Fat Jack was telling the salesmen that if business didn’t pick up in a hurry there’d be no Christmas bonuses this year and there might not even be a Christmas PARTY. “Him and his CHRISTMAS PARTIES,” whispered Morris Silver. “We haven’t had a Christmas party here in ten years. TWENTY years. We NEVER had a Christmas party.”
“So what are you complaining about?” said Phil Coleman.
“Christmas party,” said Morris Silver.
Fat Jack was saying, “Harry Himself is thinking of coming down to talk to you men. And you know what that means!”
That means the earth will shake. There will be thunder and lightning. Trees will topple. Rivers and oceans will run backwards. Dogs will meow. Cats will bark. The birds will grow silent. Mountains will roar. Harry – like God – wasn’t seen anymore. Nobody saw him arrive. Nobody saw him leave. But we all knew he was here, UPSTAIRS, listening, watching, privy to everything, even our innermost thoughts. He was Harry Himself. There was none like him. Not on Vine Street. Not in Cincinnati and not in all of America. Harry Himself could sell anybody anything. He didn’t have to anymore. He was worth, according to Fat Jack’s estimate, maybe twenty million dollars – and still HUNGRY.
Make that THIRTY MILLION and still HUNGRY.
He had started the business selling REMNANTS door-to-door, operating from the back seat of a broken down Chevy. He got the remnants from GARBAGE cans, the scraps left over in the alleys by the department stores like Shillito’s and Pogue’s. Now, of course, he was a leading philanthropist. He was married and had one daughter, adopted, a girl named Sasha, now 24, who had married a wimp accountant, Stanley, a bean counter who would eventually take over the business, a sickening thought to Fat Jack. Stanley wasn’t a salesman. Accountants were inheriting the earth.
I had once been to Harry’s office. He sat behind a tiny, tidy desk that had nothing not even a computer or a pencil on it, and there he sat so un-ferocious, so tame, so TIMID, so untrue to his legend. The office had obviously been designed by a woman for a woman and, in fact, his daughter Sasha was an interior decorator. The only thing he had going for himself here was an ashtray and a box full of cigars. One reason he stayed late was that his wife wouldn’t let him smoke those things at home. He asked me a few questions about how things were going, and thanked me for my time. He never mentioned the boiler room, which led me to believe he didn’t know what I did around here, or that he even had a boiler room. He thanked me several times. He seemed very tired, in a way to suggest that he had seen everything and nothing could ever surprise him, and there were even hints of disgust at the corners of his mouth to mean that people had disappointed him, that it wasn’t all roses at the top and that if he had to do it over again maybe he wouldn’t. He thanked me again. He was a NICE GUY. Which was a very disillusioning thing to know. You wanted him to be GREAT and POWERFUL and AWFUL. It took months of not seeing him and Fat Jack’s repeated invocations of the Harry legend to gradually build back the awe and terror in me.
“We got a man here,” Fat Jack now continued to the assembled sales force, “who can barely WALK. He’s a CRIPPLE. And what’s he doing? He’s putting all the rest of you men to SHAME! He’s closing wall-to-wall jobs left and right. That’s right. I’m talking about Lou Emmett. That old cripple over there, that has-been, is going to make this year’s MILLION DOLLAR CLUB! Before anybody else! That’s right. Lou Emmett. He may be a cripple, but he’s ten times the salesman you men will ever be!”
Later, upstairs, I said to Lou, “Well, what do you think of that? He made you feel like a million dollars.”
“By calling me a cripple?”
“Lou, why is it always the negative with you?”
“He called me a cripple. In front of everybody.”
“He also said you were ten times the salesman they’d ever be.”
The wear and tear of being so great a salesman was beginning to show on Lou. His contract with that guy over in Northwood called for him to measure a house a day; close to 25 homes in all.
“Why one a day?” I asked.
“He’s in a hurry.”
“Lou, you’re shaking.”
“Something happened. Promise you won’t tell anybody.”
“What happened?”
“Promise.”
“What happened?”
“I’m driving back from Northwood yesterday. I was very tired, Eli. I’d been measuring this house all day and I was very tired. I’m driving back. I’m someplace in Walnut Hills. A kid, this kid runs out in the middle of the street. Right in front of my car. I nearly ran him over. It was THIS close. I almost forgot to put on the brakes I was so tired. That really shook me up, Eli. I’ve had nightmares all night. I keep seeing myself slamming on the brakes, and nothing happens.”
“But you did slam on the brakes on time.”
“But I ALMOST didn’t. You’ll never know how close it was! What if it happens again?”
“You don’t even have a license.”
“You better not tell anyone about this.”
“Lou, forget this Northwood deal. This guy’s asking too much. Who IS this guy?”
“He’s the developer.”
“WHO’S the developer?”
“It really shook me up. All night I dreamed about hurting this kid. Running him over.”
“This can’t go on, Lou.”
“You know what scares me? Maybe I did run the kid over.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe I did. Hasn’t that ever happened to you? You hit a bump on the road and you wonder?”
“Did you go back?”
“Yes. I didn’t see anything.”
“So there,” I said.
“But imagine, thinking you may have killed somebody. Can you imagine?”
Yes I could imagine.
“How can a man live with himself?”
He puts it out of his mind. Every minute of every day.
“Don’t you dare tell Fat Jack I was tired.”
“I promise.”
“That’s all I’d need. He’d pull me off. I’d be finished. Are we pals?”
“We’re pals.”
* * *
Fat Jack said I looked awful. “No I mean really awful,” he said. “Terrible.”
We were down in the stockroom where miles of carpet were rolled up against the walls, arrayed like beautiful dead animals being skewered, a perfect spot to do some boxing. Fat Jack loved to spar. One time I opened a cut over his left eye and he bled all over a WHITE rug. We both laughed our heads off after we buried that bit of evidence that was worth around $18,000. Now he came to me and said, “You can’t TOUCH me.” Touch him? He was so open I could have floored him by just saying boo. But I never would, of course.
“You’re not so tough,” he said after we traded harmless jabs for a few minutes, him doing all that dancing and prancing as if he were a prizefighter with the championship of the world on the line. Then he switched to wrestling, pulling me down in a headlock. Then he grabbed my tie and twisted it, saying, “I want to know what’s going on. So tell me.”
So I told him. I told him Stephanie hadn’t been home for three days and three nights, ever since she’d met with Sonja. I was worried, worried sick that Sonja had harmed her. I called her home. Her mother had assured me that Stephanie was fine, staying at some friend’s house – but would tell me no more.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t think she’s with a friend.”
“You think she’s been kidnapped?”
“I don’t know.”
“That fucking Sonja.”
“I never should have hired her. I never should have fired her.”
People like that, you don’t know what to do. Whatever you did was wrong.
Fat Jack comforted me by saying, “That’s what you get for being such a cockmaster…”
“I never went near her.”
“…going from one broad to another. One of them’s bound to be a lemon.”
“I know it’s all my fault.”
“Yes it is all your fault,” he said, offering further comfort.
“If anything’s happened to Stephanie…”
“There’s nothing you can do, Eli. Her own mother says she’s all right.”
“Her own mother hates my guts. She lies.”
“There’s nothing you can do, Eli, except wait. Stephanie’ll call. She always does.”