“I almost forgot,” Old Pete said. He reached m his pocket and took out two stubs from yesterday’s game between the Cubs and Pittsburgh. “Put these in the letter. And add: ‘The Cubs are in first place. They got a real chance for the pennant.’ He ought to get a kick out of that.”
She took the stubs and stood up.
“I won’t be back today. And we’re going out of town in the morning. You know where to get me if anything important comes up.”
“Have a nice trip...and don’t worry about Nick,” Betsy Keith said in an almost motherly way.
Old Pete looked up at her for a moment. Goddamn it but she was homely. “Watch out for things. And if anything comes in from Nick call his mother.”
Pete Stratton got up from behind his desk and walked past the fireplace and opened a closet door. There was a wash-stand and mirror and cabinet in the closet. He carefully removed the ruby ring from the little finger of his left hand, washed, combed his hair, put the ring back on, straightened his tie, adjusted his tailored blue sharkskin suitcoat to his shoulders. Then as he was about to switch out the light he heard his office door open and in the mirror saw the older of his partners, Charlie Stratos, come in.
“How’s things, Charlie?” Pete said gaily, turning out the light, then turning round.
“Hello Pete,” he said drearily.
Charlie Stratos had walked across the room and was leaning on the desk; unsmiling, tired, worried, and unkempt. He had on the same suit this week as he had worn the last two weeks, Pete noticed. A cheap wrinkled imitation flannel. His shoes were old and unshined, his dark but graying hair which grew so far down on his forehead that he had hardly any forehead at all, was mussed as usual. Charlie took off hi horn-rimmed glasses, wiped his eyes, took out his handkerchief and blew his huge wide nose, running the back of his hand scratchingly over his slightly pock-marked face. One collar of his shirt was pointing so far upward that it almost touched his neck, Pete noticed feeling suddenly squeamish.
“I think we’d better change our plans for tomorrow,” Charlie said. “I had a call from Poulous in Indianapolis just now. That union fellow down in Peru is making trouble.”
“The one we paid off last month?” Pete asked.
“Raker,” George nodded.
“The sonofabitch,” Pete said. “What does he want?”
“He’s going to ask for a raise for the projector operators.”
“He’s not.”
“That’s what Poulous said,” Charlie said. “We better go down to Peru first. We can go to Youngstown after that. I thought we might have trouble with the fellow.”
“Poulous said we would,” Pete said. “That Poulous is coming along. He’s a worker, that kid...You think you can handle this fellow?”
“We got to handle him,” Charlie said worriedly. “If the word gets out that he took us every one of our territories will want a raise.”
“The sonofabitch,” Pete Stratton said thoughtfully again. “You think he wants more money.”
“I’m not sure. We’d better go there first though, Pete. All right?”
“All right by me,” Pete said.
“We’ll talk in the car tomorrow then,” Charlie said dryly, unsmilingly, wiping his face with his handkerchief, his now glassless eyes half squinting for a vision of Pete.
“I’ll pick you up at eight,” Pete said. Then concernedly, meditatively, holding the now unlit cigar in his hand, staring meditatively upward, Pete Stratton as if vested with a consummate authority of some sort rendered judgment once more. “That rotten sonofabitching Raker.”
CHAPTER IV
THE banker Lawrence Green was not there at the bar in the Field Building restaurant when Pete Stratton arrived. Yet, although it was only a little after twelve, the bar was already crowded. He ordered a Manhattan, then standing waiting for his drink looked around the room of lunching business men nodding or waving to some of his many acquaintances.
Almost everyone, well the old timers anyhow, knew Pete Stratton from the days before and during the early part of prohibition when he used to run about the smartest niteclub west of New York. In fact, at times Pete had thought, maybe as smart as any in New York. He was after all the first man to go to Paris and buy an entire show and bring it over here. The show from the Moulin Rouge, no less.
Those were the days all right, Pete thought. Those were really happy days. And, by God, there was no help problem then. A man worked for the dollar he earned then. And didn’t complain.
The Manhattan came. Pete glanced at it a moment. It was not a good Manhattan, he thought, without even tasting it. Nobody cared how they made drinks anymore. It wasn’t like when he was a bartender working at Bathouse John’s down in the old First Ward where all the sports hung out. You had to make a real drink to work for the Bathouse.
He sipped the Manhattan. Grimaced slightly. Too damn much vermouth. What the hell was happening to this country. He must have told the bartender fifteen times how he liked his Manhattan...was there any use anymore?
He put his foot on the bar step and leaned forward, his ear spread to the conversation of two men standing to his left. You could never tell when you might pick up a good thing in this La Salle Street bar, Old Pete knew.
“How long do you think it will last?” one said.
“Seven months at the most. It can’t last any longer. With Germany gone, and Russia staring down Japan’s back they’ll have to end it. Or commit race suicide—I wouldn’t put that past them.”
“Hell, I don’t think it will last that long.”
And that was all that Pete Stratton heard before Lawrence Green walked up beside him: Short, thin, gray-haired, with his distinguished long angular Jewish nose, and his pince-nez, Lawrence Green, president of First City Bank of Chicago, director of nineteen corporations.
“Lawrence,” Pete Stratton greeted, shaking the banker’s hand and putting his other hand on his shoulder. “You’re looking fine. Fine.”
“How have you been, Pete?”
“For a man my age, very well, thank God—I thought we might have a drink here at the bar before going to the table.”
“A martini would be fine.”
Old Pete ordered the martini.
They chatted about this and that for a moment, the usual vagaries, then the banker asked: “How’s the family...what do you hear from Nick?”
Pete Stratton who at that moment was sipping on his Manhattan, quickly took another sip of his Manhattan, then put down the glass.
“I heard from him a few days ago. I meant to bring die letter. He wanted to be remembered to you...He’s getting along fine. Fine. We’re praying he’ll be home soon.”
“He’s a nice boy, Pete. I always liked that boy. If I had a son I’d like him to be a lot like Nick,” the banker said, adjusting the pince-nez. There was a very fine black silk ribbon attached to the glasses. And the eyes under the glasses were green, and very quick, and the eyeballs extremely white accentuating the green of the eyes. He had on a very finely tailored light gray suit with a vest and was just about the same height as Pete.
“Wounded twice,” Pete said. “Twice.” There was a pride in his voice and the sudden slight forward thrust of his chest that he managed to suppress to a degree, yet nevertheless could not completely hide. And did not want to hide, really, as long as it did not appear that he was being braggart or boisterous. Pete was proud, very proud in a way, of his outward appearance of humbleness. “That’s what I’m working for, Lawrence,” he added slightly dramatically. “It’s for him. For his future.” His voice quivered ever so slightly.
The martini came. They toasted each other: “Happy days.” And drank.
“That’s a hell of a thing to live with, Lawrence, having your son in the war. You don’t know how many nights I stay up worrying. It’s hell, this thing. Hell.”
Lawrence Green stared over his martini glass with those quick green, cold eyes obviously engrossed in some sudden thought. Then he smiled and set the glass down on
the bar.
“It will be over soon,” the banker said. “Sooner than a lot of people think. Then we can get back to normal.”
“What do you think it will do to business?” Pete asked humbly. “Do you think we’re going to have another depression?”
“Recession might be better. Then good times, Pete. The best times this country ever had. Even better than the days when I used to come into your club. Better than that. A great new prosperous America.
“There has to be. We need homes. Buildings. More space for more people. We have to build. Build. Build.”
“That’s right. We have to go ahead. We have to,” Pete Stratton said trying to hide the feeling of sheer pleasure that had begun somewhere in the pit of his stomach and was now in his chest, and still moving upward.
Green, as always, exuding confidence, a glowing confidence, always left Pete with a smattering of that very confidence. Often, later however, Pete would wonder how much of Green’s confidence was real. After all it was a banker’s job, his living, to keep the people building so that he could lend them money at big interest and if that didn’t work out take over the property ten cents on the dollar.
Old Pete had lost enough property in the depression to know that. Yet there was a real confidence in Green. Pete always left Green feeling good, and felt good hours later. But too he was always thinking after he left Green. Hours later the thoughts would turn to analyzation then usually, eventually, to suspicion. After all who but the bankers took his property away in the last depression.
“Things ought to be good for my nephew then,” Pete said. “He’s going to be a great architect someday. He had the highest average ever to come out of LIT. I had a hell of a time putting him through that school, Lawrence. Times were tough then. Damn tough...They even gave him a fellowship to study in four countries. LIT is about the best for an architect.”
“It is. I know your nephew, Pete. In fact I ran into him on the street one day just after the war started. He reminds me a lot of Nick. I don’t mean their looks, though they do look something alike. It was something else. I remember I couldn’t place what it was. His first name is Pierro, isn’t it? Pierro Stratton. That’s right. You’ve got a nice family, Pete. A nice family. And you’ve come a long way. You should be grateful,” the banker spoke sincerely.
Pete Stratton crossed himself quickly, “I thank God every night,” he said solemnly. Then in a new voice: “You know my niece is getting married. We haven’t sent out the invitations yet. But I hope you’ll be able to come.”
“It depends on the Mrs,” Green said, knowing full well he wasn’t going to any Greek wedding. One of those had been enough for him. And for his wife. “She hasn’t been feeling well, lately.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Pete said.
“Is Pierro back from the service yet?”
“Two weeks ago. He looks great. Great,” Pete said exuberantly.
“He ought to have a wonderful future with all the building we have to do. Tell him to drop in and say hello. Anytime.”
“That’s nice of you, Lawrence—To ask. I’m sure you can give the boy some good advice.”
“I like boys, Pete. That’s been my one big heartache not having a son of my own...Well, shall we eat?”
They had lunch. During lunch they discussed mostly the inner operation of Interstate Theatres. Pete like to keep Green informed as well as possible of what was going on; to make him feel a real part of the Company. In fact it had been Pete’s own idea to offer Green ten percent of their stock at seventy-five cents on the dollar and a directorship the year before. Green of course accepted.
The banker had done well with the Greeks. He liked the way they could keep the costs down and the way they ran their business, especially the way they had solidified it by the buying of real property. It could be a tremendous thing someday, he knew. Much bigger even than Old Pete Stratton realized.
And besides, and this neither Pete Stratton nor the Stratos brothers knew, another member of the banking family of Green in New York was financing another group of Greeks in a theatre venture of national proportions: The very same chain that had somehow gotten the deal away from Interstate for the purchase of the Garden State Theatre chain in Pennsylvania; even though Interstate had lined up the deal first while the chain was in probate.
The Greens were an old banking family; related distantly to the Rothschilds in England. The family had been in America five generations and the total capitalization of their banking interests, it was rumored, surpassed that of any family in the country.
Lawrence Green, fifty-nine years old, had not really come into his own as yet; his father Benjamin still being alive and presently board chairman of the First City Bank. Nevertheless Lawrence Green was a millionaire many times over; just not quite as many times as his father. And now his father was on leave of absence serving on a Special Presidential Advisory Board in Washington.
Old Pete had known Green ever since 1918 when Green had come in his club with a party to hear a new singer named Sophie Tucker who was causing a sensation. Later, when Pete had decided to build another building across the street on the vacant corner from his club building he had gone to Green for the backing and they had done business on and off ever since.
Green was not the one who foreclosed on Pete’s property after the crash however. Greens did not foreclose themselves. They merely transferred the mortgages to another bank which they controlled; had their men make the foreclosures; thereby not only insuring their reputations for ‘fair play’ but actually taking advantage of an adverse condition to better their standing in the community of finance.
Finally Old Pete brought Green up to date; including the trouble that they were having with the union man, Raker, and which Pete had just found out about himself a half-hour before.
Pete, of course, reassured Green that the Raker matter would be settled; adding that the entire industry of exhibitors would benefit from their speedy expedition of the union case.
Green did not doubt it. The Greeks (that is the way he referred mentally to Interstate), The Greeks would certainly settle it one way or another. It was just that some of their ways were often crude, often too reckless to suit Green. They didn’t come from the hay lofts of Halstead Street to where they were the easy way. They came their way, the only way they knew.
Finally Pete gave Green the financial statement for the past month. He never mailed it; always gave it to him personally. Green had only glanced at it, smiled, and put it into his breast pocket. Then Pete paid the check and walked Green back to the First City Bank which was just down the street one block from the Field Building on La Salle.
After Pete Stratton left Green he went immediately across the street to Martins restaurant and phoned his nephew Pierro at Pierro’s mother’s apartment on the Near North Side. He made arrangements to meet the young architect in half an hour at Lou Duck’s restaurant near the Drake Hotel.
It would work out good, he thought. He had about an hour to kill and it was about time he had a talk with Pierro; at least feel him out on what his plans were. Christ, he’d been home over two weeks now and hadn’t made one attempt to get a job or get set up in his own office or do anything except attend parties out on the North Shore; occasionally stopping by Pete’s house in Winnetka on the way out or way back.
What the hell was the matter with kids these days. Pierro must be close to thirty. And what does he do. And with his education. Youth. Opportunity. If I’d only had that opportunity. The country on the verge of a great prosperity. Cocktail parties. And the buildings about to go up. It didn’t make sense. What the hell does he think he’s going to do? Live off me the rest of his life. A big stiff like that. Smart. Educated...Waste...Waste...Waste ... Of Talent. Material. And the people in my country starving. Dammit I forgot to send that check to my family in Verdamah.
I’ll build another church there too. Dammit I will. So the Germans tore my church down. Well, I’ll build another. What the hell kind of people
were the Germans. Savages. Tearing down my church. Blowing up the road I built. That I worked like a dirty dog, AND SAVED, TO BUILD. The world’s gone crazy. It’s not like the old days. The good old days, he thought...and suddenly now he was far down La Salle, past Randolph Street and the Sherman Hotel, almost to Lake Avenue and passing a fruit stand.
He went inside and bought some raisins and nuts and walked over the La Salle Street Bridge nibbling on the raisins and nuts when he wasn’t holding his brown homburg against the spring wind that came from Lake funneling down Wacker, feeling the warm sunglow on his face (It had been a cold winter for an old man) then cut eastward toward the Lake, and up the ramp onto Michigan Avenue, and the young pretty (Youth Again) office girls, June suntanned legs exposed by God’s own wind coming from out over the blue Lake, and the rush rush of the traffic on Michigan Avenue, and the breasts from under the sweaters that did not sag (Youth Again) but seemed to reach out to God’s own wind coming from out over the blue Lake...
The rush, rush, honk, honk.
Everything was uniform...Khaki-clad...Navy-clad.
“Pete, Pete Stratton, haven’t seen you in years.”
“Jack Downey. Old Jack Downey.”
“Real estate now, Pete.”
“Theatre business, Jack.”
Down the Avenue, past the white of the Wrigley Building. The Tribune Tower. “EXTRA...EXTRA...TRUMAN TO POTSDAM”
The wide Avenue with the big expensive Buildings.
Saks. Oh my God. Saks.
And the June sun-tanned legs exposed by God’s own wind from out over the blue Lake.
It was a great country. A Great Country, all right
To walk. To feel the June sunglow. The Bigness.
AMERICA...THE CUBS...THE SERIES...MAYBE THE WORLD SERIES...THIS YEAR.
He had never really been able to explain to anyone back in Verdamah what a really great country it was. It was too Great for that.
It was good to walk.
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