You don't have to believe in the trolley company to let it take you where you want to go
A Man in Full“You don't have to believe in the trolley company to let it take you where you want to go” is an aphorism that turns institutional skepticism into a practical strategy. In a conversation presented as an exchange about something Trotsky said, the line first lands as a joke; for Raymond Peepgass, it becomes the key to a clandestine plan involving Croker Concourse.
The Saying in Conversation
The phrase is offered as a Trotsky saying, and its absurdity draws laughter from Harry Zale’s squadron. Its point is not developed in the conversation itself: the group treats it as funny without seeing what it has to do with anything. That mismatch between a joke’s apparent triviality and its later consequence gives the expression its narrative force.
Peepgass’s Reinterpretation
The line suddenly acquires practical meaning for Peepgass. He feels a significant mental shift and sees the beginnings of a theory, concept, or strategy. The trolley company becomes a figure for an institution whose services or procedures can be used without believing in it. For Peepgass, that thought opens a route to act inside banking procedures while keeping his purpose hidden.
His excitement is inseparable from the plan’s illicit character. He recognizes that it will require secrecy, intimate knowledge of banking, resourceful confederates, stealth, and a thief’s heart. The revelation unsettles him even as it exhilarates him: the cautious Harvard MBA who chose banking now imagines that he possesses the qualities needed to carry out a covert scheme.
From Aphorism to Scheme
Peepgass’s idea is to have Charlie Croker hand Croker Concourse over to the bank through a deed in lieu of foreclosure, avoiding the foreclosure process and its auction. He then imagines the bank quietly unloading the building for a fraction of its cost, as Friedman is already urging Harry Zale to do, while a syndicate is formed to take it off the bank’s hands.
The crucial personal opportunity is for Peepgass to organize that syndicate without anyone at PlannersBanc knowing. He imagines crushing Croker and emerging with untold millions, but the necessity of secrecy is already built into the plan: the phrase does not mean that Peepgass trusts the system. It gives him a way to treat the system as a vehicle for an outcome of his own.
