Mort Ziff Is Not Dead

by Cary Fagan

  “There,” she said with satisfaction. “Don’t my boys look handsome?”

  Marcus immediately messed up his hair and let his tongue hang out. “Gee, thanks, Ma!” he said in a hick accent. “Ah think ah looks real good!”

  Our reservations were for six o’clock, and we were twenty minutes early. Marcus said, “Can we look in the gift shop?”

  Larry’s eyes widened. “There’s a gift shop?”

  “Go ahead,” Dad said. “Just be careful not to break anything.”

  We went down the corridor. Everything in the gift shop had the word Florida on it, along with a palm tree, a flamingo or a shark. There were scarves, ashtrays, beach balls, belts, bags, ukuleles. Larry picked up a metal penny bank made to look like a coffin. When you wound it up a little plastic skeleton arm came out to pull in the coin. On the side it said, Greetings from Miami Beach!

  “Seeing this is the greatest part of the whole trip,” Larry said.

  “Better than the beach and the ocean?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Better than the swimming pool and the food in the dining room?” asked Marcus.

  “Yup.”

  Marcus and I rarely agreed on anything, but Marcus circled his finger beside his ear to mean that Larry was crazy and I nodded. We joined my parents in the lobby, where a long line of people waiting to get into the dining room snaked around the reception desk. We had a reservation so the host took us to our table right away. So did the Horvaths, just behind us. As Amy passed by me she said, “I can’t believe you put a spider down my shirt today!” Then she gave me her wink.

  “Good job, Wormy!” Marcus said, slapping me on the back. But my mother gave me a disapproving look. The waiter came and I ordered the special—roast chicken and mashed potatoes. We were just having our dessert when the lights went down. Four spotlights shone on the stage and lit up a big drum kit and three guitars on stands.

  Ladies and gentlemen! Direct from London! It’s the pop sensation…the Centipedes!

  The four guys we had seen in the lobby came running onto the stage. The drummer held up his sticks and banged them together as he counted, “One, two, three, four…” And then they started to play.

  You are so nice, ah-ah-ah,

  You are so cute, ooh-ooh-ooh,

  And when I see you, wah-wah-wah,

  I feel my heart go woo-woo-woo.

  The rest of the words were drowned out by all the screaming teenagers. Suddenly they rushed toward the stage and started dancing. They shook their bodies and threw their arms in the air and looked like they had itching powder down their shirts.

  “Not like the way we used to dance, that’s for sure,” Dad shouted over the noise.

  “I think it’s great!” Mom said, snapping her fingers to the beat. “Come on, Phil, let’s join in.”

  “Mom, no!” wailed Marcus. But it was too late. Mom was already dragging Dad out of his chair.

  The Centipedes played for an hour. I had to admit the music was catchy, even if the words were pretty lame. But I kept thinking about Mort Ziff, and I was sure that Amy was thinking about him too. At last the lead singer shouted, “Good night, Miami Beach!” and they rushed off the stage. We joined the crush leaving and had to wait for a free elevator to take us back to our room.

  Larry turned on the television. I watched for a while and then went into the bedroom to look out the open window at the dark beach and the ocean. As I felt the soft air on my skin I wondered where Mort Ziff was.

  A noise made me turn and I saw my Mom coming up beside me. “It’s pretty nice here, Norman.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I just wanted to say that I know why you put a spider down that girl’s shirt—Amy Horvath.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s because you have a crush on her.”

  “Ah, Mom—”

  “I know it can be scary to talk to a girl you like. But really, Norman, it’s easy. Just go up and say hi. I bet the two of you would really get along. Now, you better get ready for bed. We’ve got another day to look forward to tomorrow.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and went out again. I wanted to say something to her, but what? That I was secret friends with Amy and that if my brothers knew they would kill me? I went to put on my pajamas instead.

  Cheese Asteroid

  In the morning, Mom and Dad tried to convince us to go to an exercise class on the deck by the pool. “You want me to do something healthy on my holiday?” Marcus asked. “Next thing you’ll be asking me to eat asparagus.” My parents just shrugged and went by themselves.

  We gave them enough time to take the elevator before leaving our room. We went to the library and sat at the table waiting for the Horvath sisters. Larry’s confidence in knowing everything about Planet Furball seemed to have evaporated. He looked white as a sheet. Marcus started to complain about the girls being late, but then they walked in. The sisters moved silently behind us—Amy slipped a note into my hand—and then sat in the chairs on the other side of the table.

  “We get to decide on the format,” said Gloria. “First Danielle asks a question and Lame-Brain answers. Then they reverse. The first person to get a wrong answer loses.”

  “We don’t care. Donkey-Breath can go first,” Marcus replied.

  With the insults out of the way, the game began. Danielle said, “What is the only cure for catnip poisoning?”

  Larry answered right away. “Gorb oil. Now it’s my turn. Which rat used a whisker to sabotage the dome’s electrical grid?”

  “Easy,” Danielle said. “That was Bug-Eyes. How many cats were trapped in the space rover while searching for the mythical cheese asteroid?”

  “Seven. Want me to name them all?”

  Back and forth they went, each of them getting every answer right. It looked like neither of them could be stumped. But then Larry asked, “When a cat and a rat fell in love and ran away to the garbage zone, who betrayed them?”

  Danielle froze. I could see her thinking, her eyes moving back and forth.

  “Time’s running out,” Marcus said.

  “I…I don’t know. Was it Foulbreath?”

  “It’s a trick question,” Larry said. “No cat and rat have ever fallen in love on Planet Furball.”

  “Darn! I should have known.”

  “We won!” shouted Marcus. He and Larry leapt up and started jumping around the room. The sisters just stared glumly until they were finished and then we all filed out.

  “You know,” Danielle said to Larry, “a cat and a rat falling in love would be a great episode.”

  “Wouldn’t it? But could they really survive in the garbage zone?”

  “They’d have to build—”

  “Hey,” Marcus said. “No fraternizing with the enemy.”

  “That’s right,” said Gloria. “And now we’re tied at one win each. There has to be a tie-breaking contest between those two.”

  She pointed at me and Amy.

  “We’ll think of something,” Marcus said. “Right now, we’re going swimming.”

  “We’re going swimming too,” Gloria said.

  Marcus made a face. “It’s a good thing the ocean is so big.”

  Alligator Ballerina

  When we got back to the room, I went into the bathroom to look at Amy’s note. Immediately, somebody started pounding on the door.

  “Hey, Wormy!” called Marcus from the other side. “You have to beat that girl. Are you good at anything?”

  Yes, I thought, I’m good at ignoring my brothers. I unfolded the note and read it.

  Our parents are making us go out after we swim. But we have to talk about Mort Ziff! Meet me at the usual, 4 p.m.

  Amy

  But as I came out of the bathroom, Marcus saw me shoving the note into my pocket. I froze.

  “What’s that?” he said. “Let me guess. Are you writing a poem? About flowers and moonlight and, oh, I don’t know, what a dork you are? Let me see it.”

  “Maybe it’s a
fortune from a fortune cookie,” Larry said. “I bet I know what it says. Tonight at dinner you will be pelted with olive pits.”

  I had to think fast. “Actually, it’s an algebra problem I’m trying to figure out. Want to help?”

  “Oh, I would,” Marcus said, “but I’m too busy doing nothing.”

  My father came up to us. “You won’t be doing nothing for long. Listen, boys. We can’t spend every day at the hotel.”

  “Why not?” Larry asked.

  “Because there are things to see,” Mom said. “The Horvaths told us they’re going on an excursion, and we should too.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Mom,” said Marcus. “We should do the opposite of anything the Horvaths do.”

  But Mom went on. “We’re going to give you a choice. The first choice is an art museum.”

  Larry pretended to strangle himself. His face grew red and his tongue stuck out. Then his eyes rolled up and his head banged onto the coffee table.

  “The second choice is an alligator ranch.”

  My brothers began to chant, “Alligator ranch, alligator ranch!” I thought it sounded pretty good too. We quickly got dressed and went down to catch a special tourist bus in front of the hotel. The bus drove along, stopping to let people off at a shopping mall and a golf course. Then the big hotels disappeared and we passed houses with enormous verandas and wooden swings on their porches. The houses got smaller, and then we passed rows of run-down shops and hamburger joints and fried chicken stands. After that came some scrubby grass surrounded by broken fences and then, finally, a gate with a wooden sign. George and Martha’s Alligator Ranch.

  Anyone who enjoys the thought of seeing a big man in a tiny bathing suit wrestling an alligator would have loved this place. In fact, there were alligators of all sizes—small, medium and large—including some that had just hatched out of eggs. They were about the size of a banana and we got to hold one.

  At the end of our visit we went into the gift shop (Mom said that Florida had more gift shops than gas stations) where they had a lot of baby-sized plastic alligators dressed in clothes and held upright on little stands. There was an alligator dentist in a white coat holding a drill, an alligator baseball player with a bat, an alligator ballerina balanced on one foot. Only after looking carefully did I realize that they weren’t made of plastic; they were real baby alligators that had been stuffed. Pretty creepy, I thought, but Marcus begged our parents to let him buy a stuffed alligator playing a banjo. They let him get a key chain instead.

  On the bus ride back, Marcus kept pretending his key chain was a giant bee about to sting Larry’s ear. So Larry took off his shoe and pretended it was a swatter. He kept waving his shoe in the air until he accidentally smacked Marcus on the chin. Marcus wrestled Larry’s shoe away and threw it out the bus window. Fortunately, we were just rolling up to the front of the hotel. Larry limped around on one shoe while he looked for the other in the bushes.

  It was still a warm afternoon. Larry put his shoe back on and he and Marcus said they were going up to the room to change.

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” I told my parents. “I think I left something in the games room.”

  “What did you leave,” Marcus asked, “your underwear?”

  “No. I left my favorite…my favorite…pencil.”

  “You have a favorite pencil?” Larry said. “But that pencil is so dull. Get it? Dull!”

  “You’re the one who’s going to get it,” Marcus said, tweaking Larry’s nose. While my parents were trying to get them to behave I scampered down the hall. I went straight to the coffee shop, where Amy was waiting in our booth.

  “Sorry,” I said. “We just came back from an alligator ranch.”

  “We were at Parrot World,” Amy said. “A parrot pooped on Gloria’s head.”

  “I can’t top that,” I laughed.

  “Listen,” Amy said. “I’m tired of being afraid of my sisters. Maybe we should try to stand up to them.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea—at least not with my brothers. They’ll only make my life more miserable.”

  “You should think about it.”

  “Okay. But what are we going to do about Mort Ziff?”

  “We should go talk to him. He must be feeling really depressed.”

  “Maybe he wants to be left alone.”

  “Then he’ll tell us to buzz off. I got his room number from the front desk.”

  “All right, let’s go.”

  We got up and passed by Deloris, who was folding napkins. “That’s the way it is with people,” she sighed. “They come and they go.”

  Room 313 was at the end of the hall. I knocked softly on the door, but when there was no answer Amy banged with the flat of her hand.

  Mort Ziff’s voice came from inside. “What’s all that banging? There’s a carpenter’s convention, maybe?” The door opened and he stood there in his usual suit and tie. The little dog Napoleon squeezed between his feet to come up for a pat. “It’s the world’s youngest door-to-door salesmen,” he said. “I’m afraid that I’m not buying anything today.”

  “Can we come in?” I asked.

  He welcomed us with a flourish of his hand. His room was half the size of ours. The window looked out onto a brick wall. An open suitcase lay on the single bed.

  “You’re packing?” Amy asked.

  “No job, no room. That’s how it goes.”

  “It isn’t fair,” I said. “They can’t fire you. You’re the Mayor of Miami Beach. You’re an institution.”

  Mort Ziff raised an eyebrow. “Harvard University is an institution. I’m just a guy who tells jokes.”

  “But where are you going to live?”

  “That’s the two-dollar question. My agent is trying to find me a new gig. But it seems everybody wants the young comics these days. Or else these new rock and roll bands. I’ve been living at this hotel for so long it feels like home. I don’t know where I’ll go. But listen, you shouldn’t be worrying about me. You two should be out making the most of your holiday. You need to have fun. Go rob a candy store or something.”

  He ushered us out. We walked down the hall and took the elevator to the lobby. “I guess there’s nothing we can do,” Amy said.

  But I was thinking. “Mort Ziff needs to perform.”

  “But where?”

  “Here. Didn’t he say this feels like his home? He needs to perform here. Just not in the dining room.”

  Amy looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Okay, but then where? You don’t mean…wait a minute. Do you mean the coffee shop?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It really is kind of a dump.”

  “That’s why I think that the owner, Herbert Spitzer, might agree. What does he have to lose?”

  “I see your point. But we’d still have to convince him. And nobody sees Herbert Spitzer. He’s like—he’s like the Wizard of Oz.” But Amy smiled. “I guess we’re just going to have to see the man behind the curtain.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “It has to be before Mort Ziff leaves. It has to be right now.”

  We looked at each other, our eyes going wide. See Herbert Spitzer? See the reclusive millionaire who wears gold suits and keeps money stuffed in his refrigerator?

  Amy pressed the elevator button. The doors opened.

  The Penthouse

  We felt the elevator rise thirty-six floors, all the way to the penthouse at the top. The elevator doors opened straight onto a reception area with white walls and a glass desk. Behind the desk sat a man in a bow tie—the same man Mort Ziff had called the Grim Reaper.

  “No, absolutely not,” the man said into the telephone. “Mr. Spitzer wants complete control of the company or the deal is off.”

  He hung up and began writing something down. I gulped as we walked up to the desk.

  “Excuse me,” Amy said. “We’d like to speak to Mr. Spitzer.”

  The man squinted at us. “Mr. Spitzer never speaks to guests
. If you have a request or complaint, please go to the front desk.”

  “It isn’t either,” I said. “It’s a…a business proposition.”

  He stared at me a moment and then laughed, but not as if he thought anything was funny. “Mr. Spitzer isn’t interested in having a lemonade stand by the pool.”

  “That’s all right, Myron,” said a voice behind him. A door that I hadn’t noticed was open and a man stood before it. He was a big man, hefty, as my dad would say, and his hair was slicked back. He didn’t wear a suit made of gold, but a checked jacket and dark pants.

  “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “I’m Norman Fishbein. And this is Amy Horvath.”

  “Please step into my office.”

  He motioned for us to come around the desk and through the door. As I went in I looked around in disbelief. His office wasn’t fancy at all. It didn’t have jewels in the floor. In fact, it looked like some old apartment, with a small kitchen with ancient appliances, a Formica table with matching chairs, and a snug corner with a rocking chair and an old sofa. Sitting in the rocking chair was a very old woman, peering through her glasses while she knit a sweater.

  “Mama, we have guests,” Herbert Spitzer said in a loud voice.

  “How nice. Did you offer the young people a cold drink? I made some iced tea.”

  “I will, Mama.”

  Herbert Spitzer went over to the refrigerator. I remembered what people said—that he had a fridge full of money. But all I saw when he opened the door was milk, eggs, bread and the pitcher of iced tea. He poured two glasses.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip.

  In a louder voice Amy said, “It’s very good, Mrs. Spitzer.”

  “I’ve been making it that way for fifty years.”

  Herbert Spitzer smiled. “You two look surprised. I’ve made my office match the apartment where I grew up. My mother’s more comfortable that way. I hope you’re having a wonderful stay at my hotel.”

  “Oh, we are, Mr. Spitzer,” I said. “There’s just one thing. Or rather, one person. Mort Ziff.”