He did not always lose.
It was true he lost Lock and Key, the upscale furniture company he founded… all seventeen stores spread through the Midwest, Chicago, and Los Angeles. He lost his stock, cash, and retirement accounts. Oh, he also lost his family, the respect of his two daughters and most of his friends. But he hardly considered himself a loser.
He was a winner.
Starting with nothing, John Schatz sold his engraved Perazzi shotgun (hidden from auditors in a friend’s cabin) for $8,000. He used it all to buy stock in a tech company. He didn’t exactly throw a dart, but watching the news figured any tech company would do. Four months later he cashed out, making six thousand dollars.
Schatz was encouraged. At this rate he would recover one million dollars in two years. Not enough, and not fast enough, but a good start.
He needed a partner. Schatz always used partners, and he had a problem. No one from his past would talk to him. One day, strolling to the little grocery store on 46th and Central, he passed a walk-up office building. The concrete steps were unswept. A crumpled Budweiser can lay on the landing. Among peeling doors he spotted an engraved plastic sign, Michael Vanaday, Attorney at Law. He would have preferred working with a woman. That’s why he liked the interior design industry, but times had changed. You take what you can get.
Mr. Vanaday resembled a scarecrow. He was perhaps twenty years younger, an angular forty-ish lawyer with thinning blond hair and an open, long-nosed, pock-marked face. He was a tax and personal bankruptcy specialist but this made no difference. Like any lawyer he could generate contracts and file lawsuits. Schatz told him he found a piece of land next to the Walmart in Oakdale. Who owned the land? Vanaday asked. Who wanted it? What could be built?
Who cared?
With no money of their own he and the lawyer formed a partnership with the land owner. A rather greedy land owner, who inherited the six acres and was anxious to see the land sold. The attorney and the ever-affable Mr. Schatz applied to the city and had the land re-zoned. Then Schatz found a buyer, an apartment building developer. It was the fourth number he dialed. Was the developer interested in this little overlooked gem? Quite.
Three months later Schatz, Vanaday, and the landowner divided $1.2 million, half going to the landowner. Not bad for putting none of their money at risk.
Schatz was fifty-eight. He lived in a single room overlooking an alley. With no car, he took buses through the working-class neighborhoods of Minneapolis. Dinner was usually low-salt canned pinto beans or a bag of frozen vegetables. A person would have imagined, now that a bit of money jingled in his pocket, he would take a moment to consider his options. That he would proceed carefully.
That person did not know John Schatz.
Schatz rented space in a strip mall and ordered desks and phones. He hired three salespeople. Not especially successful or qualified salespeople, but the two young women and young man dressed well. They were good looking. Close enough. He would do the rest.
He opened a store under the name Catalina Interiors. Business was good, and he moved from his rooming house to a comfortable two-bedroom apartment, and then into a townhome. He leased a Jeep, and made friends with his fellow entrepreneurs. The nail salon and liquor store and bridal shop owners did well. When they bitterly, profanely complained about Donald Trump, he was bemused. He rather suspected they would happily, though secretly, vote for him that fall.
Schatz secured a second store, in Eagan. Concentrating on wholesale and commercial accounts, he began shipping to national buyers, using his previously-learned internet experience. He hired four more employees. Then the COVID lockdowns began in earnest.
In a month he was bankrupt.
Before they could take his Jeep, he met a florist, a middle-aged woman. Laticia spent her life as a clerk, and then a bouquet designer, and wanted to open her own store. Using a credit card (why did they keep sending those?) Schatz went 50/50 with her on an internet and delivery launch. By necessity, they rented store space in a poor neighborhood, East Lake Street, in Minneapolis. A neighborhood of graffiti and gunfire, but they felt secure. The store was next to the Third District police headquarters.
Then George Floyd died.
Laticia cried on his shoulder as they watched firefighters pouring water on the smoking remains of their store. The Third District police headquarters lay in similar ruins. He didn’t know what to say to his partner. ‘Nothing’ seemed best.
This morning John Schatz sits in his rented room. The room has a table, a chair, a microwave, an ancient, humming refrigerator, and a small bed.
He puts on socks and work boots and grabs a paper bag holding a banana and a handful of unshelled peanuts. He has a bus to catch. It will take him to a warehouse, where there is a Will Call office with a file cabinet with a list of contacts.
A man doesn’t need much. A little food, a place to sleep. And about ten million dollars. That’s all.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com