The Magic Christian (3 page)

“But Guy has always been
eager
to help in such matters,” Esther broke in warmly.

“Thank you, Aunt Esther,” said Guy with soft humility, “I do like to think that the record speaks for itself.”

Guy Grand had owned a newspaper for a while—one of Boston’s popular dailies, with a circulation of 900,000. When Grand assumed control, there was, at first, no change in the paper’s format, nor in its apparently high journalistic standards, as Grand stayed on in New York on the periphery of the paper’s operations, where he would remain, he said until he “could get the feel of things.”

During the second month, however, French words began to crop up unaccountably in news of local interest:

Boston, Mar. 27 (AP)—Howard Jones, vingt-huit ans, convicted on three counts of larceny here, was sentenced this morning to 20-26 months in Folsom State Prison, Judge Grath of 17th Circuit Court of Appeals announced aujourd’hui.

Working then through a succession of editors, proofreaders, and linotype operators, Grand gradually put forward the policy of misspelling the names of cities, islands, and proper nouns in general—or else having them appear in a foreign language:

YANKS HIT PARIGI

MOP-UP AT TERWEEWEE

During the war, when geographic names were given daily prominence in the headlines, these distortions served to antagonize the reader and to obscure the facts.

The circulation of the paper fell off sharply, and after three months it was down to something less than one-twentieth of what it had been when Grand took over. At this point a major policy change was announced. Henceforth the newspaper would not carry comics, editorials, feature stories, reviews, or advertising, and would present only the factual news in a straightforward manner. It was called
The Facts,
and Grand spent the ransom of a dozen queens in getting at the facts of the news, or at least a great many of them, which he had printed then in simple sentences. The issues of the first two days or so enjoyed a fair sale, but the contents on the whole appeared to be so incredible or so irrelevant that by the end of the week demand was lower than at any previous phase of the paper’s existence. During the third week, the paper had no sale at all to speak of, and was simply given away; or, refused by the distributors, it was left in stacks on the street corners each morning, about two million copies a day. In the beginning people were amused by the sight of so many newspapers lying around unread; but when it continued, they became annoyed. Something funny was going on—
Communist? Atheist? Homosexual? Catholic? Monopoly? Corruption? Protestant? Insane? Negro? Jewish? Puerto Rican? POETRY?
The city was filthy. It was easy for people to talk about
The Facts
in terms of litter and debris. Speeches were made, letters written, yet the issue was vague. The editor of
The Facts
received insulting letters by the bagful. Grand sat tight for a week, then he gave the paper over exclusively to printing these letters; and its name was changed again—
Opinions.

These printed letters reflected such angry divergence of thought and belief that what resulted was sharp dissension throughout the city. Group antagonism ran high. The paper was widely read and there were incidents of violence. Movements began.

At about two
P.M.
on June 7th, crowds started to gather in Lexington Square near the center of the city. The
Jewish, Atheist, Negro, Labor, Homosexual,
and
Intellectual
groups were on one side—the
Protestant
and
American Legion
on the other. The balance of power, or so it seemed, lay with the doughty
Catholic
group.

It was fair and windless that day in Boston, and while the groups and the groups-within-groups bickered and jockeyed in the center of Lexington Square, Guy Grand brought off a
tour de force.
Hovering just overhead, in a radio-equipped helicopter, he directed the maneuver of a six-plane squadron of skywriters, much higher, in spelling out the mile-long smoke-letter words: F**K YOU . . . and this was immediately followed by a veritable host of outlandish epithets, formulated as insults on the level of group Gestalt: Protestants are assholes . . . Jews are full of crap . . . Catholics are shitty . . . and so on,
ad nauseum
actually.

It set the crowd below hopping mad. Grand Guy Grand dropped to about a hundred feet, where he canted the plane towards them and opened the door to peer out and observe. The crowd, associating the low-flying helicopter with the outrageous skywriting going on above, started shouting obscenities and shaking their fists.

“You rotten Mick!”

“You dirty Yid!”

“You black bastard!”

That was how the fighting began.

During the Lexington Square Riots, Grand set his plane down to twenty-five feet, where he cruised around, leaning out the door, expressionless, shouting in loud, slow intonation:

“WHAT’S. . . UP? WHAT’S. . . UP?”

By four o’clock the square was in shambles and all Boston on the brink of eruption. The National Guard had to be brought into the city and martial law obtained. It was thirty-six hours before order was fully restored.

The press made capital of the affair. Investigations were demanded. Guy Grand had paid off some big men in order to carry forward the project, but this was more than they had bargained for. Back in New York it cost him two million to keep clear.

“Y
ES, I SEE,”
said Guy, clearing his throat, looking with concern at the piece of sweet biscuit in his hand, “. . .certainly. Why don’t you . . . well, you know, find out how much they need, make out a check, and . . .”

Aunt Esther covertly twittered again, her eyes bright above the very white hand that hid her mouth, and Agnes turned her own face sharply away in mock exasperation with the boy.

“Not
give
them the money, Guy!” Agnes exclaimed. “They wouldn’t
hear
of it, of course—the young man,
Sol,
especially. Surely you know how
proud
those people are . . . a defensive-mechanism, I suppose; but there you are, even so!
No
—what I had in mind was to tell them of a
stock
to buy, you see.”

“Right,” said Guy crisply, “then they would take one of the trips later, that the idea? But, hold on—if they spend all their money on the one trip, how can they buy into the stock in question?”

“Guy!” said his aunt in a voice of ice and pain.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” said Grand with perfect candor.

Aunt Esther took refuge behind her kerchief, into her ceaseless giggling.

“I mean make it go up and down!”
cried Agnes crossly. “Or rather
down
first, then
up.”

She regarded him narrowly for a moment, her thinness stretching upwards like an angry swan, suspecting perhaps that he was being deliberately obtuse.

“A perfect babe in the woods!” she said. “How you manage to hold your own at conference table I’m sure I couldn’t imagine!”

“Sorry,” said Grand, unsmiling, following through with the youthful gesture of slightly ducking his head for a sip of tea.

Of course it was all largely an act between them.

“Name one good stock in which you hold ten thousand shares,” said Agnes sharply.

“One good stock . . .” repeated Guy Grand, his great brow clouding.

“. . . that begins with an ‘A’,” said Aunt Esther.

“That begins with an ‘A’?” said Grand, almost incredulous, yet as willing as a good-natured child at play. “Esther!” cried Agnes.

“Well, do you mean
exactly
ten thousand, or
at least
ten thousand?” asked Guy.

“At least ten thousand,” said Agnes. “And it
needn’t,”
she added, with a straight look to her sister, “begin with an ‘A’!”

“Hmm. Well, how about ‘Abercrombie and Adams’?” said Grand tentatively, “there’s a fairly sound—”

“Good,” said Aunt Agnes. “Now then, what if you sold all your shares of that? What would happen to the price of it?”

“Take a nasty drop,” said Grand, with a scowl at the thought of it. “Might cause a run.”

“There you are then!” cried Agnes. “And Clemence’s young man
buys
—when the price is down,
he buys,
you see—then the
next
day, you buy back what you sold! I should think it would go up again when you buy back what you sold, wouldn’t it?”

“Might and might not,” said Grand, somewhat coldly.

“Well,”
said Agnes, with a terrible hauteur, “you can just
keep
buying until it does!” Then she continued, in softer tones, to show her ultimate reasonableness: “Surely you can, Guy. And then, you see, when it’s up again, Clemence and her young man will
sell.”

“Yes,” said Grand with a certain quiet dignity, “but you know, it might not look good, that sort of thing, with the Federal Securities Commission.”

Agnes’s lips were so closely compressed now that they resembled a turtle’s mouth.

“Might not
look,”
she repeated, making it hollow, her eyes widening as though she had lifted a desert rock and seen what was beneath it.
“Well,”
she said with unnerving softness, taking a sip of tea to brace herself and even, turning to draw on her sister with a look of dark significance, “. . . if all you’re concerned with is
appearance
—then perhaps you aren’t the person I thought you were, after all.” And she poured herself another cup.

Grand was stricken with a mild fit of coughing. “Yes,” he was able to say at last, “. . .
yes,
I see your point, of course. Does bear some thinking through though, I must say.”

His aunt, momentarily aghast, had just started to speak again, when the maid stepped inside the door to announce the arrival of Miss Ginger Horton—an extremely fat lady, who entered the room then, wearing an immense trapeze sunsuit and carrying her Pekinese.

“Guy!”
she cried, extending her hand, as he, rising, came forward. “How
too
good to see you!

“Say hello to
Guy,
my Bitsy!” she shrieked gaily to the dog, pointing him at Guy and the others. “Say hello to everybody! There’s Agnes and Esther,
see
them, Bitsy?”

The dog yapped crossly instead, and ran at the nose.

“Is
Bitsy-witsy sicky?” cooed Miss Horton, pouting now as she allowed Guy to slowly escort her towards a chair near the others, he maneuvering her across the room like a gigantic river scow. “Hmm? Is my Bitsy sicky-wicky?”

“Nothing too serious, I hope,” said Grand with a solicitous frown.

“Just nerves I expect,” said Miss Horton, haughty now, and fairly snapping. “The weather is just so . . .
really abominable,
and then all the nasty little people about . . . Now here’s your Agnes and Esther, Bitsy.”

“How very nice to see you, my dear,” said the two elderly women, each laying thin fingers on her enormous hand. “What an adorable little sunsuit! It
was
kind of you to bring your Bitsy—wasn’t it, Guy?”

“It was extremely kind,” said Guy, beaming as he retreated to his own great chair near the window.

It was, as a matter of fact, Guy Grand who, working through his attorneys, had bought controlling interest in the three largest kennel clubs on the eastern seaboard last season; and in this way he had gained virtual dominance over, and responsibility for, the Dog Show that year at Madison Square Garden. His number-one
gèrant,
or front man, for this operation was a Señor Hernandez Gonzales, a huge Mexican, who had long been known in dog-fancier circles as a breeder of blue-ribbon Chihuahuas. With Grand’s backing however; and over a quick six months, Gonzales became the celebrated owner of one of the finest kennels in the world, known now not simply for Chihuahuas, but for Pekinese, Pomeranians and many rare and strange breeds of the Orient.

It was evident that this season’s show at the Garden was to be a gala one—a wealth of new honors had been posted, the prize-money packets substantially fattened, and competition was keener than ever. Bright young men and wealthy dowagers from all over were bringing forward their best and favorite pedigrees. Gonzales himself had promised a prize specimen of a fine old breed. A national picture magazine devoted its cover to the affair and a lengthy editorial in praise of this great American benignity, this love of animals—“. . . in bright and telling contrast,” the editorial said, “to certain naive barbarities,
e.g.,
the Spanish bullfight.”

Thus, when the day arrived, all was as it should be. The Garden was festively decked, the spectators in holiday reverence, the lights burning, the big cameras booming, and the participants dressed as for a Papal audience—though slightly ambivalent, between not wishing to get mussed or hairy, and yet wanting to pamper and coo over their animals.

Except for the notable absence of Señor Gonzales, things went smoothly, until the final competition began, that between “Best of Breed” for the coveted “Best in Show.” And at this point, Gonzales did appear; he joined the throng of owners and beasts who mingled in the center of the Garden, where it was soon apparent his boast had not been idle—at the end of the big man’s leash was an extraordinary dog; he was jet-black and almost the size of a full-grown Dane, with the most striking coat and carriage yet seen at the Garden show that season. The head was dressed somewhat in the manner of a circus-cut poodle, though much exaggerated, so that half the face of the animal was truly obscured.

Gonzales joined the crowd with a jaunty smile and flourish not inappropriate to one of his eminence. He hadn’t been there a moment though before he and the dog were spotted by Mrs. Winthrop-Garde and her angry little spitz.

She came forward, herself not too unlike her charge, waddling aggressively, and she was immediately followed by several other women of similar stamp, along with Pekineses, Pomeranians, and ill-tempered miniature chows.