The Fall-Down Artist by Thomas Lipinski Page A

going to pave the way for them, literally. The mills and plants, we’ll buy them up and knock them down. Hell, with the shape they’re in, a good stiff wind will do the job for us. Then rebuild and attract the new companies, the new employers, the new blood. This place, Steel Center, is up in the Mon Valley. The deal for that place, my deal, is cinched. But it’s just the first of many. Look around; every river valley in the area is on its last legs. We’ll rebuild them all.”
    â€œIt could happen,” Dorsey allowed. “The papers have stories about Carnegie Mellon and Pitt research projects that the high-tech people should eat up. But this stuff is all in its infancy. Be careful with your dough.”
    â€œAgain, all types of companies will be enticed,” Martin Dorsey said. “But you seem concerned about our ability to attract high tech. Well, don’t be. Listen, son, they’re here. There’s a company, up off Route Twenty-eight along the Allegheny, that’s already putting out all types of electronic equipment. Defibrillators, the electric paddles they use to whack a person after a heart attack? They’re making experimental ones that are implanted into a patient’s chest like a pacemaker. They can’t fill the orders, there’s that much demand.”
    â€œSorry, Pop,” Dorsey said. “I’m in no position to make an investment, if that’s what this is about. Business is good but not that good.”
    â€œCarroll, I do wish you would stop looking at the world through a green beer bottle,” Martin Dorsey said, shaking his head. “You think I started this speech with a near apology for our lives just to hit you up for a donation? You’re right, you don’t have what it takes for a deal like this. ButI do. Not in money, in services; that’s where my value is, and I stand to make a mint. I asked you here to let you know I intend to cut you in on my take. What you’ll get is a fraction of a fraction, but it will pay the mortgage on your Polack town house and keep People’s Natural Gas from removing you some winter from the preferred customers list.”
    â€œSave it,” Dorsey said. “I’d just have to hire an accountant who would steal it in the end. Besides, why so generous in your old age?”
    â€œWho’s generous? What am I giving away?” Martin Dorsey asked. “I’m seventy-one years old, and money doesn’t mean what it used to. I can get all I want just by reminding a few guys here and there about some old debt from years ago. It’s the deals that matter, making things happen when maybe they’re not supposed to. Convincing people to see things my way against what they think is their better judgment. Keeps me going like I was thirty again. But you, you’re young and you’re not ambitious by anyone’s standard. You need money to get along. And this I can provide right now.”
    â€œDon’t need it,” Dorsey said. “Thanks, but I get along okay.”
    â€œYes, you do need it; think it over. And don’t thank me because thanks are not in order. I’m old and I want to feel good about myself. This will help to do it. Makes me feel that everything between us has turned out okay. It’s my illusion, my present to myself.”
    â€œDon’t need it,” Dorsey repeated, shaking an empty can and thinking he had closed the discussion.
    â€œThink about it,” Martin Dorsey hissed, his eyes suddenly cold. The effect was not lost on Dorsey.
    â€œI’ll toss it around.”
    â€œGood,” Martin Dorsey said. “Now get out. I’ll give you a call.”

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    Although it might have its rivals, Dorsey was sure the emergency room at Mercy Hospital was the city’s most hectic. Located in Uptown, the hospital sat in the middle of a crumbling neighborhood in which a number of federal renovation projects had fallen