Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  Old Pete nodded emphatically. She watched him as he strode toward his desk; short, well but not too heavy set, bullnecked, the neat tailored back of the expensive blue sharkskin suit, the white pure white of his hair, the determination in the walk itself. He sat down and picked up the phone. Automatically Miss Keith left.

  “Hello Dolly,” Pete Stratton said in a new voice; a tired resigned voice; as if he had arrived at the office twelve instead of three hours before. “God Bless You....How are you?” he said in that tired, dramatic way of his, as if he were rendering a benediction. “I’ve been tied up.”

  “I’ve been trying to get you for two hours,” Mary Stratton said. She had a very young voice on the phone; soft, modulated, almost sensual. She was in fact forty-three; twenty-four years Pete Stratton’s junior.

  “I haven’t been taking any calls,” he said tiredly. Holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder he picked up the desk lighter and lit his cigar. “We had a meeting.”

  “That’s what Miss Keith said. I wondered if you heard from Nick.”

  “I told you I’d call if I did. I don’t know what’s wrong with that goddamn kid.”

  “Now, Pete, you know the boy’s been in the hospital.”

  “I also know from the last time we heard from him, which must have been a month ago...”

  “It was three weeks, Pete.”

  “I also know from the last we heard,” he continued on as if he hadn’t heard her interruption, “that it wasn’t too serious. Damn it, he should have plenty of time to write, laying around a hospital or one of those fancy rest camps. Nowadays no one has any respect. Here I am getting up in years, building something for my son to carry on, and he don’t even write a letter. What the hell kind of kid is that?”

  “You don’t know what the boy’s been through,” she said protectively. “You know my intuition: I’ve a feeling that boy was hurt much worse than he let on.”

  “There’s no reason for him putting you through this. The other sons write. How do you think I feel? I ran into Gus Duck today. And he says what do you hear from the kid? What the hell am I supposed to say? How do you think I feel? How do...”

  “Now don’t get excited, Pete. You know it’s not good for you.”

  “Who wouldn’t get excited? A son should help his Father. Not worry him.”

  “We’ll hear from him soon,” she spoke softly; soothing now. Then in a new voice: “Pete, you didn’t leave me any money this morning.”

  “I give you money day before yesterday. My God, you didn’t spend all that money...”

  “Darling, you know this is a big month with your niece getting married. And you giving the wedding. You promised her. Certainly you want it to be nice. What’s the use of spending five or six thousand on a wedding and not even having her presentable.”

  “Haven’t you anything in your account?”

  “I told you Monday that I was overdrawn. You remember. At breakfast.”

  “Oh God,” Pete Stratton said tiredly. “All right I’ll call Green at the bank, It makes me feel like hell though. It makes me feel cheap as hell always calling him about your account.”

  “But Pete, if you’d put a sizeable amount in there I wouldn’t have to overdraw. The wife of Pete Stratton ought to have a sizeable account.”

  “I’ll call Green,” he said resignedly. “I’m going out of town tomorrow for a few days.”

  “I’ll get your things together.”

  “All right Dolly,” he said.

  “I love you Pete,” Mary Stratton said.

  “I love you, Dolly,” Pete Stratton said, thinking of her now. She was certainly a beautiful woman. No Greek in the country had as beautiful a woman as Pete Stratton. Goddamn it, though, he thought for a moment, I probably should have married a Greek girl. No Greek girl would spend money like she did. An old country girl knew the value of a dollar. “God Bless You, Dolly,” he said tiredly.

  “Take care of yourself, Pete. And don’t get excited. You know it’s bad for your heart. Goodbye, Pete. And don’t worry about Nick.”

  If I don’t worry about my son who was going to, ne tell like saying, but felt like getting off the phone even more. Certainly Nick wasn’t worried about anything. “I won’t worry...God Bless You,” he said tiredly, in that almost dramatic way he had of saying it, that always pious way as if he were really truly entrusted with the powers of benediction. He hung up.

  Not so tiredly he called Miss Keith on the intercom and told her to get Green at the bank. All right he would try once more. He would put five hundred in her account instead of the usual two-fifty. It wouldn’t last any longer than the two-fifty, he thought. What did she need all that cash for anyhow. She had charge accounts all over. Suddenly a half chill ran through him as he thought of how she tipped. He got Green on the line and told him to put five hundred in her account.

  During Pete Stratton’s conversation with Green of the First City Bank he asked him to lunch if he was free, which he was. Green was the president of the First City Bank and Pete could just as easily have called one of the vice presidents or clerks to have the funds transferred from his account to his wife’s.

  But it was an opportunity to talk to Green, to be friendly with him. And Old Pete took every opportunity. Besides having the funds transferred he had a chance to very subtly expound on how his wife was careless with money thereby showing (Pete thought) his own great respect for it, besides his great sense of responsibility.

  For two months now Pete had been working secretly with Green in an attempt to find a suitable new partner for the business. It wasn’t that the business wasn’t solvent. It was. In fact it was presently netting over ten thousand a week. The fact was that Pete owned only one third of the business and the fact that his two partners were brothers had, since it had become such a big business, begun to bother Pete. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his partners, he told himself over and over, but that a dollar was a dollar and business was business. Besides he felt he could deal with them. But supposing something happened to him, what then? Young Nick was still wet behind the ears and those two guys would take Nick like Detroit took the Cubs in the ‘06 series, merely, probably by conning Nick into believing the Company wasn’t doing too well, by evaluating his stock far below its actual value for him, and then offering him more than they said it was worth. Still this would be a considerable amount, Pete had analyzed, but Nick had no business experience and wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do with the money once he got his hands on it.

  So Pete had the idea of bringing another partner into the firm to serve as a buffer against the brother combination. You can’t beat blood, Pete knew.

  Old Pete had figured it out very carefully. They (the partners) had agreed that each would go to Greece for one year at the Company expense. Before one of them was to leave Pete would suggest an expansion program, which would be large enough to require new capital.

  They would go to Green for the money and Green would suggest a new partner, which of course previously had been picked by Green and Pete. Primarily by Pete. Also Pete would secretly put up some of his own private capital to help finance the new partner as he would have to pay premium prices for the stock, and for this the new partner would have to sign a secret agreement with Pete to sell him back some of his newly acquired stock after five years, which would of course eventually make Pete the majority stockholder. But he had to have a man he could trust. Perhaps someone in his own family he had thought once but immediately dismissed that idea. That would make it much too obvious. George and Charlie Stratos were not that stupid. In fact his partners George and Charlie Stratos were not stupid at all. But the deal would have to be worked out soon as Charlie was leaving for Europe with his family in six months, conditions being all right over there by then.

  It was good Charlie was going first, Pete thought. He was the older and really the brains. Of course George was coming along. But you really couldn’t expect too much from George at thirty-four, having nev
er had any real big business experience.

  Besides Pete felt he could handle Charlie. Charlie had his weaknesses. For one thing he liked to gamble too much. He didn’t gamble in that friendly game with the Greeks that Pete played in. It was a bad bunch Charlie gambled with; those truly professional gamblers. Mostly Italians. That was really inviting trouble, gambling with Italians, Pete thought.

  On top of that, in spite of the fact that young George was always courteous and respectful to Pete (to this day after thirteen years of association he never called him Pete but rather Mr. Stratton) Charlie was overly severe, often almost disrespectfully bossy with the employees of the firm. Either that or overly familiar and overly friendly and generous.

  But when it came to business, especially the buying of pictures, young George like his brother Charlie, would fight and pinch literally wearing down the distributors (one would argue price while the other relaxed at a local steam bath, then the other would take over and the one that was presently almost argued out would leave under one pretense or another, then he would go to the steam bath, get massaged, sleep for a while perhaps, then return and take over again) then once the deal was made by one or the other, the figure usually being a compromise one, with the distributor taking the short end of the compromise out of sheer exhaustion, then as an extra added attraction when the other brother returned and the price was announced the other brother would begin to argue vehemently with the brother who had fixed the figure, saying that they would suffer severe losses at such a price.

  They would argue to the point (all this in front of the distributor) that it appeared they were about to take violent physical action towards each other. The net result of this was that often the distributor, aware of the Stratos ability to run theatres and especially to exploit pictures, the distributor would often change his figure giving them the price they had requested originally.

  Playing it out to the end they would leave the distributor s office separately, still apparently in a frenzy with each other: leaving the distributor, of course, with a great sense of guilt. Setting him up actually for the next bout. They would leave separately and then meet somewhere for maybe one cocktail, they hardly ever drank much, and gloat over the coup they had pulled off. Both of them eager to get back to the office and tell Pete the price, or if it was after office hours to phone him the deal they had made. Old Pete Stratton was the money man of the corporation. Often Old Pete, after hearing how the Stratos brothers had pulled off a buying deal would think to himself that, yes, those guys really belonged in the movie business: They should have been actors.

  When Pete Stratton had called Green, and because Green sounded in such a good mood, invited him to lunch, he had had a previous luncheon engagement with four or five other Greeks down in Greektown.

  This particular group of Greeks met usually once a week. They were all successful, getting more successful every day due, of course, primarily to the war combined with that innate ability of being able to acquire scarce merchandise by one means or another.

  They met once a week for lunch after which they adjourned to a suite at the Drake for poker. At lunch they usually discussed business for a while, and how much money so and so had or was making. But also to discuss those days around 1900 when they had first started out as banana peddlers, porters, bus boys, dishwashers; and had lived together in a hay loft over a horse barn on Halstead Street existing mostly on olives and bread. Splitting the meager rent. Saving every penny they could until they could buy a business of their own.

  This group living had its advantages, they knew. They always went to buy suits down on Maxwell Street together, using their group purchasing power to shave the price. Too, all of them being in the food business in one form or another, they were able occasionally to steal something eatable from their employers. This merchandise was always shared. Later this ability to steal had come in most conveniently. They knew all the tricks and because they knew them there was very little pilferage in their own business; if any at all.

  It was a good get-together always. They had a chance to speak in their native tongues, talk nostalgically about the old country; to feel they were with people who understood them.

  They drank much of the light dry resinous wine called Retsina. They laughed loudly, and if one of them had a little too much of the wine he might reach out and slap a waitress on the butt. Too, they ate their old country dishes. The soup was usually Pacha; the head brains feet and entrails of lamb being the ingredients. The odor of this soup was very mustily severe. Often they ate of octopus. Lamb of one sort or other always. Olives. Goat’s cheese. Cabbage leaves stuffed with rice. Then sweets, those rich buttery honey sweets which were not really of Greek heritage but a by-product of the Turkish occupation. Then Turkish coffee, and then usually several of the watery looking, anisette tasting, cordial called ouzu. It came from the Cyprus Islands. No other country could produce it with exactly the same flavor. And it was supposed to have an aphrodisiacal effect.

  When this was over they would adjourn to their suite at the Drake for drinks, poker, and usually be joined by women of the profession. So now Pete called the restaurant and in Greek told the owner to inform his friends that he would join them later at the Drake.

  He looked at his watch: eleven-thirty. There was an hour before he had to meet Green downstairs. He sat back in the swivel chair, puffed his cigar, glanced momentarily once more at his caricature on the mantel. He felt satisfied. They had come a long way with this company in the last thirteen years.

  Nineteen thirty-two. He was about the only Greek who had any money at all then. It was really hard to believe that Charlie and George Stratos were in a jail cell that year. Jailed for the money they had extorted from two of their partners in three theatres; extorted really in an attempt to save the theatres. Then they had called for Old Pete and they told him their plan and he got them out and they started. Started with one lousy little theatre, only three hundred seats, on the outskirts of Gary in the residential district where the mill workers lived.

  A long way. Now fifty-six theatres in three states. The absolute control of over fourteen towns. And the buildings they had bought in the towns. I bet we could get two million for the operation right now, he thought satisfyingly. You’re damn right we could. It was worth it. Two million. And all the actual cash he had taken out of his pocket was thirty thousand.

  The phone rang. It was a contractor interested in bidding on a major overhaul job they were doing on a theatre in Milwaukee. Pete referred him to George Stratos. That was his department.

  After Pete hung up he pondered for a moment. I wonder if George is getting kickbacks from those contractors he hires. Or from the candy machine operators. Hell, that could run into a lot of money. A hell of a lot the way we’re going. Pete thought about it a few minutes longer, then pulled out his key ring and after finding the correct key opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a steel strong box and after momentarily searching the key ring again unlocked the box.

  In the box there was thirty thousand in non-negotiable stocks (blue chips every one). Several insurance policies. Four keys to safety deposit vaults each with a tag and the first name of Pete and the last name of four towns in Greece, Pete Saloniki, Pete Verdamah, Pete Sparta, Pete Athens, (Verdamah was the name of the town where Pete was born), and below the name was the city or town where the bank was located, all crudely but neatly printed in Pete’s own hand in ink. There were also some promissory notes.

  He examined the stocks. It didn’t take him long. It was a ritual with him. He had examined them so often that he could tell by the weight of the packet if one was missing.

  They were the stocks, his will said, that would provide the immediate cash for the family in case of his death, while his estate was being probated, though there would be little to probate. Pete had taken a bankruptcy in nineteen thirty and consequently all his holdings were listed under the names of various members of his family. Not his immediate family only, but under the nam
es of his brothers, cousins, nieces.

  Then he studied the promissory notes. He had out over twenty thousand. Well, what the hell, he said to himself, if you can’t help your countrymen out when times are tough what good are you. They were good for it. Everyone that he had loaned money to was doing good. It was good to give. God would know he had given. HE always knew when you did something good for your fellow men.

  He carefully put all the papers back into the box, locked it, put it back in the drawer. Locked the drawer. Then he picked up last month’s financial statement and put it in his inside coat pocket.

  He rang for Miss Keith. She came in with her dictation pad and sat down.

  He began abruptly:

  “Take a letter to my son.”

  Dear Nick: (He hesitated a moment.)

  “Your mother is going crazy because you haven’t written. You know, Nick, what a wonderful mother you have. You shouldn’t do things like that. I worry too. About you, the business, the whole family. I’m way up in years, son. The business needs you. Your mother needs you. I need you. Write your mother, son.”

  “Take care of yourself. We pray for you. You pray too, son. It will never hurt you. God Bless You...”

  Love,

  Dad.

  There were tears in Pete Stratton’s eyes, Miss Keith could see.

  “How I love that boy,” Pete Stratton said all choked up. “Miss Keith, you don’t know how I worry about that boy.”

  Old Pete removed his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  “I wonder what’s wrong with that kid,” he said.

  “Nick’s all right, Mr. Stratton. I’ve known Nick since he was a little boy. I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Stratton. You know how the mail from overseas is.”

  “Nick’s twenty-three now,” Pete Stratton said putting the glasses back on. “When I was twenty-three I had twelve years of work behind me. I had two businesses of my own by the time I was twenty-three. Experience. That kid’s gotta get going. Experience.”

  “Yes, Mr. Stratton,” Miss Keith said. She drooled slightly when she spoke. “Anything else?”