Harpo Speaks! (10 page)

It was all too familiar. It was all too clear that I was not going to have myself a very good time in this town either.

This was a more expensive hotel. I was stuck in the biggest room, the only one with its own bathroom, and by the end of three days-no sign of Mintz, of course-the bill had already reached the fifteen-dollar mark.

I made the first move, and copped a plea with the manager. I told him my partner had run out on me a couple of times before, staying away longer than he intended-but begged him not to worry because Mr. Mintz always came back to settle accounts. My frank approach didn’t do much good, however. “This kind of monkey business don’t go with me,” the manager said. “You pay up for your three days here or I’ll call the sheriff.”

When the sheriff arrived, I put on my derby, picked up my bag and went obediently along to the local jig.

The sheriff let me telephone New York City-reversing the charges, which was unusual in those days. I called the neighborhood drugstore at 93rd and Lex, and they got Minnie-who was back from Atlantic City-to come to the phone. When I told her what had happened she hit the roof. The idea of Frenchie letting me go off on the road with a crook like Seymour Mintz! Why, you could tell from the way he walked he wasn’t on the level. Minnie had forgotten that Mintz had first latched on to me through her introduction.

Anyway, she borrowed the money for the hotel bill and my return fare from Uncle Al. Three days later I was home again. The firm of Mintz & Marx was dissolved. My collection of business cards went down the dumbwaiter with the garbage. It would be a long time before I saw my name in print again.

It was a long time, too, before I found out the truth about Seymour Mintz, why he had taken me on, and what he did every time he disappeared. Actually it was Frenchie who found out from Seymour’s father, who came around to announce that he was no longer responsible for his son’s debts. If anybody could get this word to Seymour he would appreciate it. Mr. Mintz thought Frenchie might know who his son’s current partner was. Apparently there’d been two or three new ones since my retirement.

Seymour’s racket was this: In his suitcase he carried samples of trousers and haberdashery-elegant, expensive-looking goods. He’d show these to merchants and take orders at ridiculously low prices. The prices he quoted were hard to resist, and he had no trouble getting big orders and big cash advances. These advances were the rolls of bills he flashed when he swooped to my rescue-in Judge Duffy’s court and in the upstate clink.

None of his orders was ever delivered, of course. That’s why Mintz had to keep on the move and move fast.

My job on the road, unbeknownst to me, was that of decoy. After Seymour dumped me in a hotel, he worked all the small towns in the area, taking orders and collecting money against them. When he figured he had the territory milked dry, he came running back, hollering with phony outrage, to bail me out. Then we jumped to the second town, where he signed me into the hotel and took off to fleece a new batch of suckers.

He always assured his prospects that his partner, Mr. Marx, was staying in the Hotel So-and-so, working on deliveries. If they wanted, they could call the hotel at Mr. Mintz’s expense and verify this. Fortunately, nobody ever inquired any further while I was involved. If anybody had raised a stink, Mr. Mintz would have taken it on the lam and Mr. Marx would have taken the rap.

Seymour had been caught up with more than once, and each time his father had had to pay off the merchants who’d been swindled. Finally old man Mintz got fed up and refused to shell out another cent. As a result, Seymour’s last partnership was his biggest one-with the state of New York. He served two years in Dannemora State Prison.

I was deeply hurt by it all-but not by being arrested three times or by having to pay back the twenty bucks Minnie borrowed from Uncle Al. I was hurt because I had lost a friend, Seymour Mintz. The experience should have given me pause for reflection and made me a keener judge of people, their character and motives. But I’m afraid the only lesson I learned was simply, “Never trust a guy who walks on a bias.”

In the next five months I was hired and fired twelve times. I hadn’t learned any business lessons during my upstate trip either.

My first job was as cigarette boy at the Freundschaft Club, a German joint down on 79th Street. This was a big private club with poolroom, beer hall, dining rooms and cardrooms, on three floors. It was run by a red-faced, mustachioed guy who looked like Kaiser Wilhelm, which was what we called him behind his back.

I worked alternating shifts of eight and twelve hours, for a salary of twenty-five cents a day plus meals. I did all right between meals, too. I would put away nine, ten, twelve hamburgers at a sitting. The chef was stunned by my capacity. He used to win bets with other guys on the staff on how much I could cat without stopping. If I had a piece of the action I could put away fourteen hamburgers, no trouble at all.

As cigarette boy, I didn’t actually sell cigarettes. I gave them out for club tickets, or chits. No money was supposed to change hands. That was a depressing thought, so I soon remedied the situation. I got a nice little side line going, selling cigarettes for less per pack than the members paid for the chits. My racket was doomed, however. I found out that at the end of every month the Kaiser took careful inventory of the stock and checked it against the sale of chits. Well, I would worry about that when the time came. But when the time came I had nothing to worry about, since I no longer worked there.

Coming off my shift one night I was starved, as usual, so I sneaked down to the kitchen and swiped a roast chicken. As luck would have it, Kaiser Wilhelm stepped into the elevator I was riding back upstairs. I shifted the chicken quickly behind me, stuffing it under my shirt. But my look must have given me away. The Kaiser grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. The roast chicken fell to the elevator floor, and that was the end of my employment at the Freundschaft Club.

My next two positions were in the cloak-and-suit industry, farther south in Manhattan. I was hired first as a ragpicker. My job was to sweep up all the rags from the cutting-room floor and stuff them in huge bags, to be weighed out at the end of the day. At the end of one day, a bag of rags weighed suspiciously high. That was because I was asleep in it. I was fired.

I was then hired down the street as a delivery boy for Edwards, Engel & Lefkowitz, another cloak-and-suit house. I lasted much longer there-a week and a half. For once, I wasn’t fired. I resigned. I was ordered to deliver a monstrous bundle of suits to Wanamaker’s Department Store. By the time I made it down to Astor Place, I was so exhausted I decided to stay there and apply for a job at Wanamaker’s.

I was sorry to leave the garment district. I had just worked out a dodge for getting a full-course meal for five cents. This required that I eat in a long, narrow restaurant at rush hour, when the joint was jammed like a six-o’clock subway car. I would order a full-course meal at a table in the rear, then take the check and fight my way to a table in the front, where I’d order a sweet roll and coffee. The check for this-for five cents-was the one I’d pay, having torn up the check for the deluxe luncheon.

I had to watch my pennies that year. I was still paying off the money Minnie had borrowed from Uncle Al, and I kicked in most of the rest of my salary to the family. This left me barely enough for carfare, plus a nickel a day for dinner, plus an occasional two cents to treat myself to a Horton’s ice-cream cone.

Once I lost my carfare home and went into a cigar store to borrow a nickel. I offered the counterman my vest as security. Without a word he went to the back of the store. He returned holding a vest exactly like mine. “I been stuck with this one you gave me for six months now,” he said. “No soap.” It was the same old story. The other vest was Chico’s. He’d been there before me.

So anyway I gave the department stores a whirl. I was fired from Wanamaker’s when I was caught in a crap game. I worked for Stern’s for a few days, and also for Gimbel’s. Forgotten why Stern’s and Gimbel’s fired me, which is probably just as well.

Next in my steady rise to becoming a failure in business, I was a cash-boy at Siegel & Cooper’s, a store to which I was attracted by reason of its having an escalator. I had ridden only once on an escalator. I thought it would be fun to ride one up and down all day and get paid for it.

When I got the job, one of the first things they told me was that the escalators were for customers only. All employees had to use the back stairs.

Not discouraged, I struck up a friendship with the escalator guard, who seemed like a sympathetic fellow. He was. When he found out what I had in mind, he made a deal. He’d turn his back whenever I took a ride if I did him a favor and swiped a sheet of trading stamps for him the next time I went to the cashier’s office.

I pinched a sheet of five hundred stamps and slipped them to the escalator guard. But still no ride. There was more to the deal. Now the guard wanted me to go cash the stamps for him.

This sounded pretty risky, but the guard said, “They won’t recognize you through the window, kid. You’re too new here.”

Well, they recognized me. My sty gave me away. Fired.

After this I was at liberty much too long for comfort. I was getting mighty hungry, so hungry that I even went to Edwards, Engel & Lefkowitz to ask for my old job back. The foreman was still sore at me for having quit without notice and gone over to Wanamaker’s, but the bookkeeper felt sorry for me. He gave me a note to a friend of his named Haverhill, a shipping broker who had an office way downtown near the Battery.

The following Monday I went to work for Mr. Haverhill. This turned out to be the first job I ever took seriously and showed signs of making good at. Yet it was, ironically, the only job I was ever unjustly fired from.

The function of F. M. Haverhill’s office was to obtain customs permits for firms to ship goods abroad. I remember two of the clients well: the Pfauder Tank Company and the Ansonia Clock Company. I remember them well because, after my first day in the office, I did all the work. I took the calls, listed specifications of shipments, went to the steamship companies to get the export permits, and delivered the permits to the clients’ offices.

I was happy to be this busy, and carry this much responsibility. If I say so myself, there was no more efficient shipping brokerage clerk in New York City.

If any problems came up, I took them over to a saloon on West Street, which was where Mr. Haverhill spent his working day. My boss was a tolerant, aristocratic gentleman of the old school. He forgave me my mistakes, and was a patient teacher. He had only one failing. He was a lush.

Although my boss was seldom there, I was never lonely on the job. Haverhill shared office space with a trucking firm. Two cheerful men, a Mr. Wicks and a Mr. Thornton, ran the trucking business, and they treated me as an equal since I ran the brokerage business.

This was a new part of town for me, down by the harbor, and I very soon came to love it. On the Battery, at the very tip of Manhattan, was the Aquarium, a fascinating place, and there was a public swimming pool nearby. Also nearby was a Max’s Busy Bee, one of a chain of marvelous cut-rate diners. Max of the Busy Bees, whatever else he might have been, was the office boy’s best friend. He provided exactly the kind of food we liked the best, at prices we could afford to pay.

At the Busy Bee, smoked salmon on rye sold for three cents per square foot. Lemonade to wash it down cost a penny per pint glass. A jumbo piece of strawberry shortcake, oozing with fresh berries and smothered with whipped cream, was three cents. And while you were eating, countermen would yell out the day’s specials, to keep your appetite whetted: “Take a fresh-baked blueberry pie home to Mother! Nine cents apiece!” “Give the family a treat tonight! Whaddaya say? Today only-chocolate walnut layer cake, double size eleven cents!”

With the boss holed up cozily in his saloon, I could take an hour and a half or two hours for lunch. All I could eat at Max’s Busy Bee. A swim in the pool. A nap in the sun. A stroll through the Aquarium looking at exotic fish. Then back to my desk and my official documents, to take care of my important clients.

This was a job I could work at forever. Could there be a catch to it? There was. There was a duty I hadn’t been told about when I was hired.

While Mr. Haverhill and the trucking firm shared our office space, half and half, they didn’t split the rent half and half. On the first of every month Haverhill played a game with either Thornton or Wicks, and the loser had to pay the entire month’s rent. The game was Who Can Kick the Highest, Keeping One Foot on the Floor? If Haverhill kicked higher than Thornton or Wicks (who tossed to see which of them would compete), the trucking outfit paid the rent. If Haverhill was outkicked, he picked up the tab for the month.

On the first working day of June, the 3rd, I reported to the saloon for my weekly instructions, and that was when Mr. Haverhill explained the rent-kicking arrangement to me. He wasn’t in very good shape, looking as if he’d spent the whole weekend in the saloon. So I offered to help him over to the office for his monthly kick.

Mr. Haverhill was touched by my concern, but he said it wouldn’t be necessary. He simply wasn’t up to anything so strenuous. He wasn’t well, not well at all-the old liver, didn’t I know. He couldn’t win, and he couldn’t afford to lose. Therefore he designated me to take his place.

At that age my height was a full five-foot-two. `Thornton was six foot even and Wicks was six-foot-three. I told the boss I couldn’t possibly kick against either of them. “Nonsense,” said Mr. Haverhill. “Think big, m’boy, and you’ll be big. Think tall, be tall. If I didn’t have faith in you I wouldn’t let you handle the permits. Now go-show me you have faith in me.”

I went. I kicked. I lost. My opponent was Wicks. Even with cheating, my left foot three inches off the floor, I couldn’t get my right toe any higher than Wicks’s chin. I returned to the saloon with the rent notice. I wasn’t too upset because I was sure now it was all a practical joke.