Mario Puzo - Fools die

He thought he could read the man. Cully had believed that the incident with Jordan was a mark against him with Gronevelt. On the contrary, Gronevelt had been delighted when Cully stuck up for Jordan at the baccarat table. It proved that Cully was not just your run-of-the mill, one-shot hustler, that he wasn’t one of your fake, scroungy, crooked shafters. It proved that he was a hustler in his heart of hearts.

For Gronevelt had been a sincere hustler all his life. He knew that the true hustler could come back to the same mark and hustle him two, three, four, five, six times and still be regarded as a friend. The hustler who used up a mark in one shot was bogus, an amateur, a waster of his talent. And Gronevelt knew that the true hustler had to have his spark of humanity, his genuine feeling for his fellowman, even his pity of his fellowman. The true genius of a hustler was to love his mark sincerely. The true hustler had to be generous, compassionately helpful and a good friend. This was not a contradiction. All these virtues were essential to the hustler. They built up his almost rocklike credibility. And they were all to be used for the ultimate purpose. When as a true friend he stripped the mark of those treasures which he, the hustler, coveted or needed for his own life. And it wasn’t that simple. Sometimes it was for money. Sometimes it was to acquire the other man’s power or simply the leverage that the other man’s power generated. Of course, a hustler had to be cunning and ruthless, but he was nothing, he was transparent, he was a one-shot winner, unless he had a heart. Cully had a heart. He had shown that when he had stood by Jordan at the baccarat table and defied Gronevelt.

But now the puzzle for Gronevelt was: Did Cully act sincerely or cunningly? He sensed that Cully was very smart. In fact, so smart that Gronevelt knew be would not have to keep a check on Cully for a while. Cully would be absolutely faithful and honest for the next three years. He might cut a few tiny corners because he knew that such liberties would be a reward for doing his job well. But no more than that. Yes, for the next few years Cully would be his right-hand man on an operational level, Gronevelt thought. But after that he would have to keep a check on Cully no matter how hard Cully worked to show honesty and faithfulness and loyalty and even his true affection for his master. That would be the biggest trap. A true hustler, Cully would have to betray him when the time was ripe.

Valerie’s father fixed it so that I didn’t lose my job. My time away was credited as vacation and sick time, so I even got paid for my month’s goofing off in Vegas. But when I went back, the Regular Army major, my boss, was a little pissed off. I didn’t worry about that. If you’re in the federal Civil Service of the United States of America and you are not ambitious and you don’t mind a little humiliation, your boss has no power.

I worked as a GS-6 administrative assistant to Army Reserve units. Since the units met only once a week for training, I was responsible for all administrative work of the three units assigned to me. It was a cinch racket job. I had a total of six hundred men to take care of, make out their payrolls, mimeograph their instruction manuals, all that crap. I had to check the administrative work of the units done by Reserve personnel. They made up morning reports for their meetings, cut promotion orders, prepared assignments. All this really wasn’t as much work as it sounded except when the units went off to summer training camp for two weeks. Then I was busy.

Ours was a friendly office. There was another civilian named Frank Alcore who was older than I and belonged to a Reserve unit he worked for as an administrator. Frank, with impeccable logic, talked me into going crooked. I worked alongside him for two years and never knew he was taking graft. I found out only after I came back from Vegas.

The Army Reserve of the United States was a great pork barrel. By just coming to a meeting for two hours a week you got a full day’s pay. An officer could pick up over twenty bucks. A top-ranking enlisted man with his longevity ten dollars. Plus pension rights. And during the two hours you just went to meetings of instruction or fell asleep at a film.

Most civilian administrators joined the Army Reserve. Except me. My magician hat divined the thousand-to-one-shot kicker. That there might be another war and the Reserve units would be the first guys called into the Regular Army.

Everybody thought I was crazy. Frank Alcore begged me to join. I had been a private in WW II for three years, but he told me he could get me appointed sergeant major based on my civilian experience as an Army unit administrator. It was a ball, doing your patriotic duty, earning double pay. But I hated the idea of taking orders again even if it was for two hours a week and two weeks in the summer. As a working stiff I had to follow my superior’s instructions. But there’s a big difference between orders and instructions.

Every time I read newspaper reports about our country’s well-trained Reserve force I shook my head. Over a million men just fucking off. I wondered why they didn’t abolish the whole thing. But a lot of small towns depended on Army Reserve payrolls to make their economies go. A lot of politicians in the state legislatures and Congress were very high-ranking Reserve officers and made a nice bundle.

And then something happened that changed my whole life. Changed it only for a short time but changed it for the better both economically and psychologically. I became a crook. Courtesy of the military structure of the United States.

Shortly after I came back from Vegas the young men in America became aware that enlisting in the newly legislated six months’ active duty program would net them a profit of eighteen months’ freedom. A young man eligible for the draft simply enlisted in the Army Reserve program and did six months’ Regular Army time in the States. After that he did five and a half years in the Army Reserve. Which meant going to one two-hour meeting a week and one two-week summer camp active duty. If he waited and got drafted, he’d serve two full years, and maybe in Korea.

But there were only so many openings in the Army Reserve. A hundred kids applied for each vacancy, and Washington had a quota system put into effect. The units I handled received a quota of thirty a month, first come, first served.

Finally I had a list of almost a thousand names. I controlled the list administratively, and I played it square. My bosses, the Regular Army major adviser and a Reserve lieutenant colonel commanding the units, had the official authority. Sometimes they slipped some favorite to the top. When they told me to do that, I never protested. What did I give a shit? I was working on my book. The time I put into the job was just to get a paycheck.

Things started getting tighter. More and more young men were getting drafted. Cuba and Vietnam were far off in the horizon. About this time I noticed something fishy going on. And it had to be very fishy for me to notice because I had absolutely no interest in my job or its surroundings.

Frank Alcore was older and married with a couple of kids. We had the same Civil Service grade, we operated on our own, he had his units and I had mine. We both made the same amount of money, about a hundred bucks a week. But he belonged to his Army Reserve unit as a master sergeant and earned another extra grand a year. Yet he was driving to work in a new Buick and parking it in a nearby garage which cost three bucks a day. He was betting all the ball games, football, basketball and baseball, and I knew how much that cost. I wondered where the hell he was getting the dough. I kidded him and he winked and told me he could really pick them. He was killing his bookmaker. Well, that was my racket, he was on my ground-and I knew he was full of shit. Then one day he took me to lunch in a good Italian joint on Ninth Avenue and showed his hole card.