“What do you want?” Mundin asked sullenly.
Coett said, “Let me tell a fantastic story. Mind you, I dont say it’s true. But it’s interesting. There are two young people, like a brother and sister, for instance. One of them has some stock, but can’t use it. The other is—ah—temporarily out of circulation. Let’s suppose that a smart young lawyer gets hold
of them. First thing he does, he walks in on a meeting and lets it be known that the stock exists. With that as a wedge, he pries the girl loose from wherever she is. With the girl, he sucks in three good, dumb Joes—like Hubble, Nelson, and me, for instance. With the dumb Joes in the palm of his hand, he squeezes recognition of the stock out of, for instance, Arnold. That’s pretty good work: He has the girl, and he has the stock. The question is, what do the dumb Joes have then?”
God, thought Mundin, and I never believed in mind-reading. He said, “Am I supposed to take this fantasy seriously?”
Coett shook his head. “Of course not, Mundin. Just, for the sake of the record, before we get too far involved in any of this, let’s see the stock. Tomorrow morning be time enough?”
“Tomorrow morning will be fine,” Mundin said hollowly.
Chapter Seventeen
take the Port of New York.
• Not the slagged-out, cinder-crusted waters that lap at the fringe of Belly Rave, but Old New York, when Belle Reve was fresh and the plaster had not yet cracked. The harbor is filled with ocean-going ships. (Remember ships?) Between Manhattan and the Jersey shore ferries ply. There are many of them in the mid-twentieth-century bustle, half a dozen lines and more; some old, some new, some fast, some slow. . . .
There are two ferry lines owned by railroads. (Remember railroads?)
One is a proud green fleet. Half a dozen thousand-tonners, steel-hulled, Newport-built. Radar charts their crossings, and the pilings in their slips stand straight and tall.
The second fleet: Three rust-colored midgets, shambling blindly back and forth between snaggle-toothed berths.
Consider the paradox: The weary red ferries belong to a rich and solvent railroad. The radar-eyed giants are chattels of a corporation which has been in the hands of the receivers for four decades and two years.
It is a matter of recorded fact that, in the middle of the
twentieth century, the only ferries in New York Harbor which could afford to install the expensive blessings of science belonged to a line in bankruptcy. Let us rewrite the dictionary:
bank’-rupt-cy (n) the state of having affairs managed by disinterested parties, not owners; therefore, the natural and preferred state of Big Business.
Mundin said stubbornly:
“All right, all right, all right! You don’t have to go through it again, Ryan. Finance is Coett’s business, not mine; and corporate law is your business, not mine; and if you all say that G.M.L. has to go into bankruptcy I’m not going to stand in your way. But I don’t like their methods.”
Ryan shifted achingly on the lumpy couch. Mundin was getting worried about him; his skin was pale yellow, his eyes black circles. Obviously the old fool had given up food almost entirely for the past weeks. But he could still make sense when he talked. He said, “If you go to a doctor to save your life, do you complain about the taste of the medicine?”
Mundin didn’t answer. He shook his head worriedly and paced the room.
Norma came back from putting Don Lavin to bed. She sat down wearily and poured herself a drink. “Mud,” she growled. She made a face as she swallowed it. “I’ve poured better liquor off laboratory specimens. Mundin, what about the stock?”
Mundin said: “Lavin—Norma—if you ask me that one more time, I swear I pick up and walk out of here. I don’t know what about the stock. Maybe we can’t deliver it. If we can’t, we can’t; I’ve had a rough day and I’m just not up to any more miracles right now. Maybe we can talk Coett and the others out of it tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe not,” said Norma; but she looked at Mundin’s rebellious expression and that was all she said.