Carriage Trade (40 page)

“I'm right, of course! Would I lie to you?”

“I hope not,” Si said carefully. “But I wonder why Mrs. Van Degan came up with a smaller figure.”

“That broad's nutty as a fruitcake,” Moe said. “I've done deals with her husband, and he's told me she's as nutty as a fruitcake. She spends six months a year at the Hartford Retreat, whenever she starts thinking she's Marie Antoinette and the peasants are trying to murder her. That's how nutty she is.”

Si waved his hand to dismiss the subject. “There's a third matter I've been meaning to ask you about. You remember when we were all working so hard to get the renovations finished and the electricians were threatening to strike? That day, a bunch of goons appeared outside the building. Where did those guys come from?”

Moe chuckled. “Electricians went back to work, didn't they? Isn't that what you wanted?”

“But where did the goons come from? I've never seen such a rough-looking bunch.”

“I told you, I got connections. People with influence.”

“Who are these people?”

“Just friends. Friends of mine. People who owe me.”

“And the elevator inspection certificates. They were all put up awfully quickly. But even though I was here the whole time, I never saw an elevator inspector come around.”

“There's shortcuts. Shortcuts you can take down at City Hall. Everybody does it. If you went through all the red tape they got for you down there, it would take six months to get an elevator inspected.”

“You mean our elevators were never inspected?”

“Look, what are you bitchin' about?” Moe said. “You got your work done when you wanted it done, didn't you? You got everything done on time, with all the necessary permits, strictly legit. So what's your problem?”

“I guess what it all boils down to,” Si said, steepling his fingers, “is that I've started wondering about some of the investors you've been bringing in. That initial two-hundred-thousand-dollar check, for instance. That was a large sum of money. Where did it come from?”

“I told you! Friends, connections, people who owe me. People who for one reason or another don't want their names known. In that particular case, it was from a guy who wanted to invest some money he didn't want his wife to know he had. So what's the big deal?”

“I don't want any dirty money in my operation, Moe.”

“Dirty money, clean money, what's the diff? It's all money, ain't it? Money is money.”

Si paused for a moment. “Moe, I'm really grateful for everything you've done,” he said at last. “I couldn't have gotten this place off the ground if it hadn't been for you.”

“Now that's more like it,” Moe said. “Now you're talkin' more like I'd expect to hear—a little gratitude for all I done.”

“I
am
grateful, Moe. But this morning I had a meeting with an officer from the Morgan Guaranty Trust. He came to offer me some financing. Funny, isn't it? A year ago the big banks wouldn't talk to me. But now that the store looks like it's going to be successful, the banks send vice presidents around, begging me to let them loan me money. Anyway, I'd like to accept this particular offer. And I'd like to use some of that capital to buy you and your friends out.”

Moe's eyes narrowed. “Oh, yeah?” he said.

“Quote me a price, Moe.”

“You ain't gonna buy me out, pal.”

“Come on, Moe. Be reasonable. Quote me a price. Some of that money I've had for two years. Let me pay it back, with full interest.”

“I told you you ain't gonna buy me out! You ain't never gonna buy me out! This is my store too, ya know! This is the first respectable high-class business I've ever had an interest in, and who made it respectable? Me! And I ain't gonna lose that interest in it—never!”

“Moe, I'm asking you as a friend. With the money I'd pay you, you could go out and buy something else—”

“I don't want nothing else! I worked too damn hard to get what I got right now, and I ain't gonna give it up!”

“Then I'm afraid I'll have to—”

“Afraid you'll have to do
what
? Now, wait a minute, buddy! You better hold the phone! Are you threatening
me
, pal? There ain't a fucking thing you can do to me, and you fucking well know it! How'd you like it if I told your fancy banker friends who this blowgut who calls himself Silas Tarkington really is? How'd you like it if I took a coupla reporters from
The New York Times
, that seems to think you're the hottest thing since sliced bread, out to Woodlawn Cemetery and showed 'em where the
real
Silas Tarkington is planted, deader'n a mackerel? You got a bad case of a swollen head if you think you're gonna get rid of me, Mr. Big Shot! I'll yank that tombstone outa Woodlawn Cemetery and plant that fucker right beside your front door on Fifth Avenue, and you'll be dead! Try any fast ones with me, pal, and they'll be writing your obituary!”

He began jabbing his pudgy forefinger into Si's chest.

“You're stuck with me, pal,” he said. “Get that through that swollen head of yours. I made you what you are, and I ain't lettin' you go!”

“You could ruin us both, of course. But I suppose you know that.”

“Right! If we sink, we go down together. But we ain't gonna sink, and you know why? 'Cause I been ruined before, and I ain't gonna be ruined again, and you been ruined before and you ain't gonna be ruined again, neither. You gonna let that little shiksa you're screwin' see you turned into a ruined man? Fuck, no! She's only screwin' you because she's screwin' Mr. Big Shot. Well, I made you into that big shot, so you're
my
Mr. Big Shot now, and you're gonna stick with me.”

“Just tell me one thing, Moe,” he said. “When is my mother going to start getting her dividends? She's started pestering me.”

“We got other more important investors to pay off first, that's when. It's like these're bondholders and preferred stockholders. Bondholders and preferred stockholders always get paid off first. Your old lady is only a common stockholder, who gets paid off after.”

“Who are these preferred stockholders, Moe?”

“I told you! Friends of mine who are venture capitalists, who prefer to remain unanimous, who put up a big piece of our start-up cash, remember?”

“Are they getting nine percent?”

“In actual fact, they're getting slightly more, which is what preferred stockholders always get. Anyway, that was the deal I got you. And don't mess with these guys, pal. Mess with these guys, these venture capitalist friends of mine, and you'll find out what trouble really is! These are big guys, pal!”

“That's another thing I don't like, Moe,” he said. “These friends of yours. I don't like the sound of them at all.”

“Well, you're gonna have to like 'em because you're stuck with 'em, just like you're stuck with me.” He continued jabbing his finger into Si's chest. “You're stuck with me, and you're stuck with me for
life
! You're not gettin' rid of me until the
day you die
. And maybe not even then, pal. Maybe not even then!”

From
The New York Times
, November 12, 1958:

ELEVATOR PLUNGES AT TARKINGTON'S 5TH AVE.

No Serious Injuries Reported

A passenger elevator plunged from the fourth floor to the basement yesterday afternoon at Tarkington's, the fashionable new specialty store at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, apparently as the result of a faulty cable. However, no serious injuries were reported, thanks to the quick thinking of one of the elevator's seven passengers.

The passenger, Howard J. Kilgour, 47, of Phoenix, Ariz., told
The Times
, “When I felt the elevator begin to fall, I remembered reading somewhere that most elevator shafts are constructed with a heavy rubber cushioning device at the bottom. So I ordered everybody to sit down quickly on the floor of the car. When the car hit bottom, there was quite a jolt, but at least nobody fell, and nobody was more than a little bit shaken up. There was no panic, no screaming. We were released from the car very quickly into the basement.”

Silas Tarkington, president of the glamorous new store, expressed shock at the accident, gratitude that there were no injuries, and had nothing but praise for Mr. Kilgour for his quick thinking and quicker action. “He's a real hero,” Mr. Tarkington said. “Our elevators were all recently inspected and safety-certified,” he added. “Needless to say, all elevators will be thoroughly reinspected before they are put back into service.” The store closed early shortly after the incident to allow for inspection and repairs.

One of the seven passengers in the elevator at the time was Myrna Loy, the motion picture actress, who was in New York from Los Angeles on a Christmas shopping trip. Miss Loy made light of the incident. “I'd come to New York expecting to take a big plunge on some new outfits from Tarkington's. But I hadn't planned on literally taking this kind of a plunge,” Miss Loy said.

19

Mrs. Rose Tarcher (interview taped 8/28/91)

Sure, the store was a success. At least they made it sound like a success from all the things they wrote about it in the papers. My hats sold well there. I did a good business. Maybe you remember the big Henry Ford wedding that was in 1959? No? Well, I did all the bridesmaids' hats for that, and there were twelve bridesmaids. Those hats retailed for five hundred dollars apiece. That was a nice order. And a lot of the guests at that wedding wore my hats too.

I never worked at the store. Solly—I guess it's all right to call him Solly now, isn't it, now that he's dead?—he didn't want me to. He said he wanted a younger woman for the saleslady. I think it was because he didn't like my New York accent. But why shouldn't I have a New York accent? I was born and raised in New York. He got some lady with a phony English accent. Millicent, she was. I used to talk to her on the phone. I never met her.

But that arrangement was okay with me. I didn't mind working out of my apartment. I filled all the orders there, and then, when they were ready, they sent a messenger up from the store to pick them up.

And, as I say, business was good, a lot better on Fifth Avenue than it was on Union Square, and my rent was free, so I had no complaint about that aspect of it. But what I began to wonder about was, where were the dividends on that stock I'd bought? Sure, maybe I didn't expect dividends the very first year, and maybe not even the second. But I'd bought that stock as an investment, and they'd promised me a return of nine percent a year. Now, I may not be the bookkeeper that my late husband was, but you don't have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that for an investment of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, at nine percent, I should have been receiving an income of thirteen thousand five hundred a year, right? A year went by, then two, and there was no income. Where was it?

I spoke to my son about it. “Where is this so-called income I'm supposed to get?” I asked him.

“Don't worry, Mama,” he told me. “There's still some start-up costs we have to cover. As soon as they're paid off, we'll start sending you your dividends. That'll be any day now.”

Well, “any day now” was turning into a longer and longer time.

I called that nice Mr. Minskoff, who'd set the whole thing up for me, and asked him about it. He told me that New York State's case with Solly was now completely closed. Solly was now completely on his own, and Mr. Minskoff was off that case entirely. Solly was now in charge of everything, and I should take the matter up with him.

“I've tried taking the matter up with him,” I told him, “but I get nowhere.”

“There's absolutely nothing further that this office is empowered to do for you, Mrs. Tarcher,” he told me. I began to think I was getting the run-around.

In 1960, I had to put my mother, God bless her, into a nursing home, and that was a big drain on my finances. I kept calling Solly, and when I could get him on the phone I'd ask him where my income was, when my dividends were going to start. He gave me more about start-up costs that needed to be recovered and more “any day now.” When I could get him on the phone, that is. A lot of times I'd call him, and I'd get a secretary who'd say he was tied up with a customer or something and couldn't come to the phone right now. Remember, I wasn't supposed to let anyone know that it was his mother calling. I was Miss Rose from Leah Roth Millinery.

“I'll have him get back to you, Miss Rose,” the secretary would say. But then he started not returning my calls.

I knew I was getting the run-around when I read in the papers that he was fixing up the top two floors of his building and turning them into a fancy apartment for himself. A “twenty-two-room luxury duplex,” the papers called it. Well, I thought to myself, if he can afford to fix up a twenty-two-room luxury duplex for himself, why can't he afford to pay me my dividends?

Oh, every now and then he'd send me presents. He'd send me a cashmere sweater from the store, or half a dozen scarves, or nylons, or a nightie, or a couple of nice pairs of gloves. It was as though he thought these presents would keep me off his back. Once he sent me a mink coat. But you can't use a mink coat to put food on your table. You can't use a mink coat to pay the milkman and the butcher. Since I couldn't get him on the phone anymore, and he wouldn't return my calls, I started writing letters to him. “Thanks for the mink,” I wrote him, “but where's my dividends?”

No answer to these letters.

That was when I decided to speak to my daughter Simma, whose husband's an accountant, thinking maybe Simma and Leo would have some suggestion about how I should deal with this run-around.

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that Simma and Leo were being given the same run-around as I was! Simma had bought stock in his store too, and this was the first I'd heard about it! Mr. Minskoff had been to see her too, not long after he'd come to see me, and she'd put in a hundred and fifty thousand of her money too, the same as me. But somehow, thanks to Leo, Simma had been smarter. She'd got them to issue her a lot more shares of stock than I got. But her story was the same—no dividends. Why she never told me about making this investment I'll never know.