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Rat Race

<h2>CHAPTER 28</h2> The highly respectable receptionist at the office of Tompkins, Wasson & Cone almost smiled at me. "There are several gentlemen waiting for you, Mr. Tompkins," she announced. "Some of them have been here since before lunch. Do you plan to receive them or shall I ask them to return tomorrow?" "No, I'll see them in a few minutes," I replied. "Miss Briggs will let you know." No sooner had I settled down at my desk, however, than Graham Wasson and Phil Cone came dancing in, wreathed in tickertape. "We're rich! We're rich!" they chanted. "Where's the Marine Band and 'Hail to the Chief'?" I asked. "How rich are we, anyway?" "We cleaned up," Wasson said. "Just a bit under three million in one week. It was as you said. We went short of the market and after Roosevelt's death, boy! did they liquidate! And thanks to Phil here, we got out before the big boys put the squeeze on the shorts." "That reminds me, Winnie," Cone interrupted, "one of the mourners in the customers room who's waiting to see you is Jim DeForest from Morgan's. He's been waiting here since two o'clock. You'd better see him quick, huh? We don't want to keep 23 Wall waiting, do we?" "Nuts, Phil," I told him. "I'll see them in the order of their arrival. That's what they do at Morgan's when you haven't got an appointment." I pushed the button for Arthurjean. "Who's been waiting the longest, Miss Briggs," I asked. She consulted a little pack of memo forms. "There's this Mr. Sylvester," she said. "He was here when the office opened and has been waiting here all day. He wouldn't state his business." "Okay," I replied. "Send him in or he'll faint from hunger." Mr. Sylvester was florid in a quiet Latin way and looked as though he might be anything from an operatic tenor to the proprietor of a gambling ship. He waited until my partners had withdrawn. "Mr. Tompkins," he said, speaking quietly, "I represent a syndicate that's reorganizing the free market in meat. We need a real smart guy, well-connected, like yourself, to head it up and keep track of the money. We'll pay a million dollars a year any way you like it—Swiss banks, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City—and no tax." "I'm always interested in a million dollars but I never did like Atlanta," I told him. "Atlanta!" He shrugged his shoulders. "We got lawyers could talk Capone outa Alcatraz and we got a fix on the Courts, too. What would you be doin' in Atlanta?" "I doubt that they'd make me librarian," I said, "and I don't think I'd make the ball-team, so I guess I'd have to work in the laundry. What's the trouble with the black market, anyhow? Seems to me you've got O.P.A. right in your corner." "Too many amateurs and outsiders," he told me, "just like with Prohibition. Meat's bad and too many cops get a cut. We aim to do like the beer syndicates—organize it right, keep prices reasonable, have the pay-off stabilized, make it a good banking proposition. We've checked on you. You're smart. Would a million and a half do?" I shook my head. "I've got a million and a half," I remarked. "Okay," Mr. Sylvester straightened up, shook my hand and gave a little bow. "Think it over!" he urged. "If you change your mind put an ad in the Saturday Review personal column. 'Meet me anywhere, Winnie!' That's cute. 'Meet' and 'Meat,' see? Our representative will call on you." I asked Arthurjean to send in the next visitor and to my surprise she announced DeForest. "Hell!" I told her. "There must have been others ahead of him." "There was," she said, "but they agreed to let him see you first. They said they'd be back tomorrow. They were from Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers so they wanted to give Morgan's first crack at you, I guess." Jim DeForest proved to be one of the vaguely familiar figures I had noticed flitting around the Harvard Club. "Winnie," he said, "I just dropped in to say that we have been pretty well impressed by the way your firm handled itself in this recent market. Mr. Whitney wanted to know whether it would be convenient for you to drop in and have a talk with him soon." "Today?" I asked. DeForest glanced at his Rolex. "Today's a little late," he remarked, "but give him a ring tomorrow. No, damn it! He's leaving for a short trip to Washington. Make it next week and he'll have plenty of time for you." "What's it about, Jim?" I asked. "Don't tell me that I'm going to be offered a Morgan partnership?" He looked as though I had burped in church. "I hardly think so," he replied. "If that were the case, Mr. Lamont would have seen you somewhere uptown. You know the way they gossip in the Street. No, I rather fancy that Mr. Whitney wants you to be one of our brokers for floor operations. Or, he might, since you specialize in estate work, want you to help with some of the new issues we are planning to underwrite." "Either way would suit me fine, Jim," I told him. "Do you know," I continued, "this is the second happiest day of my life. The first was when I got married." DeForest seemed a bit relieved and permitted himself a worldly smile. "And today," I continued, "I received the greatest honor that can come to an American in Wall Street. Believe me, Jim, this means more than having just cleaned up three million dollars in straight trading. After all, what is money worth if it can't buy what isn't for sale?" This idea seemed to be taken under DeForest's advisement for future consideration but he let it pass. After all, a million dollars is dross compared to the approval of the employers of men like Jim DeForest, still limping along on twenty-five thousand a year twenty years after graduation. "Grand to have seen you, Winnie," he said, indicating that the audience was at an end. "I'll tell Mr. Whitney that you'll see him next week. And of course, no talk about this. We don't like to encourage gossip about our operations." I promised that I would be silent as the grave, not even telling my partners or my wife. "After all," I pointed out, "it's not a good idea to arouse false hopes. Perhaps Mr. Whitney will change his mind." "I hope not," DeForest said solemnly, as though I had mentioned the possibility of the Black Death. "I most certainly hope not. We don't do business on that basis, you know." "Well, Miss Briggs, who's next?" I inquired, after DeForest had withdrawn with the affable air of royalty inspecting a clean but second-rate orphan asylum. "Since those bankers left, there's only three waiting. One's a general but he comes after this other man, what's his name, Patrick Michael Shaughnessy, whoever he is." "Send in the Irish," I told her. Mr. Shaughnessy was an Irish-American counterpart of the Mr. Sylvester who wanted to reorganize the free market for meat. He was a natty dresser and he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. "Mr. Tompkins," he told me, "I'm from, the Democratic National Committee. The Chairman—and gee! Bob's a wonder—wanted to ask whether you'd consider a diplomatic appointment." "Of course, I would," I replied, thinking of Germaine's artless desire to be an Ambassadress, "but that depends on where I'm sent and that kind of thing. What have you in mind?" "There's only one post open right now," he remarked. "That's Bolonia or Peruna or hell, no, it's Bolivia. That's somewhere in America, ain't it?" I agreed that Bolivia was located in the Western Hemisphere. "That's where the tin and llamas come from, Mr. Shaughnessy," I educated him. "The capital city of La Paz is located about twelve thousand feet high in the Andes and the inhabitants are mainly Indians. I don't think that Mrs. Tompkins would care for it." His face fell. "You'd be an Ambassador, of course," he informed me, "and that's always worth something. But the Boss said—that's Bob, of course, we all call Bob the Boss—that if you wouldn't fall for Bolivia to ask you what about Ottawa. That's the capital of Canada. It's right next to Montreal and those places and there's good train service to New York on the Central any time you want to run down for a show or a hair-cut. Bob said Canada was a real buy." "Oh, a buy?" I remarked. Shaughnessy looked at me shrewdly. "Uh-huh!" he replied. "How much will it cost me to be Ambassador to Canada?" Shaughnessy was faintly aggrieved. "The Boss don't like to talk about money and jobs that way, Mr. Tompkins. He always says think of the chance to serve the country. Say, you're a good Democrat or if you aren't a Democrat you're the next thing to it, a Republican that is, and you want to make a contribution to the Party. We always got a deficit, see. If there ain't one now there's one coming right up. Say you lay two or three hundred grand on the line. That goes a hundred grand to the Committee and another hundred grand divided among the State Committees. You see, we got to take care of the Senate so they'll vote to confirm you and there are some operators up there what won't vote for nothing 'cept they get taken care of first. Then the rest we put into a dignified publicity campaign, to build you up with the public and let the Canucks see they're getting something special when the President nominates you." I considered this one carefully. "Do you let me pick the public relations firm that handles that end of the campaign, Mr. Shaughnessy?" He grinned artlessly. "I should say not!" he chuckled. "How do you think we boys on the Committee make a living? No, we pick the firm that does the job and that's all you need worry about. We own 'em. So you see you're protected right across the board. Any time we sell an Ambassadorship, we deliver." "Doesn't the State Department have something to say about it?" Shaughnessy told me exactly what the State Department could do about it, so I told him to let me have a few days to think it over. After all, three hundred thousand dollars was quite a lot of money to pay for a diplomatic post. It wasn't as though I could make it pay off in Scotch whiskey or mining shares as in the past. "That's what you think," the agent of the Democratic National Committee rapped out. "Listen, Mr. Tompkins, if you buy that job take me along as your private secretary and I'll show you how to make it pay like a bank and no ifs. What shall I tell the gang?" "Tell them I'm definitely interested," I replied truthfully, "but I'd like a couple of weeks to think it over." My next visitor was General Forbes-Dutton of the Army Service Forces. "Remember me, Winnie?" "Why sure!" I replied with great cordiality. "If it isn't—" "That's right," the General interrupted. "Well, boy, after Pearl Harbor I got me—I was asked to go to Washington to help out, so the bank said it was my duty, that they'd hold my job for me, and I've been there ever since. I'm on Westervelt's staff, in charge of financial procurement policies. Neat, eh?" "So you're still working for the bank?" "Not for them, Winnie. With them. We're both working for the government. Financing war-contracts, you know. Now Westervelt's heard good things about you, Winnie. He was much impressed by the way you turned down that gang of chiselers who tried to horn in on the quinine deal. They're all out. He's got a big job in mind for you. How'd you like to be a Brigadier-General?" "It's a little late for that," I told him. "The war's almost over." He laughed very heartily. "It's a honey of a job, Winnie. Here's what gives. This war's almost over, as you say. Then the Army will have the job of selling off the stuff it doesn't need and boy! it has everything. We've just about cornered everything there is and the whole world's going to be crying for the stuff. We want a good trader in charge, who knows how to play ball with the boys, realistic that is. No star-gazer, eh? And that's where you come in. There's millions in it. Hell! there's billions. We got to go slow in selling it or we'd bust the market, wreck values and stall reconversion, so we had us a brain-storm when we heard how you cleaned up in the Funeral Market. How about it? Want to play ball and get next to the biggest break you ever heard of?" I looked Forbes-Dutton squarely in the eye. "Isn't it going to be a headache?" I asked. "I mean, won't there be a stink in Congress about it? I'm no fall-guy." The General shook his head. "Congress is in on it, every man jack of them outside a few screwballs," he assured me. "We got a deal worked out in every District—all legal and clean, of course—so there isn't a Senator or Congressman that can't march right up to the trough and get his. Hell! there's so much of it—food, tractors, jeeps, clothes, ships, machine-tools, factories even—that we could buy every Congressman ten times over and still have plenty of glue. With you on top—" "It still sounds as though you were looking for a fall-guy," I told him. He again laughed merrily. "Anywhere you fall in this surplus game you'd still land soft and be in clover. What about it? Shall I phone the Pentagon?" "Sorry to stall you," I said, "but I've got to think it over. I've got to talk to my lawyer. I'd still like to come down to Washington and study the angles." "Angles? Hell! This hasn't any more angles than a big ripe watermelon. Brigadier-General's not a bad title for a post-war use. When these G.I.'s come back they'll want to find soldiers running things. Okay, Winnie, I see your point. I'll tell the General you'll be coming down to look the ground over. You'll get the Order of Merit, of course—" "I've already got it," I informed him. "The hell you say! That's wonderful. Well, then we'll fly you over to London or Brisbane and give you a couple of theatre citations to dress you up. After a couple of weeks on Ike's or Mac's staff you'll have a build-up like nobody's business. Then we make a killing. 'Bye!" When the door closed behind General Forbes-Dutton I called for Arthurjean. "Honey," I told her, "get me a snort of brandy and accept my personal apologies to the entire female sex for any time I have ever made use of the word 'whore'." "What's eating you, Winnie?" she asked. "I've just been propositioned by two gentlemen who would be complimented if you called them prostitutes," I told her. "The only honest man I've met today was that first little guy. All he wanted me to do was to help reorganize the Black Market. Who's left now?" "There's only this one man who calls himself Charles G. Smith and has been waiting some time. He looks like a crank. Shall I give him a hand-out and tell him to go away?" I shook my head. "I can't take much more of the current brand of patriotism." Charles G. Smith was a small, wispy man, with a protruding Adam's apple, buck teeth and shabby clothes. He ignored my outstretched hand and advanced on me, with a glittering eye. "Mr. Tompkins," he announced, in a curiously deep, velvety voice, "you have made millions of dollars that you must soon leave behind you. You have invested years of your life in collecting and keeping those dollars—little disks of metal, little slips of paper. What have you invested in the only thing you will be permitted to take with you when you leave?" "What do you mean?" I asked. "I mean your immortal soul, Mr. Tompkins, your immortal soul," said Mr. Charles G. Smith. "Oh Lord! A religious crank!" I exclaimed. "Naturally," he agreed proudly. "I'd rather be crazy about God than nuts about money. Why not?" I looked at him with growing respect. "Why not, indeed?" I thought. "My case is out of your line, Mr. Smith," I told him. "They all say that," he replied, "but God doesn't think so." "My case is different," I repeated. "You see, I have not one but two immortal souls." He nodded benignly. "I know," he said. "God told me that you were in trouble." "That sounds as though you and I were buddies, Mr. Smith," I observed. "Where can I find Him? It will take God Himself to straighten out my case." Smith shrugged his shoulders. "You can't find Him," he said. "You've got to wait until He finds you." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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