It was one of the very few times I’d seen the man since he’d hired me. Looking at him now, I saw the increased puffiness of face, laxity of expression, since that day so many months before when I sat unshod in the bar. Fehringer undoubtedly was right; Tom Stanton was drinking himself out of efficiency.
But this was no time for soulless calculation. This was a time for loyalty. And I was full of loyalty, stoked to the gunwales with loyalty, fairly reeking with loyalty.
Once I got past Tom’s receptionist — a nice bit that, and available from what I’d heard around the water cooler — and saw Tom himself, I got directly to the meat of the problem.
“Tom,” I said, using his first name for the first time, “you’re the man who brought me into MGSR&S in the first place and I want you to know that I’m grateful.”
“That’s good,” he said. A faint aroma of bourbon was in the air.
“And so,” I continued, “when I heard of something in the wind that could be dangerous to you, I knew at once what my duty was.”
He became a bit more alert. “Dangerous? To me?”
“Your boy Fehringer came to see me yesterday,” I said, and went on from there, outlining everything that Fehringer had said and everything that Fehringer had implied.
When I was finished my tale of deception and intrigue, a dejected and beaten man slumped in his easy-foam chair before me. “He’s right, Harv,” said Tom Stanton. “I’ve been slipping lately. I’ve left myself wide open for a back-stabbing like this. Old Fehringer! I might have known.”
“I thought I’d let you know at once,” I said, “so you’d have time to plan your counterattack.”
“Counterattack,” he echoed hopelessly. “What can I do? The man’s an intriguer, he’s been planning this for months. Old Fehringer! Got the knife out for me, and nothing I can do.”
“Ah, but there is,” I said. “Tom, I’m loyal to you, you know that. I want to help.”
He looked up at me, hope springing into his eyes. “Is there something cooking in your double-boiler, Harv, boy?” he asked me.
“There sure is, Tom. Fehringer’s going to play the eager-beaver a while now, till he’s ready to spring the double whammo. All you have to do is let him swipe a project, and let the big men see him at it.”
“Bad tactics, Harv,” he said, shaking his head. “Right away, they’ll know old Tom is slipping.”
“For the nonce, Tom, for the nonce. But catch this: You work up a presentation anyway, you see? Meanwhile. I’m in Fehringer’s bailiwick, and I sabotagerooney his little effort, and at the next conference splat!”
He sat up, the light of battle dawning in his eyes. “You’ll do that for me, Harv, boy?”
“I’m loyal, Tom,” I said simply.
... Now there was a thing that year called the sailor hat, only for girls not for boys. At a conference, Tom allowed Fehringer to grab the project away from him, and said only one sentence to Fehringer, which would ring in the big boy’s minds a few weeks later: “I’ll be glad to have you take a stab at this, boy; I want to know if you’re ready for the big time.”
And Fehringer, poor Fehringer, smiled his little smile and said, “I think I’m ready, Tom.”
Six weeks later, I had Fehringer’s job, and the sailor hat account was using Tom Stanton’s presentation. Don’t say no till you’ve seen the proposition from every side. No one told me that, I thought of it all by myself. If you’re going to be immoral, you really ought to be smart about it.
Which was why I replied to Jodi, “Yes, I may like it. Let’s hear it.”
“It’s a one-shot proposition, Harv,” she said. “There may be repeat jobs, but I’m not sure of that. Here’s the story: There’s a man in Brazil right now, and he wants something that happens to be in New York right now. This thing can’t just be sent to him, because the federal government would grab it, and there’d be a lot of trouble all around. So it has to be smuggled out of the United States and smuggled into Brazil.”
“But surely,” I said, “there are regular smuggling routes already. For dope, say, or gold.”
“There’s very little smuggling going out of the country,” she said. “Besides, this is too dangerous to be trusted to the regular systems. What the boys have been looking for is an honest Joe, a guy with no record and no file, and a guy rich enough to take a trip to Brazil anyway. He can carry the stuff, and nobody the wiser.”
“And?”
She smiled. “You want to know what’s in it for you. Five thousand dollars, and a two-week all-expense-paid trip to Brazil. With me.”
“With you?”
“A man traveling with his wife,” she said sweetly, “is less suspect than any other kind of man.”
“And what is this cargo I’m supposed to deliver?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Except it’s valuable.” She lit a new cigarette. “Well, Harv? Are you interested?”
I suddenly remembered the slogan in Fehringer’s sailor hat presentation and I burst into laughter. “Spend your summer under a great big sailor,” I said. “That means yes.”
Six
Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Rome was not built in a day. The mills of the Gods grind slow but they grind exceeding small.
I quote the above, not to demonstrate my familiarity with banality down through the ages, but to point out just how thoroughly our platitudes have lost touch with the era in which we live. Tell the twentieth century male that haste makes waste and he’ll reply — quickly — that ours is an economy of waste and he’s merely being economical. Look before you leap, friend, and the door will be shut before you’re through it. And, while Rome may not have been built in a day, it was certainly sacked in a day. As for the mills of the Gods... well, forget about them.
Which is all just a lap-dissolve into the message of the moment. Jodi and I leaped quickly, without wasting time looking around. We leaped furiously. There was no time to play games.
In the first place, the cargo, whatever it might be, had to be in Brazil in a hurry. This man in Brazil (and here I pictured a fat Sidney Greenstreet type with a tropical suit and overactive perspiration glands) was impatient. He needed this cargo. And, while I had a mental image of this Man In Brazil, I had no image whatsoever of the cargo. But he needed it, by Allah’s beard, and he needed it with bells on.
In the second place, this was smuggling, and smuggling was illegal. Now neither Jodi nor I were traditional law-abiders, but smuggling in the eyes of the federal government is somewhat more serious an offense than either prostitution (Jodi’s crime) or false advertising (mine, repeatedly). Both Jodi and I, though more than willing to do the deed, echoed Macbeth in hoping that if it were done, would it were done quickly. The sooner we were in Brazil, and the sooner the cargo was delivered, and the sooner we were back from Brazil, the sooner we would be safe, again.
“Passports,” Jodi said. “I think you have to have a passport to go to Brazil, Harvey. Or to get back from Brazil. I forget which.”
“Either way,” I said, “we need them.”
“How long does it take to get a passport?”
“Months,” I said hollowly. “Many months. Red tape, and all.”
For five or ten minutes we sat in Jodi’s apartment and thought about the many months we would have to wait before we could get our passports. For five or ten minutes we sat, chewing our tongues, and preparing to cry. And then, casually, I said: “Of course, I already have a passport.”