by Ward Just
“Why?”
“In your bank there’s just you. No family no stockholders to speak of. I mean no stockholders that you don’t control lock, stock and barrel. There’s just you and your kid.”
“You’re unhappy with what your dad did?”
“No,” Charles said. “I came out all right. It’s just that there’re all these bodies around, members of the family. He had a problem. He didn’t want to hurt Mitch and Tony but he knew damn well that the cart couldn’t be pulled by three horses. Not these three anyway. He wanted to cut them in on the dough, but not on the control. He understood control better’n any man I know. He understood that completely.”
“Tony wouldn’t’ve wanted it anyway.”
“Hell, no,” Charles said.
“But Mitch wanted it.”
“Mitch wanted it,” Charles said. “Wanted it so bad he could taste it. Mitch wants to play Prendergast in Dement.” Charles was silent for a moment. “I don’t think Mitch understands that that period has come to an end. A full stop. Shit, Joe Steppe didn’t say a word tonight. Who did the talking? I did. You did. Eurich did.”
“Marge did. Tom Kerrigan did.”
“Well.” Charles smiled. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to get anything done around here without lawyers and judges and Marge Reilly. Kerrigan’s bad news but he’ll pass by this one. And Elliott was damned skillful, I’ll give him that. Tom knows now that you want this thing and I do and so does Blake Street and anyone who has a stake in this town, and why go up against that when you don’t have to?”
“I agree with that,” Bohn said. “But listen to this. This deal was damn near derailed because of the uncertainty. The Berlin guys didn’t like it, that it was in court. It made them nervous and at first they wanted to heave some money around, dumb bastards, and I told them it wouldn’t work. I went down there with Eurich to tell them that it wouldn’t work. Not in this instance. Tom Kerrigan’s no Aces Evans. I told them they had to be a little bit patient. And they said to me, ‘Can’t you control your town?’ I had to let them get that speech out of their system. Then Eurich took over and told them it would be all right because he had your assurances, and we both knew what we were doing. They didn’t like it but they came back on board. But it almost went off the track, Charlie, and that’s the thing I wanted to convey to you, a thing we’ve got to consider in the future—”
“You’re satisfied with your end?”
Bohn nodded. “More than satisfied.” Harry Bohn had a boyish face with a dimple on each cheek and when he smiled he looked like an overweight choirboy. “This is the best thing that ever happened to me. It puts the bank in a position to really take off it’s extremely profitable for everyone. All around.”
“The meeting went all right,” Charles said.
“Perfect, Bohn said.
“Poor Marge.”
“With her, it’s sentiment.”
“And you have to sympathize,” Charles said. “The damn bog means something to her in a personal way.”
Bohn said, “We moved ahead ten years today.” He looked closely at Charles, and then asked a question. “What do you really think your old man thought?”
“I know what he thought,” Charles said. “He didn’t want it but he knew he’d have to fight a delaying action. He would’ve delayed and delayed but Eurich’s people wouldn’t’ve lost interest. He would have taken Bill Eurich into that little office of his and had a talk. Just to indicate how tough he could be. There was no chance he could delay it forever but he could’ve tied them in knots and forced them to commit a bundle in lawyer’s fees, which they wouldn’t want to commit. Until next year or the year after. Then they would’ve been back and the terms wouldn’t be as favorable and the town would’ve lost, ultimately. You wouldn’t be in the deal. Steppe wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be. To tell the truth, I think lie didn’t like to think about it because it depressed him. But you’re right about the other thing. We moved ahead ten years today.”
“And it’s just the beginning,” Bohn said. He finished his drink and stood up and the two men shook hands. They laughed together a moment, then Bohn left and Charles was alone in his office. He leaned back in the chair and put his feet on the desk. The room was still filled with the smell of the others, Eurich’s Cuban cigar, Marge Reilly’s neutral perfume. Smiling, he offered a silent toast to the ceiling. Then another to the photographs, the ones of his father and of Lee and of Frank and Dana as children, the boy in a cowboy suit and the girl in a party dress.
My God, he thought; what luck. What luck to be at the controls in this town—the town he was born in and grew up in, familiar with it as he was with his own skin. Every street corner and building held a memory and no name was mysterious. He’d carry on in his father’s tradition except by a different path. His father was one who liked to be visible in all ways; he ruled by force of personality, his authority almost ecclesiastical. Charles was not like that, he didn’t have the physical dimensions for it. He liked to move behind the scenes, sitting in a room with half a dozen other men, asking questions and making decisions; reaching a consensus and acting on the consensus. They were together now, he and Bill Enrich and Harry Bohn and Joe Steppe and old Elliott, Elliott a link to the past; Elliott a necessary part of it, though he had to acquire a younger man for a partner. That was one thing he had to have, a young man who knew the score or could be taught the score, because Elliott’s responsibilities would grow. Of course he was like Amos, he didn’t think, anyone could tell him anything. And he believed that towns grew in isolation, compartmentalized and removed from the world, each town its own sanctuary or asylum. It might have been true at the turn of the century but it was true no longer. The Midwest was a single body and the cities were its lifeblood: you took the blood or you died. Elliott and Amos did not understand that money was health, it was salubrious. They did not know how to use it, and that was the trouble. In their day there was no requirement to know the similarities between assets and liabilities, and the differences between stock offerings, debentures and bonds. When Charles described to his father the manner in which he’d saved the newspaper from bankruptcy in. 1936, his father was indifferent; when he’d described it to Eurich, Eurich had been quick in his admiration. Then he, Eurich, told him how it might have been done faster and cheaper. “You bring in an outside partner in a minority position.” And Charles had nodded and said nothing, keeping to himself the knowledge that it was murderous to surrender any slice of control, no matter how small; even partial outside control meant boards of directors. Meetings and a record of those meetings and outside board members and their lawyers. Then it was no longer a family business; it was public.
Oh, he thought; this town, it was complicated and you had to know the people. You had to know their parents and their children and where they went to church and what they wanted for themselves. What was absolutely necessary for the Rising family was not necessarily so for the Bohns, bankers for four generations. Harry Bohn ran his bank like a private checking account. He and his wife and children and two aunts and six of his oldest employees held a hundred percent of the stock. He was accountable to no one, and for twenty years had managed the bank like a corner grocery. He’d been lenient with his debtors and had survived the depression but the bank had not grown. It had not moved an inch and would not move an inch because Harry Bohn’s father had very nearly lost the bank in 1919 and had died in 1925, a suicide. He’d overextended, and it killed him, or so his son believed. Charles, himself a member of the bank’s board of directors, had urged Harry Bohn to consider Bill Eurich for the board, and Bohn had finally agreed. It was essential that the bank grow with the town, and they in Dement retain practical control of their own capital; their own blood. If they didn’t, someone else would. There would be a new bank controlled by outsiders and when that happened Amos Rising’s nightmare would come true. It might still be necessary for Harry Bohn to sell off partial control to one of the large city banks. A bank was not a newspa
per. If Bill Eurich was right the town was on the edge of a furious expansion, and you could not expand without money. But that was a problem for the future. Just now it was enough that Harry have the benefit of Eurich’s experience and insight.
The truth was, Harry Bohn did not truly understand his business. He did not understand balance sheets, they were no more than dictionaries; certain numbers defined certain concepts. There was a grammar to it, a syntax and structure, a left-hand side and a right-hand side and it was not. always advantageous to draw hard-and-fast distinctions between the two. A man always looked at the right-hand side first; liabilities disclosed more than assets if you knew what to look for. It was where the assets were concealed. But you had to know yourself which was which. You had to invent your own grammar and interpret your books in your own way. From time to time his father had conplained; he did not understand what he was reading. Where am I? What does this mean? He didn’t understand any of it and Charles tried to explain and then gave up. At the end of each year he was able to demonstrate that the net worth of the newspaper was greater than the year before, even though “net worth” was a relative concept. Depreciation was an asset or a liability, depending on the point you were trying to make, and with whom. The future was an asset if you calculated it properly, though it was nowhere indicated on the balance sheet or on the P and L either. An outsider would not be able to find it, or the profits.
Damn, he said aloud. He walked into the hall, through Tony’s office and into his father’s. The spirit of the old man was still there, buried deep in the leather desk chair and the shabby rug and the squat manhogany desk and the hat rack, with that damned hat hanging on it as it had for twenty years ... He put his drink on the desk and took the old silver key ring out of his pocket and opened the top drawer and drew it toward him. You could read a man’s life from the contents of his desk, this one filled with old things, papers, business cards, pencils; the detritus of a lifetime. He would have to sort it out sometime. Or let Mitch do it; it would keep Mitch busy He pulled the drawer all the way out and gave a sudden wheeze, Good Christ, The old man’s revolver, loaded, safety off. He broke the breech and extracted the cartridges and aimed through the window at a streetlamp. Click! Then he returned the revolver and loose slugs to the drawer and closed and locked it. That damned gun, it dated from the time of the troubles with Capone’s people. If they really were Capone’s people. His father had never known for certain; he assumed that they were. That was twenty years ago and the old man had kept the gun in the desk, loaded, ever since. Charles Rising turned off the desk lamp and sat awhile in the unfamiliar leather chair, the room dark and the building silent. He was a lucky man; he knew absolutely what he wanted to do and was in a position to do it. And. it was a very near thing; he could as easily not be a newspaperman at all. Charles remained only a moment. The office was small and gave him claustrophobia.
5.
SHE SAID, “You’re sweet, but no.”
“Well, then—”
She knew he was disappointed. “I can’t.”
“Shoot. I knew I was calling too late.”
“I’m not going with anybody else.”
“Then.” She heard his voice brighten; no telephone line could disguise it. “Then come on, what the heck, We’ll have a ball. It’s dumb and probably won’t be any fun, but.”
“Can’t,” Dana said.
A long sigh of disappointment. “Come on, Jeez Crise, it isn’t as if—”
“You ought to take Janie. I’ll fix you up.”
“Janie who?”
“Janie Cockran, you know her. She’s really good-looking, you’ll like her. I know you’ll like her and I’m going to fix you up. I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”
“Jeez Crise,” he said. “How old is she?”
She said, “She’s fifteen. But that’s all right.” She thought a minute, searching for points in Janie Cockran’s favor. “I don’t think she drinks. But she smokes.” Dana was lying on the floor with her legs raised flat against the wall. She wiggled her toes and put the telephone to her other ear. Downstairs she could hear men’s voices. “She’s very old for her age, I promise you’ll like her. I know it, give. me a chance—”
“Where are you going Saturday?” His voice was hesitant; she guessed he both wanted to know and didn’t want to know. “You’re serious, you’re not going to the dance? With anyone?”
“I’ll be in New York,” she said casually. The voices downstairs grew louder, and she could hear the clink of ice and glasses. She knew that in another five minutes she would be asked to get off the telephone. She wiggled her toes again, and beat a little tattoo on the wall.
“New York?”
“With my Mother,” she said. “We’re staying at the Biltmore.” She knew he had never heard of the Biltmore and was immediately sorry for having mentioned it. But she had been thinking of the clock for days, imagining herself under it.
“What’s happening in New York?”
She said, “We’re looking at schools. They’ve decided to put me in a school in the East.” She forced disappointment into her voice. “Or she’s decided,. He doesn’t like the idea at all.” She giggled again. “He thinks it’s about the worst thing that ever happened, or I think he does. He doesn’t say much about it. He just nods and grumbles a little and says, ‘Well, if you think that’s best.’”
“Well, why? I mean, what’s wrong with here? Everybody’s here, not there. The East? I don’t understand that at all, not one bit.”
She said, “They want me to go to college.” That, she thought, was at least part of the truth; not a lie, anyway. “They are not too excited about my grades here.” That was definitely not a lie, except for English and history. “And she wants me to be under good influences.” Dana laughed out loud, she knew that would confuse him. “She means you. The Sen-Sen didn’t cover you up the other night.”
“It didn’t?”
“You smelled like a brewery.”
“Oh Crise,” he said.
“Hey, Bobby?” She listened to his breathing a minute. “I’m kidding. Really, I’m kidding. Reeeel-y, no kidding I’m kidding.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“They didn’t suspect anything. They like you.”
“I’m really not too anxious to itch off your old man.” None of them were. And when she was at their houses their parents always asked after her parents, though in many cases they’d never met. Once, she and a girl friend were walking downtown to the movie and she suddenly turned and said, I’m just as good as you are. Dana was embarrassed. Why would she say that? The girl said, My father said that just because your family ... Of course, Dana said; of course. But she felt that the girl didn’t believe, her own words, or the words her father had supplied her. She was the smartest girl in the class, and one of the nicest, and chronically overweight; and her father was a milkman.
She said, “I’ll be back next Wednesday.” She felt his bewilderment over the telephone. “She’s promised to take me to a couple of shows. But listen,” she said. “How about Janie Cockran? I can fix it up, no kidding. She knows who you are, knows you’re a friend of mine and so on.”
Bobby said, “Is she hot?”
Dana laughed. “How would I know?”
“Can you find out?”
“You find out,” she said.
“You can find out easier’n me and it’ll save a lot of trouble for everybody.”
“Well, she’s a freshman—”
“A freshman?”
“But I’ll do my best. How hot do you want?”
“Very hot,” he said.
“Well, I don’t know how hot she is. I suppose she’s medium-hot.”
“Dana!” It was her father, standing at the foot of the stairs. “Dana, time’s up! There are other people in this house who might want to make a call or receive one. Cut it short, please.” He stared at her a minute, then turned away.
She nodded at her father and said into the telephone, “I’ve g
ot to go now. Let me know tomorrow.”
“I’ll come over after dinner.”
“All right. Call first. And don’t forget the Sen-Sen.”
“Oh Jeez,” he said.
“I’m joking, Bobby.” She hung up, reaching to cradle the receiver, The truth was, Janie Cockran was not hot. Not cold, but not hot either. But neither was Bobby. She decided it was the perfect date, if Bobby did not get polluted. Or act as if he were polluted, which was the same thing. Worse. She rose and went to the banister and leaned over it, trying to catch her father’s eye. She signaled that the phone was clear and he nodded. She remained at the banister a moment, watching them; her father, her two uncles, and Mr. Townsend. Mr. Townsend was reading from a pile of documents. Legal language of some kind. From time to time he’d put the paper to one side and smile and talk conversationally. She listened for a moment.
“... knows what might happen in a year or five years or ten. Illness, death. No one knows the future. Of you three, your father believed that Charles was the businessman. Therefore he has been given control ...”
She watched her father light a cigarette very deliberately. The expressions on the faces of her uncles did not change. She was lulled by Elliott Townsend’s voice. It seemed to her to resemble the voice of a family doctor; soothing, reassuring. Her Uncle Tony seemed the most distracted of the four, as if he wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible. He fidgeted with his drink and kept glancing at his shoes, as if some message were to be found there. Then she saw her father look at her and she moved away from the banister. The look said, This is private. As she moved away, the lawyer’s voice rose.
“Not, I hasten to add, control of the profits. It was Amos’s wish that those be divided equally among the three of you. Amos believed that a great enterprise could not be run by a committee. So Charles has been given control of the policy, but not the profits. Those will be divided, as I’ll demonstrate in a minute ...”
Taking one last look, she saw Mitch Rising’s jaw tighten; he always looked fierce to her, and she did not know if he was feeling less fierce or more fierce than normal. But that was a tense room. She felt that words were being withheld. In that room, words and phrases were hidden everywhere. Feelings were hidden, and no doubt would remain hidden. One would hunt for them in vain. She heard her mother working in the kitchen; a pot clattered, a door slammed.