The platform boss walked over and looked into the elevator. "Junk, eh?" he asked. "All of it?" David nodded. "Where shall I put it?" "You ain't puttin' it no place," the boss said. "Beat it right back upstairs an' tell Wagner to shell out five bucks if he expects me to get rid of his junk."
Again David could feel his anger rising slowly.
Wagner was at his desk when David got back upstairs.
"The platform boss wants five bucks to get rid of that junk."
"Oh, sure," Wagner said. "I forgot."
He took a tin box out of his desk and opened it. He held out a five-dollar bill.
David stared down at it. "You mean you really got to give to him?" he asked in disbelief. Wagner nodded. "But that's good newspaper stock," David said. "My father would haul that away all day long.
It's worth a dime a hundredweight.
That batch would bring fifty bucks at any junk yard."
"We haven't the time to bother with it.
Here, give him the five bucks and forget about it."
David stared at him.
Nothing in this business made any sense to him. They junked five hundred dollars' worth of paper before they'd paid for it, then didn't even want to salvage fifty bucks out of it.
They'd rather pay five bucks more just to get rid of it. His uncle couldn't be as smart as they said he was if he ran his business like this. He must be lucky. If it wasn't luck, then his father would have been a millionaire.
He took a deep breath.
"Do I get an hour for lunch, Mr. Wagner?"
The foreman nodded. "Sure. We all do."
"Is it all right if I start my lunch hour now?"
"You can start right after you take care of the heralds."
"If it's all right with you," David said, "I’ll get rid of them on my lunch hour." "It's O.K. with me, but you don't have to.
You get a full hour off for lunch."
David looked at the telephone. "May I make a call?"
Wagner nodded and David called Needlenose at Shocky's garage. "How quick can you get here with a truck?" he asked, quickly explaining the deal.
"Twenty minutes, Davy," Needlenose said. There was a moment's silence, then Needlenose came on again. "Shocky says he'll only blast yuh ten bucks for the truck."
"Tell him it's a deal," David said quickly. "And bring along a pair of dusters. We might have a little trouble."
"Gotcha, Davy," Needlenose said.
"O.K., I’ll be out in front."
Wagner looked at him anxiously as he put down the telephone.
"I don't want any trouble," he said nervously.
David stared at him.
If they were all so afraid of him they wouldn't let him do his job, he might as well give them something to be afraid of.
"You'd know what trouble is, Mr. Wagner, if Uncle Bernie ever finds out you've been spending five dollars to lose fifty."
The foreman's face suddenly went pale. A faint beading of perspiration came out on his forehead.
"I don't make the rules," he said quickly. "I just do what purchasing tells me."
"Then you've got nothing to worry about."
Wagner put the five-dollar bill back in the tin box, then put the box back in his desk and locked the drawer.
He got to his feet.
"I think I'll go to lunch," he said.
David sat down in the foreman's chair and lit a cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking sign.
The men at the packing tables were watching him. He stared back at them silently.
After a few minutes, they began to leave, one or two at a time, apparently on their way to lunch.
Soon the only one left was the Sheriff.
The old man looked up from the package he was tying.
"You take my word for it," he said. "It ain't worth you getting killed over.
That Tony downstairs, he's a Cossack.
You tell your uncle to give you a different job."
"How can I do that, pop?" David asked. "It was tough enough talking him into this one.
If I come cryin' to him now, I might as well quit."
The old man walked over toward him.
"You know where they went?" he asked in a shrill voice.