The Return of Marvin Palaver Read online

“I’m talking a consignment of plate, Schlosser, a load what I bought from that boss of yours before he fell over dead and left me nothing but an inventory mess and a shipment what’s missing. You’re the foreman and you don’t know from this? What do you know from this, Schlosser?”

  “You mean you bought that?”

  Sidney heard that and cocked his head, as if he were missing something. A man with a conscience as bad as his, he naturally always wondered if there was an angle. “What do you mean, have I bought that?”

  “What I said.”

  “Talk English like a normal person and answer the question, Schlosser.”

  “I’m asking,” said Schlosser, “did you pay money for it?”

  “Of course I paid money for it. I just told you it’s a deal what I made with Marvin, or maybe you heard from a deal with Marvin and it don’t cost you money?”

  “In that case,” said Schlosser who was getting very single minded, “you owe me, let’s see, fifteen thousand dollars, Mister Minsk-sir.”

  For a minute there I thought Sidney was going to have a heart attack, which couldn’t have happened at a worse time. To have success snatched away not by one death but by two, that was overdoing it.

  But it turned out alright. It was just Sid’s way of showing surprise. He always acted surprised when somebody asked him for money.

  “What the hell do you mean by fifteen thousand dollars in all my life I never heard such a thing or you take me maybe for some kind of idiot?”

  “Well,” said Schlosser as if he were thinking about it, “I don’t know anything about that, but I do know what Mister Palaver said and he doesn’t lie.”

  This made Sid speechless. I myself felt a lot of respect and admiration for Schlosser. But then, would I pick a foreman what turns out a klotz?

  “When I close the deal, is what Mister Palaver said, you get fifteen thousand dollars, dear Schlosser, for a finder’s fee and for extras.”

  Sidney regained his senses.

  “Are you outa your cotton pickin mind?”

  Now Schlosser started to walk back and forth, back and forth, arms folded in front, with a look on his face like he was waiting on account of the train was late. He was walking back and forth right in front of that pile of girders and he knew very well what was behind all that.

  I was getting very, very nervous. Schlosser stopped walking.

  “What I want to know is this: Since Mister Palaver paid you, which is what you said, where’s my money, Sid?”

  It was wonderful to see how Schlosser turned out to be a person that measured up to my own, high standards. Sidney, who did not like to be called Sid right after Schlosser had called me Mister Palaver, he was turning purple.

  “You holding me up?”

  “You going to pay me fifteen thousand?”

  “You want your job?”

  “You want your iron?”

  It was a wonder to see how two people could insult each other just by asking some questions.

  “I got a document,” Sidney yelled, “that says three thousand, not fifteen.”

  This amazed Schlosser, who had heard that figure before, the time I had put it into his head. But I didn’t want him to get stuck on some argument about money again, so I interfered just enough to get my own thoughts in edgewise. I said it through his brain and pushed him to say it out loud. With a little amazement at the suddenness of his thoughts, he then said it.

  “You show me that document, Sidney, the contract, and I’ll believe such a thing like three thousand.” Then he shook his head back and forth, the way that rabbit had been shaking that watch.

  But now I had Sidney good. I got him when he made the mistake of making that document public. So with a little help from Schlosser’s greed and Sidney’s stupidity — or maybe it was the other way around — this fanagle was going to come off after all.

  Meanwhile, Sidney the Mark and Schlosser the Genius were at it again.

  “That contract,” Sid was saying, “isn’t worth a damn until I get to see that iron, you understand that, Schlosser?” Then he switched to crafty. “So who’s the seller and who’s holding the stuff?”

  Schlosser just stood there with his back to the steel plate in question. He smiled. Maybe this was the first time in his life that he had the upper hand in anything. He looked ten years younger.

  “I don’t get the money, you don’t get the stuff.”

  Sidney controlled himself and tried to get clever. He must have been thinking that maybe he could confuse the dummy.

  “I can’t do that,” he said. “Since Marve is dead, all this stuff gets handled through the estate, which means I haven’t got the right to pay you,” which of course was crap from horses.

  “Who can pay me?” Schlosser, right to the point. “I’ll take it up with Abbie. He’s the executor.”

  “He’s Marve’s accountant.”

  “And now he’s executor, which means no money till you tell me where the stuff is, or you interfere with the legal business of the estate, which means breaking the law and you could go to jail.”

  Of course Sidney was underestimating the power of Schlosser’s mind. Or let me put it this way. It is the advantage of a simple mind that it can only hold one thing at a time. In this case that was: Get the money. Get it first.

  “Get the money first,” said Schlosser. “I mean get fifteen thousand, not three.”

  “I’ll show you the document, lame brain!”

  “You do that,” said Schlosser. “And then you get me the money.”

  “You wanna keep your job?” and then all that started again.

  In a while, Sidney broke it off, defeated by the inferior mind. So in a while Sidney went back to the only thing left a defeated man, which is his pride and a little spite.

  “So what’s that crap over there, behind you?”

  “What crap do you mean?” and Schlosser looked all around.

  “Right behind you those girders. Haven’t you got girders at the end of Line Four? How’m I going to do inventory when all the crap is mixed up with some other crap, is what I’m asking? You supposed to be managing around here or what?”

  Only a man with no feelings or respect for his business could stand there and say crap about the merchandise as often as Sidney had said it. But that wasn’t really what worried me. What worried me came next.

  “So move it!” Sidney yelled across the top of his red and white Cadillac.

  That’s what he said, gold chains clanking and sounding like God handing down the thirteenth commandment.

  Of course Sidney didn’t know what was behind those girders, but the real question was, would Schlosser keep it in mind how dangerous this development was.

  “Get in that crane and move it!” from Sid the Almighty. And what does Schlosser say?

  “It’s five o’clock,” is what Schlosser said.

  This meant that he was not going to lift a finger, out of the question, unless he was going to get overtime. Even more out of the question.

  “You move that crap by eight o’clock in the morning, eight sharp, you got that clear in your mind, you should pardon the expression?”

  Sid did not wait for an answer. The red seat made a squish when he dropped himself into the upholstery, and then he drove down Line One to the gate at the other end, where his own yard started.

  So it was a reprieve. Instead of getting shot at five in the afternoon, it was going to be next day, shortly after dawn. Unless, unless —

  I noticed that Schlosser was troubled about the same thing. If he moved the girders, Sid would find the steel plates. If Sid found the plates, why would he pay for them? And furthermore, if Schlosser did not move the girders, then at eight o’clock in the morning, good-bye job.

  I knew exactly what Schlosser would do with that problem, and he did. He got into his pick-up and drove back to my office, a place he now seemed to consider his own. He went to my refrigerator which he now felt was a place for his beer, and then sat on my couch so he coul
d put his feet on my coffee table. Having done all this, he drank beer and thought about his problem.

  I stayed away from his head, on account of the fumes, and did my own thinking. I drifted out to the square and hovered there for a while, as if that would solve my problem.

  Unless everything I had worked for even through death and all was now going to go straight down the toilet, I had to move five flatbeds of steel by eight o’clock in the morning.

  There was no way I could move that much iron by eight o’clock in the morning.

  It was not entirely dark yet, but it was now much more quiet. Only Coogan’s down the road was still open, and his trucks would be coming in and out all night long. And Tony, who was the super on Coogan’s docks four to twelve, he wasn’t going to think much of the plan where he should leave work at a moment’s notice, authorize a flatbed to himself at a moment’s notice, and move a zillion tons of steel from one end of the yard to the other. This man Tony had a lousy Italian temper. Why the hell move it from one end of the yard to the other? A limited person like Tony would be thinking along those lines when pressed for work at a moment’s notice.

  Who needs him? I could figure that out myself. Only a regular shlemiel would move what was already on the lot from one end to the other!

  Chapter 5

  An Early Delivery

  Having solved the problem of how to make thirteen hours do, I zipped right back to the trailer, my office, my foreman, and was too late. Schlosser was already on the phone.

  “Lemme have Tony,” he said into the instrument. He wiped his mouth with the same hand that was holding the bottle.

  “Which Tony?” said the night girl at Coogan’s switchboard. “Tony Gallo, Tony Sforza, Tony Angelo, Tony d’Angelo, or maybe you had in mind Tony Curtis?”

  She didn’t seem to like Schlosser making a phone call right then any more than I wanted him to make a phone call at that moment. So while she was being snotty like that, I was trying to get into Schlosser to stop him, except I was having trouble with the fumes, eyes watering and sneezing and so forth.

  “I want Tony Sforza, honey. You take Tony Curtis and I take Sforza, okay? And shake a leg, honey.”

  Schlosser, by the sound of it, was at the beer stage where you get all this courage, especially when you’re on the telephone.

  “Who’re you?” said the honey.

  “Tell him it’s Schlosser. I’m the one runs the Palaver yard and the Minsk yard too. That Schlosser.”

  “Oh, you’re the bald gut what looks like a stuffed knish. Let me tell you something, Schlosser. I don’t shake a leg or anything else, comes to that, for an old guy with no hair and looking like a Wurst who talks to me on the telephone dirty and no respect. You got all that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Good,” and the honey at Coogan’s hung up.

  Also, she had solved my problem. She had stopped Schlosser from going ahead on his own, when my way was better. Of course, I now had to convince him of that.

  I got into his head and almost gagged from the fumes. I moved to the speech center, away from the more heady parts where the beer had gathered, but that gave me a raw throat and an urge to spit all the time. So I got back to the headache center and got to work, in spite of everything.

  “Who needs them,” I started out, figuring that a note of defiance would put a little muscle into all that sog.

  Schlosser cocked his head but he didn’t do much else. He got out of the couch, put the phone back on the desk, and turned towards the refrigerator. I fought off his headache and got busy again.

  “Single-handed Schlosser is what they call me. I’m going to pull the whole thing off myself”

  He stopped by the refrigerator and stuck a finger in one ear. Then he jiggled the finger around until I thought I’d go crazy from all the squeeking and grinding noises this made. I suffered this till he was done and next I got very loud and insistent.

  “The fact is, I’m going to deliver the whole shipment by myself and on top of it I’m going to do it by eight o’clock in the morning.”

  This had a strong effect on him.

  “I better stop drinking,” he said.

  I had not intended he should have such a shock, but the shock turned out good. Schlosser went back to the couch and sat down quietly. I also noticed that the fumes were getting much thinner. Back to work.

  “Think big,” I said in that empty cavern where the fog now hung high by the ceiling. “Think this: Who gets the steel?”

  “Sid.”

  “Where’s the steel?”

  “Lot Two.”

  “Whose lot is Lot Two?”

  “Sid’s.”

  “So the steel is already delivered!”

  Schlosser got up from the couch and let out a deep breath.

  “Jeesis,” he said. “How do I think of these things?”

  I let him marvel about that for a minute, but then I had to get him to work.

  “Only a genius,” I let it echo along the corridors between the empty chambers. “A genius with brains, with chutzpa, and with muscle. So now, which one are we going to use first?”

  “Muscle.”

  “Right! We go to work. Sid wants the girders moved, so let’s move ‘em!”

  He hit himself in the head and said, “Of course!”

  “So now get the crane from Lane Four and move all the girders where Sid wants them put. Three hours work.”

  “Four.”

  “Four hours work. Move ‘em by eight o’clock in the morning and show that crap head what a worker you are.”

  “What a genius idea,” he sighed.

  “And when you tell him at eight o’clock in the morning, at the same time you say: Sidney darling — Just a minute. You say, Mister Minsk, not only did I move the girders like you said, but I also got the Palaver delivery brought in last night.”

  “And now,” Schlosser added, “pay up, Sid darling. Like it says on the contract.”

  “Just a minute. Now listen. For that you need the bill of lading.”

  “Jeesis, I forgot!”

  “So at seven in the morning you be right here, in Marve’s office. Abbie will be here. You ask him for the bill of lading, because Abbie has the key to the files, ask him to give you the Trans-State papers on the delivery you took last night. Abbie gives that to you, and you take it to Sid. And take Abbie with you to Sid’s, because that way you’ll get paid.”

  “Jeesis,” he said again. “How do I think of these things?”

  I let him play with that thought for maybe a half a second and then I hustled him out to the crane. Another problem solved for the night. The next one was Abbie.

  Chapter 6

  A Problem of High Visibility

  Abbie and me, we never had problems. I’m the uncle and Abbie is the nephew, which is different from being the son. But that I don’t want to hear about. The only problem with Abbie, he is an accountant which is almost like having a nebish for a friend.

  Such a person has no vision, no daring, no chutzpa of any kind.

  I have never understood why a business man, a creative person, has got to have an accountant around, a person who is no artist at all. Two people like that should not even meet, let alone work together.

  You may think you hire an accountant so the man works for you? Not in a million years you could be more wrong. You say to an accountant I want this line of figures to show how I spent more than I made, because that’s business. What does my nephew the accountant say? He says: No, because that’s against the laws of the civil code and it’s against the laws of mathematics. Then I say: Are we going to talk business or are we going to discuss juris prudens? Then it goes on from there.

  He’s a blood relative of mine from my brother’s side, so he knows how to talk. The trouble is, he talks like an accountant, a man who goes around telling me I shouldn’t make money, if you can believe such a thing.

  Speaking of that, how come my nephew the accountant can go and live in Brooklyn Heights wi
th a door man, like a regular Brooklyn address isn’t good enough for the younger generation?

  I appeared in my new and sudden ways on the tenth floor of the address where Abbie had his apartment — you should pardon me, it’s a condo — around seven o’clock in the evening, a decent hour for any person that’s normal.

  By that time you have had a nice little supper, a little glass of the concord along the way, a mandel broid with the coffee, and it’s time to sit down with the feet up a little, the evening paper maybe, or the TV if you can’t read. So where is my Abbie?

  In the dinette by the kitchen the table was laid for supper. There was a candle, already lit, in the silver holder I’d given him after Sarah had died, there were two places laid out, plus the salt and pepper and the dish with the celery sticks to clean the stomach.

  Two places meant to me that Ruthy was staying in. She lived there, I knew that, though I never could understand why these young people don’t also get married, but then most evenings she either took classes or sat around in the law library reading books which kept her from cooking and washing and keeping a decent place.

  But that’s none of my business, even though I could smell already that the chicken they had in the oven was plenty done, and the vegetables on the stove the same thing.

  I stood there, if what I’m doing in the shape I was in can be called standing, and had a little bit of a twinge going through me on account of the nice smell, the warm steam of the kitchen, the candle, when all of a sudden here comes Abbie running fast, he turns off the oven and the pots on the stove, and right away runs back to the living room.

  I ask myself, why does a man come running into the kitchen, dressed in a shirt and a tie and stark naked from the waist down, comes running in like that with a hard-on, turns off the stove and runs out again? I mean, this was seven o’clock and supper ready to go on the table.

  “Did you turn it off?”

  “What?”

  “Did you turn — easy. Abbie, that’s my belly button.”

  “Yeah, right, oi — ”

  “Abbie, try it a little….”

  “Yeah, I turned it off, turnitoff, turnyeeoff, trujeenoff — ”