The Last Collection (4 page)

“No, you don't understand . . .”

“Stop playing around with me, Kerner,” the doctor yelled. “You're making me paranoid and in one minute my fee will soar to $75.00 an hour.”

“You're not letting me talk. I thought the patient was supposed to do the talking while the psychiatrist listened.”

“I don't believe in that bullshit. In my office we both talk. You talk until I get sick and tired of hearing your voice. Then I talk so I can pay you back for making me sick and tired. In other words, you talk when I want you to.”

Kerner was getting angry. “Well, chacun à son goût,” he said sarcastically.

“Okay, okay, Kerner. You're not impressing me. I can speak French too. I also speak Yiddish, so, ‘Gay cocken offen yam.' You know what that means? . . . It means, go shit in the ocean.”

Kerner started to get up. It was no use; the man was obviously crazed. He had to get out of there. His chest was beginning to constrict and his stomach was knotted. He felt like throwing up. He got off the couch and turned towards the door.

“Where are you going, Mr. Kerner?”

“I'm leaving,” Kerner said and walked quickly to the door.

“You're a shlepper, Kerner!”

“You're crazy,” Kerner replied angrily and went outside. He opened the waiting-room door and went out into the hallway. Behind him he could hear the doctor yelling.

“Kerner, you're a shlepper. You have no faith. That's your sickness. You have no faith!”

Kerner started to run. He ran all the way to the stores on Sherbrooke Street.

Chapter Three

M
orrie Hankleman sat at his desk unable to work. No matter what he tried to think about, his mind kept coming back to Artie Kerner. He had never thought it possible to hate someone as much as he hated that man. Kerner was going to pay his dues. One way or the other, he was going to pay. No one was going to take Morrie Hankleman for a ride; not after what he had been through.

For six years he had worked his ass off as a department manager for the Blue Star chain of food stores. Then they had promoted him to store manager. He had worked in that capacity for another two years. All the while he was thinking of ways to get into something on his own. He had a lot of ideas but no money to implement them.

The time was passing. He had hoped to be at least well-off if not wealthy by the time he was thirty, but things weren't turning out that way. He was getting desperate. He wanted to make some big money, to relax, to play the big shot, to come and go as he pleased. He couldn't see himself working for the Blue Star chain for the rest of his life but he could see no other alternatives.

He felt he had to break out or die. He was ready to go for broke if only something would fall his way. And then it did. He was promoted to vegetable buyer for all the Blue Star stores on the island of Montreal—thirty-four of them. The increase in his salary wasn't insignificant but he couldn't have cared less about that. He would have gladly taken the promotion with a decrease in his salary because, from the very moment he was told about his new function, Morrie Hankleman knew exactly what he would do.

He didn't do it immediately. First he familiarized himself with the job and the people with whom he had to deal. It wasn't long before he was ready to make his first move.

Some of the salesmen sounded him out the very first time they met him. They all had their own style. Some were subtle, and some were less subtle, but it didn't take Morrie Hankleman long to know which men he could deal with. He took his first payoff one month after he had assumed his new job. He never looked back.

By the end of the first year, he had put $50,000.00 in a Swiss bank.

It was shortly after the end of that first lucrative year that Morrie Hankleman began thinking seriously about what he was going to do. He knew eventually the word would get around that he was on the take and he wanted to get out clean. If he was lucky, he could go on taking indefinitely; if he wasn't, he might have another year or two.

He began investing cautiously in the stock market and got to know some of the inside people. Then one day he got wind of a major promotion job. He was advised with absolute certainty that a mining stock on the Montreal exchange, then selling at $1.00 per share, would soon begin a steady rise to a minimum of around $10.00 a share. Hankleman thought about it for a full day. His source of information was a man well connected with the big promoters. Moreover, he and this individual had whored around together and for him to con Hankleman would be a dangerous thing on his part, given that Hankleman knew enough about his private life to completely destroy his marriage and his reputation.

Hankleman decided to move. He took $20,000.00 and, using margin, purchased $40,000.00 worth of the stock. Then he waited. He waited under the most extreme pressure of his life. He slowly withdrew into a shell so that, by the third day, he was communicating with people in monosyllables. On the fourth day after he had bought the stock, it began to rise. At first it made its ascent slowly and Hankleman was having his doubts. He contemplated pulling out with a slight profit, but held on, withdrawing further into himself. On the tenth day, his wife took their child and left. Morrie Hankleman was too involved with his stock to give this more than a moment's thought.

Then suddenly at the end of the second week, the stock began to skyrocket, going up a dollar per day per share.

By the end of the third week, it hit $5.00 a share. At that point, unable to stand the pressure and feeling as though he might have a nervous breakdown, Morrie Hankleman sold, and collected close to $200,000.00.

The next day he gave his notice to the Blue Star chain and became a changed man. He felt magnanimous; he called his wife back and she came. Now he had money and he was a free man. But at the same time he realized what people meant when they spoke about the heavy responsibility of having money. He had to be careful. If he was cautious he could make his money grow; if he wasn't he could piss it all away.

He began to think about reasonable investments. He consulted with people whose expertise he respected, and finally he bought several small apartment buildings with good revenues.

But he wasn't satisfied. He couldn't help but compare the return on any investment with the profit he had made on the one stock-market deal.

He decided to go into the business of lending money. He would go into second mortgages for which there was a great demand by serious people. At the same time, he made up his mind to try his hand at pure short-term money-lending where he knew the profits were unbelievably high. He passed the word around that he had money available for any kind of loan.

Now as he sat at his desk thinking about all this, Morrie Hankleman realized that he had made a few mistakes. Perhaps his first mistake had been to go into the business of shylocking without thoroughly understanding all of its intricacies. Perhaps his second mistake had been to place too much trust in credit reports. His third mistake had been to lend money to Artie Kerner.

Morrie Hankleman stood up and walked out of his office. His first two mistakes he would take care of himself. In another fifteen minutes he'd be meeting with the man they called Solly the Hawk. That would be the first step towards rectifying his third mistake.

Chapter Four

S
olly the Hawk sat at his desk in the office that he shared with his partner, Big Moishie Mandelberg. He glanced over at the big man who was busy haranguing someone on the telephone. The Hawk looked at his watch. The man, Morrie Hankleman, would be there soon, probably to discuss a collection, the Hawk thought. Why else would he want to see him?

He thought back to the party at Bregman's office the night before. It had been nice seeing some of his friends and acquaintances from the old days, and they had been happy to see him as well, he thought, or at least some of them had. A few had looked at him somewhat nervously. Of course, he could understand it. A kind of myth had grown up around him over the years and often when he was introduced to people for the first time, they would look at him with what Solly knew was fear in their eyes. Then they would just mumble or stammer a few unintelligible words as though afraid to say anything that might offend him and incur his wrath which, to their minds, could be unleashed violently and unpredictably. Some would simply keep a respectful distance; others would hang around and ass kiss.

The ass kissers, he disliked. They wanted something from him. It was as though they were trying to insure themselves for the future—just in case. No, he didn't like the ass kissers. As for the others—if they were afraid of him, that was their problem.

The truth was that he hated violence. In all the hundreds of times that he had gone out on a collection, he had actually resorted to physical violence only seven times. He remembered each incident in clear detail. He had never on any of these occasions initiated the action, but in each case had merely defended himself against violent men who, for one reason or another, had reacted crazily to his request for payments owed. In fact, in all those instances where he had fought, he would gladly have walked away to avoid a confrontation had he been able to. In many cases that was exactly what he had done; simply walked away. But on those seven occasions, he'd had nowhere to walk away to.

Of course, he had to admit that in a way he had helped promote his image. He enjoyed collecting and he loved talking about his various jobs. He enjoyed telling a story to the boys. He liked to make them laugh and he felt good when he was talking and saw how they hung on his every word.

Since they always seemed to want to hear about those jobs where violence was used, the Hawk accommodated them, but he never lied. Sometimes he added certain embellishments to make the stories more appealing but the kernel of each story was the truth.

Since he had only seven stories involving violence and since he was continually being called upon to relate them, Solly the Hawk was able to perfect each one to the point where it was a perfect masterpiece. Every story combined a basic conflict between good and evil. Elements of greed, envy, lust, were always involved. He was always able to inject a large dose of humour into each one.

The Hawk knew these stories were repeated to others by his audience, so when he sometimes wondered why such a myth had grown up around him, he knew that, to some degree, he had no one to blame but himself. Now, as he sat at his desk, he couldn't help smiling at his own little weakness. If that would be his worst weakness, he would be happy.

His thoughts turned to Morrie Hankleman again and he looked at his watch. Hankleman's appointment was for ten o'clock. It was now a quarter to ten.

The Hawk was anxious to find out what kind of proposition Hankleman would have. He had already made up his mind that if the job was straightforward, he would take it on.

The Hawk's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Big Moishie's voice. “So you're really going to do something for this Hankleman?”

The Hawk shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe. I'll see first what kine of deal he's got. If it's good, I'll probly take it on.”

“I didn't like this putz when I met him last night at the party, Solly. He's a sniffer. You know?”

Solly the Hawk shrugged again. “Whaddo I care. So long as he has a legit deal I'll consider it. I could use a liddle action, Moishie.”

Moishie Mandelberg gave a half-shrug and scowled to indicate his displeasure. “I didn't like the way he was talking to you. Like he was talking down to you. Like he was talking to a gorilla. Like maybe you had trouble understanding plain English.”

“Whaddo I care,” the Hawk replied with a smile.

“On the one hand he was sucking your ass and on the other he was talking down.”

“Whaddo I care,” the Hawk replied. “It's nutting new. Like dey say, I'm laughing all de way to de bank. . . . Besides, I gotta keep busy. I can't sit in de office all day stroking. Right?”

“Right,” Big Moishie said, nodding. “I just didn't like the way he was talking to you.”

“Who gives a shit, Moishie. It doesn bodder me. Besides, we don even know what he's got ta offer. Let's hear first what his story is. Right?”

“Right.”

The Hawk glanced at his watch. “He should be here any minute now,” he said.

“Did you feel his hand when he shook hands with you?” Big Moishie asked.

“Yeah.”

“It was like shaking hands with a sticky washcloth. I never felt such a wet hand in my life. It was like dripping water.”

The Hawk nodded. It was quite true. Hankleman did have a very wet hand.

“Not only was it wet, but it was sticky like a leech. I had to go wash my hands after I shook with him. It was like wet glue. I don't trust people with wet, sticky hands.”

The Hawk shrugged but he knew what the big man meant.

Suddenly the secretary's voice came over the intercom. “There's a Mr. Hankleman here to see you.”

“Tell em ta come in,” the Hawk said.

Big Moishie caught Solly's eye and scowled again. The Hawk ignored his partner's look as Morrie Hankleman came barrelling into the office and headed right for Solly's desk, his right hand extended.

The Hawk winced inwardly as he took the wet hand in his own.

“Nice to see you again so soon, Mr. Weisskopf,” Hankleman said, smiling magnanimously.

The Hawk shook his head in acknowledgement and waited for Hankleman to greet his partner, but he didn't.

“I tink you remember my partner, Mr. Mandelberg,” the Hawk said.

“Oh, yes. Nice to see you,” Hankleman said and winked at Big Moishie.

Solly twitched as Hankleman did this. No one winked at Big Moishie. Moishie Mandelberg gave the slightest nod of acknowledgement and shot a quick glance at Solly.

“Have a seat, Mr. Hankleman,” the Hawk said, motioning at the chair opposite his desk.