He entered.
The shop was stocked to the point of overflowing. Racks of beadwork, leather goods and trinkets jammed the aisles. It was almost impossible to squeeze past them. Once past, it would be impossible to be seen from the street.
A fat Mexican woman was seated on a camp stool just inside the door. She beamed at Toddy.
"Yess, please? Nice wallet? Nice bo'l of perfume for lady?"
"What have you got in the way of gold jewelry?" Toddy asked. "Something good and heavy?"
"Nada! Such things you could not take across the border, so we do not sell. How 'bout nice belt? Nice silver ring?"
"Oh, I guess not," said Toddy. "Not interested in anything but gold. Real gold."
"You look around," the woman beamed, placing her camp stool in front of the door. "I get nice breath of air. You may find something more nice than gold."
Toddy nodded indifferently, and squeezed his way back through the racks. A few feet, and the display suddenly ended; and a Mexican man sat on a stool against the wall, reading a copy of La Prensa.
He wore an open-neck sports shirt, sharply creased tan trousers and very pointed, very shiny black shoes. He was no more than five feet tall when he stood up, smiling, ducking his glossy black head in greeting.
"Mr. Kent, please? Very happy to meet you!"
He opened a door, waved Toddy ahead of him, and closed and locked it again. A courteous hand on Toddy's elbow, he guided him down a short areaway and into a small smelly room.
There was an oilstove cluttered with pots and pans, a paint-peeled lopsided icebox, a rumpled gray-looking bed. Toddy sat down at an oilcloth-covered table, smeared and specked with the remains of past repasts. His nostrils twitched automatically.
"The ventilation is bad, eh?" The Mexican showed gleaming white teeth. "But how would you? The windows must be sealed. The disorder is essential. Think of the comment if one in this country should live in comfort and decency!"
"Yeah," said Toddy uncomfortably. "I see what you mean."
The Mexican moved back toward the icebox. "It is nice to meet one so understanding," he murmured. "You will have bo'l of beer, yess? Nice cold bo'l of beer?"
Toddy shook his head; he hoped he wouldn't have to be holed up long in this joint. "I guess not. A little early in the day for-"
"No," said the Mexican. "You will have no beer."
There was not the slightest change in his humbly ironic voice. There was no warning sound or shadow. But in that last split second when escape was too late, Toddy knew what was coming. He could feel the gizmo's swift change from gold to brass.
The blow lifted him from his chair. He collapsed on the table, and the table collapsed under him. There was a muted crash as they struck the floor.
But he did not hear it.
17
Tubby little Milt Vonderheim was not Dutch but German. His right name was Max Von Der Veer. He was an illegal resident of the United States.
The only son of a good but impoverished Hessian family, he had been expelled from school for theft. Another theft landed him in prison for a year and caused his father to disown him. Milt learned the watchmaking trade in prison. He was by no means interested in it, but useful work of some kind was mandatory and it appeared the easiest of the jobs available. He was not sufficiently skilled at the time of his release to follow the trade.
He was not particularly skilled at anything, for that matter. And, after an unsuccessful attempt at burglary, which almost resulted in his rearrest, he became a waiter in a beerhall. He fitted in well there. He was lazy and clumsy, but this very clumsiness, coupled with what seemed to be a beaming, unquenchable good humor, made him an attraction… That waiter, Max, ach! Snarling his fingers in the stein handles, stumbling over the feet he is too fat to see. A clown, ja! You should hear him when he tries to sing!
Since he could do nothing else, Milt put up with the gibing and jokes. He beamed and exaggerated his clumsiness, and made a fool of himself generally. Inwardly, however, he seethed. He had never been good-natured; he was sensitive about his appearance. He could have toasted every one of the beerhall customers over a slow fire and enjoyed doing it.
Then, one day, the leader of a troupe of vaudevillians noticed Milt, and was impressed by what he saw. This awkward youngster could be valuable; he was a natural for low-comedy situations. He didn't have to pretend (or so the leader thought). He was a born stooge and butt.
Milt joined the troupe. Eventually, early in 1913, he came to America with it.
That was the end of the good-natured business. That was the end of being the clumsy and lovable little brother of his fellow vaudevillians. Cold-eyed and unsmiling, Milt let it be known that he despised and hated them all. One more innocent joke, one more pat on his ridiculously potted belly-and there would be trouble. The funny business was strictly for the stage from now on.
Milt got away with it for four months, during which he extorted three raises in pay. By the time he deliberately forced his dismissal, he had acquired a sizable sum of money and no small knowledge of the country, its language and customs.
He got himself fired in San Francisco. Five days and five hundred dollars later, he had a new name and a number of sworn documents proving his American citizenship. His parents, these documents revealed, had been the proprietors of a San Francisco restaurant. He had been privately tutored by a Dutch schoolmaster. Parents, restaurant, schoolmaster-and the original records of his birth-had been destroyed in the great fire and earthquake. Milt's English was not good-but what of that? Many legal residents of the country talked a poorer brand. For that matter, many legal residents of the country had no legal way of proving their right to be here except by the very method Milt used.
Americans, it seemed, were not as exacting as Germans, and Milt easily found employment as a watchmaker. He pursued it just long enough to discover that his employer's streak of larceny, while latent, was virtually as broad as his own. At Milt's suggestion-for which he took half the profits-the store owner filed hundreds of suits against merchant seamen for articles allegedly bought from him. Since the defendants had shipped out and were unaware of the notices of suit brought in obscure legal papers, judgment was automatic.
Later he opened his own small side-street watch-repair shop. Until a certain day in 1942, he thought he was doomed to remain there, barely making a living, a foolishly cheerful-looking fat man who could not acquire the wherewithal and was rapidly losing the nerve for the gigantic swindles he dreamed of.
One of these last was inspired by his own history. Perhaps there were many persons who had entered and remained in the United States under the same circumstances as his. If one had the means to ferret them out-! Ironically, he was pondering this very scheme on that day in 1942 when, looking up from his workbench, he discovered that others had thought of it also. Thought of it and acted upon it.
Being Milt, he was not, naturally, at all discomfited by the discovery. His words and his expression were actually contemptuous.