There hadn't been much need for negotiation in the last couple weeks, not since Harry had sprayed one farmer's truck with machine-gun fire, lighting up the predawn morning like the Fourth of fuckin' July. It had been funnier than hell watching that farmer and his kid tuck their tails 'tween legs and go rattling out of the loading-dock area, barely able to steer that bullet-puckered hunk of junk out of the terminal. They were lucky it even drove.
Beyond his considerable negotiating skills, Harry, who was also the business agent of the Drivers and Employees local, could shut the market down with a snap of his thick fingers. With an item as perishable as produce, the union had the farmers and dealers by the balls; if Harry called a strike, forcing the handlers to quit work, the Northern Ohio Food Terminal would be a world of rotting goods.
The market, a big yellow-brick building, a block long and half again as wide, opened at five A.M.; but trucks began showing up shortly after three, jamming Fortieth Street, engines running, drivers waiting for the line ahead to move so they could pull up to the loading docks and empty their loads. It was a cool, clear morning, for now, though the sun would remind everybody it was July soon enough. Along the loading docks the unloaders in Harry's union stood in their leather aprons, waiting for the trucks to pull in; they looked bored, even though the air was filled with the shouts and honking horns of impatient truckers.
Soon the market would be crawling with buyers: men in business suits representing the chain stores; men without ties who were the smaller, local grocers, buying for their coming day, to fill the shopping lists not yet made out by housewives around the city, who were sleeping now but would be shopping later.
Some of the trucks were already being unloaded. One of Harry's unloaders was up in the reefer, as the refrigerated trucks were called, swinging boxes of butter down to another unloader, who was stacking them on the sidewalk, six high, eight deep, like a small building. As Harry passed by, his shoes crunched packing ice that had spilled onto the sidewalk.
Harry liked working the market. He liked the hustle and bustle. He liked the way the place smelled, even: barrels of sauerkraut, sheep's milk cheese, candied ginger; steam rising off the griddle of the hot-dog stand inside; the scent of turnips and carrots as an unloader threw back a tarp and hosed down piled bunches of greens. The place was a second home to him: He'd done odd jobs here as a kid; you could earn a few pennies and get some free produce at day's end.
These days, in his exalted position, Harry never did any physical labor, other than busting your occasional arm or leg. He wore a shirt and tie under a leather jacket; his khaki trousers were work pants, but rarely got dirty. He walked along the aisle connecting the loading docks, enjoying the sight of his union boys opening tailgates, untying ropes, pulling tarps back, taking loads down. Putting money in Harry's pocket. A relay team unloaded watermelons from an open truck onto the dock and into the market; crates of cantaloupes, sacks of potatoes, baskets of tomatoes, were passed along and hauled into storage bins; bunches of onions and turnips got stacked in a big green mound, as green as money. As green as the money Harry was making.
Now, just as the traffic jam out on Fortieth let up, another was forming here along the loading-dock area. Metal-wheeled dollies squealed as cooler boys trundled up the wide ramp inside the terminal to the freight elevator, next to which gigantic floor scales trembled under cantaloupe crates. Unloaders maneuvered their two-wheeled hand trucks, piled up with crates, around each other and stacks of produce and a dozen other obstacles, swearing, yelling, but steering clear of Harry as he passed, their expressions momentarily tightening into smiles for their business agent, who found the noisy hubbub of the loading docks as reassuring as the ringing bell of a cash register.
Not all of them appreciated what he was doing for them, but that was okay with Harry. As long as they stayed in line. Long as they paid their dues.
Up ahead, two docks down, a small crowd had gathered; it had to be something good, Harry knew, to interrupt market activities in these bustling predawn hours. He walked in a straight line down the connecting aisle, causing unloaders operating hand carts to weave around him and out of his way, like motorists avoiding a child who has wandered onto a highway.
Two men-obviously farmers-stood at the rear of a modest, battered tractor-trailer rig, where they had just as obviously been stopped in the process of unloading crates of greens onto the dock. Two other men were confronting the farmers. These men wore leather jackets and shirts and ties, like Harry's; without ever suggesting it, Harry's goon squad (though neither he nor they thought of themselves as such) had adopted their leader's style of dress as a sort of uniform.
Jack Rose, a big black-haired boy Harry had known since his kid gang days, was gesturing with a hand the size of a catcher's mitt.
"It's a buck an hour per man," he said in a raised voice, indicating he was repeating these words for perhaps the third or fourth time, "and it's a two-man job. And it's a good four hours' work."
"Four hours!" the older of the farmers said. A faintly freckled Swede, or maybe Norwegian, Harry figured; about thirty-five, thickly mustached, and pale for a farmer. He wore coveralls and a floppy straw hat. He was a hick if Harry ever saw one, and Harry saw plenty here at the market.
"My uncle told you, we can do it in under two hours ourselves," the other one said, a towheaded younger man, also in overalls but wearing a cap. He was pale, too, Harry noted, craning his neck to see better. License plate on their truck was New York.
"You don't understand," Rose said, smiling harshly. "It's union rules. You got to hire us. No choice in the matter."
"It's too much," said the mustached farmer, shaking his head no. "We can't afford it. We'll do it ourselves, thanks just the same."
Harry, staying in the second row of the small but steadily gathering crowd, decided not to get involved. Neither Rose nor the other man, O'Day, had spotted their boss looking on. It would be good to see how they fared in a confrontation. Two more of his boys, Callahan and Carney, in their leather jackets and shirts and ties, fell in next to their boss in the growing audience.
"I guess you never hauled into this market before," Rose was saying, in a slightly more friendly tone.
"Not in a couple of years," the mustached farmer admitted. "Now if you fellows would just go about your own business-"
Rose thumped the mustached farmer's chest with two stiff fingers. "This is our business. What are you, one of these smart guys? I got a good notion to pound you into this here pavement, pal. And we can tip over your truck, too, if you want, and if you ever come in here again, it'll cost you fifty fucking bucks to unload."
The two farmers looked at each other, shrugged, shook their heads no, and began unloading more crates onto the dock.
Jack Rose kicked one of the crates, splintering the wood.
The mustached farmer sighed, shook his head again, and calmly said, "That'll cost you, mister."
"No," Rose said, "it'll cost you,"
He picked up another crate and smashed it on the cement, cracking it open, spilling out the contents, turning produce into garbage.
And now Rose and O'Day seemed aware of the crowd around them, if not of Harry Gibson's presence in it, and that seemed to spur the pair on.
"Walk away now," the mustached farmer said, "or you'll have trouble."
"You got trouble," O'Day said, speaking for the first time, and he took a swing at the mustached farmer.
The farmer ducked out of the way, nimbly.
O'Day swung again, and his fist, his arm, cut the air like a saber, connecting with nothing, as the farmer slipped that punch as well.