Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

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!”