Magician's Wife by James M. Cain Page A

dress, I wouldn’t let ’em in. So—”
    â€œIn my business I sell what sells.”
    â€œYou’re leading to something, Mr. Lockwood. What?”
    â€œI don’t have the details yet—just a general idea, but as far as it goes, it’s clear. As I see it now, the kids tromp you, the fly-by-nights take their money, and all you get is beer cans out on the edge of the ocean.”
    â€œThat says it, that’s exactly it!”
    â€œWhy don’t you go for their money?”
    â€œBut how? I sell a shore dinner! I—”
    â€œWait! It’s beginning to come!”
    He took Mr. Reed by the arm and led him out to the boardwalk, then down some steps to the beach and out to the thundering surf. Then, after staring, he led back up the steps to the town, now having the first gay night of its new summer season, with neon signs lit up and orchestras sounding off. He kept on to the town’s boat harbor, one much like Channel City’s, the long inlet called Sinepuxent Bay, where various craft were tied up, prettily reflecting the lights. And as he walked he dreamed out loud: “I see it now, Mr. Reed—a corporation, locally owned—locally owned, I said, by you and a few of your friends—a right little, tight little syndicate that’ll have a series of booths—awnings, pitched on the sand, with grills and freezers and counters where girls in candy-striped pants will wait on our teenage friends and throw the empty cans in a hamper. You sell ’em ice cream, hot dogs, and beer—while I sell you what you need, I and some of my friends.” Mr. Reed, after raising the question of cash, “the capital we’ll need,” and being told, “Don’t worry about it,” began to like the idea, and presently Clay went on: “I see something else, Mr. Reed: this thing has a civic angle. It’s going to help put an end to the trouble. Because, ‘stead of fighting these kids you’ll befriend them, and ‘stead of fighting you they’ll get with it! And on Labor Day what will it be? Just a sociable cookout, that’s all.”
    The upshot of it was that when Clay drove back, early Tuesday morning, he took Mr. Reed along, and no sooner got to his office than he “set up” a lunch for that day, in the Chinquapin-Plaza Blue Room, for the two of them, with Mr. Lomack of Greenfield Dairies, Mr. Gordon of Gordon Bakeries, Mr. Katz of Restaurant Fixtures, and Mr. Heine of Chinquapin Brewery. By then, having it all clear in his mind, he was able to lay it out to these prospective purveyors in the briefest possible time, and almost at once to sell it, to Mr. Reed’s hypnotized wonderment. In fact, he took it for granted they would come in, “as it’s something that should have been started years and years ago.” When he knew he had them, he went on: “On prices, stock, deliveries, all that inside baseball—forget it. They’re nothing, and we’re all equipped for what’s to be done. So let’s keep our eye on the main thing—it’s a public-relations question, first, last, and all the time. We have to convince that town and everybody in it that this is their enterprise—it’s not run by the fly-by-nights. The money stays in the town. It’s new money, it comes to the town, it stays there! I would say, and I hope you concur, that before we set up one tent we should run a series of ads—in The Pilot of Channel City, which circulates down at the beach—laying the whole thing out, introducing ourselves, saying who we are, coming out in the open. Then we’ll be ready to go!”
    All concurred.
    â€œThe thing is going to take dough. I’m putting Grant’s in for five thousand bucks—as a loan, Mr. Reed, repayable out of earnings, as, of course, I couldn’t claim stock without misrepresenting to those people in Ocean City. It’s their show, without