The Way It Works Page 3

  “Xiè xiè,” I say, and I bow again. That information might come in handy. It would sure impress Yolanda’s mom.

  My suit is ready. I put it on in the washroom at the bus station. It looks great. Mrs. Wong even got the dirt out of the knees.

  Then I head for Capital Investments. It’s almost three o’clock. I’m so worried about my money I feel like I’m going to throw up. But I can’t show that now. I need to put my game face on.

  Finally, I have a real job interview.

  It’s time to show the world who Walter Davis really is.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Now that is the sharpest suit I have seen in a while.”

  The man who’s speaking is just a few years older than me. He sits in a black leather office chair. He’s blond, trim, with ice-blue eyes. He stares at me for a full five seconds. Like he’s waiting for me to crack. I look back at him. Maybe he thinks he can make me nervous. And to tell the truth, I’m terrified. But I’m not going to show it.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I like yours too.”

  He smiles. Then he holds out his hand.

  “Jon Watts. You can call me Jonny.”

  “Walter Davis.” We shake.

  “So, you want to work for Capital. What do you bring to the table?”

  “I’ll be straight with you,” I say. “I don’t have a fancy education. What I do have is brains and talent. And I can work harder than anyone. If you give me a chance, I won’t let you down.”

  Jonny nods. Then he smiles.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he says.

  We go down a hallway lined with office doors. Then we come to a big room with lots of desks in it. On every desk is a phone. And on every phone, someone is talking a mile a minute. They’re mostly men around my age. A few women. A few older guys.

  “This is the boiler room,” says Jonny. He steers me to an empty desk. Then he pushes a phone at me. “This is yours,” he says. He hands me a couple of papers. “This is your script. Here’s a list of numbers. You want people to invest with our company. Tell them anything you want. I don’t care. Just get their money. Once they say yes, pass them on to a supervisor. We’ll get their personal information. All you have to do is sell. You follow me?”

  I nod. Seems simple enough.

  “All right,” says Jonny. “Go ahead and dial that first number.”

  I dial. An old lady answers.

  “This is Walter with Capital Investments,”

  I say, reading from the script. But the words run together in my head. I can’t think. I toss the script aside and speak from the heart.

  “Can I talk to you about your future?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” says the old lady on the other end.

  I don’t even remember what happens next. We talk for about five minutes. At the end of it I’ve promised her 30 percent returns in the next year. And she’s agreed to invest ten thousand dollars with Capital Investments.

  I hang up the phone. Jonny’s eyes are huge. He starts to clap.

  “Let’s hear it for Walter!” he shouts. “On the job five minutes, and already he brings in ten large! Give it up, boys!”

  The room breaks into applause. Guys I don’t know are standing up, yelling my name. It’s all pretty overwhelming. Jonny holds my hand up like I’ve just won a fight.

  “Walter,” says Jonny, “you just got yourself a job.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  I’m still saying thank you in my head an hour later, as I’m walking out of town. I’m headed for the impound lot, where my car is. If I can talk an old lady into investing ten thousand of her hard-earned dollars, I can talk some yahoo into letting me look inside my own car for five minutes.

  Which I do.

  I tear the car upside down. But the money isn’t there.

  “Did you go through my car?” I ask the guy behind the counter. He’s not the guy who towed me. He’s even greasier and hairier. Must be the owner, I think.

  “We don’t go in the cars, man,” he says.

  “What do you think I am, a thief ?”

  “You stole my dang car, didn’t you?”

  I say.

  “The law is the law, my friend,” he says.

  “That’s the way—”

  “I know, don’t tell me,” I say. “That’s the way it works.”

  I’ve got nothing else to do, so I head for the part of town where I got towed. I know it’s a long shot, but I have to check. It takes me an hour to walk there. I scan the ground for a wad of cash.

  Yeah, right. Like someone is going to leave something like that just laying there. If this is where I dropped it, it’s long gone.

  No use crying over spilled milk. I console myself by pretending a widow found my money. A widow with nine starving children. She needed the money worse than I did. That’s why this happened. It helps me feel a little better. But not much.

  I head back to the city. My watch tells me it’s going on six o’clock. The shelter opens at eight. I have two hours to kill. I walk slow, taking my time. It’s a nice night. The whole way, I think about Yolanda. How she looked last night, and how she smelled. How close I came to kissing her. If not for her dad in the doorway, that is.

  That’s all right. If I had a daughter, I’d be protective too. I kind of like old Parnell. You have to respect someone who protects the people he loves.

  I go to the bus station and change into jeans and a T-shirt. I put my suit away as carefully as possible. Then I go to the shelter to get in line. It’s easy to get a bed on warm nights like this. It’s harder in the middle of winter, when not getting a space means you could die.

  The shelter is hard to sleep in. The blankets and pillows smell terrible. There’s always someone raising a fuss. Crying, yelling, coughing, shouting. Always something. You learn to tune it out after a while.

  Besides, I have tomorrow to look forward to. My first day on the job.

  I won’t be homeless much longer.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’m up bright and early for my first day at work. To tell the truth, I didn’t sleep a wink. I was too nervous and excited. And the shelter is just too loud. But being tired is nothing. I’d swim through a river of razor blades for a shot at a job. And now I’ve got one. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to slow me down.

  I’m at the bus station just after sunrise.

  I get out my suit and put it on. It’s a little wrinkled, but I’ve already made my first impression. And it was a good one. Today is not about appearances. It’s about results. Can I do better today than I did yesterday? Of course I can. I have to. That’s the key to success.

  I eat a breakfast burrito at my regular place. Then I start heading for the office. My office. My job. It feels so good to think that, I say it out loud. I don’t care who hears me talking to myself. I have a job.

  “You hear that, Moms?” I whisper.

  “I’m gonna make you proud.”

  I’m coming up on the block where Capital’s offices are. Something seems to be going on today. There’s a big crowd of people standing outside the building. Probably shooting a movie, I think. They do that a lot in this city.

  I push my way through the crowd up to the front. But I don’t see any movie cameras. All I see are a couple of cops standing guard at the front door. I’ve never been in trouble with the law, but I do know that cops never mean good news. Something bad is going down.

  I nudge the guy next to me.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I ask.

  He looks at me. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “I haven’t heard anything. What’s up?”

  “You work here?” he says.

  “I work at Capital. Today’s my first day.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, buddy,” says the guy. “But your first day is also going to be your last.”

  I feel like the ground is falling away from me. I’m in shock. I stagger, then catch myself.

  “What do you
mean?” I ask.

  “Two words, pal,” says the guy. “Ponzi scheme.”

  Ponzi scheme? You have to be kidding me, I think. This is just what Scooby was talking about. People taking other people’s money. Pretending they’ll get great returns. But really, all they get is robbed.

  What else did Scooby say? If something sounds too good to be true…then it probably is.

  Suddenly it hits me. I robbed an old lady yesterday.

  “Here they come!” someone else yells.

  At that moment, the front door opens. There are a lot of cops, and a lot of guys in suits. One thing I notice right away is that the guys in suits are in handcuffs. Some of them are trying to hide their faces.

  Then I recognize Jonny Watts. He’s got handcuffs on too. His cocky attitude is gone. He looks like he wants to cry.

  I know how he feels.

  “You got to be kidding me,” I say.

  “Sorry, bro,” says the guy I was talking to. “Heck of a way to start your first day.”

  The guys in suits are being loaded into cop cars. But I can’t watch anymore. I find a bench and sit down.

  Scooby was right. Cor ruption is everywhere.

  Who was I kidding? I thought I could make it in the world of high finance. But the only firm that would give me a chance turned out to be crooked.

  I put my head in my hands. I don’t belong in this city. I need to leave. Ever since Moms and I came here, I’ve had nothing but trouble. Little by little, everything has been taken away. I’ve lost it all. Home, car, money. Even my own mother was taken from me. And now I’ve lost the one thing I managed to hang on to all this time—hope.

  That’s it. I’m done. I’m out of here. I don’t know where I’m going, but anywhere is better than here. I’ll pawn my suit. I’ll get my car back. I’ll fill the tank with gas. And then I’ll leave.

  Suddenly I feel like a huge weight has come off my shoulders. I know this is the right thing to do.

  I go back to the bus station for the last time. I put on my old clothes again. I fold up my suit. Then I go to the pawnbroker’s place, just a few blocks away. I know Moms spent over four grand on the clothes and the briefcase. After a long argument, I get four hundred bucks for it all, plus a pawn ticket.

  It breaks my heart to think of how hard Moms worked to buy this suit for me. All so I could get a good job. But I’m not going to stand here in a pawnshop and cry. I have a new plan already, and I’m going to follow it. That’s one of the seven habits from my book. Know what you want and work for it. All I want right now is to get out of this town before it kills me.

  I make the long walk back to the impound lot. I go to the counter and hand over most of the cash I just got. The guy behind the counter asks me to wait a minute while he finds his receipt book.

  I don’t care. What’s my hurry? I have nothing but time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After I pay my towing charge and the storage fees, I have eighty-one dollars left. That’s enough to fill the tank with gas and buy enough food for a few days. And then what will I do? I have no idea. It’s in God’s hands now.

  I never was very religious. But maybe I should start going to church. Nothing I do seems to work. And come wintertime, a nice warm church would be a good place to hang out.

  Then I remember something. How could I have forgotten? I was supposed to have a date with Yolanda tonight.

  Well, that’s not going to happen now. I’m so depressed I can’t even face her. What will I do? Just not show up, I guess. I hate doing that, but I can’t look her in the eye and tell her I’m homeless. Unemployed. Broke. She would throw me out like last week’s trash. And her dad would hold the door open for her.

  It’s not right to just blow her off. But it doesn’t matter if I call her or stand her up. Either way, I lose her. And after what I’ve just been through, I can’t take the idea of being humiliated again.

  Today was supposed to be the best day of my life. Instead, it’s one of the worst. I haven’t felt this empty since I watched my mother pass away.

  “Give me a second to find your keys,” says the owner. He’s looking around behind the counter. “It’s a little crazy here this morning. The courier is late again.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Take your time. I got nowhere to be.”

  The owner goes to the door and opens it.

  “Steve!” he yells. “That courier come by yet?”

  I can’t hear Steve’s answer, but it must be bad news. The owner slams the door and shakes his head in disgust.

  “People are so unreliable,” he says to himself. Then he picks up a newspaper and looks under it. My keys are underneath. “Here are your keys, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  I take my keys. But I don’t leave just yet.

  A lightbulb has gone off in my head.

  “You say you’re waiting for a courier?”

  I ask him.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I have a package that has to go across town. And it needs to be there in an hour.”

  “You mind me asking how much they charge you for that?”

  “Thirty-five dollars.”

  I nod.

  “I’ll do it for twenty,” I say.

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Give me the package, and I’ll deliver it right now. Twenty bucks. Guaranteed.”

  “How do I know you won’t steal it?”

  I take out my wallet. I remove my driver’s license and put that in my shirt pocket. Then I hand my wallet over to him.

  “Here,” I say. “That’s everything I have. All my id, my money, everything. When I come back, call them up and ask if they got the package all right. Then you pay me and give me my wallet back.”

  The owner stands there staring at me for a minute. I think he’s about to throw me out. But then he nods.

  “You got yourself a deal,” he says.

  I hold out my hand. We shake.

  “I won’t let you down,” I say.

  The package is a manila envelope. It feels like it’s full of papers. I take it under my arm. Then I go out to the lot and find my car. It starts up right away. That’s something to be happy about, at least. If I had engine trouble, I might just have to lie down and die on the spot.

  Then I drive across town. It feels good to have my wheels again. I find the address with no trouble. It’s a law office downtown. I know this city like the back of my hand. That’s one good thing about all the time I spent job hunting.

  I drop the package off. Then I head back to the lot.

  Back in the office, the owner is waiting for me when I come in.

  “I already called them,” he says. “They said you made the delivery. Nice work. Here’s your wallet back. And here’s twenty bucks.”

  He hands me a crisp new bill. I put it in my wallet, along with the cash I have left. It’s a lot more fun putting money into a wallet than it is taking it out. Now I’m twenty dollars richer. Suddenly I don’t feel quite so low anymore.

  “Thanks,” I say. “You going to have more packages to deliver?”

  “I have to send one out every week,” he says. “They’re legal documents. Always to the same address. And they always need to be there by the same time. You think you can promise me that?”

  “You bet,” I say. “I’m never late. Guaranteed.”

  “Well, you just got yourself a job,” says the owner.

  “Mister,” I say, “you have no idea how good those words sound to me right now.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Okay, so one little courier job a week is nothing. But ten of them…that would start to add up. A hundred, and I’d be in good shape.

  It looks like I have a new job. And this one is not too good to be true.

  It’s just good.

  It’s two days later. I’m broke again. But this time it’s okay. I just spent fifty bucks on a stack of business cards. I’ve never had business cards before. They make me feel official. But more importantly, they make me look good. />
  The business cards say NEV-R-LATE URBAN COURIER. And they have my name and phone number on them.

  The phone number belongs to the new cell phone I just got. That’s what I spent the rest of my money on. Can’t do business if you don’t have a phone.

  So now I’m walking door to door. I go into every business I see. Lawyers, doctors, dentists, financial firms. I don’t care. Everyone needs a courier sometime. And I want that courier to be me.

  I do the same thing in each place. I introduce myself to the receptionist. I hand her a card and explain who I am. Then I ask if the office manager is available. Most of the time, the answer is no. But sometimes I get to speak to the person in charge.

  “I’ll make this fast, because I know you’re busy,” I say to them. “I can deliver anywhere in the city for half the price of the competition. I’m never late. Guaranteed. If you want a reference, call this number.” And I give them the name and number of the owner of the impound lot. He’s already agreed to be my reference. So maybe my car getting towed wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  I’ve been doing this for a whole day. I’ve knocked on maybe fifty doors. I want to hit fifty more before five o’clock.

  It’s just three o’clock when my phone rings for the first time. I’m so excited, I almost drop it. A jeweler needs something picked up and delivered to him asap. Can I do it now?

  “Sure thing,” I say. “You’ll have it in an hour.”

  While I’m making that delivery, the phone rings again. A music store owner needs me to go pick up a guitar for him. It just happens to be on the way to the jeweler.

  “No problem,” I say.

  That’s my first day. I make fifty bucks, cash. I charged the jeweler a little extra because it was a rush job. But he didn’t care. He was just happy to get his package.

  I sleep in my car again that night. But this time, I don’t mind. I had enough money at the end of the day to buy a decent meal. And my brain is spinning with possibilities. How far can I take this thing? It’s the right idea at the right time. I always thought I would love to work in finance. But it would be even better to work for myself.