The Longer the Thread Page 4

  Romero lifted a worried face. “You don’t understand, Eric. It does make a difference. If he’d done it for spite, he would have had the result he wanted. But if he did it to start trouble with the workers, he hasn’t succeeded. He’s failed.”

  “So?”

  “So God knows what he’ll try next.”

  Chapter 3.

  Double Seams

  It is possible to conceal bad news from creditors for long periods, as headlines in the Wall Street Journal prove. It can even be done when those creditors include such alert institutions as the Sloan Guaranty Trust. Wall Street’s net is very fine, but each year some fish slip through. It was a tribute to the caliber of John Putnam Thatcher’s staff that neither the Pennsylvania Railroad nor IOS, not to mention scions of the Du Pont family, had cost the bank one penny.

  Duplicity, in the simple sense, was not the only peril. George C. Lancer was currently enmired in London because of other reasons. Rolls Royce had not misled its creditors; it had misled itself.

  Unfortunately for Slax, considerations above and beyond the commercial had made the company of burning interest to the Sloan.

  It took Pete Olmsted less than forty-eight hours to learn about the nine thousand ruined slacks. First, in a showroom on Seventh Avenue, he heard somebody named Max gossiping casually about production snafus at Slax’s Bayamón plant. Then, over a lunch complete with fashion show, he pumped the buyer for a big Cleveland department store. Slax was behind in some of its deliveries, said Miss Mellors. There had already been one major snarl over an advertised special.

  Miss Mellors wanted vengeance. “We took space in all the Sunday papers. And where was our stock on Monday morning?”

  After that, it took no time at all to find a buyer who had received delivery. “We had customers returning those slacks for weeks. And you should have heard what they called us!”

  Olmsted pondered this information, then decided on Machiavellian cunning. Again he reached for the phone.

  “Now, I don’t want you to think that these Slax rumors are bothering me too much,” he said in Thatcher’s office, after reporting his haul.

  John Putnam Thatcher maintained an unencouraging silence.

  “. . . still, I want to keep an eye on what’s going on there. You know in the rag trade things happen overnight.”

  Thatcher was tart. “I thought Slax was supposed to be a solid well-established firm with a future,” he observed.

  Olmsted nodded vigorously. “Yes, but so was Allure Knits,” he said. “Then within six weeks—down the drain! You have to keep on top of these boys. I’m not going to rely on Harry. I’d better go down and take a look at this Bayamón shop myself.”

  “Fine,” said Thatcher.

  “You know, John”—Olmsted was ostentatiously offhanded—“this underscores the point I was making the other day.”

  Thatcher had let his attention drift back to the papers on his desk. He looked up.

  “It takes someone who knows the garment industry in and out to pick up these rumors in time,” Olmsted went on modestly. “After all, we do have three million dollars tied up with Slax.”

  “Sometimes,” Thatcher remarked, “I fear that I am the only one who finds that fact interesting.”

  Olmsted was not abashed. “Now, I don’t deny that International can handle our business in Puerto Rico when it comes to sugar refineries or supermarket chains—”

  “No doubt they will be happy to hear you say that,” said Thatcher.

  “But,” said Olmsted, approaching his punch line, “I doubt if anybody in Puerto Rico knows enough to ride herd on Slax. Now, take these nine thousand slacks . . .”

  His voice trailed off as Thatcher held up a minatory hand.

  “Olmsted,” he said kindly, “if you are putting your money on your special mastery of Slax, perhaps you would find this interesting reading.”

  It was the document he had been studying when Olmsted talked his way past Miss Corsa.

  “It is a detailed report—on Slax Unlimited,” Thatcher went on inexorably. “It was prepared by the staff in San Juan. Innes has just forwarded it to me. You will find a very full consideration of the nine thousand pairs of slacks.”

  He broke off to eye Olmsted.

  “I wouldn’t presume to instruct you about the garment trade,” he said genially, “but let me give you a word of advice about infighting at the Sloan. It doesn’t pay to underestimate the opposition.”

  Olmsted was torn between indignation and curiosity. “How the hell do you suppose they heard?” he demanded.

  Thatcher smiled. “Down in San Juan they feel that only local experts could be expected to pick up something like this.”

  He could not know how true his words were.

  The one-hundred-man staff of the Sloan Guaranty Trust in the Hato Rey section of San Juan had many things to keep it busy, from a new CATV television station outside Ponce to a housing development in Dos Pinos. But the telephone lines between New York and San Juan had been humming. The word had been passed. Any tidbit about Slax Unlimited was to be seized.

  The Sloan in San Juan had two distinct advantages over Commercial Credit. First was esprit de corps. There were moments—familiar to all worldwide enterprises—when the home office seemed like the enemy. Then, too, Puerto Rico is a small island, and American bankers and businessmen there move in a small world.

  Information about Slax flowed in from many sources. A member of the Real Estate Department attended the Lions Club luncheon at the Caribe Hilton. His table mate, one Wesley Fagan, operated the largest trucking firm on the island. Fagan, as usual, was filled with complaints about his customers. A major culprit was, it turned out, Slax Unlimited.

  “They yell for the trucks to come at five,” Fagan grumbled. “Then they don’t have anything to load. God knows what they think they’re doing.”

  Young Becker pricked up his ears and hastened to report to his superior.

  “Hmm,” said Ettore Ildebrando. He had already heard from another subordinate. Mr. and Mrs. John Harley, newly arrived from New York, were subletting an apartment in Rio Piedras. Their next-door neighbors, as it happened, included Mr. and Mrs. Eric Marten. The newlywed Mrs. Marten had artlessly confided that Eric was working late many nights because of difficulties at Slax.

  “Hmm,” said Ildebrando again. “I think Mr. Humble will be interested.”

  Dudley Humble, vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust (Puerto Rico), was interested.

  “Hmm,” he said, rapidly reviewing several long conversations with his allies back in New York. “You know, Ettore, that Commercial Credit lent Slax three million dollars.”

  “Without clearing through us,” said Ildebrando.

  He knew it. Everybody in the bank knew it.

  “They’re talking about sabotage at Slax, you know,” said Humble keenly. “I doubt if Commercial Credit has any idea of the problems Americans can have down here.”

  Ildebrando doubted it, too.

  “Especially now with the plebiscite,” said Humble. “In fact”—a skilled observer might even have said he was warming to his theme—“I expect that things may get worse at Slax before they get better.”

  “Hmm,” said Ildebrando.

  “Maybe it would be a good idea if I had a friendly talk with this young fellow—what’s his name? Zimmerman’s brother-in-law.”

  “David Lippert,” said Ildebrando promptly.

  Back in New York, Olmsted might be underestimating the opposition. Down in San Juan, the Sloan Guaranty Trust was carrying the fight into the enemy camp.

  Harry Zimmerman was not worrying about the Sloan Guaranty Trust. He was too busy worrying about his customers. His days were spent in a weary round—pacifying buyers who had been burned with the white bell bottoms, ensuring that other deliveries gave no ground for complaint, agreeing to produce overnight a style that one discount house insisted would sell like hot cakes if only it were available.

  Even his suppliers came in f
or extra consideration. It is always a bad sign in business when a salesman forgets which end of the selling transaction he is on.

  “Sure, Sid,” he said during a chance encounter, “take as much time as you need on the buttons. As long as they’re in Georgia by the twenty-first, that’ll be okay.”

  Sid, scarcely believing his ears, gave Zimmerman no chance for second thoughts.

  “Fine! This is where I turn off. Give me a ring about lunch sometime,” he said and plunged into the crowd slogging uptown.

  Harry, waiting for the light to change on Seventh Avenue, threw away his cigarette and turned up his collar against the biting wind. As usual the avenue was a madhouse. Boys were shoving pushcarts along in the street, models equipped with boots and wig cases hurried to appointments, vociferous knots of men flipped out fingers that represented changing sums of cash, cars inched cautiously through the human ramparts overflowing each curb. Every movement sent up a spray of icy slush. Above it all was the noise of boys yelling, truck drivers cursing, brakes squealing, carts squeaking. Every level of affluence was represented, from the grandees of the cloak-and-suit empires to the hole-in-corner jobbers. There were experts in zippers and hooks, in braid and frogs. There were young and old, black and white, rich and poor. They were speaking English, Yiddish and Italian. Many of them were speaking Spanish.

  Disenchanted, Harry surveyed the scene. Practically every week, Women’s Wear Daily announced another departure to New Jersey or North Carolina. Yet the density around him remained exactly the same as twenty years ago. Then Harry remembered that Slax itself was three times as big as it once had been. Maybe the movement out of town just about offset the growth in the industry.

  This philosophizing carried him all the way back to his crowded and shabby office. Outside, in the modern reception hall, there was wall-to-wall carpeting, indirect lighting and expensive furniture. Here there were piles of papers, boxes of swatches, old photographs and new sample books.

  There was also a call from Puerto Rico.

  “Yeah? Oh, hello, David.”

  As David spoke, Harry’s saturnine expression darkened slightly.

  Finally he said, “Keep your shirt on, Dave. I’ve had the Sloan on my neck, too. . . . What? . . . How the hell should I know? Probably everybody knows by now.”

  Again the phone spoke.

  Zimmerman kept his patience with an effort. “Look, Dave, don’t kid yourself. Some things you can’t keep secret—believe me. The word gets around. . . . What? . . . I told Olmsted that we’ve had a few little problems, but that everything is okay now. And that’s what you’re going to tell them down there, too. A big show of confidence—that’s the ticket.” As he spoke, he worked a cigarette from a crumpled pack.

  For once, David Lippert was as emphatic as he was. “Look, Harry,” he said, “I don’t think you know how bad this is. First there were those damned white bell bottoms—”

  “I know all about that,” said Harry. “So does Macy’s and Field’s. And a helluva lot of others.”

  “All right,” Lippert snapped. “Since then we’ve had a batch of linings mislabeled. If somebody in shipping hadn’t caught them this morning, they’d be on their way to New York.”

  Harry was silent. The last thing Slax needed right now was more delay.

  “. . . Yesterday the conveyer belt was out. That held up the whole pressing room hours. And somebody took the keys to the pattern room. We’ve had to have the locksmiths—”

  “Okay, okay,” said Harry gruffly. “I get the picture.”

  “No, you don’t,” said David. “Someone’s doing all this deliberately. Somebody’s shafting us!”

  Harry felt a throb of nervous tension. Then: “Keep calm, Dave. So we’ve got a troublemaker. But don’t make it any bigger than it is.”

  David burst into speech, excited, uncontrolled. “Bigger than it is? Now they’re talking about agitators—and anti-American feeling because of the plebiscite! They say we can’t do anything about this! So we’ve got to sit and take it while somebody works us over.”

  The younger man’s near-hysteria steadied Harry. “Listen, is Cesar there? Let me talk to him.”

  It was a mistake he did not usually make. For a moment there was no reply, only a low hum on the line. Then, stiffly, Lippert replied, “I’ll have him call you.”

  “Okay, Dave,” said Harry hastily. “Well, don’t let it get to you. This is probably just some nut. If it doesn’t clear up, we’ll go to the police. We’re not going to let anybody’s crazy politics close down Bayamón.”

  But his brother-in-law was still offended when the call ended.

  For a minute Harry glowered at the phone. That’s all we need now, he told himself. Hurt feelings. Then he picked up his order books again. A little calculation showed him what he already knew. More mix-ups in Puerto Rico and Slax could be in real danger.

  David Lippert was not a man to sit alone with his worries. It was Norma’s afternoon for Spanish lessons, so he could not call her. His secretary was more interested in her engagement than in her boss. That left only one other source of comfort.

  Cesar Romero’s office was a glass-enclosed cubicle on the balcony overlooking the one-story Slax plant. Romero looked up as David strode in.

  “My God, Cesar,” David began without preliminaries. “I don’t know what Harry expects us to do!”

  Romero was conscious of the irony of the situation. Every difficulty at Slax had landed on Romero’s shoulders. He had been caught between the growing tension in the front office and widening anxiety on the line. He had personally dealt with every breakdown, every delay. Now he had to comfort David as well.

  “I do not think we have to worry much about the Sloan,” he said after hearing David’s tale of woe. “They have heard about our troubles, so they wish to talk with us. If nothing else happens—”

  Just then the door was flung open with explosive force.

  Eric Marten, red in the face, closed it behind him. He was fighting for self-control.

  “More trouble!” he said, his big voice shaking. “This one is a catastrophe.” The Danish accent was more noticeable than usual.

  He hurled his briefcase onto Romero’s work table.

  “Look inside,” he commanded.

  Lippert drew out a handful of gaily patterned cotton. With a curse, Marten snatched it from him and stretched the fabric taut.

  The red and blue stripes were defaced by an ugly brown stain. It had rotted and scorched the material like fire.

  “Acid!” spat Marten, crumpling the cotton into a ball and flinging it back onto the table. “Thousands of dollars’ worth of material! And every bolt has been soaked with acid!”

  “Oh, my God!” David Lippert cried. “Did you hear him, Cesar? Acid!”

  Romero ignored him. “Eric, is it all lost—all the cloth?”

  For a moment Marten looked dangerous. Then he breathed deeply and said, “No, Tomaso is still checking through the warehouse. Someone threw acid around. All the bolts have to be examined. We cannot take any chances. But it will all take time. And the losses—well, I can’t tell how much material has been ruined.”

  He subsided into a chair staring bleakly at Romero.

  The knock on the door startled all three men.

  “Señor Romero,” said Benito Domínguez. “I will need your permission to order a new gasket.”

  He proffered the order pad. But as he spoke his dark eyes were flickering over the room, from David Lippert to Marten. And finally to the cotton on Romero’s table.

  Possibly they did need a gasket, thought Romero, reaching for a pen. But possibly the sight of Eric Marten storming through the line had brought Domínguez up here. Whatever his reason for coming, the important thing to do was get him out.

  “Here you are,” Romero said, scrawling his signature.

  But Domínguez was enjoying himself. Deliberately he stepped forward and reached for the fabric. He picked up a corner and played it out between thick stubby fi
ngers.

  “So,” he said in a low voice. “It goes on at the warehouse too? And still there is nothing you can do, señores.”

  “Enough, Domínguez!” Romero ordered. “You have work to do. Here is your form.”

  Eric Marten was more direct. “Get out!” he said harshly.

  Domínguez’ eyes narrowed to a feral glitter. But he was attacked from an unexpected quarter.

  “Tell him,” said David Lippert, surging from his chair, “the fun’s over! He’s not going to ruin Slax—not while I’m in charge. Tell him to get this and get it straight! He’s through with these games—or else!”

  Romero moved between the two men. “David,” he said in an urgent undertone, “this is not the time . . .”

  But the damage was done. Benito Domínguez had been given his opening.

  “We are not afraid of angry North Americans any more,” he said magniloquently. “Now they must be afraid of us. Things are changing in Puerto Rico. Señor Lippert will have to learn this.”

  He would have continued, but Marten was bellowing, “My God, what kind of fool are you, Domínguez? What good is this sabotage doing you or anybody else? Slax is good to you. You have steady work here. Good pay—”

  Domínguez drew himself up. “We know these tactics. Accuse us of sabotage! Charge us with crimes!” The voice had fallen into a singsong rhythm. “But no, señores. We are not criminals. We are Puerto Ricans! Good work and good pay, Señor Marten? Little children go hungry here while rich North Americans drain the lifeblood of Puerto Rico. You live like kings—you and your wives and your children—”

  David Lippert made a blind convulsive move toward Domínguez, but Eric Marten was before him. Unceremoniously he put a massive hand under Domínguez’ elbow and propelled him out of the office.

  “That bastard! Don’t let me get my hands on him or I’ll kill him! The goddam sonuvabitch! I don’t give a damn what happens! That guy goes—do you hear me?” Lippert’s storming had a strangely hollow ring. After a moment, he fell as silent as his companions. From the shop, the hum of machines continued.

  “What will they do next?” Cesar Romero asked colorlessly.