"What is brokers?" Mr. Marcus Shimko asked. "A broker is no good, otherwise he wouldn't be a broker. Brokers is fellers which they couldn't make a success of their own affairs, Mr. Zamp, so they butt into everybody else's. Particularly business brokers, Mr. Zamp. Real-estate brokers is bad enough, and insurings brokers is a lot of sharks also; but for a cutthroat, a low-life bum, understand me, the worst is a business broker!"
"That's all right, too, Mr. Shimko," Harry Zamp said timidly; "but if I would get a partner with say, for example, five hundred dollars, I could make a go of this here business."
Mr. Shimko nodded skeptically.
"I ain't saying you couldn't," he agreed, "but where would you find such a partner? Nowadays a feller with five hundred dollars don't think of going into retail business no more. The least he expects is he should go right away into manufacturing. Jobbing and retailing is nix for such a feller, understand me—especially clothing, Mr. Zamp, which nowadays even drug stores carries retail clothing as a side line, so cut up the business is."
Harry Zamp nodded gloomily.
"And, furthermore," Shimko added, "business brokers could no more get you a partner with money as they could do miracles, Mr. Zamp. Them days is past, Mr. Zamp, and all a business broker could do nowadays is to bring you a feller with experience, and you don't need a business broker for that, Mr. Zamp. Experience in the retail clothing business is like the measles. Everybody has had it."
"Then what should I do, Mr. Shimko?" Zamp asked helplessly. "I must got to get a partner with money somewhere, ain't it? And if I wouldn't go to a business broker, who then would I go to? A bartender?"
"Never mind!" Mr. Shimko exclaimed. "Some people got an idee all bartenders is bums, but wunst in a while a feller could get from a bartender an advice also. I got working for me wunst in my place down on Park Row a feller by the name Klinkowitz, which he is now manager of the Olympic Gardens on Rivington Street; and if I would have took that feller's advice, Mr. Zamp, instead I am worth now my tens of thousands I would got hundreds of thousands already. 'When you see a feller is going down and out, Mr. Shimko,' he always says to me, 'don't show him no mercy at all. If you set 'em up for a live one, Mr. Shimko,' he says, 'he would anyhow buy a couple of rounds; but a dead one, Mr. Shimko,' he says, 'if you show him the least little encouragement, understand me, the least that happens you is he gets away with the whole lunch-counter.' Am I right or wrong?"
Mr. Zamp nodded. He resented the imputation that he was a dead one, but he felt bound to agree with Mr. Shimko, in view of the circumstance that on the following day he would owe a month's rent with small prospect of being able to pay it. Indeed, he wondered at Mr. Shimko's amiability, for as owner of the Canal Street premises Shimko had the reputation of being a harsh landlord. Had Zamp but known it, however, store property on Canal Street was not in active demand of late, by reason of the new bridge improvements, and Shimko's amiability proceeded from a desire to retain Zamp as a tenant if the latter's solvency could be preserved.
"But I couldn't help myself, Mr. Zamp," Shimko went on. "I got no business keeping a restaurant at all."