9

Wednesday, July 1, 1953

Chet Cramer was late getting back from lunch, having spent an interminable three hours in discussion with Tom Padgett about a partnership in his heavy-equipment business. In Chet’s opinion, Padgett was a fool. He’d married a woman fifteen years older than he was. Tom was forty-one now, which put her somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-six years old, a shriveled-up old bag. Everyone in town knew it was her money he was after. She’d been widowed after twenty-five years of marriage to Loden Galsworthy, who’d died of a heart attack. Loden owned a string of funeral parlors, and Cora not only inherited those, but the rest of his estate, which was valued at a million dollars and included the house, two cars, stocks, bonds, and life insurance. Tom was a man with big schemes and precious little in the way of common sense. He’d hit her up for one loan in order to set up his business in the first place. He’d borrowed an additional sum from the bank. He admitted he’d been underfunded from the get-to, but now he wanted to expand, capitalizing on the inevitable demand for John Deere equipment as Santa Maria grew. The builders had to lease from someone and why not him? Chet could see his point, but he didn’t much like Padgett, and he sure as shit didn’t want to go into business with him. His suspicion was that Tom had a big balloon payment coming up, and this was nothing more than a push to find the dough before the note came due. Cora must have put her foot down and refused to bail him out.

At the country club, over grilled trout, Chet had been polite, feigning interest when, in truth, he had an agenda of his own. He and Livia were eager for membership, and he was hoping Tom and Cora would agree to sponsor them. The place had an old-money respectability he’d always admired. The furnishings were refined, though he noticed a touch of shabbiness in the corridor on his way in to the dining room. Only rich people had the confidence to offer leather chairs so old they had cracks along the seat. The point was that members here were movers and shakers in town, and membership would put Chet on a first-name basis with most of them. Even at lunch, men were required to wear jackets and ties. He liked that. He’d looked around the room, picturing the entertaining he could do here. Livia was an avid but lousy cook, and he’d done everything he could to steer her off inviting folks for dinner. She didn’t believe in alcohol consumption, which she said was against Scripture. That made meals a dreary proposition. From his perspective, heavy drinking was the only way to survive her enthusiasms, and he employed every manner of ingenuity to keep his glass filled with something more palatable than the sweetened iced tea she served.

Here he could see that members and guests to a man were enjoying midday cocktails-martinis, Manhattans, whiskey sours. Chet wanted to take up golf, and he liked the idea of Livia and Kathy lounging around the pool while colored waiters in white coats served them sandwiches held together with frilly toothpicks. You weren’t even expected to pay for the meal. You signed your name to a chit and then paid in full at the end of the month.

Of course, Padgett was sly. He seemed to sense Chet’s ambition, and he was probably hoping to use it as leverage for the so-called partnership. Chet had stalled him off, suggesting that Tom put together a business plan so he and his accountant could take a look. Chet said as soon as he knew what kind of money they were talking, he’d have a chat with the bank. Which was all a bunch of crap. He didn’t need his accountant to point out the folly of underwriting Padgett’s proposal when he, Chet, was struggling to keep his dealership afloat. In some ways, he and Padgett were in the same fix. Chevrolet expected him to expand his salesroom, services, parts and accessories facilities, along with his presence in the used-car market. The company also insisted that he pay for a product sign, a service sign, and “other necessary signs,” none of which were cheap. He was in hot competition with nine other car dealerships in town-Studebaker, DeSoto, Packard, Buick, Dodge, Plymouth, Chrysler, Hudson, and Cadillac. At the moment, he was holding his own, but he knew it would require a sizeable investment if he wanted to pull ahead.

Poor dumb Padgett had bombed out twice with his get-rich-quick schemes: the first, an amusement park that would have cost the moon; the second, some hare-brained idea about buying a television station. Television was fine, but it wasn’t going anywhere. An Ardmore table-model TV set-like the one he owned-was retailing for $359.95, and how many people could afford to pay that? Less than ten percent of households in the country owned a TV. Besides which, there were already 326 television stations in the country. Los Angeles had nine. What was the point of one more?

The heavy-equipment business was at least practical, though Padgett would probably find a way to drive it into the ground, figuratively speaking. Chet was banking on the fact that Padgett didn’t know the first thing about putting together a business plan. If he managed to come up with the numbers, Chet could always blame his accountant when he finally turned him down. If he was clever about it, he could hold him off long enough for his country club membership to be approved before he delivered the bad news. He’d have to come up with the ten thousand dollars’ initial club-membership fee, but he’d figure that out.

Chet pulled into the dealership and parked in his usual spot. Passing through the showroom, he noticed the big gleaming coupe was gone and he felt a flash of hope. The car was prime, high-powered and streamlined, with all the latest gadgets. Of course, the factory had shipped the car with accessories he hadn’t ordered, but he was good at persuading buyers to accept pricey options. The car had arrived on the lot only two days before, and a sale this quick would be impressive in his ten-day report. Every month, he had to provide the factory with a sales estimate for the next three months. These figures were used to determine factory production, but if he didn’t have the sales, he wasn’t accorded the inventory, and if he didn’t have a good selection of cars his business would steadily diminish.

The dealership felt deserted that afternoon because two of his three salesmen were off for a variety of reasons that annoyed him no end. One had called in claiming he had a head cold, for pity’s sake. What kind of man was that? In all his years in the business, he’d never taken a sick day. Jerry Zimmerman, his other salesman, had come up with an excuse just as lame, which meant he was left with Winston Smith, the new hire, in whom he had no particular faith. Winston had been through the same extensive training every Chevrolet salesman enjoyed, but he didn’t have the fire. Chet wasn’t sure what the kid wanted out of life, but it wasn’t selling cars. His ambitions were airy-fairy, all talk and no substance. He probably pictured sales as a means to an end instead of a calling, which is how Chet saw it. At first Chet thought the boy had promise, but it hadn’t come to much. Winston wasn’t hungry and he couldn’t for the life of him get the concept of closure. Selling wasn’t about having nice long chats with folks. It was about making the deal, getting a signature on the dotted line. He’d have to learn to take control and bend others to his will. In the meantime, the boy was earnest and good-looking, and maybe that would be sufficient to carry him while he developed a spine.

Chet passed through the outer office, ignoring the fact that his potato-faced daughter was busily scribbling on a piece of pink notepaper that she slipped into a drawer as soon as she caught sight of him. It galled him that he was paying a dollar an hour when she had no office skills. Her phone manners were atrocious, and he was forever scrambling around behind her, trying to make amends for her moodiness and her snippy tone of voice.