Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (25 page)

“What?” Tom asked.

“He said he’d just gotten your memo, and he wanted you to know right away that he doesn’t want you to talk about the mental-health committee with anybody. Not now, he said.”

“All right,” Tom replied. “Thank you.” He sat down at his desk and stared out the window. After a few moments he got up and went to the library. In spite of everything, it was necessary to succeed at his job, he thought–maybe it would be more necessary than ever now.

“H
OW DID IT GO TODAY
?” Betsy asked when she met him at the station that night.

“Fine,” Tom said, just as he always did. There’s no point in carrying your troubles home with you, somebody had said. You’re supposed to leave them in the office.

“There’s a man named Bugala coming to see you,” she said. “He’s a contractor. He spent all morning looking at the carriage house.”

“Bugala?” Tom asked. “He’s not one of the contractors I wrote to.”

“I don’t know about that,” she replied, “but he wants to see you. And he looks to me like a man who can get things done.”

When they got back to the house, Antonio Bugala was waiting, sitting in a battered Chevrolet pickup truck. He was stocky, dark-haired, and had once been told by a girl that he looked like pictures of Napoleon as a young man. This was a compliment he had never forgotten–he much preferred it to the dubious distinction conferred upon him by his nickname, which was “Buggy.” “Buggy” Bugala had been brought up in South Bay and for the past five years had been astonishing everyone by becoming almost as successful as he had always predicted. Already, at the age of twenty-eight, Bugala was a contractor with thirty-four men, including his father, on his payroll.

Now Bugala jumped out of his pickup truck and walked cockily over to Tom. “I’m Tony Bugala,” he said. “I hear you got some building and road work to be done.”

“How did you hear about it?” Tom asked.

Bugala glanced at him sharply. There’s no use in giving this guy a lesson in business, he thought. In point of fact, Bugala had cultivated the affections of a secretary in the office of the leading contractor in South Bay, and she obligingly told him about all jobs on which her boss was asked to bid, but obviously this was a trade secret which could not be divulged.

“Friend told me,” Bugala said honestly. “Said you wanted that old barn made into a house.”

“I just want some estimates,” Tom said. “I won’t be in a position to do anything about it for some time”

“I looked at it this morning,” Bugala said. “You can’t do much with it–it’s just a shell. You could build a house from the ground up for what it would cost you to make anything out of that place.”

“Are you sure?” Betsy asked.

Bugala thought, You figure I go around discouraging business for the fun of it? Aloud he said, “There’s no basement–just a dirt floor. That stone is only a façade, and the wood under it is rotten.”

Well, there goes what we thought would be a sure initial profit, Tom thought. He said, “If we divided this land into one-acre lots, how much would it cost to run in a road that would give access to all of them?”

“You figuring on doing that?”

“I’m just looking into it.”

“You got permission from the Zoning Board?”

“I haven’t even asked. I don’t have title to the place yet.”

“Your land go to that row of pines over there?”

“That’s right. The stone fence marks the other boundaries.”

“Let me take a look at it,” Bugala said. He wanted time to think, for he had immediately perceived there might be more to do here than run in a road or convert a barn into a house. The light was fading, and the row of pines was dark against the sky. Bugala plunged into the grass, which was growing knee high, and walked rapidly toward the pines, darting quick glances in all directions. He took in everything–the astonishing view of the Sound, the gradual slope of the land which would provide a view from every lot, and the outcroppings of rock, which probably would mean expensive blasting, but no drainage problems. Putting in a road would be easy, he figured–the driveway to the old house could probably be continued right along the west boundary of the property. With a view like that, why sell acre lots? There was no place else in South Bay, almost nowhere else within commuting distance of New York, where a man could buy such a view of the Sound. Bugala’s imagination, which was always at a slow simmer, suddenly began to boil over. Why not put up a whole housing project on quarter-acre lots? All right, you’d have to jump over the Zoning Board somehow, but if it could be done–the prospect was fantastic!

Bugala’s mind did not plod, it soared, and he abruptly arrived at a
picture of the way the land could be developed, complete with all financial details and photographs in national magazines showing what Antonio Bugala,
Mr
. Antonio Bugala,
Esquire
, had done. You’d start by running in a crooked road along the west boundary–a straight road would be cheaper, but everybody in Connecticut was crazy and liked crooked roads better. In all, Bugala judged with a practiced eye, there must be more than twenty acres of land. You wouldn’t put in straight rows of houses, you’d stagger them, about eighty houses on quarter-acre lots, each with a view of the Sound–you’d set them in just like seats in a theater, the back row the highest, and the front row the lowest, only you’d be careful to avoid straight lines. You’d put planting around each house and perhaps push up some earth between houses, so in time you couldn’t see one house from another, at least in the summer–maybe it would pay to transplant some fairly big bushes. The houses would be modern, very low to preserve the view, with big windows overlooking the Sound, and no cellars, to save having to blast through that ledge. It might pay to go arty and get a fancy architect to figure out enough variations on a few simple modern designs to prevent the place from looking like a low-cost housing development. The houses wouldn’t have to be much–what you’d be selling would be the view. With just an adequate house, you might get twenty-five thousand dollars for a quarter acre of that view. If you brought in your materials and heavy machinery to build all eighty houses at the same time, you might be able to put up something pretty good for a base cost of no more than fifteen thousand dollars per unit, for labor and materials.

Tony Bugala began to sweat. That meant there was a potential profit of ten thousand dollars on each quarter acre of land, he figured–a possible take of $800,000 before taxes, if it were handled right, and if you could raise the initial money for labor and materials. He wondered how much money Tom Rath had, and whether Tom had any clear idea of the potentials of the place. Quickly a lot of facts came together in his mind. Tom drove an old car; the land was obviously run down; people were saying old Mrs. Rath had died broke. Obviously Tom Rath didn’t have much. Bugala wondered whether Tom would sell him the land cheap–maybe the thing to do was to tell him a road couldn’t be put in, the whole venture was impractical, but he’d take the place off his hands for twenty or thirty thousand dollars. No, that wouldn’t work–in the long run it never
paid to try that stuff, not if you planned on getting big. If you wanted to become really tops in the business, you had to forget that small-time cleverness and play it straight. Anyway, Rath had already asked other contractors for estimates on roads, and one of them would be sure to tell him he had a potential gold mine in the view.

The thing to do, Bugala decided, was just to talk the whole idea over with Rath, maybe try to form some kind of partnership, even a stock company to raise the money to put up the houses all at once. After all, there was no reason to try to cut Rath out–there would be plenty of profit to go around, a long way around, and it was more important to get part of it than to fail in a try to get it all. Tony Bugala, a man of quick enthusiasms and fast decisions, immediately made up his mind to drive some sort of bargain with Tom. For five years he had been looking for something big, something into which he could throw all his energies, one great calculated risk that would take him out of the small stuff and put him into the big time, where no one had thought “Buggy” Bugala could go. This was it, he figured–there would have to be lots of talking and fussing around and figuring and paper signing, but if the Zoning Board didn’t block them, this was it.

Bugala had jumped so far ahead in his thoughts that when he reached the row of pines and looked up to find himself standing in a bare field, with the light almost gone, he was surprised. He turned and started walking rapidly back toward Tom. If I can’t get Rath’s co-operation, the whole deal’s off, he thought–that’s the first step. His mind, however, refused to wait for the first step–it kept bounding ahead. The financing wouldn’t be hard. Rath could probably raise fifty thousand dollars on the land alone, once it was re-zoned, Bugala figured. As each house went up, more could be borrowed on it. On his own heavy construction equipment, Bugala figured, he could raise twenty thousand, and maybe he could get more on a personal note–the banks were already beginning to keep a friendly eye on Antonio Bugala. It wouldn’t be difficult to find a partner to throw in another twenty thousand, maybe, and with a hundred thousand in the kitty, construction could begin. Put a down payment on the materials for all eighty houses, but concentrate on completing the first four. Sell those at twenty-five thousand apiece, and you’ve got your initial investment back!

While he was thinking all this, Tony Bugala was walking rapidly,
almost running with enthusiasm, back to the house, where Tom and Betsy were standing with the three children. Tom watched Bugala’s hurried movements with astonishment. It was growing chilly, and an evening breeze was starting to ruffle the distant waters of the Sound, which lay gray and nebulous in the last glow of twilight. Bugala came striding up to Tom, perspiring with excitement.

“Mr. Rath,” he said bluntly, “I’ve got a proposition to make.”

They sat in the kitchen of the old house talking until midnight. “Buggy” Bugala slammed the table with his small thick hand and, talking a mile a minute, described the houses he wanted to build so minutely that Tom could almost look out the window and see them. Betsy leaned forward, her face flushed and her lips parted, drinking it all in. “Eight hundred thousand dollars!” she said.

“Wait a minute,” Tom said. “This is all fine, but before we go any farther, there are a few hard facts we got to take into account. In the first place, the estate isn’t settled yet, and the will may be contested–it may be months before we have a clear title on this land. In the second place, the whole plan depends on our getting permission from the Zoning Board. I’ll know more about that Saturday when I see Judge Bernstein, but meanwhile I wouldn’t count on anything too much–it’s never easy to put quarter-acre lots among a lot of big estates. In the third place, even if everything else goes all right, we’re going to have to look for somebody to put up more cash. Even if I can raise fifty thousand on the land, and even if you can throw in twenty or thirty thousand, we’ve still got twenty or thirty thousand to go–and that’s assuming that a hundred thousand is enough to start a project like this. And in the fourth place, Mr. Bugala, I don’t mean to be discourteous, but I just met you for the first time tonight, and I don’t want to commit myself on going into a venture like this with you. Have you ever done anything like this before?”

Bugala flushed. “I built six houses last year,” he said. “I can do it. I built fifteen houses since the war. And you know what? During the war I put an air strip across Kiwan in eight days! Eight days! You ever seen Kiwan?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “I’ve seen it. Did you put that air strip in?”

“You’re damn right! In eight days! And with the Japs bombing us every night!”

“You didn’t have to pay your men for overtime on Kiwan,” Tom said practically. “This is a different deal.”

“All right,” Bugala said. “I’ll tell you something else I’ve done. You know that big place a guy named Hopkins just put up down where the old yacht club used to be? I built almost half of that. Now let me level with you–I wasn’t the contractor, but plenty of it was subcontracted to me. I did most of the outside construction work, and damn near all the landscaping. You want to see what I can do, go down and look at the place. I’ll give you a list of all the people I’ve done work for! Ask the bank about me. Ask anybody around here about me–I got a good name!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Tom said. “I just don’t want to have to commit myself tonight.”

“You wouldn’t take my ideas and go to a big outfit with them, would you?”

“I don’t plan to, but I don’t want to commit myself,” Tom said. “There are a lot of wrinkles to be ironed out of your ideas yet. Do you really think we can make a profit of ten thousand dollars on each house and quarter-acre lot?”

“Maybe–and what if we only make half that? Would that be so bad?”

“No, but how are you going to pay interest on a hundred thousand dollars while we’re building? And there’ll be taxes. It might be a year before we had anything to sell. We’d be operating on an awfully slim margin.”

“Hell, we can borrow a hundred and ten thousand and use ten of it to pay the interest and taxes–that would last us almost two years!”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “You make it sound awfully easy. What if you run into unexpected delays? What if you can’t get your materials on time, or a storm washes us out when everything’s half done, and what if a depression sets in, and we can’t sell our houses when we finish them? This might be an easy way to make a pile, but it’s also an easy way to go bankrupt!”