Chapter 3
"Then another thing I call your attention to, Mr. Nirdlinger, a feature we've added in the last year, at no extra cost, is our guarantee of bail bond. We furnish you a card, and all you have to do, in case of accident where you're held responsible, or in any traffic case where the police put you under arrest, is to produce that card and if it's a bailable offense, it automatically procures your release. The police take up the card, that puts us on your bond, and you're free until your case comes up for trial. Since that's one of the things the Automobile Club does for members, and you're thinking about the Automobile Club—"
"I've pretty well given that idea up."
"Well then, why don't we fix this thing up right now? I've pretty well outlined what we do for you—"
"I guess we might as well."
"Then if you'll sign these applications, you'll be protected until the new policies are issued, which will be in about a week, but there's no use your paying for a whole week's extra insurance. There's for the collision, fire, and theft, there's for the public liability—and if you don't mind sticking your name on these two, they're the agent's copies, and I keep them for my files."
"Here?"
"Right on the dotted line."
He was a big, blocky man, about my size, with glasses, and I played him exactly the way I figured to. As soon as I had the applications, I switched to accident insurance. He didn't seem much interested, so I made it pretty stiff. Phyllis cut in that the very idea of accident insurance made her shiver, and I kept on going. I didn't quit till I had hammered in every reason for taking out accident insurance that any agent ever thought of, and maybe a couple of reasons that no agent ever had thought of. He sat there drumming with his fingers on the arms of his chair, wishing I would go.
But what bothered me wasn't that. It was the witness that Phyllis brought out. I thought she would have some friend of the family in to dinner, maybe a woman, and just let her stay with us, there in the sitting room, after I showed up around seven-thirty. She didn't. She brought the stepdaughter in, a pretty girl, named Lola. Lola wanted to go, but Phyllis said she had to get the wool wound for a sweater she was knitting, and kept her there, winding it. I had to tie her in, with a gag now and then, to make sure she would remember what we were talking about, but the more I looked at her the less I liked it. Having to sit with her there, knowing all the time what we were going to do to her father, was one of the things I hadn't bargained for.
And next thing I knew, when I got up to go, I had let myself in for hauling her down to the boulevard, so she could go to a picture show. Her father had to go out again that night, and he was using the car, and that meant that unless I hauled her she would have to go down by bus. I didn't want to haul her. I didn't want to have anything to do with her. But when he kind of turned to me there was nothing I could do but offer, and she ran and got her hat and coat, and in a minute or two there we were, rolling down the hill.
"Mr. Huff?"
"Yes?"
"I'm not going to a picture show."
"No?"
"I'm meeting somebody. At the drugstore."
"Oh."
"Would you haul us both down?"
"Oh—sure."
"You won't mind?"
"No, not a bit."
"And you won't tell on me? There are reasons why I don't want them to know. At home."
"No, of course not."
We stopped at the drugstore, and she jumped out and in a minute came back with a young guy, with an Italian-looking face, pretty good-looking, that had been standing around outside. "Mr. Huff, this is Mr. Sachetti."
"How are you, Mr. Sachetti. Get in."
They got in, and kind of grinned at each other, and we rolled down Beachwood to the boulevard. "Where do you want me to set you down?"
"Oh, anywhere."
"Hollywood and Vine all right?"
"Swell."
I set them down there, and after she got out, she reached out her hand, and took mine, and thanked me, her eyes shining like stars. "It was darling of you to take us. Lean close, I'll tell you a secret."
"Yes?"
"If you hadn't taken us we'd have had to walk."
"How are you going to get back?"
"Walk."
"You want some money?"
"No, my father would kill me. I spent all my week's money. No, but thanks. And remember—don't tell on me."
"Hurry, you'll miss your light."
I drove home. Phyllis got there in about a half hour. She was humming a song out of a Nelson Eddy picture. "Did you like my sweater?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Isn't it a lovely color? I never wore old rose before. I think it's going to be really becoming to me."
"It's going to look all right."
"Where did you leave Lola?"
"On the boulevard."
"Where did she go?"
"I didn't notice."
"Was there somebody waiting for her?"
"Not that I saw. Why?"
"I was just wondering. She's been going around with a boy named Sachetti. A perfectly terrible person. She's been forbidden to see him."
"He wasn't on deck tonight. Anyway, I didn't see him. Why didn't you tell me about her?"
"Well? You said have a witness."
"Yeah, but I didn't mean her."
"Isn't she as good a witness as any other?"
"Yeah, but holy smoke there's a limit. A man's own daughter, and we're even using her—for what we're using her for."
An awful look came over her face, and her voice got hard as glass. "What's the matter? Are you getting ready to back out?"
"No, but you could have got somebody else. Me, driving her down to the boulevard, and all the time I had this in my pocket." I took out the applications, and showed them to her. One of those "agent's copies" was an updated application for a $25,000 personal accident policy, with double indemnity straight down the line for any disability or death incurred on a railroad train.
It was part of the play that I had to make two or three calls on Nirdlinger in his office. The first time, I gave him the bail-bond guarantee, stuck around about five minutes, told him to put it in his car, and left. The next time I gave him a little leather memo book, with his name stamped on it in gilt, just a little promotion feature we have for policy holders. The third time I delivered the automobile policies, and took his check, $79. 52. When I got back to the office that day, Nettie told me there was somebody waiting for me in my private office. "Who?"
"A Miss Lola Nirdlinger and a Mr. Sachetti, I think she said. I didn't get his first name."
I went in there and she laughed. She liked me, I could see that. "You surprised to see us again?"
"Oh, not much. What can I do for you?"
"We've come in to ask a favor. But it's your own fault."
"Yeah? How's that?"
"What you said the other night to Father about being able to get money on his car, if he needed it. We've come to take you up on it. Or anyway, Nino has."
That was something I had to do something about, the competition I was getting from the Automobile Club on an automobile loan. They lend money on a member's car, and I got to the point where I had to, too, if I was going to get any business. So I organized a little finance company of my own, had myself made a director, and spent about one day a week there. It didn't have anything to do with the insurance company, but it was one way I could meet that question that I ran into all the time: "Do you lend money on a car?" I had mentioned it to Nirdlinger, just as part of the sales talk, but I didn't know she was paying attention. I looked at Sachetti. "You want to borrow money on your car?"
"Yes sir."
"What kind of car is it?"
He told me. It was a cheap make.
"Sedan?"
"Coupe."
"It's in your name? And paid for?"
"Yes sir."
They must have seen a look cross my face, because she giggled. "He couldn't use it the other night.
He didn't have any gas."
"Oh."
I didn't want to lend him money on his car, or anything else. I didn't want to have anything to do with him, or her, in any way, shape, or form. I lit a cigarette, and sat there a minute. "You sure you want to borrow money on this car? Because if you're not working now, what I mean if you don't absolutely see your way clear to pay it back, it's a sure way to lose it. The whole secondhand car business depends on people that thought they could pay a small loan back, and couldn't."
She looked at me very solemnly. "It's different with Nino. He isn't working, but he doesn't want this loan just to have money to spend. You see, he's done all his work for his Sc.D., and—"
"Where?"
"U.S.C."
"What in?"
"Chemistry. If he can only get his degree, he's sure of work, he's been promised that, and it seems such a pity to miss a chance for a really good position just because he hasn't taken his degree. But to take it, he has to have his dissertation published, and pay this and that, for his diploma for instance, and that's what he wants this money for. He won't spend it on his living. He has friends that will take care of that."
I had to come through. I knew that. I wouldn't have, if it didn't make me so nervous to be around her, but all I could think of now was to say yes and get them out of there. "How much do you want?"
"He thought if he could get $250, that would be enough."
"I see. I see."
I figured it up. With charges, it would amount to around $285, and it was an awfully big loan on the car he was going to put up. "Well—give me a day or two on it. I think we can manage it."
They went out, and then she ducked back. "You're awfully nice to me. I don't know why I keep bothering you about things."
"That's all right, Miss Nirdlinger, I'm glad—"
"You can call me Lola, if you want to."
"Thanks, I'll be glad to help any time I can."
"This is secret, too."
"Yes, I know."
"I'm terribly grateful, Mr. Huff."
"Thanks—Lola."
The accident policy came through a couple of days later. That meant I had to get his check for it, and get it right away, so the dates would correspond. You understand, I wasn't going to deliver the accident policy, to him. That would go to Phyllis, and she would find it later, in his safe deposit box. And I wasn't going to tell him anything about it. Just the same, I had to get his check, in the exact amount of the policy, so later on, when they checked up his stubs and his cancelled checks, they would find he had paid for it himself. That would check with the application in our files, and it would also check with those trips I had made to his office, if they put me on the spot.
I went in on him pretty worried, and shut the door on his secretary, and got down to brass tacks right away. "Mr. Nirdlinger, I'm in a hole, and I'm wondering if you'll help me out."
"Well I don't know. I don't know. What is it?" He was expecting a touch and I wanted him to be expecting a touch. "It's pretty bad."
"Suppose you tell me."
"I've charged you too much for your insurance. For that automobile stuff."
He burst out laughing. "Is that all? I thought you wanted to borrow money."
"Oh. No. Nothing like that. It's worse—from my point of
view."
"Do I get a refund?"
"Why sure."
"Then it's better—from my point of view."
"It isn't as simple as that. This is the trouble, Mr. Nirdlinger. There's a board, in our business, that was formed to stop cut-throating on rates, and see to it that every company charges a rate sufficient to protect the policy holder, and that's the board I'm in dutch with. Because here recently, they've made it a rule that every case, every case, mind you, where there's an alleged mischarge by an agent, is to be investigated by them, and you can see where that puts me. And you too, in a way. Because they'll have me up for fifteen different hearings, and come around pestering you till you don't know what your name is—and all because I looked up the wrong rate in the book when I was out to your house that night, and never found it out till this morning when I checked over my month's accounts."
"And what do you want me to do?"
"There's one way I can fix it. Your check, of course, was deposited, and there's nothing to do about that. But if you'll let me give you cash for the check you gave me—$79.52—I've got it right here with me—and give me a new check for the correct amount—$58.60—then that'll balance it, and they'll have nothing to investigate."
"How do you mean, balance it?"
"Well, you see, in multiple-card bookkeeping—oh well, it's so complicated I don't even know if I understand it myself. Anyway, that's what our cashier tells me. It's the way they make their entries."
"I see."
He looked out the window and I saw a funny look come in his eye. "Well—all right. I don't know why not."
I gave him the cash and took his check. It was all hooey. We've got a board, but it doesn't bother with agents' mistakes. It governs rates. I don't even know if there's such a thing as multiple-card bookkeeping, and I never talked with our cashier. I just figured that when you offer a man about twenty bucks more than he thought he had when you came in, he wouldn't ask too many questions about why you offer it to him. I went to the bank. I deposited the check. I even knew what he wrote on his stub. It just said "Insurance." I had what I wanted.
It was the day after that that Lola and Sachetti came in for their loan. When I handed them the check she did a little dance in the middle of the floor. "You want a copy of Nino's dissertation?"
"Why—I'd love it."
"It's called 'The Problem of Colloids in the Reduction of Low-Grade Gold Ores.'"
"I'll look forward to it."
"Liar—you won't even read it."
"I'll read as much as I can understand."
"Anyway, you'll get a signed copy."
"Thanks."
"Good-bye. Maybe you're rid of us for a while."
"Maybe."
Chapter 4
All this, what I've been telling you, happened in late winter, along the middle of February. Of course, in California February looks like any other month, but anyway it would have been winter anywhere else. From then on, all through the spring, believe me I didn't get much sleep. You start on something like this, and if you don't wake up plenty of times in the middle of the night, dreaming they got you for something you forgot, you've got better nerves than I've got. Then there were things we couldn't figure out, like how to get on a train. That was tough, and if we didn't have a piece of luck, maybe we never would have put it over. There's plenty of people out here that have never been inside a train, let alone taken a ride on one. They go everywhere by car. That was how he travelled, when he travelled, and how to make him use a train just once, that was something that gave us a headache for quite some time. We got a break on one thing though that I had sweated over plenty. That was the funny look that came over his face when I got that check. There was something back of it, I knew that, and if it was something his secretary was in on, and especially if he went out after I left and made some crack to the secretary about getting $20 he didn't expect, it would look plenty bad later, no matter what kind of story I made up. But that wasn't it. Phyllis got the low-down on it, and it startled me, how pretty it broke for us. He charged his car insurance to his company, under expenses, and his secretary had already entered it when I came along with my proposition. She had not only entered it, but if he went through with what I wanted, he still had his cancelled check to show for it, the first one, I mean. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut to the secretary and he could put his $20 profit in his pocket, and nobody would be the wiser. He kept his mouth shut. He didn't even tell Lola. But he had to brag to somebody how smart he was, so he told Phyllis.
Another thing that worried me was myself. I was afraid my work would fall off, and they'd begin talking about me in the office, wondering why I'd begun to slip. Tha
t wouldn't do me any good, later I mean, when they began to think about it. I had to sell insurance while this thing was cooking, if I never sold it before. I worked like a wild man. I saw every prospect there was the least chance of selling, and how I high-pressured them was a shame. Believe it or not, my business showed a 12% increase in March, it jumped 2% over that in April, and in May, when there's a lot of activity in cars, it went to 7% over that. I even made a hook-up with a big syndicate of secondhand dealers for my finance company, and that helped. The books didn't know anything to tell on me. I was the candy kid in both offices that spring. They were all taking off their hats to me.
"He's going to his class reunion. At Palo Alto."
"When?"
"June. In about six weeks."
"That's it. That's what we've been waiting for."
"But he wants to drive. He wants to take the car, and he wants me to go with him. He'll raise an awful fuss if I don't go."
"Yeah? Listen, don't give yourself airs. I don't care if it's a class reunion or just down to the drugstore, a man would rather go alone than with a wife. He's just being polite. You talk like you're not interested in his class reunion, and he'll be persuaded. He'll be persuaded so easy you'll be surprised. "Well I like that."
"You're not supposed to like it. But you'll find out."
That was how it turned out, but she worked on him a whole week and she couldn't change him on the car. "He says he'll have to have it, and there'll be a lot of things he'll want to go to, picnics and things like that, and if he doesn't have it he'll have to hire one. Besides, he hates trains. He gets trainsick."