The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [145]
we found them in their sheds, by the church, by the funeral home, or on a moving job. They sold coal by the ton and by the bag; they had stake trucks or dump trucks; they had to be convinced and sold, entertained, offered special deals, flattered, bantered, told secrets about the veins of the mines, made up with specious technical information about BTU's and ash percentages. Happy was crafty with them, an excellent dealer's man with talents comparable to those of a ship's chandler; he drank as much piva as they did, glass for glass, and he got results. Enticed by undercut prices and the pick of the coal, they began to come in. Also, Simon ran some sales, just to get things moving. He had me pass out handbills in Chinatown, advertising coke which the laundry Chinese favored above other fuel, and slowly he accumulated customers. He also covered the city and hit his new relatives for orders; Charlie Magnus threw business his way, and little by little things began to stir. Simon was wised up as to how to do things politically--to be in a position to bid on municipal business--and he saw wardheelers and was kissing-cousins with the police; he took up with lieutenants and captains, with lawyers, with realestate men, with gamblers and bookies, the important ones who owned legitimate businesses on the side and had property. During the chauffeurs' and hikers' strike he had squad cars to protect his two trucks from strikers who were dumping coal in the streets. I had to wait for his calls in the police station to tell the cops when a load was setting out from the yard, my first lawful sittin" in such a place, moving from dark to lighter inside the great social protoplasm. But the dark of this West Side station! It was very dark It was spoiled, diseased, sore and running. And as the mis-minted ard wrench-struck figures and faces stooped, shambled, strode, gazed, dreaded, surrendered, didn't care--unfailing, the surplus and superabundance of human material--you wondered that all was stuff that was born human and shaped human, and over the indiscriminateness and lack of choice. And don't forget the dirt-hardness, the dough fats and raw meats, of those on the official side. And this wasn't even the bio Newgate of headquarters downtown but merely a neighborhood tributary. As a son-in-law of the Magnuses, and also because he wanted to be, Simon was on very good terms with Lieutenant Nuzzo, than whom few were more smooth and regular-looking. I am not sure how the lieutenant managed. A cop, who even in the friendliness of a joke must take you by the shoulder as if in an arrest, with hands whose only practice is to be iron. In some manner Lieutenant Nuzzo had stayed a Valentine, even though his flesh was heavy and his face kept imprints long, like sleep creasings and the marks of fingers. We had dates to go to the Chez Paree with him--a party of five until I began to take Lucy Magnus, making it six--and had spaghetti and chicken livers with sparkling burgundy or champagne; the lieutenant, he looked around like a master of ceremonies on a visit from a much better night club. His wife seemed like a woman on probation; as everybody is, after a fashion, with a police lieutenant. Even a wife. He was an Italian, he brought the style of ancient kingdoms with him. A lot of them do. Authority must have death behind it. To cut off Masaniello's head; to hang great admirals themselves, as Lord Nelson did in Naples harbor. This I believe was how to read the lieutenant's smooth face while he sat in the enjoyable noise of the Chez Paree, viewing Veioz and Yolanda or the near-naked chicks who didn't altogether know what they were doing but suggested the motions of busy people bringing their private pleasures to a head. Anyway, while this night club remained tops, Simon and Charlotte were great ones for it, as much, shrewdly, for the lowdown to be gotten there and contacts and public life and business, as to have their pictures taken by flashbulbs, laughing and in shenanigan embraces with paper caps and streamers, an important race at their table, a singer