In Milton Lumky Territory

  She nodded, following what he was telling her.

  “But,” he said, “with us it’s different.”

  “Everybody in the business world feels like you,” she said. “Don’t they? It’s just another world from me, Bruce. It has nothing to do with right or wrong; I just know I can’t do something like that. We’re stuck with them, or maybe somebody else can do something with them, but you have to tell them what they’re getting. I meant what I said. If you drive down to Reno I’ll phone him; I remember his name. Ed van Scharf or von Scharf.” She showed him a notebook. On a page she had written the name down, and the phone number of the discount house.

  “Can I stay at the house tonight?” he said presently.

  “Of course you can,” she said, caressing his arm and shoulder and staring at him with intensity, as if, he thought, she were searching for some sign. Something to tell her what to do. “You could have last night. You didn’t have to leave. Where did you go?”

  “I slept in the car,” he said.

  “You don’t ever have to do that. I didn’t go back to bed; I stayed up until morning, thinking. I shouldn’t have upbraided you about your having worked for a discount house. But it is true, Bruce. Your training and outlook are different from mine. I called Fancourt and he’s coming by after I close, around six. I want to tell him the situation. I know there’s nothing he can do, but I want to make sure.”

  “It’s a good idea,” he said, although he saw no use in it.

  “And then I’m giving up this place,” she said. “It’s taught me a lesson. Out of the three thousand we just owe one half. We can get enough out of this to pay the loan easily and have a good deal left over. It might even be that Zoe would want to buy it. I think I’ll ask around five thousand for it. I just want to get it off my hands and get out of here. And then when that’s done, we’ll look around and see what we want to do.” She smiled at him hopefully.

  “You don’t want to make one try to dump the machines?”

  Hesitating, she said, “I - don’t think we can.”

  “We can,” he said.

  “You don’t know that, Bruce.”

  Getting to his feet he said, “I’ll go up to the house and get the ten you took inside.”

  “And then what?”

  “Even if you sell this place,” he said, “we still have to do something with the machines.”

  “Are you going to drive down to Reno?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Unless something else comes up.”

  “When you get back, I hope to have sold this place.” She said it in such a way that he believed her. She meant it. If she could, she undoubtedly would. But, he thought, it can’t be done that quick. It would take some time. And some doing.

  “Can I draw fifty bucks for expenses?” he asked her. He had used up all the money he had.

  “I think so,” she said. She looked into the register and then she gave him twenty-five dollars from her purse and two tens from the register and, to wind it up, a roll of nickels. “Almost fifty,” she said.

  “It’s enough,” he said. “I have my credit card to buy gas.”

  “Did you believe me when I said I’d call your old boss?”

  “We’ll see,” he said. He did not believe that when it came down to it she would jeopardize the sale. They both understood the situation; they could not afford the pleasure of telling anyone about the keyboards. Like Baranowski, they would have to keep it quiet and hope it wouldn’t be noticed. Possibly Baranowski hadn’t discovered it himself until after he had bought up the four hundred machines …

  All along the line, he thought. The machines passing from one hand to the next. From one city to the next. Up from Mexico to Seattle, through San Diego and Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, maybe even some of the smaller towns in-between.

  And now we own a bunch of them.

  Now it’s up to us to make the wheels turn; to get rid of them, push the things into motion again.

  In his mind he believed that she saw it like that, too. It was too serious. What other way was there?

  Susan said, “You know, when you called me from up there, and told me about Milt - it worried me. That you could walk off and leave him. I guess you’ll walk out of here sometime, like last night. When you calculate in your mind that it’s unprofitable to stay with me. When you get to the point that you can’t see a living to be made out of this place, or out of being married to me. Maybe I can talk to you in your own terms. I think there is a living to be made out of me. I can probably make a living on my own; I always have. At least, since I was - I started to say, Since I was your age. But actually it was since I was nineteen. Isn’t that something for you to consider? A wife who can support herself, and possibly support you as well?”

  He said, “You know I’ve never thought about anything like that.”

  “Maybe not consciously,” she said.

  “That damn talk,” he said, with loathing.

  “Haven’t you subconsciously wanted to lean on me? The situation cries out for it. An older woman that you recognize as a figure you used to look up to and depend on for guidance.”

  “I never depended on you,” he said, at the doorway of the office. “I was afraid of you. I lived for the day I could get out of your class.”

  “You liar,” she said. “You needed somebody to guide you. You had to be led around.”

  “Don’t be vindictive,” he said, hardly able to stand hearing her tell him such things. Such obviously made-up things for no other purpose than to injure him. She was saying whatever she could think of.

  “You were a weak child,” she said, her face white but composed. “A dependent child that followed the lead of the other children.”

  “Not true,” he said, having difficulty speaking.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You had an older brother. He’s doing medical research, isn’t he? He won a lot of scholarships. I remember seeing his school records. He was brilliant; I remember that.”

  “Having fun?” he said. “Have fun. Have a lot of fun.”

  “I can understand your wanting to demonstrate to me that you’re an adult and capable of taking your place as an equal,” she said, with the perverse acuteness that had always shown up in her when she was terribly angry, determined to get back at any cost. “If only you had been able to pull off this deal of yours. For your own sake, as well of course as for ours, I wish you had actually been able to do what you maintained you had the experience to do. I guess I shouldn’t be saying things like this to you, should I? You’re not psychologically strong enough to hear them. I’m sorry.” But even as she apologized her eyes shone with cruelty; she was still searching for something more to say. “Sooner or later you have to learn about yourself,” she told him, her voice rising to that sharp, carrying, speech-like tone that had entered into his bones years ago and stuck with him. He winced at the sound. It made him cringe and feel guilt and fright, and the remembered hopeless dislike toward her. Suddenly, with triumph, she waved her finger at him and said, “I think I have your motivations worked out; you deliberately managed to buy these machines, knowing subconsciously that they were defective, to pay me back for the hostility you felt toward me when you were eleven years old. You’re still eleven. Emotionally, you’re living out the life of a grammar school child.” Panting, she stared at him, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  There was nothing to say. He left the office without answering. For a time he did not know or care where he went; he wandered around downtown Boise, in a blank.

  What meanness, he thought. Anything to score a hit.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe - subconsciously - he had noticed that the keyboard was not right. After all, he had had plenty of opportunity to study it. In the same manner that Milt Lumky had arranged to become ill at the proper moment, to pay him and Susan back.

  How can anybody ever know? he asked himself.

  Maybe it doesn’t matter, he thought. Maybe it has no meaning, one way or ano
ther. I did buy the machines; Milt did get sick. Motives or secret reasons have no significance in this. I still have to get rid of the sixty Mithrias portable electric typewriters.

  And I’ll be god damned if I’m going to say anything to anybody about the keyboards. Let them find out for themselves.

  * * * * *

  HE WAITED UNTIL SUNSET and then he started out on the highway.

  I had better cook up a darn good story, he said to himself. Because the first thing he’ll want to know is why I’m trying to unload them. The sale will be made or lost there.

  As he drove he meditated.

  Nothing entered his mind for several hours. And then, out of nowhere, he thought up one of the most sensational lies that he had ever heard of. An absolutely perfect explanation for his purposes.

  He had to dump the Mithrias machines because a representative of some major U.S. typewriter - Royal or Underwood or Remington - had gotten wind that he had them and was about to peddle them. The factory representative had shown up and told him that if he sold them over the counter he would never get a U.S. typewriter franchise as long as he lived. And that furthermore he would not even get parts or supplies; they would strangle him on the vine.

  On the other hand, if he dumped the Mithrias machines outside of the area, they would see that he got a decent franchise arrangement.

  It was the superiority of the Mithrias that had frightened the U.S. typewriter people.

  A discount house like C.B.B. would jump at a chance to get the machines, once they had been fed such a story. Assuming they believed it.

  As he drove he thought, If they believe it, then I have a sale. If they don’t, then I don’t. And, he thought, if they buy, they’ll buy at a good price. I can probably sell it to them at a good profit. Not for fifty bucks a machine but more like seventy-five. That would mean a clear net profit of fifteen hundred dollars. Fifty percent mark-up, which is good enough for anybody.

  Of course, he realized, I’ll never be able to set foot in Nevada again.

  I wonder if I can pull it off, he asked himself. The idea of it intrigued and excited him. Not merely dumping the machines, but making a good profit. And selling them not just to anybody but to a discount house. One that he had learned the business from.

  And to his own former employers … it was a challenge.

  15

  IN THE UPSTAIRS OFFICE overlooking the main floor of the Consumers’ Buying Bureau building, Ed von Scharf met him and sat down with him.

  “Let’s have a look at them,” von Scharf said briskly.

  Bruce said, “You sound as if you had been expecting me.”

  “Your wife called,” von Scharf said. “She told us the situation. How much did you pay for them?”

  Chagrined, he murmured, “Fifty bucks apiece.”

  “I want to get somebody from the typewriter department in here.” Von Scharf excused himself. When he returned he had with him the buyer from the typewriter department and Vince Pareti, one of the Pareti brothers. The three of them huddled together over me Mithrias that Bruce had brought into the building with him.

  “We can get a standard keyboard out of it,” the typewriter buyer said finally. “With a couple of minor differences. Not enough to matter. All the letters and numbers will be right. That’s what does it.” He nodded to Pareti and von Scharf and started out.

  “How much?” Pareti asked him. “Figure the labor.”

  “At our cost,” the expert said, computing. “Say, at the most five bucks a machine.”

  After he had left, von Scharf retired to the rear of the office while Pareti conducted the negotiations. “We’ll take them off your hands,” Pareti said to Bruce. “We’ll pay you forty-five dollars apiece, and we want all sixty plus the name of your supplier. How many more does he have, according to your knowledge?”

  “About three hundred and forty more,” Bruce said.

  “And how much would he want?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, feeling the futility of the thing fall onto him. “You can probably haggle him down below fifty bucks apiece. Which is what I paid.”

  “Yes,” Pareti said. “That’s what your wife told us. We just wanted to be sure. We don’t want you to take a loss, but you can see that it’s going to cost us to get them into shape where we can sell them. What do you say to forty-five apiece? That means you take a loss of only three hundred bucks; that’s chicken feed.”

  “To you, maybe,” Bruce said.

  “I’d just as soon give him the full fifty he paid,” von Scharf said.

  “Oh no,” Pareti answered, with finality.

  “He got them down here for us. And he scouted them up in the first place; that ought to be worth something. His wife says he was on the road a week. We’re going to be listing them for almost two hundred.”

  “I’m against it,” Pareti said, “but if you want, go ahead and make out a check for three thousand.” To Bruce he said, “How does that make you feel? You’re out from under them and you didn’t lose a nickel.”

  Feebly, Bruce said, “I think they’re worth more than fifty bucks.”

  The two men grinned.

  “Flip a coin,” von Scharf said. He dug out a fifty-cent piece and spun it up into the air. “Heads you sell, tails you don’t.” The coin missed his hand and fell to the floor. “Tails,” he said. “You don’t sell.” He picked up the coin and put it back in his pocket.

  Bruce said, “Give me an hour or so to decide. Okay?”

  They both nodded.

  As he left the office, von Scharf clapped him on the back and then walked along with him, to the exit door. “You know,” he said, “I’m a little surprised at you. You didn’t accept them sight unseen, did you?”

  “No,” Bruce said. “I looked at them.”

  “If you’d been working for us, you wouldn’t be now.”

  “I’ll see you in an hour,” Bruce said. Turning his back he walked outside to the parking lot and his car.

  For an hour he drove around and then he stopped at a drive-in ice cream stand and bought a pineapple malt. On long dry trips he found that a pineapple malt tasted least like the countryside; it made him think of girls and beaches and blue water, portable radios and dances, the happiness of his high school days. What there had been of it.

  In most of the cars near his he saw teen-agers. Kids with their girls, parked in Mercury coupes, listening to their car radios, eating hamburgers and sipping malts.

  I wonder if I ought to sell them the machines, he asked himself. If they can put them in shape for five bucks apiece, so could I. No, he realized. That’s their price; they have benches in the back and mechanically-inclined flunkies to do the job.

  Yet it occurred to him, as a sort of last-resort possibility, that he might make an attempt to have the work done himself. It would cost at least three hundred dollars. Probably more. But he wouldn’t need all sixty machines altered at once; he could start with a few, sell them, and with the money get more changed, and so forth. .

  Finishing his malt he drove until he saw a typewriter repair shop. He parked and got out and carried a Mithrias inside. Showing it to the repairman he asked him what it would cost to have the keyboard changed.

  The man, a short little solemn fellow, neatly-dressed in a white shirt, tie, and pressed sharkskin trousers, poked around inside the machine and then quoted a figure of twenty to twenty-five dollars.

  “That much?” Bruce said, with a sinking heart.

  The man explained that for some of the changes the type slugs would be unsoldered. Or the typebars could be cut, exchanged, and rewelded in a different sequence. But some of the keys would have to be split, and that was tricky work.

  “Is there any chance,” Bruce said, “that I could do the work myself?”

  The man said, “Depends on how good you are.”

  “What about tools?”

  “Yes, you’d need tools. But for one machine.”

  “I have sixty of them,” he said.


  “The man said, “What you ought to do is make an arrangement with some fellow who’s in the business. Who has a shop, tools, and knows how to do it. If you try on your own you’ll damage a couple of letters, and that’ll finish the machine. Because I’ll bet you can’t get parts for these.”

  Thanking the man he left the shop.

  That was that. Unless, of course, he could make a deal with some repairman. Maybe cut him in.

  And who did he know? Nobody. At least, nobody qualified.

  They’ve got me, he told himself. They’ll buy the machines from me, make the changes, and roll up a hell of a big profit. All my work and all my driving and planning and farting around … and, he thought, the R & J Mimeographing Service or whatever we’d be eventually calling it. We’d have our money back - most of it - but I doubt very much if we’d go on from there. In fact, I know we wouldn’t go on from there. How could we? Where would we go?

  Here I have the machines, he thought, and I can’t do anything with them. I can’t fix them and I can’t sell them. All I need is money. Money. A few hundred dollars. A thousand. Better yet, two thousand. But anyhow something. And where can I get it? We owe the bank fifteen hundred plus interest; I’ve hit my family, and Milt Lumky, and that does it. Nothing to sell, rent, exchange, put up for security.

  What about my car?

  His equity wasn’t large enough. That was out.

  Maybe Susan’s house. Borrow against it. Long enough to get these goddamn machines in shape to peddle.

  And then he thought, She did phone. She did call them and tell them about the keyboard. So perhaps, he thought, I don’t want to go on with it any further. Maybe this is a good place to stop.

  What an immoral thing to do, he said to himself. Although of course it wouldn’t seem like that to her. In fact, to her it was virtuous.

  That was the worst part. She had done it out of moral duty.

  But to him it was lousy; it had put him in a terrible spot. Your wife called us, Ed von Scharf had said. Your wife told us. She tripped you up, you ridiculous bugger. You clown. In the name of what? To help the C.B.B discount house, which she has never seen and clearly doesn’t like?