Middle Men (24 page)

“I'm tired of the calls. I can't deal with those fucking people.”

“I'm going out there on Thursday,” Costello says. “I'll take care of it.”

“Great,” Jack says. “How's everything else?”

“Have you ever seen an axolotl? It's a white lizard with golden eyes.”

“No, but there's a bat in Paraguay that can fly through trees. It's got a powerful sonar. The sonar makes a hole in the tree and the thing flies right through.”

“Things can't fly through other things,” says Costello. “That's one of the laws of physics.”

Jack shrugs, sips his coffee. This is the best part of the morning, bullshitting with Jack. Another lifer. Costello met him in 1972, when he was with Henderson Sales of Gardena, his first real gig. Started three weeks after his discharge. In the interview all they really wanted to know was if he played softball. They needed a shortstop. Destiny. Two years on the order desk, then inside sales, enjoying the air-conditioning. Then outside sales, flying around the country, a briefcase man, calling on big accounts in Kalamazoo, Adamsville, Port Arthur, and other cosmopolitan places. Phoning her every night from those ratty motel rooms. They once sent him to New York, his first and only time. He had visions of marble and light, a weekend full of banter, highballs, limousines, just like in the movies. But he was only there for twelve hours, taking a cab from JFK directly to a national distro center in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He did his presentation for all the managers and purchasing agents, and on the way out he met a valves rep coming through the door, Jack Isahakian, of the Glendale Isahakians, also on the East Coast for one day. An hour later, in the rain, they shared a cab back to JFK, neither of them so much as glimpsing the Manhattan skyline. It always turns out like that. Bummers and letdowns. Henderson eventually went under and Costello joined Summit Sales, which was basically just Henderson reconstituted without the baneful influence of Bob Henderson, the price-fixing asshole who drove all their customers away and died of a heart attack in the men's room of the Los Angeles Convention Center, thus securing his place in industry lore. Isahakian switched firms a couple times too.
The years passing, they saw each other here and there, conventions, golf tournaments. Jack a diehard Dodgers fan. They always got along. Costello remembers telling him, at a counter day in Riverside in 1985, that he was putting in a pool. The last time Costello had money in the bank.

Then 1990, the plague. Summit went under. Costello was forty-five years old, hustling for a job, any job, making calls, pulling the girls out of Catholic school, sending them to the neighbors' for breakfast. Her minivan repossessed. Credit-card shell games. She started up an unlicensed day-care service, cash under the table, grocery money, a parade of little monsters splashing in the pool. She screamed at him at night, the kids awake across the hall.
You fucking bitch, I never took a day off in my life. Not one day.
But never out loud. Too scared of her. Just lay there, taking the blame. At one point he stopped by Home Depot and filled out an application to be a cashier. Worst day of his life. Then the call. Jack Isahakian, of the Glendale Isahakians, saying that he had nothing, absolutely nothing, because everyone was fucked at the moment, but, if Costello could stand to go back to where he'd started, he could work the order desk and maybe some days do outside stuff, straight commission work on all the dogshit wholesalers, and see what happened after that, but everyone was fucked, so no promises. Jack was a loudmouth, but a grinder, the real deal. What luck to know a good and honest man.

“Did you get the
Pipeline
?” Jack says, holding up his copy. “They cut half my quotes.”

“It's still a nice little article.”

“I heard from Lamrock's guy. WCPA is going all-out for the banquet this year. Prime rib, champagne, napkins.”

“The decadence of Rome.”

“When I win, they'll probably give me five minutes to make a speech. I'm using that gila-monster thing. It's beautiful.”

Lights blaze in the outer office, marking the arrival of inside sales. Costello loads up on coffee and catalogues.

Going west on 91, against traffic. Costello, the driving virtuoso. Warehouses crowding both sides of the freeway. On each rooftop a row of spinning turbine vents. Silver spinning flowers. Costello sails over the bright and hostile neighborhoods of North Long Beach, scene of his wasted youth. The pool hall on Atlantic Avenue. During the plague, everything falling apart, he hid out there once again, a grown man, pretending he still had a job. Nine-ball at two in the afternoon. A vacation in hell. Smoke and mirrors for two months. Putting everything on the credit card. She said he looked gray, his skin was gray, and when he told her, finally, a moment of pure relief, she was there, touching his gray hand, bringing his color back.

•  •  •

Costello spends Monday night sitting in his chair, watching reruns of
Law & Order
. The phone rings. He never gets there in time, picks it up right when the machine turns on, creating stress and chaos for everyone involved. Gone for over a year and she's still the outgoing message. Talking over her voice, the machine beeping, the kids on the other end, annoyed.

“Dad?” one of the girls says. He can't tell their voices apart.

“Hello, hello!”

“It's Katie.”

“Katie!”

“Watching the game?”

“It's a travel day. How's summer school?” She has to teach it for extra money. Teaching at a Catholic high school, a vow of poverty.

“I talked to Megan and Matt. We want to take you out on Saturday.”

“Don't go to any trouble,” says Costello. “You guys should enjoy your weekends.”

“I'll call you Saturday.”

“Okay. Well, I'll let you go.”

“I don't need to be let go. I'm talking to you. We're talking.”

“Okay.”

“How's business?” she asks.

He tells her everything he knows about gila monsters and their lack of assholes.

“I don't think that's true,” she says.

•  •  •

At lunch on Tuesday it's Costello vs. Luis. The warehouse crew gathering around the ping-pong table, eating pizza. Even after a few beers, Luis is nimble and cunning. A bottle of Advil rattles ceremoniously in his back pocket each time he lunges for a ball.

“Marty gets cute with the backspin,” Jack warns, beer in hand. Next to him is Dave Mumbry, who took over all the dogshit accounts after Matt left.

“How'd you get so good at ping-pong?” he asks.

“The Army,” Costello says. “It's the least selective fraternity in the world.”

He hears someone calling his name. Lilac perfume mingling with diesel exhaust. He turns to where Linda used to be, and then down to where she is. Linda, twenty-four years old, with a bullet in her spine.

“Five Star Pipe and Supply,” she says. “Is that your guy?”

“He was Matt's, but now he's mine again.”

“They ordered some brass but didn't give me a PO number.”

“Ron gave me a verbal,” Costello says. “I gave them ninety-day billing.”

“Ninety days!” Jack shouts. “What is that, philanthropy?”

Costello follows Linda up the ramp. Doesn't know whether to help push her.

“I'll put him on a payment schedule for that stuff,” she says, “but nothing else leaves the warehouse until I see some money.”

“I'll take care of it,” Costello says.

Later that night, Costello pulls into his driveway. There's Rocha, revving up his Harley. And Connie running out the front door, encased in denim. Down to Chili's, for a delightful evening of pillage and rape. She waves to him and off they go, her legs squeezing tight.

The house is dark and quiet. For a couple of hours, Costello sits at the dining room table, paying the bills. Still paying off the bust. Fifteen years without a vacation. Never taking her out to dinner, not once. A million Ragú dinners. But at least they never ran out of rats.

Later he turns on the TV. The Dodgers on the first night of their home stand. Down two runs in the eighth. Costello, anxious, muttering to himself, drinking straight from the two-liter bottle of Pepsi. He wanders over to the glass slider and looks out on the darkness. He turns on the pool light. A pretty shade of green and the lizard down below.

•  •  •

Wednesday afternoon, up in Baldwin Park, a forsaken road winding past broken cinder block, a driveway with no address, a dungeon of a warehouse, and Ron Ciavacco, proprietor of Five Star Pipe and Supply. Sitting at the counter, marking up a racing form, as Valerie, his sister and only employee, smokes and watches
Dr. Phil
on a small black-and-white. They've been going out of business for twenty-five years.

“The wolf is at the door, my friend,” Costello says, and gently explains the situation. The concept of paying for goods and services. Ron, a beggar and a chooser, asks for better pricing on globe valves. They shake hands. Ron wishes him luck at the WCPA awards banquet.

“I don't care about stats,” Costello says. “Just as long as we win!”

At dusk, he hides from the eastbound traffic. Drives down Cherry Avenue, passing the cemetery on his way to the beach. The strand is dull and gray. Nobody goes in the water. He walks along the bluffs, smoking, counting the tankers in the harbor, a habit since childhood. Catalina Island, a distant mirage. Sixty years in SoCal and he's never taken the boat to Catalina.

Listening to the Dodgers game on the way home. Our man from Santo Domingo dealing a shutout into the seventh inning. Gets home just in time. Big bowl of vanilla ice cream, the last two innings, and then the news. Absolutely beautiful. There's a knock at the door.

“Hi, Marty!” Francine in her bike helmet.

“Now's not a good time.”

She steps inside and Costello has no choice but to set her up with a bowl of vanilla. Be thankful for small mercies,
Francine. The Nazis would've thrown you in a lime pit. Francine stares at the pictures on the bookcase, ignoring the travesty taking place right now in the top of the eighth. The manager, in his wisdom, pulling the young lefty after he gives up a walk. Let him work out of trouble, for chrissakes. Only way to become a pitcher.

“She said I could have her jewelry,” Francine says.

“What?”

Francine walking down the hall, turning on the lights like she owns the place. There's no jewelry, no real jewelry, except her wedding ring. Katie has that. Francine in their bedroom, holding the rosewood jewelry box in her stubby hands.

“It's nothing fancy,” Costello says. “You won't impress anyone, if that's what you're going for.”

The box tucked under her arm.

“Fine. It's all yours. Come on.”

Back down the hall, turning off the lights. Francine is going out the front door. She doesn't say goodbye. A Bedouin in the night.

The Dodgers closer gets lit up and they lose in extra innings. At eleven o'clock, Costello turns on the news. And then Megan calls, just to say hi. He asks her about her junior college classes and she rants and raves about the stupidity of her fellow students. She hates Orange County. Fascist this, soulless that. She wants to travel. See the watery parts of the world. She talks through the weather and into the next commercial. Sports is next. Costello starts leaning toward the side table, getting ready to hang up the phone at his first opportunity. When he sees the Dodgers highlights coming on, he says, “Well, I'll let you go.”

“What are you watching?” Megan asks.

“What? Nothing.”

She laughs at him. “We're taking you out Saturday, whether you like it or not.”

•  •  •

On Thursday afternoon he drives east into the Inland Empire, alighting upon a paved, semi-incorporated nowhere called Mira Loma. Bromberg Enterprises, the Death Star, sitting in a ring of smog on the edge of the freeway, five hundred thousand square feet of blazing white concrete. Costello parks at the edge of a vast parking lot and walks a half mile through warm, gusty winds that play havoc with his hair.

Through the dark maw of loading dock #53 and into the maze. Towering rows of everything. Hundreds of warehouse crew, pushing silver gleaming hand trucks and hydraulic pallet jacks. It smells clean in here, no diesel exhaust, all the forklifts fancy and electric. A “No Smoking” sign every ten feet. At the far end a metal staircase leading to the offices of young men with advanced business degrees from accredited universities. It's only a matter of time before Bromberg swallows up Ajax and every other rep in SoCal. Death from above. Eliminate the middleman. Chris Easton, younger than Matt, but already with a wife and kids and a mortgage. A bureaucrat with class and breeding, he sits Costello down, offers him coffee, soda, popcorn, hot dogs. They've got a whole circus up here. Costello breaks down the ballcock situation. Five hundred serial numbers for five hundred faulty units, written down by hand, his own, on a yellow legal pad, plus a flow chart of rebate and compensation. The factory rep running interference for the contractor, on behalf of the contractor's wholesaler, so neither have to face the wrath of the builder. The gallant
factory rep, doing his duty, meeting his challenger. Pistols at dawn.

“It's ridiculous how complicated this is,” says Easton, flipping the chart upside down.

“It's what they call a Byzantine arrangement. But I've already been out on all the job sites, squared things with Lamrock. We're switching out the defectives ourselves, all you need to do is sign off on the replacements so my contractor can pull from your shelves ASAP. The purchase order numbers are already plugged in and you get the percentage on everything. You really don't have to do a goddamn thing.” Calm down, calm down. “I'm just saying . . . I'm just showing you what I did so I don't have to answer questions later. It's pretty much a done deal. Our long national nightmare is over.”