Charles Wilson - A Bridge of Years

It was the first time since his interview that he had been allowed into Klein’s sanctuary, a glass-walled room that looked into three sales offices where contracts were written up. Tom sat nervously in what Klein called the customer chair, which was cut an inch or two lower than an ordinary office chair; troublesome deals were often T.O.’d to Klein, who felt he benefited from the psychological edge of gazing down from a height. “Strange, but it works. The salespeople call me ‘sir’ and practically shit themselves bowing out of the room. The customer looks up and he sees me frowning at him—” He frowned. “How do I look?”

Like a constipated pit bull, Tom thought. “Very imposing.”

“You bet. And that’s the point I want to make. If you’re going to work out in sales, Tom, you need an edge. You understand what I’m saying? Any kind of edge. Maybe a different edge with different customers. They come in and they’re nervous, or they come in and they’re practically swaggering— they’re going to make a killer deal and fuck over this salesman —but either way, deep down, some part of them is just a little bit scared. That’s where your edge is. You find that part and you work on it. If you can convince them you’re their friend, that’s one way of doing it, because then they’re thinking, Great, I’ve got a guy on my side in this terrifying place. Or if they’re scared of you, you work on that. You say stuff like ‘I don’t think we can do business with that offer, we’d be losing money,’ and they swallow hard and jack up their bid. Simple! But you need the edge. Otherwise you’re leaving money on the table every time. Listen.”

Klein punched a button on his desktop intercom. Tinny voices radiated from it. Tom was bemused until he realized they were eavesdropping on the salesroom behind him, where Chuck Alberni was writing up a deal for a middle-aged man and his wife.

The customer was protesting that he hadn’t been offered enough on his trade-in, an ’87 Colt. Alberni said, “We’re being as generous as we can afford to be—I know you appreciate that. We’re a little overstocked right now and lot space is at a premium. But let’s look at the bright side. You can’t beat the options package, and our service contract is practically a model for the industry.”

And so on. Focusing the customer’s attention on the car he obviously wants, Klein said. “Of course, we’ll make money on the financing no matter what happens here. We could practically give him the fucking car. His trade-in is very, very nice. But the point is that you don’t leave money on the table.”

The customer tendered another offer—“The best we can do right now,” he said. “That’s pretty much my final bid.”

Alberni inspected the figure and said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take this to the sales manager and see what he says. It might take some luck, but I think we’re getting close.”

Alberni stood up and left the room.

“You see?” Klein said. “He’s talking them up, but the impression he gives is that he’s doing them a favor. Always look for the edge.”

Alberni came into Klein’s office and sat down. He gave Tom a long, appraising look. “Toilet training this one?”

“Tom has a lot of potential,” Klein said. “I can tell.”

“He’s the owner’s brother. That’s a whole lot of potential right there.”

“Hey, Chuck,” Klein said disapprovingly. But Alberni was very hot in sales right now and he could get away with things like that.

Tom said nothing.

The intercom was still live. In the next room, the customer took the hand of his nervous wife. “If we put off the cedar deck till next year,” he said, “maybe we can ante up another thousand.”

“Bingo,” Alberni said.

“See?” Klein said. “Nothing is left on the table. Absolutely nothing at all.”

Tom said, “You eavesdrop on them? When they think they’re alone?”

“Sometimes,” Klein said, “it’s the only way to know.”

“Isn’t that unethical?”

Alberni laughed out loud. Klein said, “ Unethical? What the hell? Who are you all of a sudden, Mother Teresa?”

He clocked out at quitting time and took the highway to the Harbor Mall. At the hardware store he picked up a crowbar, a tape measure, a chisel, and a hammer. He paid for them with his credit card and drove the rest of the way home with the tools rattling in his trunk.

The northeastern end of the house, Tom thought. In the basement. That’s where they live.

He microwaved a frozen dinner and ate it without paying attention: flash-fried chicken, glutinous mashed potatoes, a lump of “dessert.”

He rinsed the container and threw it away.

Nothing for them tonight.

He changed into a faded pair of Levi’s and a torn cotton shirt and took his new tools into the basement.

He identified a dividing wall that ran across the basement and certified by measuring its distance from the stairs that it was directly beneath a similar wall that divided the living room from the bedroom. Upstairs, he measured the width of the bedroom to its northeastern extremity: fifteen feet, give or take a couple of inches.

In the basement the equivalent measurement was harder to take; he had to kneel behind the dented backplate of the Kenmore washing machine and wedge the tape measure in place with a brick. He took three runs at it and came up with the same answer each time:

The northeastern wall of the basement was set in at least three feet from the foundation.

He pulled away storage boxes and a shelf of laundry soap and bleach, then the two-by-four shelves themselves. When he was finished the laundry room looked like Beirut, but the entire wall was exposed. It appeared to be an ordinary gypsum wall erected against studs, painted flat white. Appearances can be deceptive, Tom thought. But it would be simple enough to find out.

He used the chisel and hammer to peel away a chunk of the wallboard. The wallboard was indeed gypsum; the chalk showered over him as he worked, mingling with his sweat until he was pasty white. Equally unmistakable was the hollow space behind the wall, too deep for the overhead light to penetrate. He used the crowbar to lever out larger chunks of wallboard until he was ankle-deep in floury rubble.

He had opened up a hole roughly three feet in diameter and he was about to go hunting for a flashlight for the purpose of peering inside when the telephone buzzed.

He mistook it at first for some angry reaction by the house itself, a cry of outrage at this assault he had committed. His ears were ringing with the effort of his work and it was easy to imagine the air full of insect buzzing, the sound of a violated hive. He shook his head to clear away the thought and jogged upstairs to the phone.

He picked up the receiver and heard Doug Archer’s voice. “Tom? I was about to hang up. What’s going on?”

“Nothing … I was in the shower.”

“What about the videotape? I spent the day waiting to hear from you, buddy. What did we get?”

“Nothing,” Tom said.

“Nothing? Nada? Zip?”

“Not a thing. Very embarrassing. Look, I’m sorry I got you involved in this. Maybe we ought to just let it ride for a while.”

There was a silence. Archer said, “I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”

“I think we’ve been overreacting, is all.”

“Tom, is something wrong up there? Some kind of problem?”

“No problem at all.”

“I should at least drop by to pick up the video equipment—”

“Maybe on the weekend,” Tom said.

“If that’s what you want—”

“That’s what I want.”

He hung up the phone.

If there’s treasure here, he thought, it’s mine.