Only When I Larf

I followed Silas and Liz into the offices the janitor had furnished for us. From behind the door’s glass panel a voice said, ‘I’m just about done.’ The last of the putty fell onto a sheet of newspaper and the glass panel bearing the battered old words ‘General Manager’s Office’ lowered gently to reveal the ugly face of the janitor. ‘I’ve got rid of the cleaners and I’ve furnished both offices with the furniture you chose. It was heavy …’

Almost without pausing in his stride, Silas placed a hundred dollars in tens between the man’s teeth. That smile could have held another five grand.

Silas and Liz marched into the inner office. The janitor raised the new glass panel into place. On it was expensive gold-leaf lettering that read ‘Amalgamated Minerals Inc. New York. Washington. Seattle. London. Stockholm. Office of Sir Stephen Latimer. President.’

You know how these New York executives start off in a bull pen. Then they get themselves promoted to a room without windows, window facing an air shaft and, if they really make the top, get an office with an outside view. This one was on a corner of the building: three windows. The janitor must have really raided the building; a fitted carpet, Knoll desk, squawk box, four phones. Mies van der Rohe chairs, and a tall Hepplewhite bookcase full of National Geographics. I went to the window; it had a view like an airline poster. On the roof of the Pan Am building a helicopter was warming up before flying to Kennedy Airport: Pockety, pockety, pockety. Clear blue air, skyscrapers and far below brightly coloured cars pulling into the kerb as fire engines wailed their way to Wall Street.

Silas coughed to attract my attention. Then he gave his roll brim hat, and umbrella to Liz as though he’d been arriving here to start work all his life. I had no overcoat, I took off my overalls. Silas got behind the teak desk and got the feel of the controls. Liz had got an electric drill out of the bag and plugged it into the wall socket. As I turned she gave it a test buzz and handed it to me. I began to drill holes through the thin partition wall. We had done it both ways on rehearsals. We’d taken sample hardboard and tested for the joists. We had used a mechanical saw and various drills. Twenty two holes with a three-quarter inch drill finishing with the saw had proved the quickest. Silas never begrudged money for research, it was an obsession with him.

Liz took framed photos from the bag and began to arrange them on the wall. They were all air photos of mine-heads or plant. Beautifully printed under each photo on the thick mounts it said things like ‘Borke Sweden. Plant for Ore Processes. Amalgamated Mineral Svenska AB. Second Largest in Scandinavia.’ Or it said, ‘Mining Drill Manf. Co., Illinois, owned by Amalgamated Mineral Inc. New York.’ Silas had researched each caption and the frames were light teak so that they would match the desk.

By the time I’d finished drilling and had broken a circular hole in the partition, Silas had arranged his personal photos on his desk. Photos of wife and families in front of a large country house, all featured a dopey man with a big moustache that Silas claimed was him a few years back. He helped me to fit the old fashioned wall-safe into the hole I’d made. I’d done it just right, so we didn’t need any of the wooden wedges to hold it firmly into the partition wall. Silas fiddled with the combination, and opened and closed the safe door a few times. Zonk. It closed with a clang. Yeah, very convincing. After all, it was a real safe except that there was no back to it. Apart from a piece of black velvet to keep it dark, it was just a tube into the room next door.

‘Two thirty three,’ said Silas, looking at his watch. ‘Stage One completed,’ Twenty seven minutes to go before the bank closed.

‘Stage one completed,’ Liz said. She hung a picture over the door of the wall safe to hide it, like they do in films.

‘Stage One completed,’ I reported. ‘But we are 25 cents miscalculated on the cab fare.’ Silas nodded. He knew that I was trying to needle him, but he didn’t react. What a stuffed shirt.

Liz was on the telephone talking to the bank downstairs in the foyer of the Building. She said, ‘I’m Mrs Amalgamin, and want to confirm our arrangement to collect close to three hundred thousand dollars in cash in just a few minutes. Well yes, I know I only have 557 dollars in my account right now, but we went all through that yesterday. The Funfunn Novelty Company owe us three hundred thousand dollars, and they have promised a cheque today. We need the cash right away.’ There was a pause, and then Liz said, ‘Well I don’t see how there can be any difficulty. Funfunn Novelty Company are customers at your branch, and so are we. You promised to oblige us but if there’s going to be any difficulty then I’ll get on to head office right away. Well I should think so. Yes I told you, I’ve arranged that, Mr Amalgamin – my husband, would never allow me to carry that amount of cash. The armoured car company will handle it and I shall just be there to pay in the Funfunn cheque and draw from our account.’ She put down the phone. ‘They had me worried for a moment. They don’t have to do that you know.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well now all we have to worry about, is that bank clerk spotting one of our Funfunn jerks on his way through the foyer and getting into conversation with him.’

‘Don’t worry baby,’ she mocked, ‘Silas will keep it cool for you.’

‘Get lost,’ I said, and went to the next door office to check my equipment. There was a security guard uniform including white belt, holster and hat, and a cash box with chain and wrist lock. There was also a new pigskin document case, some documents and a fresh Nassau newspaper hot from Times Square where you can buy all the out of town dailies. I tried the hat on. It was a stupid hat. I wore it down over my eyes. My hair stuck out and I pulled a face in the mirror. Then I tipped it back at a rakish angle.

‘You look sweet,’ Liz said. I didn’t know she was watching and her voice made me jump. I said nothing. She came up behind me and we looked at each other in the mirror. She was a doll and I would have been grateful for a bit of hand to hand combat with her any time, but I didn’t want a kiss on the ear in that condescending mummy-says-go-bye-byes way she has.

‘Get lost’ I said angrily, but she suddenly pulled my hat right down over my eyes and got out of the room before I could retaliate.

‘You bitch,’ I shouted, but I wasn’t really angry. She laughed.

I looked at myself in a mirror. I’ll tell you I looked pretty unconvincing as a security guard. My hair was too long and my skin was pale, the colour it always went in the winter if I didn’t get a week in the sun somewhere. I was always a skinny little sod. Twenty six years old and as wiry and hard now as I had ever been, even in the nick. Liz and Silas were all right; it was a lucky day for me when I met them, but they never let me forget who was the junior partner. I mean, they really didn’t.

Silas had been with Liz right from when I first met him. If I hadn’t seen the score between them, I might have thought that Silas was queer. I’d had trouble with a queer while I was in the nick. Peter the bigamist they called him and it was nearly too late before I found out how he got the name. There was nothing queer about Silas but that doesn’t mean that I knew what made him tick.

Things I didn’t have; Silas had. Things I’ll never have; Silas had, and let’s face it, things I’ll never want Silas had. He was urbane, you know what I mean? He could wear evening clothes like Fred Astaire wore them. He had a feeling of command. If I put on a white coat I was a house painter, if Silas put one on, he was a surgeon, you know the type? And of course women go for that bossy upper class manner, women were all crazy for Silas. Liz was, I just hoped I’d be able to pull birds like Liz when I got to be his age.

It was that war that did it. Before Silas was twenty two he was a major in the tank corps and had half a dozen medals. He was bossing a hundred people, and some of them were old enough to be his father. If they as much as answered back, I suppose they’d have been in front of a firing squad or something. And perhaps a few of them were! Well I mean, can you wonder he was bossy. I mean I like him, he had this sly sense of humour and we could kid each other along with neither of us giving even a flicker of a smile, and that was great, but when you got down to it, he was a cold fish. That was the war too, I suppose. I mean, you don’t go around killing people for five years and come out the other end a warm-hearted philanthropist do you? I mean you don’t.

He had this sort of computer brain, and to let emotion enter into his calculations would be like programming errors into the computer. He told me that. Several times he told me that. I don’t know how Liz could stay in love with him so long. He was sort of in love with Liz, but he was a cold fish, and there would come one day when the computer would reject Liz’s punch card, and I’m telling you he could turn away mid sentence and never come back. He was tough, and he had a terrifying temper that showed itself now and again. He had no friends whatsoever. They were all killed in the war Silas says. Yes, I said, and do you want me to guess who killed them? Liz got really angry when I said that, but I can tell you, he’s been a rough bastard that Silas, so don’t let that old school tie, and plumstone accent fool you.

He despises me. Silas despises me because I’m not educated properly and yet he pours cold sarcasm on every attempt I make to learn something. Every time he sees me reading a book he adds ‘for little people’ or ‘simply explained for the under fives’ to the title, to make me feel like a moron. I can see what he’s trying to do. He would have liked me to stop educating myself. He was frightened that one day I would take over the leadership. He was frightened I’d take over Liz too. I could see the glint of that fear in his eyes at times. Liz was much younger than Silas. Her family had known him for years apparently and Silas had started off keeping an eye on her and they had finished up living together. She says that Silas had asked her to marry him, but that she had refused. Years ago. Oh yeah. I doubted it; very much. Why would Silas have asked her that? The computer would have rejected that idea and sounded the buzzer. Silas had nothing to gain. And what Silas had nothing to gain from, Silas didn’t do.

These operations didn’t have any dash or real style – élan the French say – it was always Silas doing the big man and dangling his watch chain, while me and Liz were running around like a couple of coolies doing the real work. Now, if Silas had let me plan this operation things would be different. I’d have us posing as an aerobatics team that was selling its three planes to change over to jets. I’d told Silas that idea, but he wouldn’t even listen properly. Or there was my other idea about us being a three person expedition on our way to find the lost treasures of Babylon. I could use my book on archaeology if we did that one. Then there was an idea I had, where I would be a very young financial genius who everyone wanted to be in with. A sort of secret power in the finance politics of Europe, toppling governments with a stroke of the pen. Scratch you chum.

Anything would be better than these capers in dreary offices. Imagine the old coot who sat here in this little hardarse seat, every day from nine to five. Imagine beating that typewriter, answering the phone, yes sirring the boss until superannuation, and all for a hundred a week and all the pencils you can take home. Pow. Not me. Not me, man. I’m for the open road, the jet routes, Cannes, Nice, Monte; where the pickings are rich and the living is easy, the suckers are rising and the cabbage is high. I’d like to be there for the Grand Prix. I didn’t look like a security guard, but a driver – a racing driver – that’s what I looked like. He’s coming into the casino turn, vroom vroom, and he’s too fast, but no, he’s controlling that skid, German corner won’t kill this boy. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Up over the pavement. Both cars, their wheels missing by a millimetre, he’s ahead of von Turpitz and down the hill and the duel begins. Vroom, vroom. It’s unbelievable folks, they’re setting a new fantastic lap record. Monte has never seen anything like this before and the crowd are going wild, wild, I tell you, wild.

‘For God’s sake stop making that noise,’ said Liz putting her head around the door. ‘They will be arriving soon.’

I pulled my security guard cap on more firmly.

‘And don’t dare smoke,’ said Liz. ‘You know how angry Silas gets. Have one of my toffees instead.’ She put a toffee on the table.

‘Vroom,’ I said. ‘Vroom, vroom, vroom.’ I gave her a sexy little hug but she pulled away from me. She went out and closed the door. I was dying for a cigarette but I didn’t light one. Silas doesn’t allow smoking on duty, unless the role calls for it, and I never upset him – really upset him I mean – when it’s an operation. At other times I upset him quite a lot.

2

Liz

I wouldn’t have called it an auspicious start, but Silas and Bob were bowing to each other, like a couple of Japanese Generals, and saying ‘Stage One completed,’ so I hung the framed photo over the dummy safe and phoned the bank to confirm that we’d be coming for the money. Then Bob went next door and I guessed he was trying on his security guard peaked cap and preening himself in the mirror. I hoped that he wouldn’t have a cigarette because Silas would be sure to smell it and go into one of his tantrums. The two marks were expected at any minute. I debated whether to change my nylons; one of them had a tiny ladder, but the other had gone at the knee. Silas was scattering some land search papers across the desk. His face was taut and his lips pressed tight together with nerves. I wanted to go to him and put a hand on his arm, just so that he would look up and relax and smile for a moment, but before I could do so he said, ‘Two thirty five. The driver should have them at the front hall soon. Take your position darling.’ He looked perfect; black jacket, pinstripe trousers, gold watch chain and those strange half frame spectacles that he peered over abstractedly. I loved him. I smiled at him and he gave a brief smile back as though frightened to encourage me in case I wasted time embracing him.

We still needed a fake teleprinter message, so I hurried down the hall to the unoccupied teleprinter room. The janitor had pointed it out to me on the previous Saturday’s visit. I switched it into local so that it would not transmit, and then typed a genuine Bahamas teleprinter number and Amalgamin as an answerback code. Under that I typed the phoney message from Nassau and then switched the machine back to normal working again. I left the torn-off sheet near Bob’s uniform. There were a couple of genuine messages on the same sheet. I removed my earrings and necklace and tried to straighten my hair, but it was no use, it needed reshaping before it would ever look right again. Silas called to me, ‘Get down to the lobby, caterpillar. I don’t want those two idiots up here for at least five minutes, so stall them.’

‘Just going darling,’ I said. I put a pair of heavy, library-style spectacles around my neck on a neck string, and picked up my notebook. It was lucky I hurried, for the Lincoln hire-car that we had sent to collect the marks arrived just as I reached the lobby.

I greeted the marks and had a brief, confidential word with the driver. ‘You are to pick up an Italian gentleman – Mr Salvatore Lombardo – here outside this building at 3.06 precisely. O.K.? Can you wait?’

‘Maybe I can lady, maybe I can’t,’ said the driver. ‘But if the fuzz starts crowding me, I’ll roll around the block and pull into this same slot again. So, if I ain’t here tell him to stay put. Italian guy huh?’

‘White fedora, dark glasses and tan coat,’ I said.

‘Whadda say his name was, Al Capone?’ said the driver, then laughed.

I leaned close to him and spoke softly, ‘Try out a gag like that on Sal,’ I growled, ‘and you could wind up in the East River.’ I hurried to catch up with the two marks who were waiting in the lobby. ‘That’s not the regular driver,’ I said. ‘We have so many drivers nowadays and they all forget their instructions.’

The marks nodded. There were two of them; Johnny Jones was about forty, over-weight, but attractive like a teddy bear in his soft overcoat. The other one – Karl Poster – was tall and distinguished looking, with grey eyes and a fine nose, down which he looked at me. He was the type they cast as unfaithful husbands in Italian films that get banned by the League of Decency.

‘I was just going to get coffee for you,’ I said. ‘Our coffee machine upstairs is on the blink today.’

Karl looked me over slowly, like a comparison shopper in a slave market. ‘Why don’t we just take time out for a coffee here and now?’ he said. He looked at his watch, ‘We are five minutes early.’

‘Fine,’ I said turning back to the elevator.

‘You have coffee too,’ said Karl. He put his hand on my arm with just enough pressure to endorse the invitation, but not enough to make a girl look around for a cop.

We found a corner seat in the half empty coffee shop, and they insisted upon my having do-nuts too. Sugar coated do-nuts with chocolate chips inside.

‘Sky’s the limit,’ explained Johnny the shorter one. ‘Expense no object, it’s our big day today. Is that right Karl?’ Karl looked at him, and seemed annoyed at the ingenuous admission. ‘Karl would never admit it. Eh Karl?’ He slapped Karl’s shoulder. ‘But this is a big day for both of us. Let’s have a smile, Karl.’ Karl smiled reluctantly. Johnny turned to me, ‘Have you worked for this company long?’

‘Four years,’ I said. ‘Five next February.’ I had it all pat. Marks often asked questions like that. How long have you been with this boss. What make was the company plane. Or there were trick questions to double check things that Silas had told them, like how long since your boss started wearing glasses or what kind of car does he drive.

I looked at them. I sometimes wondered why I didn’t feel sorry for marks. Bob said he felt sorry for them sometimes, but I never felt really close to them. It’s like reading about people dying in traffic accidents, if it isn’t someone you know, it’s almost impossible to care, isn’t it? It’s like feeling sorry for the dead angus when you are eating a really superb fillet with béarnaise. I mean, would it help the angus if I scraped the steak clean and just ate the béarnaise? Well, that’s the way I felt about the marks; if I didn’t eat them, someone else would, they were nature’s casualties. That’s the way I saw it.

‘Do you like children?’ asked Johnny the short one.

‘My sister has three,’ I offered. ‘Twin boys, nearly five, and a three year old girl.’

‘I’ve got a boy, nearly six,’ said Johnny. He announced the age like it was a trump card, as though a son of seven would have been even better. ‘Would you like to see a photo?’

‘She doesn’t want to see photos,’ said Karl. Johnny looked offended. Karl amended his remark. ‘Not your photos, nor mine,’ he said. ‘She’s working, what would she want with them?’ He ended the sentence on a note of apology.

‘I’d like to see them. I really would,’ I said. ‘I love children.’

Johnny brought out his wallet. Under a transparent window in it there was a photo of a woman. The hair style was out of fashion, and the dark tones of the picture had faded. The woman had a strange fixed smile as though she knew she was going to be trapped inside a morocco leather wallet for six years. ‘That’s Ethel, my wife,’ said the mark. ‘She worked with us until the baby came. She was the brains behind the whole company, wasn’t she Karl?’ Karl nodded. ‘She brought us out of the soft toy, and into the mechanicals and plastics. Ethel pushed us over the red line. She got our first contract with the big distributors here in the east. For a long time we were in Denver. Manhattan seemed big time to us when there were just the four of us working in Denver. Ethel helped me with the design work and Karl did the books and the advertisements. We worked around the clock.’

‘She doesn’t want to hear about Denver,’ said Karl.

‘Why not,’ said the fat mark. ‘It’s quite a story you know,’ he pulled photos from his wallet. ‘It’s quite a story,’ he repeated quietly. ‘We had only nine hundred dollars between us when we began.’ He prodded the photos with his stubby fingers. ‘That’s my wife in the garden, Billy was three then, going on four.’

‘And now?’ I said. ‘How big are you now?’

‘Now we are big. We could get five million if we sold out today, if we bided our time we’d get six. That’s the house, that’s my wife, but she moved. The negative is sharp, but the print’s not very good.’

‘Five million is peanuts to a big company like this,’ said Karl.

‘A big firm like this; who owns it,’ said Johnny. ‘A company like ours; it’s flesh and blood. It’s most of your life, and most of mine. Am I right?’ I nodded but Karl went on arguing.

‘Ten million is peanuts. A company like this is world wide, their phone bill is probably more than a million a year.’

‘You don’t measure companies in dollars,’ said Johnny, the fat one. ‘You’ve got to reckon on it differently to that. You’ve got to reckon on it like it’s a living thing; something that grows. We’d never sell out to just anyone.’

‘No?’ I said.

‘Lord no,’ he said. ‘It would be like selling a dog. You’d need to know that it was going to a good home.’

‘A company like this wouldn’t need to know,’ said Karl. ‘A company like this works on a slide rule. Lawyers figure the profit and loss.’

The fat one smiled. ‘Well perhaps they have to. After all they’ve got shareholders Karl.’

‘They’ve got different sort of minds,’ said Karl.

‘I don’t think we are like that,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Karl coldly. ‘Well you look like that.’

‘Aw come on Karl,’ said Johnny. ‘Do you have any pics of your sister’s kids?’ He was anxious to assuage the effect of Karl’s rudeness.

‘No,’ I said.

‘What are their names?’

‘The twins are Roger and Rodney and the girl is Rosalind,’ I said.

Johnny beamed. ‘Some folks do that don’t they? They keep the same first letter for the names.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘And there aren’t too many girls names beginning with “r”.’

‘Rosemary,’ said Karl. ‘Rene.’

‘Ruth,’ said Johnny, ‘and Rosalind.’

‘They already used Rosalind,’ said Karl.

‘That’s right they did,’ said Johnny. ‘Well there have to be more. Look, if I think of some really good ones, I’ll send them to you here at the office. How would that be?’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Rodney,’ mused Johnny. ‘Say, you’re English aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was born in Gloucester.’

‘We have a collection of English porcelain at home,’ said Johnny. ‘We have an English style of dog too, named Peter.’

‘For Christ sake,’ said Karl. Johnny smiled self-consciously. ‘I’ll just get some cigarettes,’ he said. He walked across to the cigarette machine.

‘He’s nervous,’ said Karl when he was out of earshot. ‘This is a big moment for us. We’ve worked bare hand on that factory. Johnny’s a bright guy, brighter than hell in fact. Don’t under-rate him because he’s nervous. He doesn’t do so much nowadays, but without his know-how on the mechanical side, we would never have got off the floor.’

‘There are a lot of people passing through the President’s office.’ I said. ‘Men on the threshold of making a fortune, and men due to be fired. I know all the signs of nerves, I’ve seen all of them.’

‘No one was more edgy than I am today, I’ll tell you.’

‘You seem calm to me,’ I said.

‘Don’t believe it. Johnny makes all the decisions about buying plant, staff, premises, but these exterior problems – the big finance decisions – he leaves to me. He does whatever I say.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said.

‘It’s like not having a partner at all. If I make the wrong decision this morning I could ruin us. We both have wives and kids, and we are both too old to look around for employment.’