to what I say, Eric. You wanna go to school, go ahead. It’s none of my business. But just get me those signed express receipts, will you—”

  “Yes, Mr. Bogen. But you—?”

  “All right, then. Let it go till the morning. But get them signed up by the express company tonight. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then just hold them for me till tomorrow morning. I’ll pick them up then.”

  “Right, Mr. Bogen.”

  I hurried out into the showroom, grabbed my hat and coat, and went down to the bank where I kept my personal account. I asked the teller for my balance as of that date. He hunted through the ledger.

  “Eleven eighty-two thirty-seven, sir.”

  “I’m drawing the whole thing out.”

  I took out my pocket check book and wrote a check then and there to the order of cash for $1,182.37.

  “You’re drawing out the whole thing?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yeah. I’m closing the account.”

  He looked worried.

  “Is there any reason that you—? I mean, Mr. Bogen, are you dissatisfied with the service, or is there any other—?”

  “No, I just want to close out my account.”

  “But surely, Mr. Bogen, there must be some reason why

  “Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “there’s a reason. I’ve suddenly lost confidence in all banks. I bought myself a mattress and I’m gonna start keeping my money in that.”

  He gave me a long glare and squeezed his lips together. But he paid out on the check and closed the account.

  Then I took a taxi up to Saks. As I came into the little lounge on the third floor, Martha ground out her cigarette, stood up, raised her wrist to look at her watch, and gave me a dirty look. I grinned widely and hurried up to her.

  “What do you—?” she began.

  “Stop, Martha! Don’t call me names yet!”

  “What do you expect me to do? After keeping me waiting for—!”

  I dipped into my pocket and came up with the roll of bills I had just taken out of the bank.

  “I’ve got four reasons for being late, Martha. All of them good. All of them excellent. But here’s the best one.”

  I wagged the bills under her snub nose and the hardness began to melt a little from her face.

  “Well, all right, Harry, but you let me sit here for—”

  “Come on,” I said, slipping my arm through hers. “You buy, I pay.”

  24.

  “A MR. FLIEGEL CALLED you,” Miss Eckveldt said as soon as I came into the office the next morning. “He said he was from your garage.”

  “All right. Get him for me.”

  She dialed the number and looked up.

  “Where will you—?”

  “I’ll take it in the showroom.”

  The less I saw of her the better I felt

  “All right.”

  I walked out and picked up the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Fliegel said. “This Mr. Bogen?”

  “Yeah, Abe. This is Mr. Bogen. What’s on your mind?”

  “I got a customer for the car, Mr. Bogen.”

  “Swell, Abe. How much?”

  “Four-seventy-five.”

  “What? For a thirty-five hundred dollar job, you tell me you—?”

  “The best I could do, Mr. Bogen. Sorry. I told you it’d be like this on a—”

  “Yeah, but hell. Thirty-five hundred bucks I paid for that damn—”

  “I know, Mr. Bogen. But I told you how it was. This guy offered four-fifty and I told him five hundred was absolutely rock bottom. So we chiseled around, you know, till we split the difference. Four-seventy-five.”

  “Oh, well, all right.”

  What did it matter, anyway? I was directing my energies into more profitable channels.

  “You want me to close the deal, Mr. Bogen?”

  At that price you couldn’t even dignify it by that name.

  “Yeah, Abe. You close it. When the guy’s ready with the check, you bring it up here and I’ll sign the papers. Okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Bogen.”

  “So long, Abe. And thanks.”

  I hung up and hurried into the back.

  “Eric.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bogen?”

  “Those express receipts for the—?”

  He handed me a batch of signed receipts.

  “This covers all the orders I gave you last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right.”

  I slipped the express receipts and the duplicate copies of the charges into my pocket. I hurried into the showroom, took my hat and coat, and went out. I walked down Seventh Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street, then turned right to the Pennsylvania Building. On the seventh floor I stopped in front of a door marked “Leonard Nissem & Co., Financing.” It was a funny word for a hockshop, but nobody else laughed, so why should I? I went in and spoke to the girl in the outer office.

  “Is Mr. Nissem in?”

  “Who wants to see him?”

  “He doesn’t know me. But it’s about business, though.”

  She disappeared into an inner office and came out again in a few moments.

  “Mr. Nissem will see you. This way, please.”

  She held the gate in the wooden railing open for me and I stepped through. I passed her desk and pushed open the door of the private office. A heavy, fat-faced man with satchel cheeks, a tight collar, and a cigar in what could be described as a mouth, but looked more like a two-car garage, glanced up from behind a desk.

  “Mr. Nissem?”

  He lowered one eyebrow and sent the other up as he nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come in. Sit down.”

  I came in and sat down in a chair beside it

 
“My name is Bogen. I don’t know if you—”

  “Harry Bogen? Used to be Apex Modes?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a grin. “Used to be Apex Modes.”

  “Weh-hell!” he said, sticking out his hand. “Glad to know you.

  “Glad to know you, Mr. Nissem.”

  We shook hands and he leaned back in his chair.

  “What’s the matter?” he said with a laugh. “In trouble again?”

  “No-oh, not exactly. I was just—”

  “Who you with now, Bogen?”

  I thought he knew everything.

  “Yazdabian. Hrant Yazdabian. Know him?”

  He nodded quickly.

  “Sure do. Fact is I dropped in to see him only a couple days ago. Nice chap. A little old for the dress business, I think. But a nice guy anyway.”

  “Yeah. Hell of a nice guy.”

  “What are you, selling for him, Bogen? Or are you—?”

  “No, I’m his partner.”

  He laughed again.

  “Well, what’d you do? Get the old guy into trouble, too?”

  “No, we’re not in trouble. And anyway, what the hell are you kicking about?” I smiled a little on that sentence. “Guys like me being in trouble is your business, isn’t it?”

  “Guess you’re right. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, we’ve got bills to meet and we’re running short of cash. So I thought we’d hock a few accounts.”

  “Never say hock, Bogen. Say sell.”

  “All right then. Sell. We want to sell some accounts.”

  He became brisk at once.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got?”

  I pulled out the shipping receipts and the duplicate charges and shoved them across the desk at him. He leaned over them, scanned them quickly, jotting figures on a pad as he worked. Finally, he looked up.

  “Well?”

  “They look pretty good, Bogen.”

  “Pretty good? Say, we’ve got some of the best accounts in the country there. We don’t sell anybody but the—”

  “I know, I know. I know the accounts. They’re all good.” He looked at the pad on which he had been scribbling. “A little over five thousand dollars worth. Fifty-two hundred. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What terms do you sell, Bogen?”

  “It’s marked on the charges. Eight ten E. O. M.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right.” He looked at a large calendar on the wall. “Let’s see. Today is March third. That means, according to your terms, we ought to be getting money on these shipments by April 10.”

  “That’s right. But I’ve got bills coming due on March 10, so I’ve got to raise the dough this way.”

  “Okay.” He dropped the charges back on the desk. “I can let you have four thousand on these.”

  I looked at him in surprise.

  “What’s that? What’s that? Fifty-two hundred in charges, and you say you’ll let me have four thousand? What’s this, 20% interest for a little—?”

  He waved his hand and smiled good-naturedly.

  “Now, don’t get so excited, Bogen. It’s plain you never sold accounts receivable before, or you’d understand—”

  “That’s true, Nissem. I never sold accounts before. But my God, I don’t need experience to tell me that 20% interest is—”

  “It’s not 20% interest, Bogen. What do you think I am, a crook or something?”

  “Nah, nah, nah. I’m not calling you a crook, Nissem. I’m just saying that 20% is a—”

  “And I’m trying to tell you it’s not 20%, Bogen,” he said irritably. “The interest rate is a regular 6%. We only advance you four thousand on fifty-two hundred in accounts because there are little things we have to take care of, like service charges and so on. And the rest of the twelve hundred bucks over and above what we advance you, the balance of that we keep as an equity. When the accounts are paid up, after we got our interest and our service charge and we got back the four thousand we advanced you, then we turn back to you the rest of the twelve hundred bucks. It’s just an equity.”

  “For accounts like these,” I cried, “you need security? Just look at the names of those accounts, Nissem. Why, hell, you got accounts there that haven’t been a day late, not a minute late, in paying their bills for so many years that—”

  “What can I do, Bogen? That’s how I do business, and I do it with everybody. So why should I treat you special?”

  “All right. But hell, I think it’s a—”

  “That’s the way I do it, Bogen.”

  “Oh, well, okay, then.”

  He pressed a buzzer on his desk and the girl came in.

  “Miss Blau, make out a hypothecation contract on these charges. No changes, just the regular assignment.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She went out and her typewriter tapped for a minute or so. Before I could even finish a few preparatory hems and haws, she was back. It was a printed form and all she had done was fill in a few blanks. Nissem scanned them quickly, then placed them on the desk and handed me a pen.

  “Here, Bogen, you sign here.”

  He was pointing to two blank lines under the typed words “Hrant Yazdabian, Inc.” In front of each line was the word “by.” I signed my name on the first line and added “Secretary-Treasurer” under it.

  “All right,” he said. “Now you take them back to your office, Bogen, and get Yazdabian to sign them. And I’ll draw you a check for the four thousand.”

  “That’s all right, Nissem. Yazdabian is out of town, but one signature is enough.”

  He looked doubtful and I lit a cigarette carefully.

  “One signature? Well, I don’t know, Bogen, we—”

  “He’s out of town on a selling trip. But I’ll tell you what you can do, Nissem. You can call up our bank and speak to an officer there. That’ll verify that one signature is enough, won’t it? We have only one signature on checks, and it’s—”

  “Yeah, that’ll do it. Where do you bank?”

  “Mercantile Trust. Thirty-seventh Street branch. Wait, I’ll get you the number.” I took the phone book from his desk and skimmed through the pages till I got it. “Here.” I jotted down on his pad. “You might ask for Mr. Farrell. He handles our account.”

  “All right.”

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

  “But listen, Nissem.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t say nothing about I’m hocking accounts, will you? I don’t want a thing like that to get around the market, because if it does, we’ll—”

  “Don’t worry, Bogen. I do these things every day. I know how to talk. You just don’t worry.”

  All right, so I wouldn’t worry. Let him worry.

  “Swell.”

  He spoke into the phone.

  “Hello. Mercantile Trust? Mr. Farrell, please. Yes.” There was a pause. “Hello, Mr. Farrell? Say, Mr. Farrell, I wonder if you’d do me a favor. On the account of Hrant Yazdabian, Inc. Yeah, Yazdabian. That’s right. Well, I been doing business with them for a long time and I been getting their checks regularly. But today, for the first time, I get paid a bill of mine with a check of theirs and it’s only got one signature on it. Mr. Bogen’s and not Mr. Yazdabian’s. I called up Mr. Bogen and he said one signature was all right because Mr. Yazdabian was out of town. But I’ll tell you, Mr. Farrell. Nothing personal, or anything like that, you know, but before I deposit the check in my bank I thought I’d call you up just to—What’s that? It is? Fine. Fine. Thanks a lot, Mr. Farrell. Appreciate that. Thanks. Good-by.”

  He hung up and turned to me with a grin.

  “I told you it’s all right.”

  “I know, Bogen, but you know how it is in my business. I have to be careful and check up on—”

  “Sure, I know.”

  “Well, then, I guess there’s nothing left for me to do but give you a check.”

  “One more favor you could do me, Nissem.”

&n
bsp; “What’s that?”

  “You could draw the check to cash and go down to your bank with me and get the money for me in cash.”

  He looked up, surprised.

  “Why in cash?”

  I put on a fifteen second act of acute embarrassment.

  “Well, frankly, we owe the bank a little note and they’ve been sort of pressing us for it. If they see this check going through our account, they might grab it to satisfy the note and I won’t get a chance to pay my bills. Like this I can pay my bills in cash, and the bank’ll give me an extension on the note. The way Mr. Yazdabian and I figure, we figure the bank can wait till the money for our spring sales comes in. But the creditors in the market, we don’t want to make them wait because we don’t want to hurt our credit standing.”

  “If that’s the way you want it, it’s okay by me.”

  “Thanks, Nissem. You’ll be helping me out of a hole.”

  “I should have so many thousands in the bank,” he said with a laugh, “how many guys I’ve helped out of holes.”

  “I guess you’re a regular Santa Claus to Seventh Avenue,” I said with as much admiration as I could force into my voice.

  “Santa Claus nothing,” he said, getting up with the check in his hand. “I’m a regular life saver.”

  “Lemon flavor, I suppose.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Come on, Bogen. We’ll go down to the bank.” I took my hat and followed him. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Miss Blau,” he said to the girl in the outer office as we passed.

  “All right, Mr. Nissem,” she said.

  His bank was on the corner. I stood aside as he endorsed the check and pushed it across the counter to the teller.

  “How do you want that, Bogen?” he asked.

  “Large bills, please. Hundreds’ll be all right.”

  He told the teller what he wanted and then turned the money over to me.

  “If you run into any more trouble, Bogen, and you need any cash, so long as you keep shipping accounts like that, why, just call on me.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a grin. “I hope I don’t have to. But if I get into a spot again, you’re the guy I’ll come to.”

  25.

  I GOT OUT OF THE CAB in front of the house and paid the driver. Then I picked up the heavy bundle and went upstairs. Just as I let myself in with my key, the phone in the foyer began to ring. Before I could answer it, Mrs. Herman came pattering out of the bedroom and saw me.