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Ebook has 104 lines and 6747 words, and 3 pages

Parking, Unlimited

I could have taken that three hundred dollars and gone to school for a year, by washing dishes two hours a night. I had worked for that money, too; shocking wheat for twelve hours a day in the August sun is no vacation. But Slim Coleman convinced me that we could run that three hundred into enough to take us both for four years.

I hadn't even had time to get a haircut--and I did want a haircut; now it was pretty shaggy.

But Slim, diplomat that he is, didn't even seem to notice my hair. "I've got a real deal," he said, and his deep eyes were shining with enthusiasm. "Have you got any money?"

"Some," I said cautiously.

"It takes three hundred. Have you got that much?"

I had intended to say no, but Slim has a way of fixing his deep, somber eyes on you that gives ineffable dignity even to a touch. "Okay," I said hopelessly. "What's the bite?"

"Well, you see, it's like this." We went into a drug store and ordered cokes, and Slim characteristically insisted on paying for them when he probably couldn't have bought a package of cigarettes. I let him pay, too. I had three hundred and one dollars, and I had no intention of parting with a nickel of it--except a dollar for a haircut.

"I was using the brain-finder and I ran across the owner of this unused garage in the Loop. His name is Richard LaBombard and he's got a lot of parking lots through the Loop, and you know what he's doing?"

I saw the waitress stare at me. I swallowed and tried to listen to Slim. "No."

Slim was staring at the waitress. "He loads them up with used cars every day so those who are hunting a parking place can't get in," he said absently. "You know what he wants?"

"Well, no." I never could figure those things, but Slim could see the angles a mile away. He was always good at that.

"He's made an application for a permit to build a parking ramp that will cover a solid block down in the middle of the Loop. Now, if he can build a place to park eight or ten thousand cars, naturally that one spot is going to be the best business spot in the city. And Richard LaBombard holds leases or options on half the store space around that block. He stands to make millions."

"Where does my three hundred come in?"

Slim ignored the acidulousness in my voice. "Well, as I say, I followed him with the brain-finder and found him holding hands with the mayor's wife at a skating rink--and the next day I--ah--persuaded him to give me an option to lease this building on the edge of the Loop."

"You mean you blackmailed him."

"That's unusual. You've got some of your own money in this deal."

Like a gentleman, Slim ignored that thrust. "Tomorrow is the first. I've got to raise two hundred and fifty for a month's rent. We'll need fifty more for deposits on light, heat, and power. We'll make a million within a month. We split fifty-fifty."

"How do you make the million?"

Slim looked around. Nobody was near; he leaned close and whispered. "This is the invention of the century. We can solve the parking problem of the entire city. You know how it is--you can't even get into a parking lot after ten a.m. Lots of businesses are threatening to put branches out in the suburbs."

"Yes?"

"The parking problem must be solved if the city is to survive," Slim said dramatically.

"Okay, but how can you make any more out of an old building than anybody else?"

He whispered again. "I can create a magnetic field that will slow electrons down to almost zero velocity. A car will shrink to about four inches long." He stared at me intently. "Do you see what that will mean?"

I sighed. "I'm afraid I do. If it works, you can pack a million cars in a space that ordinarily would hold about a thousand." I tried to stop my enthusiasm, but it was too late. The idea was taking hold. "And that garage is right across the street from Newton's, the biggest department store in the city."

"The parking problem was intensified last week when they abolished parking on the street so the afternoon traffic could get through. Boy, this is the spot for us!" Slim said.

"Will it take all of three hundred dollars?" I asked Slim.

He nodded gravely, "Every cent. And then it will be a shoestring."

"Wouldn't two hundred and ninety-nine be enough?"

"No," said Slim. He looked back at me. He had always been that way; he never compromised with my money.

I shuddered when I saw my hair in the mirror as we left. But, I knew I'd better keep the dollar for cigarettes....

We paid the first month's rent; I put up the deposits, and Slim brought a bunch of wire and stuff from his basement, and we worked till one o'clock winding gadgets and building a regular stall to run a car into. This garage had a ramp going to the basement floor, and we decided to use that floor. Also, there was an old freight elevator up to the second and third floors, and we could park a few on the main floor and send a few upstairs when we had time, because of course we didn't want the secret to get out.

Slim tried the squeezer-upper when he got it finished. He set a couple of old saw-horses inside and, turned on the juice. It was uncanny to see those things shrink. You could even hear the legs scrape on the concrete floor as they pulled together. In just about three seconds the saw-horses were an inch high. Then Slim reversed the current and they expanded to normal size again. All this in about one breath.

"But look," I said, suddenly stricken with a horrible thought. "What if you don't get a car back exactly the size it was at first? Then new tires wouldn't fit, new parts wouldn't fit--oh, my goodness!" I was abruptly overwhelmed with the enormity of such damage.

"That's all taken care of," he assured me. "The electrons in any given object seem to have a tendency to resume their former orbits if they get a chance. In other words, if I expand a car to almost its normal size and then cut off the power, the electrons will sort of coast into their original orbits and the car will resume its exact former size. Sort of a quantum jump, I suppose."

I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"Of course, if you go too far, you'll have an oversize car, but you could reduce it again," said Slim. "Now in the morning we'll hang out a parking sign and let them drive onto the main floor. You run the cars into the basement, and we'll have this thing down under the ramp, out of sight." Slim's deep eyes were glowing. "We'll make a million," he said, rubbing his hands.

But it was a mankiller. I handed out claim checks and drove cars to the basement. Slim reduced them and hauled them across the room to a lineup. That was funny--seeing a car shrink to three or four inches long. It was an irresistible impulse to pick it up, but when you tried, you changed your mind. The cars were practically as heavy in their small size as in their big size, and that made it something of a problem to get them moved around.

We had borrowed a toe-and-heel, a sort of crowbar with rollers on it, and with the reduced friction from the extremely small tires of the cars, it wasn't too hard to move them, but it was still a mankiller to move a thousand in one day, and move each twice. We took turns at the reducer. I could handle them best by catching them under the front axle, but we decided to make them six inches long so it would be easier. The metal in its smaller size seemed as tough as it had been normally, but the parts were pretty small to get hold of with anything strong enough to handle them.

Slim solved this problem the second day when he put a long piece of gas-pipe on the heel-and-toe and shrank it considerably. The second day, too, we had two men working upstairs. The third day we had a gadget made so that we could roll a car's front wheel on it and then pull the car anywhere. That was when we began to get our breath. The other way had been tough. I don't know how Slim stood it at all; if I hadn't worked in the wheat-fields all summer I would have fallen from exhaustion.

We had two of those gadgets made and then we tilted the reducing stall a little. We'd block the wheels with a two-by-four after we had a car inside, then reduce it, take out the block, let the car roll onto the gadget and haul it away. We arranged them on the concrete floor in rows about four feet apart. When somebody came back to get their car out we had to pinch-bar the car back up on the gadget and wheel it to the stall.

On the last day of the month, LaBombard came in to collect his next month's rent. He was all eyes and he said he didn't see how we could do it. "You took in twenty-two hundred cars yesterday and this building won't hold over six hundred," he said, his eyes darting all around. "You must have a fast turnover."

Slim kidded him. "We put 'em on the roof," he said, and paid him and pushed him out. I didn't like the look in that man's eyes as he left.

"Well," said Slim exuberantly to me, "we're sitting on thirty thousand dollars. Think you can get through college on that?"

"I hope I can take time off to get a haircut," I said fervently. It was embarrassing to have people look at me and suddenly snicker and turn away to hide their faces. The trouble was, we didn't dare turn the reducing over to anybody else, and so we both worked like robots.

Yes, we had a deal. Late at night, after we'd closed up and had time for some coffee, Slim would talk about how we were going to build a chain of parking ramps across the country.

"We'll make billions," he said, his deep eyes shining with a far-away fanaticism that only Slim Coleman can exhibit, "and we'll be known as the saviors of civilization. We'll call ourselves Parking Unlimited."

Then one night the building inspector came. We were just resting for a moment, with no cars in sight, when we looked around and there he stood. It startled us, because absolutely no one was allowed in the basement.

"What do you want?" Slim asked, and just then a car appeared on the ramp, coming down to the reducer.

"I'm the building inspector. I'm checking on the weight you're putting in this building. It's an old building, you know." And all the time his eyes were darting everywhere.

"Did LaBombard send you?" asked Slim. The car was halfway down.

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