I thought about the congressman who had come in to my office. He’d had balls then. Or maybe he was at the end of his political career and didn’t give a shit. Mr. Miller was watching me carefully.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m Jewish. But the Sephardic you have to be careful with or they’ll just outwit you. So when you go to see him, just use your head.” He paused and anxiously asked. “You’re not Jewish, are you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I thought then how I felt about orphans. We were all freaks. Not knowing our parents, we never worried about the Jews or the blacks, whatever.
The next day I called Mr. Eli Hemsi at his office. Like married men having an affair, my clients’ fathers gave me only their office numbers. But they would have my home number, just in case they had to get in touch with me right away. I was already getting a lot of calls which made Vallie wonder. I told her it was gambling and magazine work calls.
Mr. Hemsi asked me to come down to his office during my lunch hour and I went. It was one of the garment center buildings on Seventh Avenue just ten minutes away from the armory. A nice little stroll in the spring air. I dodged guys pushing hand trucks loaded with racks of dresses and reflected a little smugly on how hard they were working for their paltry wages while I collected hundreds for a little dirty paperwork, at the crossroads. Most of them were black guys. Why the hell weren’t they out mugging people like they were supposed to? An, if they only had the proper education, they could be stealing like me, without hurting people.
In the building the receptionist led me through showrooms that exhibited the new styles for the coming seasons. And then I was ushered through a little grubby door into Mr. Hemsi’s office suite. I was really surprised at how plush it was, the rest of the building was so grubby. The receptionist turned me over to Mr. Hemsi’s secretary, a middle-aged no-nonsense woman, but impeccably dressed who took me into the inner sanctum.
Mr. Hemsi was a great big guy who would have looked like a Cossack if it had not been for his perfectly tailored suit, rich-looking white shirt and dark red tie. His face was powerfully craggy and had a look of melancholy. He looked almost noble and certainly honest. He rose from his desk and grasped my hands in both of his to greet me. He looked deep into my eyes. He was so close to me that I could see through the thick, ropy gray hair. He said gravely, “My friend is right, you have a good heart. I know you will help me.”
“I really can’t help. I’d like to, but I can’t,” I said. And I explained the whole draft board thing to him as I had to Mr. Hiller. I was colder than I meant to be. I don’t like people looking deep into my eyes.
He just sat there nodding his head gravely. Then, as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said, he just went on, his voice really melancholy now.
“My wife, the poor woman, she is in very bad health. It will kill her if she loses her son now. He is the only thing she lives for. It will kill her if he goes away for two years. Mr. Merlyn, you must help me. If you do this for me, I will make you happy for the rest of your life.”
It wasn’t that he convinced me. It wasn’t that I believed a word he’d said. But that last phrase got to me. Only kings and emperors can say to a man, “I will make you happy for the rest of your life.” What confidence in his powers he had. But then, of course, I realized he was talking about money.
“Let me think about it,” I said, “maybe I can come up with something.”
Mr. Hemsi was nodding his head up and down very gravely. “I know you will. I know you have a good head and a good heart,” he said. “Do you have children?”
“Yes,” I said. He asked me how many and how old they were and what sex. He asked about my wife and how old she was. He was like an uncle. Then he asked me for my home address and phone number so that he could get in touch with me if necessary.
When I left him, he walked me to the elevator himself. I figured I had done my job. I had no idea how I could get his son off the hook with the draft board. And Mr. Hemsi was right, I did have a good heart. I had a good enough heart not to try to hustle him and his wife’s anxieties and then not deliver. And I had a good enough head not to get mixed up with a draft board victim. The kid had had his notice and would be in the Regular Army in another month. His mother would have to live without him.
The very next day Vallie called me at work. Her voice was very excited. She told me that she just received special delivery service of about five cartons of clothing. Clothes for all the kids, winter and fall outfits, and they were beautiful. There was also a carton of clothes for her. All of it more expensive than we could ever buy.
“There’s a card,” she said. “From a Mr. Hemsi. Who is he? Merlyn, they are just beautiful. Why did he give them to you?”
“I wrote some brochures for his business,” I said. “There wasn’t much money in it, but he did promise to send the kids some stuff. But I thought he meant a few things.”
I could hear the pleasure in Vallie’s voice. “He must be a nice man. There must be over a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes in the boxes.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I’ll talk to you about it tonight.”
After I hung up, I told Frank what had happened and about Mr. Hiller, the Cadillac dealer.
Frank squinted at me. “You’re on the hook,” he said. “That guy will be expecting you to do something for him now. How are you going to come across?”
“Shit,” I said, “I can’t figure out why I even agreed to go see him.”
“It was those Cadillacs you saw on Huller’s lot,” Frank said. “You’re like those colored guys. They’d go back to those huts in Africa if they could drive around in a Cadillac.”
I noticed a little hitch in his speech. He had almost said “niggers” but switched to “colored.” I wondered if it was because he was ashamed of saying the ugly word or because he thought I might be offended. As for the Harlem guys liking Cadillacs I always wondered why people got pissed off about that. Because they couldn’t afford it? Because they should not go into debt for something not useful? But he was right about those Cadillacs getting me on the hook. That’s why I had agreed to see Hemsi and do Hiller the favor. Way back in my head I hoped for a shot at one of those luxurious sleek cars.
That night, when I got home, Vallie put on a fashion show for me with her and the kids. She had mentioned five cartons, but she hadn’t mentioned their size. They were enormous, and Vallie and the kids had about ten outfits each. Value was more excited than I had seen her in a long time. The kids were pleased, but they didn’t care too much about clothes at that age, not even my daughter. The thought flashed through my mind that maybe I’d get lucky and find a toy manufacturer whose kid had ducked the draft.
But then Vallie pointed out that she would have to buy new shoes to go with the outfits. I told her to hold off for a while and made a note to keep an eye out for a shoe manufacturer’s son.
Now the curious thing was that I would have felt that Mr. Hemsi was patronizing me if the clothes had been of ordinary quality. There would have been the touch of the poor receiving the hand-me-downs of the rich. But his stuff was top-rate, quality goods I could never afford no matter how much babe money I raked in. Five thousand bucks, not a thousand. I took a look at the enclosed card. It was a business card with Hemsi’s name and title of president and the name of the firm and its address and phone printed on it. There was nothing written. No message of any kind. Mr. Hemsi was smart all right. There was no direct evidence that he had sent the stuff, and I had nothing that I could incriminate him with.
At the office I had thought that maybe I could ship the stuff back to Mr. Hemsi. But after seeing how happy Value was, I knew that was not possible. I lay awake until three in the morning, figuring out ways for Mr. Hemsi’s son to beat the draft.
The next day, when I went into the office, I made one decision. I wouldn’t do anything on paper that could be traced back to me a year or two later. This could be very tricky. It was one thing to take money to put a guy ahead on a list for the six months’ program, it was another to get him out of the draft after he had received his induction notice.