The Olde World headquarters stood in the street-level space of an office building at the southeastern corner of Twenty-first and M. I parked my Dart in the lot behind a movie theater and restaurant at Twenty-third and slid the white-shirted attendant a couple of bucks for the privilege. At the restaurant’s back door a Latino busboy sat on a black railing, smoking a joint. He took a hit, held it in, and followed my path with his gaze as I crossed the lot.
I walked east on M Street. Downtown had begun to empty out for the holiday. An early rush hour thickened the streets, leaving few pedestrians afoot. Underdressed homeless men shared the sidewalks with blue-blooded attorneys in plain charcoal suits and with women dressed unimaginatively and mannishly in their pursuit of success. The West End balanced poverty and ambition, granite and spit, money as new as the morning paper and glass-eyed hopelessness older than slavery.
At Twenty-second I checked the location of the third Pie Shack. A synthetic-diamond store now stood at the address. If there had been a Pie Shack, and it had burned, it had burned a long time ago.
I kept walking until I reached the door of the Olde World. When I got to it, I stepped inside.
The layout was the same as all the others. This time a man in his thirties with Mediterranean features stood behind the counter. He was writing something in a spiral notebook when I walked in, and as the entrance bell above the door sounded he slipped the notebook into a space below the register. I smiled and placed my Variety Foods business card on the counter.
“Afternoon,” I said. “Ron Wilson, Variety Foods. And your name?”
“Cheek.”
“Cold enough out there for ya today?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Colder than a brass monkey’s balls, right?”
Cheek rolled his eyes in exasperation and sighed. “What can I do for you?”
“Is the owner or manager in?”
“He’s in,” he said in a high voice, and touched the paper hat that was stained at the rim with the oil of his hair. He wiped a smudge of grease off one thick eyebrow that ran unbroken over his deeply set brown eyes. “But he don’t see salesmen without an appointment.”
“What’s his name?”
“Frank.”
“Do me a favor.” I leaned on the counter, buddying up. “It’s New Year’s Eve, and this is my last call of the day. Hell, it’s my last call of the year, and I’ve got to make my numbers.” I winked. “Go back there and tell Frank that there’s a guy out dth="ht="0em" here, he’s willing to sell anything on his price sheet for fifty percent better than what he’s buying it for anywhere else.”
“Fifty off?”
“Five-oh.”
“He still won’t see you,” Cheek said.
I said, “Give it a shot, huh?”
Cheek moved into the kitchen and stayed there for quite some time. I waited with my price book under my arm. When a customer entered and the door chime sounded, Cheek returned from the kitchen. He licked the graphite tip of his pencil before he wrote the customer’s order on a green guest check pad, then he turned and walked back into the kitchen. I stayed put and five minutes later Cheek was back with a square, flat box of pizza. He rang the customer up and slammed the drawer closed as the customer headed out the front door. Cheek began to reenter the kitchen when I stopped him.
“What about Frank?” I said cheerfully.
Cheek turned around and pushed the paper hat back on his damp head. “He says he’ll see you for a minute, if what you got’s legit. But only for a minute. He’s busy.”
“A minute’s all it will take. Thanks.”
Cheek waved me back. “Come on,” he said.
I followed him behind the counter, through a doorless frame, and into the kitchen. The kitchen was open and bright with a track of fluorescent tubes that lighted it from front to back. On the north wall stood a large baker’s oven, its door down. A thick young expediter with curly brown hair, long in the back and shaven on the sides, peered into the oven. He checked the pies inside and then flung the door up and shut. Beside the oven, warming lights glowed red over a two-level steel table, and on the shelf above the lights sat an institutional microwave oven. Next to the microwave a Sony box with removable speakers was set on DC101. The righteous freak-out of Van Halen’s guitar careened throughout the room.
A large stainless-steel prep table was situated in the middle of the room, and on the opposite wall a cold salad bar abutted a sandwich block, both refrigerated underneath. Several black-handled knives of various sizes were racked above the sandwich block. Next to the block a four-foot-wide stainless-steel refrigerator stood upright and stopped inches from the ceiling. On the third wall sat two deep stainless-steel sinks, with a rinse hose suspended above. A tall, wiry man with slick black hair and a severely pocked face stood before the prep table in the middle of the room, ladling sauce into a pie shell. Neither he nor the expediter looked up as I passed into the kitchen.
Cheek raised his hand and said, “Wait here.”
I stopped walking and cradled my book. The thick young expediter moved quickly behind me to the sandwich block and pulled a knife off the rack. He retrieved some onions from a plastic container below and deftly began to peel and slice them on the board with the knife’s serrated edge. The pock-faced man pushed tomato sauce around the pie shell with the bottom of his ladle in slow, careful circles. Cheek entered a small office in the back of the kitchen. I watched him do it.
Two men sat in chairs in the office. I could see their pants legs-one wore black twills, the other khakis-and the wooden legs of the chairs in which they sat. Some smoke drifted out of the office door. I listened to Cheek’s high voice, and a deeper one after that, and then the khaki legs unwound and the man inside them stepped out of the office with Cheek.
He was an average man of average-to-heavy build, with a blue work shirt tucked into the khakis and a dirty apron tied over half of both. There was a plastic foam cup in his right hand and the ass end of a cigar in the fingers of his left. He plugged the cigar in the side of his saliva-caked mouth and stopped walking a foot shy of my face.
“What ya got,” he said. Booze was heavy on his breath.
“Deals,” I said, my salesman’s smile glued ridiculously high. “Unbelievable deals, Frank.” I extended my hand. “Ron Wilson, Variety Foods.”
Frank put his hand to his mouth, unplugged the cigar, and had a gulp of scotch from the plastic foam cup. “Let’s skip all the bullshit, okay? Cheek said you had something good, and it’s New Year’s Eve, and to tell you the truth I’m already half in the bag. So let’s see what you got, quick, before my mood changes and I make you come in on order day like every other slob.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Where should we go? In your office?”
“Uh-uh.” Frank’s head tipped like a bell in the direction of the sinks. “Over there.”
I followed him and watched the office as I walked. Smoke still leaked out from behind the door. At the sink I set my black book on the drain platform and opened to a random page. Black-and-white photographs of canned goods ran top to bottom on the left quarter of the page, and corresponding price columns took up the balance.
“I assume you use all of these goods,” I said, lightly running the tip of my forefinger down the column of photographs, studying the gimmick as I spoke. The dollar amounts lessened as the purchase quantities increased.
“We use a lotta shit,” Frank said as he pulled the scotch cup away from his lips. He had chewed small crescents of plastic foam off the rim. “What’s the deal?”
“Like I told Mr. Cheek, fifty off.” I looked around for Cheek’s support, but he was back out front.
“Fifty off what?”
“Our best price on the sheet,” I stuttered through the smile. The smile had atrophied now to a twitch.
“Bullshit,” Frank said. A cloud of cheap cigar smoke hung between our faces. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” I said with wide eyes. “New Year’s special, onetime order. No limit. You get acquainted with our business, we make a new friend.”
The bluesy intro to Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” played through the Sony. Frank had another slug and belched. The belch watered his eyes and causedyesem"› his lips to part like two pink slugs.
“One thing I always say, Winston.”
“Wilson. Ron Wilson.”
“One thing I always say. If it’s on sale today, it can be on sale tomorrow. Right?”
“Maybe so,” I said. “ But I sure would like to write an order before the clock strikes twelve.”
“Never happen,” Frank said. “I’m not that kind of sucker. Nice try, though. Always ask for the sale.” He rocked back on his heels. “Look me up after the New Year, hear?”
“I will. Thanks.” I extended my hand again, and again Frank ignored it. Instead he turned his head back toward the young expediter.
“Turn that shit down!” he yelled, pointing at the boom box. Then he waddled back like a man carrying something odious in the seat of his pants and shut the door behind him.
The thick young expediter moved to the Sony and reduced the volume by a hair. I closed my book, put it under my arm, and walked through the kitchen toward the lobby. The tall, wiry, pock-faced man glanced up and looked me over as I passed. His eyes were small and heavily hooded, all black pupil, whiteless as a snake’s. I felt them on me as I exited the kitchen.