Trust (9 page)

On the last Tuesday in July, Ed Cobb drove his maroon Chrysler 300F to Donald Beale’s Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in South Burlington. Vermont, trying to avoid puddles left by severe early morning thunderstorms and cursing his decision to spend the previous Saturday waxing the car. Beale was in his office on the second floor, talking on the telephone, his feet on the sill of the picture window that looked down on the showroom. He waved to Cobb to come up. Cobb acknowledged the invitation, but did not act on it until he had swapped views about the surprisingly tenacious Red Sox with Dennis McCallum, the sales manager, and Paul Oakes, one of the salesmen.

“It’s
partly
this Conigliaro kid,” McCallum said. “Jee-
zuss
, but he can hit. But it’s mostly Yastrzemski, I think, that’s keeping them in the thing.”

Oakes disagreed. “I think it’s the manager,” he said. “They had both those two guys last year, and look where they ended up. Was it all Herman’s fault? Yeah, I think it was. He’d’ve took the credit if they’d’ve won. So they lose? He takes the blame. This Dick Williams,
boy, he is something else. Took us long enough, but we finally found ourselves a Williams who thinks more about winning the game’n he does about his own glory. Manager this year’s the difference. Don’t care what line of work you’re in, and I’ve been in this one a long time, manager’s always the difference.”

McCallum laughed. “Ain’t he something?” he said to Cobb. “Every time he’s on the Saturday card, and he really wants it off, he starts in the first of the week, shinin’ up to me like I’m a seventeen-year-old blonde with big tits, telling me how he respects me, because my brilliant mind.”

“I didn’t even see the card,” Oakes said. “I didn’t even see it.”

“Oakesie,” McCallum said, “in the first place, I never keep a salesman unless I’m sure he can count. Neither did Don’s father. You were here when I was born, so I know you can do it. I also know you do. It’s been three weeks since your last weekend tour, so you know you’re next in the order. In the second place, I was out in the back with the boss. You come in here this morning, and I see you through the window in my office. You go in, peek at the card. And I say to Don: ‘You wanna bet a cold one Oakesie’s in my shirt all day?’ And Don says: ‘Why? You got him down for Saturday?’ And Don wouldn’t take the bet. He knows you, Oakesie, just like I do. So when it don’t work with me, whatever story you cooked up, and it won’t, forget about going to Donald crying. ’cause it ain’t gonna work with him, neither.”

“You should run for the House, Paul,” Cobb said. “You’d fit right in, in Montpelier.”

“I’m not qualified to be a politician,” Oakes said.
“I never stole a thing in my whole life, and I never tell a lie. What I need’s one of those state jobs you’re always giving your friends. Where you don’t have to get anybody to vote for you, and because of that they give you money for not working. That’s what I should have.”

“You’d be great at it,” McCallum said. “Look at all the experience you got.”

“Jesus, Dennis,” Cobb said, “how the hell can this guy make a living in this business? He’s been here since Noah, and he doesn’t lie or steal? Whaddaya keep him around for? Lead the Bible readings?”

“Same reason NBC hired Carson when Jack Paar retired,’ McCallum said. “Everybody puts in a hard day, they like some comedy. Course Oakesie doesn’t always mean to be funny, but that’s when we get the most laughs—when he doesn’t mean to.”

“What the hell were you doing, Dennis?” Oakes said. “Out in the back of the shop? Thought you’re the one says it’s dirty out there, guys with all grease on their hands, cars all apart on the floor. Some customer dame with a short skirt on out there, bending over the trunk? I’ve been here over thirty-six years. You’ve been here now at least ten. Never knew you before to go out back in the shop.”

“Don’s got a new toy,” McCallum said to Cobb. “Make him show it to you, ’fore you leave.”

“Another one?” Cobb said. “What is it this time, a lake steamboat?”

“Make him show it to you,” McCallum said. “It’s a nifty little thing.”

“Where’s he
put
all this stuff?” Oakes said. “His father’s ghost must be spinning. Between the motorcycles
and the T-bird and the old ’Vette and Healey, and the MG and the Jag—where’s he put it all? He’s gonna have to have a garage at home bigger’n the one he’s got here. Which is bigger’n he needs.”

“He bought this one to sell, Oakesie,” McCallum said. “I asked him that, and he said he’s gonna sell it, right person comes along. Said: ‘I got to show some of the front-room guys that it really can be done. Actually sell a car. I don’t wanna sell one from stock, ’cause they’ll say I’m stealing from them. So I buy this one and sell it, and then I tell, say, Oakesie: “Hey, how come I can sell a nine-year-old German car, for big bucks, and you can’t sell a brand-new Chrysler? For almost the same money. What’s the matter with you?” It’s a training thing.’ ”

Cobb laughed. “I’m gonna go up and see him,” he said. “Nice talking to you guys again.”

“Yeah,” Oakes said, “but I’m still voting Republican.”

“Course you are, Oakesie,” Cobb said. “We never count on you guys. We know you do the best you can—reading’s hard for you. But we’re philosophical, ’cause you’re a dying breed. And we’re getting the young folks.”

“You’re getting them, all right,” Oakes said. “You’re getting them killed in Vietnam. And with the other war you got, the one on poverty, you’re killing them, with kindness, at home. Give the guy with the scar on his belly, holding the dogs by their ears, give him long enough in the White House, all you’re gonna have in this country’s longhairs and Republicans. The Republicans won’t vote for you, and the longhairs won’t vote at all—they’re stoned out of their minds all
the time. So who’s gonna keep your jobs for you, huh? You’ll all be on welfare yourselves. Which is probably why you’re so hot for it. Making sure you can survive.”

“Don’t envy you, Dennis,” Cobb said. “Hope Don pays you a lot if this’s what you’ve got to put up with.”

Donald Beale had framed pictures of his father and his grandfather, and the two of them with him, crowding the top of the credenza behind his desk. The chronology went from his right to left, starting with the sepia photo of his grandfather standing stiffly beside the gas pump outside the first Beale dealership; the sign in the background advertised Beale Pierce-Arrow Motorcars, Winooski, Vt. In the middle there was a black-and-white picture of his grandfather, his father, himself, and his brother, the men standing behind the boys with their hands on the children’s shoulders. There was a banner behind them that read “
SEE THE NEW CHRYSLER AIRFLOW
.” Next to the end on the left there was a color picture of Donald Beale and his father in front of a hexagonal white bandstand with a banner that read “
CONCERTS EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT. COURTESY BEALE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH, S. BURLINGTON
.” The last picture was in color and showed Donald Beale standing in front of the brick colonial showroom, holding an oil portrait of his father and an enlargement of the sepia photograph of his grandfather. The banner on the front of the building read “
BEALE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH
—40
YEARS OF INTEGRITY
.” On the wall above the credenza were numerous plaques for dealer achievements. On the wall to his right were Beale’s diplomas from Dartmouth College and the Boston University Law School.

“Been lollygaggin’ downstairs with the no-goods
that work for me, Ed?” Beale said. He was signing a stack of printed forms. “Hard enough to get those guys to work, ’thout having you distract ’em.” He signed the last of the papers and threw the stack into the Out box. He stood up and grinned, and they shook hands. “Good to see you, old pal,” he said. “Have a seat.” He sat down.

“That Oakesie is a piece of work,” Cobb said. “I suppose if you can’t find a couple of hungry rats to put in your jockstrap, the next best thing’d be to have that bastard in your hair every day.”

“Isn’t he something?” Beale said. “Been around forever, and you know if my grandfather hired him, and my father kept him on, he must have something on the ball. But you look at him, you talk to him, you say to yourself: ‘He’s a
sales
man? This guy’s about as smooth as a barbed wire on your ass.’ But let me tell you something: Oakesie sells those cars. Oakesie knows his trade. He’s got a bunch of skinflints that think every eight years or so’s about the right time to trade in. They bring in these jalopies all clapped out and rusted through, tires’re bald and brakes’re gone—‘Now, no point repairin’ her this summer, Edith; gonna trade her two summers from now’—haven’t had any real service ’Cept what they got in the barn from the people who own the things; it’s a wonder they don’t feed them hay, but they take better care of their cows—and the first guy they ask for is Oakesie. Never even occurs to these people that maybe Oakesie’s moved on since the last time they’re in, back ’fore the Spanish-American War, should be up in heaven by now. ‘Nope, bought this car from Oakesie. Seems to’ve worked pretty good. Need
a new one now, though, so I come to see Oakesie.’ And so Oakesie’s the man that they see.”

“Well, cripes,” Cobb said, “but you can’t make much money, the resale on junkers. Who the hell can you sell those wrecks to?”

“You can if you don’t pay much for ’em,” Beale said. “And Oakesie doesn’t pay very much. That guy knows down to the
penny
what the margin is on a car. Look, I run the business, right? I own the goddamned thing. And I know what the damned margins are, plus or minus a ten-dollar bill. You let us load one up on you, well, we make about twenty-six percent on the air conditioning, the fancy radio, the power windows and the seats, the whitewalls and the fake wire wheels. And if you want the bucket seats—‘My God, you’ll pay for
leather?
’—we’ve got ourselves a nice fat cushion, and you’ll get a trade-in offer that’ll make you think we’re crazy. On the base car, stripped, we gross somewhere between thirteen and eighteen percent, depending on which base car you happen to decide on. So you add the two things together, how much we make on the stripper, how much we make on the goodies, and subtract that from the price of the car, and that’s what our gross profit is.
Gross
, I said. We still gotta pay the heat and the light, and the real-estate taxes, the mechanics and all of our people. But if you order a car that costs four grand, and add two more grand in equipment, we stand to make eleven hundred bucks. If this was a charity, we’d sell you that car for forty-nine hundred dollars. But it’s not. It’s a business.

“That’s what people don’t understand,” Beale said. “It’s the same thing as the things that you do. We can only work with what we’ve got to work with. You bring
in an El Ratto we can sell for two hundred, it’s gonna cost us a half a buck to clean it up before we get even that. So we’re gonna offer you one fifty for the thing. And you’re gonna tell us the guy down the street offered you twice as much. Which means you want us to give you a buck and a half out of our eleven hundred. Maybe a buck seventy-five, if we’ve got to better his offer. Our profit is now not eleven no more: it’s nine fifty, or maybe it’s nine and a quarter. Are we gonna do that? Sure. I’d rather make nine twenty-five any day, ’n go home on empty at night. But, are we gonna give you half our profit? When we’re making no money on your car? Are we gonna give you eight hundred bucks, something in that ballpark there? Hate to tell you this, friend, but we’re not.

“The beauty of Oakesie is they believe this. He will not let them steal cars. On the other hand, they also know, he won’t steal their cars from them. And since Oakesie knows, to the penny, how much margin he has got, the deals don’t take long, and stick. Nobody ever backs out. His customers go for the strippers—he’s got people don’t even buy
heat
, for God’s sake, let alone a damned radio—and they run them into the ground. But they keep coming back, to see Oakesie. And that’s why my father kept him around, and why I do the same.”

“Yeah, but every eight years?” Cobb said. “How can you make any money selling cheap cars to people that keep them eight years, and only bring them back in when they’re ruined?”

“You got a lot of them, you can,” Beale said. “And he’s got a lot of them. He’s also got, I think one of his daughters married a Canuck or something, but he’s got
some kind of great reputation with the migrant workers, you know? Comes the apple-picking season, all of a sudden we got all these guys named André in here, looking for cheap cars. And Oakesie’s the man they want to see. They heard he’s got cheap cars. Well, they heard right. Last fall there was one day when Oakesie set a record. Sold sixteen clunkers off the back lot, some of which were sitting there since around Easter, I think. We added it up. We owned the bunch of them for somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-seven hundred bucks, and he sold them one by one that day, for fifty-three hundred bucks. Cash. That is twenty-six hundred gross profit, to get which on a good day with the wind behind you, you’d have to sell about three brand-new yachts. To people with nothing to trade. Know how many people’ve done that? I don’t know any, myself.”

“Yeah,” Cobb said, “but the cars can’t last. Don’t the Andrés come back here and bitch?”

“Nope,” Beale said, “they expect them to die. They don’t expect much, cheap cars. It gets them home, they can keep it going through the winter, it staggers back down here in the fall and they sell it the next poorer guy. Then they come back and see Oakesie. You know what his secret is? Every one of those clunkers’s got a brand-new battery. Tires’re smooth, suspension’s shot, steering’s pretty slack. But that sick old bastard starts in the morning, and that’s what brings them back.” He paused. “Those that don’t get killed, of course, sliding off the road.”

“You guys’re asking for trouble, you know,” Cobb said. “That Nader thing’s just the beginning. He can wallop Corvair out of business, all by his virtual self,
lots of big heroes like me in the government, we tend to pay some attention. Maybe we can do something like that, get ourselves idolized. And also, perhaps, reelected. Or move on to some bigger job.”