Trust by George V. Higgins Page B

money. What’s the matter with you?” It’s a training thing.’ ”
    Cobb laughed. “I’m gonna go up and see him,” he said. “Nice talking to you guys again.”
    “Yeah,” Oakes said, “but I’m still voting Republican.”
    “Course you are, Oakesie,” Cobb said. “We never count on you guys. We know you do the best you can—reading’s hard for you. But we’re philosophical, ’cause you’re a dying breed. And we’re getting the young folks.”
    “You’re getting them, all right,” Oakes said. “You’re getting them killed in Vietnam. And with the other war you got, the one on poverty, you’re killing them, with kindness, at home. Give the guy with the scar on his belly, holding the dogs by their ears, give him long enough in the White House, all you’re gonna have in this country’s longhairs and Republicans. The Republicans won’t vote for you, and the longhairs won’t vote at all—they’re stoned out of their minds allthe time. So who’s gonna keep your jobs for you, huh? You’ll all be on welfare yourselves. Which is probably why you’re so hot for it. Making sure you can survive.”
    “Don’t envy you, Dennis,” Cobb said. “Hope Don pays you a lot if this’s what you’ve got to put up with.”
    Donald Beale had framed pictures of his father and his grandfather, and the two of them with him, crowding the top of the credenza behind his desk. The chronology went from his right to left, starting with the sepia photo of his grandfather standing stiffly beside the gas pump outside the first Beale dealership; the sign in the background advertised Beale Pierce-Arrow Motorcars, Winooski, Vt. In the middle there was a black-and-white picture of his grandfather, his father, himself, and his brother, the men standing behind the boys with their hands on the children’s shoulders. There was a banner behind them that read “ SEE THE NEW CHRYSLER AIRFLOW .” Next to the end on the left there was a color picture of Donald Beale and his father in front of a hexagonal white bandstand with a banner that read “ CONCERTS EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT. COURTESY BEALE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH, S. BURLINGTON .” The last picture was in color and showed Donald Beale standing in front of the brick colonial showroom, holding an oil portrait of his father and an enlargement of the sepia photograph of his grandfather. The banner on the front of the building read “ BEALE CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH —40 YEARS OF INTEGRITY .” On the wall above the credenza were numerous plaques for dealer achievements. On the wall to his right were Beale’s diplomas from Dartmouth College and the Boston University Law School.
    “Been lollygaggin’ downstairs with the no-goodsthat work for me, Ed?” Beale said. He was signing a stack of printed forms. “Hard enough to get those guys to work, ’thout having you distract ’em.” He signed the last of the papers and threw the stack into the Out box. He stood up and grinned, and they shook hands. “Good to see you, old pal,” he said. “Have a seat.” He sat down.
    “That Oakesie is a piece of work,” Cobb said. “I suppose if you can’t find a couple of hungry rats to put in your jockstrap, the next best thing’d be to have that bastard in your hair every day.”
    “Isn’t he something?” Beale said. “Been around forever, and you know if my grandfather hired him, and my father kept him on, he must have something on the ball. But you look at him, you talk to him, you say to yourself: ‘He’s a
sales
man? This guy’s about as smooth as a barbed wire on your ass.’ But let me tell you something: Oakesie sells those cars. Oakesie knows his trade. He’s got a bunch of skinflints that think every eight years or so’s about the right time to trade in. They bring in these jalopies all clapped out and rusted through, tires’re bald and brakes’re gone—‘Now, no point repairin’ her this summer, Edith; gonna trade her two summers from now’—haven’t had any real