Some Came Running (37 page)

He enjoyed himself equally as much in getting the cars, but this was a different kind of enjoyment. He was, as he had told Dave, a silent partner in the Dodge-Plymouth agency—not even Judge Deacon knew this; in fact, no one did, except himself and Slim Carroll and Slim’s attorney who drew the papers. Slim had needed money several times when Frank had happened to have it and he had advanced it against shares of the business. So he got good buys on cars he knew he could trust. The pleasure was in the getting of them cheap, and in the secrecy.

There was the matter of the drivers. When everything else was done, he went out to hire them. It had somehow—by some occult osmosis, in spite of everything he could do—gotten around town that Frank Hirsh was starting a taxi stand, and several people had approached him for jobs. He turned them all down. He had given some little thought to this matter. He wanted to save money on the drivers. He had a choice of hiring reputable dependable men, in which case he would have to match the salaries paid by Sternutol or Kentucky Oil, or by the stores uptown. Or he could hire kids just out of high school, who lived at home, had no families of their own to support, but were usually pretty wild drivers.

He thought briefly of hiring women drivers, but discarded this because of his feeling that women were too nervous to make good drivers; the kids would be better—and also he had an intuitive feeling that women drivers would not sit too well in Parkman, somehow. In a city, maybe. But not here.

But there was still another element in the town he might draw from. These were the type of undependables and semi-disreputables to which Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson might be said to belong: younger fellows most of them, some of them married, some unmarried, whose families had never amounted to much in town, but mainly men who were sort of misfits and would rather live and work cheap than to hold down steady respectable well-paying jobs that they would have to go to every day.

Frank was aware of what he was getting into. Someone would always be quitting. Because a customer had insulted him. Or he wanted to go to St Petersburg and work on the docks for the winter. Or he got drunk and forgot to come home from Terre Haute for a month—or if he was more honest than most because he was just plain bored, disgusted because the novelty had worn off. Yeh, there would be a constant turnover of personnel. But there were several advantages on the other side. All of these young guys loved to drive cars; and rarely—if ever—did any of them ever get enough money to buy one. Also, there would always be quite a number of them hanging around town, and replacements should be fairly easy to get—especially since the job was driving. Last, but most important, there was the money they could be hired for.

It was not at all the same as his store, where respectability was a necessary asset. Nobody cared who drove them down town in a taxi—as long as they didn’t run into something.

Having made up his mind, Frank sallied forth to do his hiring. Shrewdly, he went to the Foyer. The Foyer was the other poolroom on the square. The chief difference between it and the Athletic Club was that the Foyer was the hangout of store owners and businessmen and of the townsmen in general, while the Ath Club was more the hangout of the high school kids and the country men. Nobody knew why this was so. It had always just been that way. Frank drank two beers and played two games of pool. He went there at nine o’clock in the morning and before eleven he had all three of his drivers hired.

A good sample of one of them was Albin Shipe. Albie Shipe was twenty-eight and had hung around Parkman all his life until he became a sort of fixture. His aged father had been Parkman’s only garbageman from the time Frank could first remember up until five years before the war, when he died. At sixteen, Albie had left school and got a job taking care of the courthouse furnace for the janitor, and from there graduated to a series of similar jobs. He was not a moron, or an idiot, or anything like that. He was just slow, and easily contented. He had always lived in the present moment and lacked the foresight to see where studying might have someday been important to him. He laughed a lot in a loud voice and read a great many comic books. Frank felt very paternal when he hired him. He had been meaning for a long time to get himself a small place where he could run some horses, when he got the money. Albie would make him a wonderful caretaker for it. Albie himself had been very pleased.

The other two men Frank hired were similar types. A lean little ferret-faced youth named Fitzjarrald, whose family had come here from the East before 1860; and a tall blond boy named Lee, probably a distant poor relation of all the Virginia Lees, since his family had come to Parkman from the South, in 1870, after the Civil War.

He was really very pleased with his selection, and from there he went to see the owner of the filling station nearest to the cabstand—already he was beginning to think of it as that—where he arranged a deal to get gas and oil and service at a discount in return for doing all his business there. . . .

But of course, all of this was done only after he had seen Dave and signed the contracts. He would never have gone ahead, if that had not been done first thing.

The day after getting home he had gone around to the judge’s office and picked up the contracts—while the judge stared at him as if reading the inside of his head, and made him mad again. They talked about a couple of other business deals briefly and passed the time of day just as if they were still friends. As soon as he got back to the store, he had called for Dave at the hotel.

His brother wasn’t there, the clerk—Freddy Barker, that one-eyed boy—informed him. He had gone out early, and left word to tell anyone who called that he had gone for a ride down in the country and to take their names and he would call back later.

“Gone for a ride!” Frank said, instinctively thinking of the judge, although he had just left him. “With who?”

“By himself,” Freddy said. “In his own car, Mr Hirsh.”

Frank thanked him and hung up. In his own car! Well, there was nothing to do but wait. Frank wished he had not stayed so long in Chicago. He wondered how much he paid for it? He wished he had not gone to Chicago at all. Shortly after noon, Dave called him back. He sounded a little more than half tight. Sitting at his desk and looking at the back of Edith Barclay’s pretty head, Frank suddenly decided it might be better if he went over to the hotel. He had intended for Dave to come over here. Dave seemed perfectly amenable to the suggestion. He hung up and got the contracts out of his desk and put them in the pocket of his coat.

Dave ushered him into the suite wearing an expensive-looking pair of flannel slacks and a garish Hollywood sport shirt. Frank found he was surprised, he had seen him only in his uniform and he had not thought about him ever changing it for civilian clothes. He decided he did not look so tough, in civvies. Dave’s face was red and his eyes a little wavery.

“Before we do anything else,” Dave said, “I want to tell you something. I don’t have fifty-five hundred anymore. I only have five thousand. I bought a car.”

“For five hundred dollars!”

“Well, no,” Dave said, vaguely. “I had some other cash.”

“What’d you pay?” Frank felt a little relieved.

“Seven-fifty.”

“What was it?”

“A 1942 Plymouth,” Dave said. “Good condition.”

“Tires?”

“Good tires.”

“I could of got it for you for six-fifty,” Frank said. “I told you I was a silent partner in the Dodge agency. That’s on the q t by the way.”

“I didn’t want to wait,” Dave said. “I needed it then.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Frank said, getting the contracts out of his pocket. “It just means you’ll have to take a little less percentage of the business.”

“That’s all right with me,” Dave said. “But I needed that car.”

“Well, there’s no need to get mad about it,” Frank said. “It’s your money. I see you got some pretty nice clothes, too.”

“I didn’t have any. I told you. I had some other cash on me. And then I won a little on the horses.”

“That ’Bama,” Frank said. “He’s a very good pool player; and he’s a crackerjack poker player. I don’t know how he is with the horses.” He looked up from the couch.

“It’s his hobby,” Dave said. “He makes his money on cards and pool. He just plays the horses for fun.”

“He sure drinks an awful lot,” Frank said. “More than’s good for him. Well, here’s the contracts,” he said. He spread the several copies out on the coffee table.

“Don’t those have to be changed now?” Dave said.

“No. There aren’t any amounts mentioned,” Frank said. “And I can have my office girl change the percentages later and we can both initial it.”

“Don’t they have to be notarized or something?” Dave said. He was watching the papers with a kind of fascination, as if they were poisonous snakes. He looked ready to jump back if they moved.

“My office girl’s a notary,” Frank said. “She’ll do it for me later.”

“Oh,” Dave said. He nodded. “How come there’s so many copies?”

“For filing,” Frank said. “You get two, I get two, and one for the corporation files.”

“Okay. Gimme a pen,” Dave said. “Where do I sign?”

“Don’t you want to read it first?”

“Hell, no. I wouldn’t know what I was readin, anyway.”

“Well there’s one thing I think I ought to read to you,” Frank said, getting his pen out of his coat. He turned to the last page and read out loud the “Give or Take” clause he had had the judge insert, and then explained it, looking up at his younger brother.

“Okay, okay,” Dave said. “Gimme the pen. Now where do I sign?”

“This line,” Frank said, “and then initial each page. Sign every copy the same way.”

In silence, Dave got down on one knee and riffled through the various copies, signing and initialing.

“Sign my life away,” he said with a malevolent grin.

He finished, capped the pen, and handed it back to Frank who signed them, too.

“Well. Now that that’s over with,” he said, “what about a drink?”

“I might have
one,
” Frank said. “To celebrate.”

Dave nodded and went to the phone table where the liquor and ice were. “I took a trip down around New Lebanon this morning,” he said. “Went down to the old farm.”

“The Dark Bend River?” Frank said with surprise.

“Yeah.” He came back with the glasses. “I almost wish Granddad had never sold it.”

“I haven’t been down there for years,” Frank said.

Dave grinned malignantly. “I took a case of beer, and a couple sandwiches, and went down to see the old family cemetery.” He took a long drink from his glass. “But—the beer got warm; and the sandwiches got squashed; and the roads were muddy and I almost got stuck twice; and got all wet wading through the weeds; and then most all the tombstones were all broken up or fallen over and it was all grown up in bushes under the trees.” He grinned again. “Always happens to me.”

Frank studied his brother a moment. “Our family took up that land in 1887,” he said. “Grandad didn’t sell it; he lost it. It wasn’t good land.”

“It still ain’t,” Dave said.

Frank took a drink from his glass. “I wanted to talk to you about the name of the cab company. I left it blank until we could talk about it. I think a good name would be Hirsh Brothers Taxi.”

“Oh, great Christ!” Dave said. “No.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because!” Dave said.

“Well then, how about Hirsh and Hirsh Cab Company?” “Look,” Dave said. “You’re not startin a big city operation. You want everybody in town laughing at you?”

Frank looked angry. “All right, what would you call it?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Red Checker Cab. Or Black and White Cab. Something like that. But don’t give it a big pompous name so everybody will be laughin at you.”

“I like that Red Checker Cab,” Frank said. “We can have a red-and-black checkered band around the side like the black-and white-checkered ones in Chicago, you know?” He thought a moment. “Paint the cars yellow.”

“Black,” Dave said.

“But if we have red-and-black checkers—” Frank started, then thought again. “Okay. Black. We can run a little green stripe along the outside of the checkers.”

“Keep it inconspicuous,” Dave nodded, “now look. Now everything’s settled, when do I start to work for you?”

“You won’t be workin for me,” Frank protested.

“All right then: us.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of things to take care of. Rent a building. Get the cars. Hire some drivers. All the paperwork. It’ll take at least a week.”

“That long?” Dave half-snarled. “Okay, look. I’m going to move out of here and get a room in the other hotel. The Douglas. Start savin money, now I’m poor again. So you can reach me there when you’re ready for me.”

“Okay. But there’s a lot of these things you could help me with,” Frank said.

“Okay. Anything you want me for, just call me at the Douglas,” Dave said, as if anxious to have done. “Do you want me to write you a check for five thousand now? I’ll have to close out my account. Five thousand’s all I got in it.”

“Why don’t you get a bank draft instead?” Frank said. “And then sign it over to me.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I’d just rather you do that,” Frank said.

Dave grinned. “So the draft will go through the Cray County Bank, hunh?”

“No,” Frank said. “Not at all. It’s just better business, that’s all.”

“All right,” Dave said. “I’ll send Freddy over to do it before the bank closes this afternoon.”

Frank grinned. “Why? Don’t you want to go over yourself?”

“No,” Dave said. “Not at all. It’s just better business, that’s all.” Again, he grinned that wry, malevolent grin.

Frank looked at him a moment, and then ducked his head and chuckled. “Touché.”

“Okay,” Dave said. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” Frank said, looking up. He composed his face into an expression of sternness. “There is somethin else. Just one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Dave said, looking as though he wanted to sigh.

“It’s about my office girl. Edith Barclay.”

Dave turned to stare at him over his glass. “What about her?”