Читать книгу Manhattan Voyagers - Thomas Boone's Quealy - Страница 11

Eddie Felton cast a long, distorted shadow as he walked purposefully up Wall Street past the tourists taking pictures of the cordoned-off NYSE building with a giant American flag draped across its front columns; past the road blocks, canine teams and the helmeted police armed with assault rifles; past the hot dog and falafel vendors; past the Con Ed workers surrounding an open manhole from which plumes of hot steam were pouring out; past young mothers pushing baby carriages; past middle-aged fathers with gray hair in second marriages to trophy wives pushing baby carriages; past a 28 year old bond trader who had earned $10 million yesterday on a single transaction; past UPS deliverymen in short brown pants unloading brown parcels from a brown truck; past the pedigreed dog-walkers; past the ever-hopeful Job Fair attendees; past the innocent-looking pickpockets on the watch for their next mark; past the red-coated Downtown Alliance workers sweeping rubbish from the curbs; past a Gordon Gekko impersonator with a shiny forehead on his way to perform at a bar-mitzvah party; past the clusters of office workers in shirtsleeves sneaking cigarette breaks; past the black Senegalese selling fake Rolex watches out of their cheap briefcases; past the newest female partner at Goldman Sachs carrying a Chihuahua in her handbag entering Hermes; and finally past a panhandler with hairy underarms who gave him the middle finger and told him to EAT SHIT! when he declined to drop any coins into his proffered tin cup.

Believe it or not, prior to 9/11 you could easily park your Beamer or Merc near the exchange with no problem, but not anymore; almost all of the immediate area is in lockdown mode for the foreseeable future, maybe for the remainder of the century. In front of Federal Hall he spotted a tastefully dressed, well-coiffed woman in her late fifties parading back and forth, wearing a small sandwich board announcing she was searching for a job as an administrative assistant. She grasped a stack of resumes in her hand that she seemed only too eager to give out to any prospective employers passing by. Unfortunately, there weren’t many takers. A few steps away, directly in front of the statue of George Washington, ten out-of-work men and women were hoisting signs proclaiming:

A JOB IS A RIGHT! I WANT TO WORK!

The sightings immediately saddened Eddie. While the NYSE building has been a magnet for angry demonstrations railing against rich bankers and the rowdy, unchecked capitalist system since it was erected in 1903, never before in all his time living and working in the Financial District had he witnessed such desperation on the part of middle-class people who were willing to publicly humiliate themselves in a desperate attempt to land a job. Surely it had to be a sign of the hard times that lay ahead for the nation.

He turned the corner on New Street towards the Bull & Bear but stopped midway up the cobblestone alley because he saw the figure of the Cormorant peering down at him from atop a lamppost.

“Are you following me again?”

A pellet of poop fell from the bird’s underbelly and narrowly missed soiling his purple sneaker.

“You belong in an aviary!”

Another dark pellet fell from on high, missing the mark again.

“I’m going to report you to the National Audubon Society!”

Eddie entered the tavern and rubbed the bull’s hoof for luck. Ruthie de Angelo, a full-figured woman of indeterminate age with braided dark hair and a noticeable space between her two front teeth, waved to him. She operated the Coat-Check Room and her gap-toothed grin enticed him to stop for a chat.

“Letitia asked me to give you her regards, Ruthie.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s as sober as a judge and she credits you with rescuing her.”

“I was only being a friend.”

“She keeps heckling me to go to AA meetings with her.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’d go if I were you, Eddie.”

“We’ll see, Ruthie, we’ll see.”

Hilda was sitting on a tall stool nearest the entrance so as to keep tabs on all comings and goings. It was a practice that her father had instilled in her barkeep training to help gauge how profitable a night it was going to be. It was also a way to keep a watch-out for any potential troublemakers.

“Achtung! How’s it going, Hilda?”

“It’s too early to tell, Eddie.” A spry woman of 55, her flaxen hair set in a high beehive, Hilda’s angular face and dark eyes peered at you through half-moon reading glasses resting partway down her slender nose. In her youth she had attended Juilliard as an aspiring mezzo-soprano, singing professionally, after graduation, with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Toronto Opera despite her lack of girth. Today she favored post-punk rock music and for several years has been writing a rock opera she intends to produce on Broadway one day.

Dressed in her customary uniform -- an unflattering floral dress with padded shoulders and a hem which came down to her ankles, masking her still-curvy figure – along with bobby socks and black granny shoes. Around her neck she sported a necklace of 20-dollar gold pieces, a gift from a long-ago suitor. A pewter mug of green tea sat steaming on the bar in front of her. Like so many of New York’s legendary saloonkeepers of yesteryear, Hilda is a strict teetotaler. A copy of The Wall Street Journal lay next to her tea. While there was much in the financial newspaper that she didn’t understand, she nevertheless made an effort to daily scan the major articles since all her customers read it religiously and it gave her an insight into their world.

“Has business picked up any?”

She shook her head. “Business is lousy, Eddie, I’m down 50% in the last three years.”

“Hmm.”

“Thursdays are my busiest nights. If there were three Thursday nights in the week, I’d be holding my own.”

“It’s the rotten economy that makes people afraid to spend.”

“The layoffs on Wall Street have hurt us. If I didn’t own this building free and clear, I couldn’t make the rent.”

“I notice you haven’t let go any of the staff.”

“I couldn’t, Eddie, they’ve all got families to support.”

“You’re the best, Hilda, the neighborhood is lucky to have you.”

Winston, the English bulldog, waddled over to stand protectively beside his mistress’ stool. Brown in color, with a white forehead and a broad chest, he had black, wide-set eyes, folds above the nose, drooping lips and sagging skin under the neck. At a weight of 65 pounds, mostly muscle, he was a formidable representative of the stubborn breed. Not playful or cuddly, his only endearing antic was his ability to sleep on his back while snoring with his eyes wide open.

After sizing Eddie up and fixating on the purple sneakers, the dog’s sourpuss expression didn’t change as he growled loudly, revealing sharp teeth with a noticeable under-bite. “Grrrrrrrrr!”

She bent over to pet him. “Winston is also happy to see you, Eddie, he bids you welcome.”

“It sounds more like he’d enjoy taking a chunk out of my leg.”

“Don’t be silly, Winston wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

At that moment the front door of the bar was flung open and a one-eyed man wearing camouflage cargo pants, a dark shirt with a clerical collar below a fighter’s chin leaned his torso into the vestibule. He leveled an accusatory finger at Hilda and shouted: “Du bist die Große Hure der Wall Street zu verkaufen Tod und Verdammnis! Sie sind die Führer aller Huren hier unten! “

Winston barked and lunged at him, however, the intruder managed to slam the door shut before the dog was able to reach the doorway.

“My high school German is a bit rusty,” Eddie said, “what is Reverend Halder kvetching over this evening?”

“He claims I’m selling death and damnation.”

“I saw him earlier on Front Street passing out pamphlets calling for the outlawing of liquor sales.”

“Yes, Eddie, he wants to turn back the clock and get Congress to pass new Prohibition laws.”

“It was a bad idea then and it’s still a bad idea today.”

“I agree.”

“His street sermons are getting violent. Halder could be more than a nudnik at this stage, Hilda, he might be meshugge.”

She stirred her tea. “The reverend said something else which struck me.”

“What?”

“He called me The Great Whore of Wall Street.”

“Did he now?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eddie stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Crazy or not, I’d say Reverend Halder has a definite flair for words.”

“I agree, The Great Whore of Wall Street is a catchy handle.” She scribbled the words on a paper napkin. “I wish there was some way to use it.”

His eyes shimmered with possibilities. “Maybe there is.”

“How?”

“Hilda Gluckmeister can transform herself into The Great Whore of Wall Street.”

She almost gagged. “Me?”

“You.”

“Why … why would I want to do such an insane thing?”

“Because I see BIG BUCKS in it and you have a lot of mouths to feed.”

“No woman wants to be known as a whore!”

“Whores have long been major figures in history, Hilda, women such as Madame de Pompadour, Calamity Jane, Nell Gwynne, Mata Hari, the Empress Theodora. And don’t forget that Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt, was called the Whore Queen by the Romans.”

“Whores are whores, Eddie, I don’t care what you say. And prostitution exploits women as sex objects; it’s another form of male dominance.”

“I understand that but you’d be The Great Whore, the adjective changes everything.”

“I doubt it.”

“Just recall some of the other Greats in history: The Great Houdini, Abraham Lincoln - The Great Emancipator, The Great Communicator who was Ronald Reagan, Alexander the Great, the Great Caruso.”

“Would I be the first Great Whore in history?”

He shook his head. “No, Hilda, you wouldn’t, there was The Great Whore of Babylon.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She’s mentioned in The Book of Revelation.”

“I never read it.”

“The lovely courtesan lived a few thousand years ago. She wasn’t a very nice person, as far as I recall.”

“I’m not surprised with a name like that.”

“You wouldn’t be at all like her.”

She pushed her glasses up on her forehead. “A whore is still a whore, Eddie, the connotation is definitely negative.”

“No, Hilda, not necessarily; think of the whore with a heart of gold character in literature and the movies. She’s a beloved figure, a key dispenser of advice on the vagaries of life and what ails the human spirit.”

“Hmm.”

“And there was Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute who was loved by Jesus more than any of the other disciples.”

She removed her glasses, checked the lenses, then put them on again without responding.

“Repentance is the key to redemption, Hilda, just remember the three parables on this subject in the New Testament: the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and the Parable of the Lost Coin.”

“For a Jew, Eddie, you certainly seem to know a lot about the Christian Bible.”

He shrugged. “I’m not a believer but religion has always fascinated me for some reason.”

“I’m still unconvinced; to put it mildly.”

“At your introductory press conference as the ‘repentant’ Great Whore of Wall Street, the first thing you’ll do is ask the public’s forgiveness for all the damage that Wall Street has done to the U. S. economy and to peoples’ IRAs and 401-Ks.”

“They might throw stones at me.”

“Not a chance; the world loves nothing better than a confessed sinner seeking to rejoin the ranks of the righteous.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s one of those hard-to-wrap-your-brain-around concepts, Hilda, you’ll have to trust me on this.”

“The last man who asked me to trust him, Eddie, swindled me out of $55,000. And I almost married the charlatan before I came to my senses.”

“Allow me to explain my idea in more detail.”

“Ok, but speak slowly and in words of few syllables.”

He took a moment to collect his thoughts. “First, as I said before, I’m talking BIG BUCKS!”

“You did, Eddie, but where’s the money?”

“This could be the start of a business empire for you.”

“I still don’t see any money!”

“The money trail begins with a caricature or artist’s sketch of you as The Great Whore of Wall Street.”

“Not a cartoonish caricature, I hope?”

“No, Hilda, it will have to be serious and eye-catching to grab the public’s attention.”

“Hmm.”

“And that graphic image will become your company’s logo for all future advertising and marketing activities. We’ll trademark the visual so it can’t be copied by anyone else.”

“I’m going to form a company?”

“Yeah, ‘The Great Whore of Wall Street Corporation’, Hilda, a holding company for the many different businesses you’ll be in.”

“I see a problem right off the bat, Eddie, we don’t know what a Great Whore looks like. So how do we construct a caricature of her?”

“That will be my job, Hilda, to come up with your signature look for the caricature.”

“What’s a signature look?”

“It’s an in-the-trade fashion industry term for a look that is unique only to you. All true celebrities have one.”

She drew in her breath. “Are you going to make me into a celebrity, Eddie?”

“Yeah, I’m going to sprinkle a little stardust on you.”

“You can actually do that?”

“I definitely can,” he said with a confidence he hadn’t felt in years.

Her fingertips brushed wisps of hair from her face. “I … I never thought I’d ever be a celebrity.”

“Think again.”

She smiled for the first time in the conversation. “I’d enjoy that, Eddie, really I would.”

“I spent forty years in Public Relations and I’m telling you that The Great Whore of Wall Street will be a sensational marketing vehicle.”

“It seems a slutty and vulgar sounding name to me.”

He nodded in agreement. “Slutty and vulgar is in vogue today, Hilda, just consider the rapidly growing number of trashy Reality Shows on TV.”

“It’s all part of a conspiracy to dumb-down America, Eddie, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, it could be … and it’s working.”

“People who lost their jobs and their savings in the stock market might hate me.”

“Let them! It’d be wonderful publicity for you.”

“But it would be bad publicity, Eddie.”

“No, Hilda, when you’re selling merchandise there’s no such thing as bad publicity, unless, of course, your product ends up killing somebody.”

“Are you saying that all publicity is good publicity?”

“I am!”

“Ok, Eddie, so what kind of merchandise will I be selling?”

He massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Well, at first, we’ll imprint The Great Whore of Wall Street logo on tchotchkes : mugs, hats, napkins, dolls, T-shirts, key rings, playing cards, coasters. And you’d sell this stuff over the bar here at the Bull & Bear.”

She grimaced. “That’s so tacky.”

“Most people are tacky, Hilda, tacky is also in vogue today.”

“I’ve always tried to run a high-class establishment, Eddie, selling that crap in here will cheapen the place.”

“Unfortunately, Hilda, you have to adapt to the hard economic times we live in.”

She sighed wistfully. “I wish I could go back to the good old days.”

“Don’t we all?”

“All right, Eddie, continue.”

“Once the Great Whore logo gains traction, you’ll be able to sign up distributors to market these tchotchkes nationwide for you.”

“Fine,” she said, not showing much enthusiasm.

“Crowds will start dropping by the Bull & Bear to have a drink and their picture taken with The Great Whore of Wall Street. Of course, you’ll charge a fee for the photographs.”

“It comes across as a cheap publicity stunt if you ask me.”

“The whole world is posing today, Hilda, and so will you.”

“I’m hating it already.”

“The paparazzi and shutterbugs will take notice and make this place a downtown destination.”

“I’ll be a freak like the Bearded Lady in an old carnie sideshow.”

“That’s showbiz!”

“I’m in the bar business, Eddie, not in the entertainment business!”

“Wrong! If you interact with the public today, Hilda, you’re also in the entertainment business, whether you want to be or not.”

She held her forehead. “This is all too much for me.”

“Next on the agenda, you’ll develop your own line of private-label Great Whore beers, wines and whiskeys. Consumers are label-conscious today and this will greatly increase your profit margins on alcohol sales.”

She became animated for the first time. “Now you’re talking my language, Eddie, I always wanted to own my own brewery and distillery; so did my father and grandfather.”

He shook his head again. “No, they won’t be yours, Hilda, that would require too much of a capital investment. You’ll lease vats in someone else’s brewery and distillery to supply your alcohol requirements, formulated to your own specs.”

She seemed listless again. “Oh.”

“Then, in the next stage of development, you will expand beyond the bar business and come out with a mass-market line of Great Whore products -- perfumes, denim, lingerie, cosmetics, swimwear, bedding, sunglasses and watches -- to be sold in retail stores; maybe even separate lines to be sold on QVC. This is where you’ll start to make the really Big Bucks. ”

“Am I going to have to have to design all these products myself?”

“No, Hilda, in the beginning you’ll merely license your name to manufacturers and collect a royalty fee on sales.”

“The same as Donald Trump does with casinos and hotels.”

“Correct. Later on, you can create your own designs if you want.”

“Just as Elizabeth Taylor did with her House of Taylor jewelry line.”

“Precisely.”

“I’d be good at that,” she told herself.

“You can also enter into strategic partnership agreements with producers of high-end luxury branded products such as Prada or Coach to get your own line sold within their boutiques.”

Her face became animated. “That’s what the three Kardashian sisters are doing today!”

“Exactly, Hilda, they’re the reigning Tastemakers of Girl-Dom and a great example of what I’m talking about. The sisters don’t sing, dance or act, however, their Reality Show has transformed them into celebrities. They get paid a $20,000 fee just to make a publicity appearance at a new club or store opening and are probably the most photographed women in the world.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And they’re using the power of their celebrity endorsements to market a slew of new products worldwide.”

“I understand now, Eddie, what you’re driving at.”

“Good.”

“But there’s a hitch; I’m not beautiful like the Kardashian sisters are.”

“Celebrities don’t have to be beautiful anymore; just look at Nicole Polizzi.”

“Who?”

“Snooki.”

“Who?”

“An actress on the Jersey Shore TV shows.”

“I never watched it.”

“It doesn’t matter; the point is that even fat, unattractive people can become celebrities today.”

“Hmm.”

“You’ll become a financial industry celebrity, Hilda, another Warren Buffett, except you won’t need to pick stocks for investors to buy.”

“That’s a relief, Eddie, because the only way I could pick a stock is to go eenie-meenie-minee-moe.”

“Neither can most of the talking heads on CNBC but that doesn’t deter them from shooting their mouths off.”

“Hmm.”

“Believe me, Hilda, the Kardashians will have nothing on you when we’re done.”

She sipped tea from her mug. “I must admit, Eddie, it sounds like it could be an intriguing venture.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course, I’ll want you to do the honchoing if I’m going to attempt this.”

His gaze dropped to the floor. “PR is my stock-in-trade but a lot of years have passed since I managed a successful marketing campaign.”

“You have vision and imagination, Eddie, you can anticipate what the public wants. And I have faith in you.”

“You are aware of my history, Hilda, I might go off on a bender and not show up for days.”

“I’ll take my chances if you give me your word you won’t drink on the job.”

He cleared his throat. “I … I was actually searching for a way to get back into the game for one final great project.”

“Well, here it is, Eddie, your comeback vehicle -- The Great Whore of Wall Street -- is staring you in the face.”

“All right, Hilda, if you’re willing to take a chance on me, then count me in.”

She threw up her arms. “Hooray!”

“This is going to be like trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, Hilda, but I thrive on challenges.”

“Me, too.”

“I’ll come up with a few signature look possibilities to bounce off you in a few days.”

“Ok, Eddie, but I want to bounce something off you first.”

“What?”

“There’s a spare bedroom upstairs since my aunt went back to Austria. I want you to move in. Now that we’re going to be working together, often late at night, it makes smart business sense.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll do it.”

“By any chance, Hilda, did Letitia call you?”

She nodded. “Letitia is worried about you, Eddie, you’re too old to be an office squatter.”

“I … uh … I can’t pay you any rent; I’m busted.”

“Pay me later, Eddie.”

“How?”

She picked up The Wall Street Journal off the bar and pointed to an article on the front page. “It says here that Michael Kors, the designer, just went public with his fashion company for almost $1.0 billion.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“So let’s do the same thing with The Great Whore of Wall Street Corporation.”

He smiled. “You catch on quick, Hilda.”

*