Page 10

It was midmorning, and Theo had been trying with very limited success to impose some order on the nearest of his father’s chaotic filing cabinets. His mind had started to wander and he was idly looking out of the window, observing Easey Goldstein, who was leaning against a lamppost on the other side of the road, smoking the butt of a cigarette. There was something repulsive about the way he greedily sucked in the smoke that made Theo want to look away but at the same time kept him watching, fascinated to see whether he would keep going to the point where the butt burned his fingers.

Just as Easey finally dropped the butt on the ground, Alvah Katz emerged from the warehouse and stopped beside him, talking rapidly. He gesticulated several times as he spoke, pointing back inside, and Theo had the strong impression that he was giving instructions. Easey appeared to say nothing in response, but his usual hostile scowl was replaced by a look of intense concentration as he listened, which made Theo smile—it was somehow absurd on the warehouseman’s moonlike face.

After a minute Easey nodded twice and went back inside, while Alvah crossed the road, coming straight toward Theo’s window. Theo dropped his head, surprised at how much he wanted to avoid another encounter with the cutter. Sensing that Alvah was coming to the office, he thought of making an escape to the restroom, but then glanced over at his father, sitting looking careworn behind his desk, and changed his mind.

Less than a minute later, Mrs. Hirsch ushered in Alvah, who waited in the doorway with a faintly disapproving look on his face while the secretary cleared files from the chair across the desk from Michael and piled them on top of a cabinet.

“Sorry about the mess,” said Michael pleasantly. “Theo and I are doing some spring cleaning. But we’ll be organized in no time, won’t we, son? The boy’s already proving a great asset to me, Alvah. He’s got a good head for figures. Gets it from his mother, I expect.”

Theo was surprised at his father’s friendly tone. He appeared to have completely forgotten the angry scene in the cutter’s room.

“Now, what can I do for you?” Michael asked. “What brings you down from your aerie?”

Alvah smiled coldly at the banter. “What brings me down here, Mr. Sterling, is the discovery that, as of this morning, my colleagues upstairs are unable to leave the factory floor during work hours, or at least not without applying to Mr. Vogel. I think we all agree that it’s simply not acceptable.”

“Not acceptable. I see. Well, let me tell you what’s not acceptable,” said Michael, leaning forward across the desk. “People are leaving without permission when they’re supposed to be working, and some of them are stealing. You know this because I’ve complained about it before. But nothing’s happened and it still goes on. I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it, I can assure you of that. And in the meantime, the doors stay locked. That needn’t apply to you, of course. I will arrange for you to have a key so that you can come and go, but I will need your assurance that you’re not going to give it to anyone else.”

“I can give you no such assurance,” said Alvah primly. “I wish to be treated exactly the same as everyone else.”

“Well, more fool you then,” said Michael. “Do you want to be paid the same as them as well? That would certainly save the firm some money!”

“You’re being absurd,” said Alvah. He was silent for a moment, fingering his hat in his hands, and then he turned to look at Theo. “May I ask if you approve of this new policy of your father’s, Master Sterling?”

Theo wilted under Alvah’s scrutiny, saying nothing because he didn’t know what to say.

“Perhaps it might help you to have a little background,” said the cutter affably. “Years ago, when I was about your age, maybe even a little younger, I lived in the Village, and one fine day there was a fire in a garment factory over by Washington Square. Someone had dropped a cigarette in a scrap bin and whoosh—the sky was black with smoke and the bells of the fire engines were ringing, racing to the rescue from all over Manhattan. My mother and I went to look; everyone in my neighborhood did. The firefighters had their ladders up against the building, but they weren’t high enough; they could only reach the seventh floor. There were girls at the windows of the upper floors, screaming. And then, all of a sudden, they started jumping. I remember some were holding hands. The firemen held up life nets but they weren’t strong enough, and the girls fell through them. They died right in front of me, smashed to pieces on the stone pavement, and when the rest of the girls saw that, they didn’t want to jump, but they had to because they were burning—their hair, their clothes ... they were like living torches when they fell.”

Theo gasped and Alvah paused, allowing his words to sink in.

“The owners had locked the doors. That’s why that happened,” he finished, keeping his eyes fixed on Theo.

On the other side of the desk, Michael slowly clapped his hands. “Quite a story!” he said. “I’m impressed, Alvah. You’re always surprising me with your talents. But what happened twenty years ago has got nothing to do with our situation, as you well know. Frank has keys to the stairs, there’s a well-maintained fire escape on the front of the building, and there’s the goods elevator, too, if needed. But they won’t be needed because there’s not going to be a fire: no one’s allowed to smoke and there are sprinklers in the ceiling that are checked every week.”

Alvah didn’t respond. He was still looking at Theo. “What do you think, Master Sterling?” he asked. “Should your father be locking the doors?”

Theo shook his head. It was almost an involuntary movement, an instinctive reaction to Alvah’s terrible story.

“Thank you,” said Alvah, getting to his feet and finally turning his attention back to his employer. “Mr. Sterling, I urge you to listen to your son,” he said. And then, putting on his hat, he walked out of the office without waiting for a response.

Notwithstanding his father’s oft-repeated assertion that he was there to learn the ropes, Theo remained downstairs in the office, except in the afternoon when he accompanied his father and Frank Vogel on their daily tour of the factory. And this also seemed to be the only time when Michael went up there as well, which surprised Theo, given the way his father had waxed lyrical about his company as a living, growing expression of himself throughout Theo’s childhood.

Theo could see from some of the documents he had been set to organize that his father was being pressed by creditors on all sides, but he was no accountant and his father didn’t talk to him about the firm’s overall financial health. Michael’s default setting had always been optimism, and he still seemed able to turn on the faucet of his self-belief when buyers’ representatives came to the office. On these days he would dress in his best Brooks Brothers suit and tie and take the rep out to a three-course lunch at the Roman Gardens with a stop afterward at a speakeasy behind Penn Station, leaving Theo “in charge,” as he put it. But these days were few and far between, and dust continued to gather in the showroom.

Apart from Frank, the only other regular visitor to the office was the man from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. His name was Marty Meagle, and he was always looking about himself, as if convinced he was going to find something important lurking in a corner. He had a shifty and unscrupulous appearance—just how Theo imagined a fraudster might look, instead of someone tasked with investigating crime. But Theo never got the chance to find out if his impression was correct because his father always sent him out for half an hour as soon as Marty arrived, so that the two of them could talk together confidentially.

By the time Theo got back after a coffee and roll in the Automat, Marty would be gone and Michael would be looking energized, letting fall that Marty’s report had been very interesting and that progress was being made, although to what end he did not make clear.

The detective’s visits, however, had the opposite effect on Theo, who felt sure that it was Marty who had dug up the dirt on Coach Eames. They reminded him of what he had lost and of how he had been railroaded into working at the factory, where he was learning nothing except how to organize a filing cabinet, and rekindled the impotent anger against his father that was forever smoldering inside his chest.

Two weeks after Theo began work, a buyer arrived at short notice from Philadelphia and Michael went out to lunch, leaving Theo in the office. Shortly afterward, Frank appeared, looking for Michael.

“Maybe he’ll give us some work. God knows we could do with it!” said Frank after Theo had told him about the buyer.

Theo could hear the weariness in Frank’s voice. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“It’s tough to make ends meet. I sometimes think that my job’s a bit like what that poor Greek sod had to put up with, pushing a massive boulder up the hill all day only for it to roll back down again just when he’d got it to the top.”

“Sisyphus,” said Theo.

“That’s him!” said Frank, smiling. “Did you learn that in school?”

“Yes. I liked Greek and Latin, especially the history.”

“I bet you did. And that’s where you should be now, learning your verbs and pronouns and getting ahead. Not stuck in here with the likes of us, heading up shit creek without a paddle.”

Theo didn’t say anything. He felt a surge of gratitude. No one since Coach Eames had shown him any sympathy or understanding for what he had been forced to give up, and he was also pleased that Frank was prepared to use such a vulgar expression in front of him. It made him feel grown-up.

“Your dad sees everything his way,” said Frank after a moment. “It’s his strength and his weakness, and it doesn’t make life easy for the rest of us. You especially.”

“Why’s it his strength?”

“Because it’s what gives him his drive and his self-belief. It’s the reason we’re sitting here in a swanky office off Seventh Avenue instead of working our fingers to the bone in some filthy sweatshop over by the East River. That’s where I came from, too, just like him, and I know for a fact I’d still be there if it wasn’t for your father.”

“How did he do it?” Theo was sitting forward in his chair, alive with curiosity. Nobody who knew his father had ever talked to him like Frank was doing now.

“He refused to give in,” said Frank. “He saved money, borrowed some, too, and got his own shop. And then he bled his workers dry, forcing them to work day and night for practically nothing, and used the money he made to buy equipment and rent more space. Dog eat dog, on and on, up and up, year after year, until one day he told the Lower East to kiss his ass and set himself up over here with the big boys.”

“And then?”

“Then? Then the Crash. It’s the Depression that’s killing him. He hasn’t got an answer to it and so he denies it’s there, but that’s not going to work for much longer. Self-belief will take you a long way, but it doesn’t drive an automobile through a brick wall. I wish it did.” Frank laughed hollowly. “We’re overextended here. That’s the problem. The rents are too high. It was worse before we moved, but it’s still not good.”

“You moved because of the rent? My dad said it was a move up, not a move down.”

“Well, we went to a higher floor, but that’s about all the up there was in it,” said Frank, laughing again. “The trouble is we’re neither a sweatshop nor a proper factory. We’re something in between—a subfactory, I suppose you could call it. The other factories round here, places like Weiss and Kramer, they’ve got a proper capital base, but we’re not like that. We’ve got some work of our own—your father’s always been good with the buyers. He can charm the birds off the trees when he wants to, but there aren’t so many birds around these days, and we need the subcontract work the other factories give us, so it doesn’t help that Alvah keeps rubbing them up the wrong way.”

“How? What’s he doing?”

“He cuts the fabric his way instead of the way they want it, and then they send it back and we have to start over. You saw it yourself the other day. I call him out on it, but he doesn’t care. He thinks he could walk into another job at the same money or better if Michael fired him, and he’s probably right. He’s a prize schmuck, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good cutter.”

“Why doesn’t he go, then?” asked Theo.

“I don’t know. Maybe he likes being a big fish in a small pond. He can make more trouble that way.”

“I don’t like him,” Theo blurted out. It was as if he felt he couldn’t just keep asking questions, but needed to say something himself.

“Me neither,” said Frank, smiling. “And I’d like nothing better than to see the back of him. But that’s not an item on your father’s agenda. More’s the pity.”

“Why not?” The answer made no sense to Theo, having seen firsthand how the cutter treated his father.

“Because Alvah’s important to your father. Much more important than I am, even though me and him go back a lot further and even though I’m loyal and Alvah’s a snake. Alvah allows him to dream,” said Frank slowly, as if he was searching for the right words. “And it’s dreams that keep your father going. They’re his food and drink.

“Sorry, I’m talking in riddles,” he went on, seeing the look of mystification spreading across Theo’s face. “The point I’m trying to make—badly, I know—is that your father believes that Alvah isn’t just a great cutter but a great designer and patternmaker too. He thinks that Alvah could have made a career in haute couture, designing dresses for Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow ...”

“Could he?” asked Theo, awestruck. He’d been in love with Garbo ever since he sneaked into the Paramount to see Anna Christie after school the year before and kept going back for an entire week.

“No. I very much doubt it,” said Frank. “If Alvah was a genius, he’d be in Paris now, instead of working here. But what matters isn’t what I think; it’s what your father thinks. Up until recently, he used to pay Alvah to go to the movies and sketch the dresses that the stars were wearing, and then Alvah would make designs and patterns and Michael would manufacture and sell them. They were doing pretty well, and it got even better when Alvah made friends with a warehouseman who worked on the loading dock over at Saks. Then he could see the designer dresses for himself when they came in. Until the man got fired, that is.”

“Was he Easey Goldstein—the guy at Saks, I mean?”

“Yes,” said Frank, looking surprised. “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. It was just a guess. Easey’s in the warehouse, and I’ve seen him and Alvah together a few times, talking.”

“Have you now?”

“Yes, over there,” said Theo, pointing through the window at the warehouse entrance on the other side of the street. “It looked like Alvah was telling him what to do.”

“Interesting. I can’t prove it yet, but I’m sure Easey’s involved in these thefts your dad’s stirred up about, and I wouldn’t put it past Alvah to have his finger in the pie too. I’ve always thought that that’s what got Easey fired from Saks, although Alvah said it was because they’d found out he was showing him the clothes, which is why Michael hired him, even though I was against it. One favor deserves another, was how Alvah sold it to your father.”

“Do you know about Pinkertons?”

“Marty Meagle, you mean?”

Theo nodded. “My dad’s got them investigating the thefts, although I don’t know what they’ve found out.”

“Nothing,” said Frank. “You can bet your bottom dollar on that. Marty’s as dumb as a doornail when it comes to detective work, but he knows how to play your father. Michael loves anything cloak-and-dagger, so Marty serves it up to him by the bucketful and charges him an arm and a leg every time he makes a report. It’s another expense we can’t afford when Michael should be leaving the whole thing to me. It’s my job to keep the workers honest.”

“I don’t think it was right to lock them in,” said Theo. “I’m glad you’ve put a stop to that.” He wouldn’t have been so forthright before, but Frank’s easy confidences had emboldened him.

“No. I didn’t like it either,” said Frank. “It was your father’s idea, and I’m sure he got it from Marty. I told him it wasn’t legal, but he wouldn’t listen. And it was a gift to Alvah. I heard all about how he came over here, telling you about the Triangle Factory fire, stirring up trouble between you and your dad. And you can be sure he’s been doing the same up on the factory floor. He fancies himself a union leader now that he can’t be the world’s next great designer, and he’s got a ready audience up there, I can tell you that.”

“But maybe the union’s right,” said Theo. “I mean, I’ve seen what some of the workers here are being paid—ten dollars or less for a sixty-hour week—and it’s not enough to live on. I know it’s not.”

“So that gives them the right to steal. Is that what you’re saying?” asked Frank, looking annoyed.

“No, of course not,” said Theo, quailing a little. “I just think they should be paid a bit more. That’s all.”

“But the firm hasn’t got more. You can’t get blood from a stone. And maybe it’s better to have a job earning something than go home with a pink slip and have nothing.”

Theo nodded, unconvinced. He could see what Frank meant, but it didn’t make it right. He was aware of Frank looking at him, but he still did not raise his eyes.

“You’re right,” said Frank after a moment, sounding conciliatory. “It’s not a living wage. The workers know that and we know that, and that’s why they’re angry and listening to Alvah and not me when he stirs the pot. It’ll end badly, I warrant, unless the Depression goes away, and I don’t see any signs of that.”

“How will it end, then?” asked Theo anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said Frank. “We’ll think of something. You’re a good kid, and I’m sorry for laying my burdens on you. I’ve got a bit carried away. I can see that.”

“No, don’t be sorry. Please,” said Theo, getting up from his chair. “Nobody ever talks honestly to me. Not like you’ve been doing. My coach used to at school, but I’m not allowed to see him anymore, and you’re right—my father won’t listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear.”

“But maybe he will. Maybe if you speak to him. He’s lonely, you know. That’s why he’s brought you here. And he’s changed these last few months. He’s gotten taut as a bowstring, keeping everything in. I’m worried he could break.”

“Is that why you talked to me?”

“Yes, I suppose so. And I think you’ve got a right to know too. You seem older than fourteen, and you’re not a dreamer like your father. Maybe, between us, we can get him to see some sense.”

“And do what?”

“Replace Alvah. That would be a start.”

Frank smiled, but over on the other side of the road, Theo saw that Easey Goldstein had come out of the warehouse and was standing with his back to the wall, staring across the road in his direction.