I Can Get It for You Wholesale (2 page)

I was off by almost eight minutes. Before I even had the cigarette going good, I saw him coming up Lexington. If he would have been moving slowly, I might have had some doubts. But when I saw he was hurrying, I knew I was right.

I crossed the gutter slowly, to meet him, and just as he started to turn the corner, we came face to face.

“Hello, there, Tootsie,” I said, grinning at him.

He jumped back a little, and stared at me with his mouth open. It didn’t make him look any better.

“Bogen!”

I bowed from the waist, like an actor.

“Tootsie Maltz, I presume?”

His mouth closed slowly, and he smiled a little.

“What the hell are
you
doing around here?”

“I’ll bet I don’t have to ask what
you’re
doing,” I said and winked.

“Why, what do you mean?” he said.

He drew himself up and tried to look outraged.

“It’s all right, Tootsie,” I said. “You can let your hair down in front of me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bogen,” he said sharply. He was still trying to look like he was a count or a duke and he’d just been accused of cheating at cards. Which was pretty funny. He was short and fat and had an innocent-looking moon-shaped face. On top of that he wasn’t wearing a hat or a coat; he needed a haircut and had been needing it for a couple of weeks already; and his shirt looked like it had seen the laundry last about the time he stopped wearing knee pants. It was all I could do to keep myself from laughing in his face.

“Come on there, Tootsie,” I said. “Don’t give me any of that bull, will you?”

“Listen, Bogen,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Oh, no? Well, I didn’t want to get him sore, but I had to let him know I wasn’t a rummy either.

“So you don’t know what I’m talking about, eh?” I put my hand on his arm. “This isn’t Wednesday, is it? And it wouldn’t happen that Wednesday is an off night for the Club, and nobody shows up, would it? Which wouldn’t mean that the coast was clear for a little fancy yentzing, would it? And from what you know about me, you’d say my memory was so crummy that I didn’t remember any of this, just because I’ve been away for a while, wouldn’t you?”

He looked up at me from under his thick eyebrows like a kid that’s being bawled out. His face melted into a sort of half-grin.

“Aah, well,” he said, shaking his head.

“And all of a sudden I’m getting blind,” I said, “and I didn’t just see a dame with a can like an elephant go up the stoop to the Club, not more than five minutes ago.”

By this time we were both smiling at each other.

“Same old Harry,” he said.

I slapped him on the shoulder.

“You mean same old Tootsie,” I said.

“All right, then, Mr. Wise Guy,” he said. The grin on his face was a mile wide. “If you’re so smart, and you know where I’m headed for, then what’s the idea holding me up?”

“I’ve got something important to tell you,” I said.

“Don’t kid me, Bogen, will you? What’s more important than cuzzy?”

“I’ll give you one guess,” I said.

That stopped him.

“Aah, I don’t know, Bogen,” he said, looking past me toward the stoop. “You know how those things are.”

“Sure I know,” I said. “But what the hell, in a time like this?”

He scratched his head and looked from me to the stoop and back again.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.

I felt so good that I wanted to tell him to go ahead and meet me later. I knew how he felt, and how it can drive everything else out of your mind. But I couldn’t afford to let him have his way in anything, even a small thing. Right from the start I had to impress on him who was boss.

“There’s jack in this, Tootsie,” I said, “heavy jack.”

He stood there, undecided, chewing his lip.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Come on,” I said, “put it on ice for a while. It’ll keep.”

He looked at me, smiling a little, and sighed.

“I don’t know, Bogen,” he said, “I don’t know what it is you’ve got.”

“You won’t be sorry,” I said. I took his arm and steered him toward Lexington Avenue. “And anyway,” I added, “she didn’t look so hot from the back.”

“Yeah?” he said. “That’s what
you
know!”

But he turned away!

From then on I knew I was home. When you can talk a guy out of
that
, then you know you’re good.

At Lexington we turned right and started to walk uptown. I took out my pack of cigarettes and offered it to him. He took one. I knew he would. Those radicals are the biggest chiselers in the world. We walked and smoked in silence for a while. I knew he was burning up to know what it was all about, but I let him wait. I figured it would do him good.

“Well, what’s up, Bogen?”

I looked at the lamppost we were passing. Twenty-Eighth Street. That meant that three blocks was his limit. Which wasn’t bad. Most people couldn’t have kept quiet that long.

“Plenty,” I said, inspecting the ash on my cigarette closely, like it was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it.

“Ah, gee whiz, Bogen, why don’t you cut it out?”

“What’s all the hurry?”

“You’re asking me?” he said. “You were the guy that was in a hurry. Five minutes ago you were in such a hurry that you wouldn’t even let me take time out to get boffed. And now you ask what’s my hurry.”

I laughed and put my hand on his shoulder.

“Okay, Tootsie,” I said, “come on.”

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”

He was primed all right.

“In a little while,” I said. “Let’s get something to eat first.”

I didn’t expect any objections to that and I didn’t get any.

“Where’ll it be?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, then stopped and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Stewarts is back this way, on Twenty-Third. We’re going in the wrong direction.”

I took his arm and pulled him along with me.

“Oh, no we’re not,” I said. “We’re going in the right direction. When you eat with me you don’t eat in cafeterias.”

He shrugged.

“It’s okay with me.”

As though I didn’t know that.

“And you can paste this into your hat right now, Tootsie,” I said. “As long as you string along with me, your cafeteria days are over.”

He didn’t say anything.

“That is,” I added, looking at him out of the corner of my eye, “unless you’re too busy with the revolution to find time for some easy dough.”

He looked at me and grinned.

“The revolution can wait,” he said.

Could I pick them?

“All right, then,” I said. “Now we eat.”

At Thirty-Fourth we turned left. I knew a little Hungarian place between Lexington and Fourth where they had regular tablecloths and a couple of waiters. For Tootsie that would be good enough. After cafeterias this would look like the real big time to him.

I waited until he went through the chopped liver and the soup and the goulash. I wasn’t particularly hungry myself, but I can always eat. From the way Tootsie dug in I couldn’t make up my mind which he needed most, the meal or a haircut. I was willing to buy him the meal, but if I had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t take a haircut for at least another month. He suited me perfectly the way he was, dirty, ragged, unshaved. That was the way I needed him. And that was the way he’d stay. Not that he was such an odd-looking specimen. You can pick dozens like him off Seventh Avenue any day in the week, except Sunday, with your eyes closed. But of all those you can find, show me one that had his point of view. The rest of them are just a bunch of dopes who would consider it an honor and a pleasure to die for dear old Stalin. The only person Tootsie would ever die for is Tootsie Maltz, and even then he’d find a way to wiggle out of it. Which showed that he wasn’t so dumb.

After a while he pulled his mush away from the plate and sighed.

“How was it?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips.

“Boy!” he said.

“I guess you wouldn’t have much objection to eating like that every day, would you?”

“What do
you
think?” he said.

He’d probably drop dead if I told him.

“Well, maybe I can arrange it for you,” I said.

“Yeah? How?”

“Well, if you’re a good little boy, and you pay close attention to what Papa says, and you don’t get snotty, and you answer all questions correctly the first time, and you don’t interrupt—”

“So? So?”

“So listen.”

I took a fresh pack of cigarettes from my pocket, ripped the top off, and put them on the table in front of him.

“Help yourself,” I said, pointing to them. “Every time you open your yap to say something, take a cigarette instead. Don’t interrupt me. Just listen and answer when you’re asked. The rest of the time, smoke.”

“Okay,” he said with a grin and reached for one. I lit one myself and settled back to look at him.

“You working now?” I asked finally.

“No,” he said, then: “Say, you’re not going to all this trouble just to offer me a job, are you? Because if—”

“Smoke,” I said.

“My mistake,” he said, laughing, and drew on his cigarette.

“Ever been around Seventh Avenue? The garment district?”

“Once in a while.”

“You never worked there?”

“Nope.”

“That means you don’t know much about it, doesn’t it?”

He nodded.

“All right, then, Tootsie,” I said. “Hold on to your hat. Besides a good meal, you’re going to get a little education to-night. And personally, I don’t think it’ll hurt you. Just remember to keep your ears open.”

He lit a fresh cigarette. He should worry. They were free.

“Now, then, Tootsie, we’ll get down to facts and figures. I don’t know how strong you are between the ears,” I said, “but even if you were a real mental heavyweight, I wouldn’t bother you with too much detail. You know how it is, Tootsie. I want you to save your energy. You probably need a lot of it for those wrestling matches of yours with those red elephants.”

He started to open his mouth, but I held up my hand for silence. He grinned and I blew smoke in his eyes. We both laughed.

“All right, then,” I said. “On those few square blocks between Thirty-Fourth Street and Times Square on Seventh Avenue, there are over six thousand firms that manufacture dresses.
Exactly
how many there are doesn’t matter. Just take my word for it that it runs into the thousands. All right. Now, every one of these firms employs at least one shipping clerk. You know what a shipping clerk is, Tootsie?”

He shook his head and waved the cigarette to show me why he wasn’t talking. He was all right. He was catching on.

“Maybe I better explain it to you,” I said. “After all, a gentleman of leisure like you, you know, how would you ever know what a shipping clerk is? See what I mean? Well, Tootsie, a shipping clerk is a kind of two-legged animal, without a hell of a lot of brains, that never sleeps and hardly ever eats. It’s always on the go, chasing over to the contractor with a bundle of cut work, trying to make the post office with a special before the parcel-post division closes, running from one piece-goods house to another to match a swatch that some crazy buyer has brought in, or lugging half the sample line to some buying office on Thirty-First Street so some dizzy broad that must have been a snappy number about the time Dewey sailed into Manila Bay can make one more selection before her train leaves for Cleveland or Chicago or God alone knows where. The reason I know all this, Tootsie, my boy, is that at one time I was just about the world’s champion shipping clerk. Anybody who could hold down a job with Toney Frocks, Inc., the joint I worked for, under the heel that ran it, a certain gent by the name of Schmul, would have to be the world’s champ. If you don’t think that makes me an authority, just go out on Seventh Avenue some day and ask. In the meantime, though, just take my word for it. By the way, Tootsie,” I added, “if this is beginning to bore you, just say the word. I’m only mentioning these things to keep the record straight.”

He nodded, still grinning.

“So anyway,” I said, “we’ve gotten to the point where every firm on Seventh Avenue has at least one shipping clerk. A lot of them have more than one. But that doesn’t matter. The only thing to remember is that no matter how dumb a guy is, he can still see that there must be thousands of shipping clerks on Seventh Avenue.
You
see it, don’t you?”

Again he nodded. It doesn’t take me long to get them hypnotized.

“Now, it happens, Tootsie, that the average salary for a shipping clerk is fifteen bucks a week. They even paid
me
that.” His grin widened a little. “Here’s where I want you to strain yourself a little, Tootsie. Do this bit of mental arithmetic with me. Fifteen times several thousand, I don’t know how many exactly, but several thousand, fifteen times that—gives you what?”

He opened his mouth, but I put up my hand.

“Right,” I said. “Right. All those thousands of dollars are paid out every week on Seventh Avenue to shipping clerks.”

I leaned back in my chair and grinned at him.

“Now, of course, Tootsie, I don’t know how many steam yachts and butlers they had in
your
family.” The grin returned to his face. “But me, Tootsie, I’m Grade A presidential timber. I was born on Goereck Street and my old man never made more than fifteen bucks a week in his life, except during the War, when he made twenty, which was no break for me, because all it did was raise the standard of living in the family so damn high that when the old man dropped back to fifteen bucks a week I had to go out and peddle papers after school so the old lady shouldn’t have to sell her ermine wraps.”

I fit a cigarette and blew smoke in his eyes until he blinked.

“Ever since then, Tootsie, I’ve hated people who make fifteen bucks a week. Which means that I don’t like shipping clerks, see? But if my reasons don’t suit you, then, just to make you feel better, Tootsie, let’s say I don’t like the way they part their hair, or that most of them come from the Bronx, or anything you want. Anyway, I don’t like them. And it makes me twice as sore to think that they’re getting all that money every week. So what have I done? I’ve figured out a way to turn most of that money into my pockets. And, at the same time”—I dropped my voice a shade to make sure he’d understand this was for his benefit—“into the pockets of my partner, whoever he may be.”