by William Tenn
On the way to the druggist, I stopped in a stationery store and bought a book of blank receipts. I filled out most of it right there. New York, N. Y. and the date. Received from Mr. Ogo Eksar the sum of twenty dollars for a five-dollar bill bearing the serial number........ "That okay?" I asked him. "I'm putting in the serial number to make it look as if you want that particular bill, you know, what the lawyers call the value-received angle."
He screwed his head around and read the receipt. Then he checked the serial number of the bill I was holding. He nodded.
We had to wait for the druggist to get through with a couple of customers. When I signed the receipt, he read it to himself, shrugged and went ahead and stamped it with his seal.
I paid him the two bits: I was the one making the profit.
Eksar slid a crisp new twenty to me along the glass of the counter. He watched while I held it up to the light, first one side, then the other.
"Good bill?" he asked.
"Yes. You understand: I don't know you, I don't know your money."
"Sure. I'd do it myself with a stranger." He put the receipt and my five-dollar bill in his pocket and started to walk away.
"Hey," I said. "You in a hurry?"
"No." He stopped, looking puzzled. "No hurry. But you've got the twenty for a five. We made the deal. It's all over."
"All right, so we made the deal. How about a cup of coffee?"
He hesitated.
"It's on me," I told him. "I'll be a big shot for a dime. Come on, let's have a cup of coffee."
Now he looked worried. "You don't want to back out? I've got the receipt. It's all notarized. I gave you a twenty, you gave me a five. We made a deal."
"It's a deal, it's a deal," I said, shoving him into an empty booth. "It's a deal, it's all signed, sealed and delivered. Nobody's backing out. I just want to buy you a cup of coffee."
His face cleared up, all the way through that dirt. "No coffee. Soup. I'll have some mushroom soup."
"Fine, fine. Soup, coffee, I don't care. I'll have coffee."
I sat there and studied him. He hunched over the soup and dragged it into his mouth, spoonful after spoonful, the living picture of a bum who hadn't eaten all day. But pure essence of bum, triple-distilled, the label of a fine old firm.
A guy like this should be lying in a doorway trying to say no to a cop's nightstick, he should be coughing his alcoholic guts out. He shouldn't be living in a real honest-to-God hotel, or giving me a twenty for a five, or swallowing anything as respectable as mushroom soup.
But it made sense. A TV giveaway show, they want to do this, they hire a damn good actor, the best money can buy, to toss their dough away. A guy who'll be so good a bum that people'll just laugh in his face when he tries to give them a deal with a profit.
"You don't want to buy anything else?" I asked him.
He held the spoon halfway to his mouth and stared at me suspiciously. "Like what?"
"Oh, I don't know. Like maybe you want to buy a ten for a fifty. Or a twenty for a hundred dollars?"
He thought about it, Eksar did. Then he went back to his soup, shoveling away. "That's no deal," he said contemptuously. "What kind of a deal is that?"
"Excuse me for living. I just thought I'd ask. I wasn't trying to take advantage of you." I lit a cigarette and waited.
My friend with the dirty face finished the soup and reached for a paper napkin. He wiped his lips. I watched him: he didn't smudge a spot of the grime around his mouth. He just blotted the drops of soup up. He was dainty in his own special way.
"Nothing else you want to buy? I'm here, I've got time right now. Anything else on your mind, we might as well look into it."
He balled up the paper napkin and dropped it into the soup plate. It got wet. He'd eaten all the mushrooms and left the soup.
"The Golden Gate Bridge," he said all of a sudden.
I dropped the cigarette. "What?"
"The Golden Gate Bridge. The one in San Francisco. I'll buy that. I'll buy it for..." he lifted his eyes to the fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling and thought for a couple of seconds "...say a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Cash on the barrel."
"Why the Golden Gate Bridge?" I asked him like an idiot.
"That's the one I want. You asked me what else I want to buy—well, that's what else. The Golden Gate Bridge."
"What's the matter with the George Washington Bridge? It's right here in New York, it's across the Hudson River. It's a newer bridge. Why buy something all the way out on the coast?"
He grinned at me as if he admired my cleverness. "Oh, no," he said, twitching his left shoulder hard. Up, down, up, down. "I know what I want. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A hundred and a quarter. Take it or leave it."
"The George Washington Bridge," I argued, talking my head off just so I'd have a chance to think, "has a nice toll set-up, fifty cents a throw, and lots of traffic, plenty of traffic. I don't know what the tolls are on the Golden Gate, but I'm damn sure you don't have anywhere near the kind of traffic that New York can draw. And then there's maintenance. The Golden Gate's one of the longest bridges in the world, you'll go broke trying to keep it in shape. Dollar for dollar, location for location, I'd say the George Washington's a better deal for a man who's buying a bridge."
"The Golden Gate," he said, slamming the table with his open hand and letting a whole series of tics tumble through his face. "I want the Golden Gate and nothing but the Golden Gate. Don't give me a hard time again. Do you want to sell or don't you?
I'd had a chance to think it through. And I knew that Ricardo's angle had been the angle. I was in.
"Sure I'll sell. If that's what you want, you're the doctor. But look—all I can sell you is my share of the Golden Gate Bridge, whatever equity in it I may happen to own."
He nodded. "I want a receipt. Put that down on the receipt."
I put it down on the receipt. And back we went. The druggist notarized the receipt, shoved the stamping outfit in the drawer under the counter and turned his back on us. Eksar counted out six twenties and one five from a big roll of bills, all of them starchy new. He put the roll back into his pants pocket and started away again.
"More coffee?" I said, catching up. "A refill on the soup?"
He turned a very puzzled look at me and kind of twitched all over. "Why? What do you want to sell now?"
I shrugged. "What do you want to buy? You name it. Let's see what other deals we can work out."
This was all taking one hell of a lot of time, but I had no complaints. I'd made a hundred and forty dollars in fifteen minutes. Say a hundred and thirty-eight fifty, if you deducted expenses like notary fees, coffee, soup—all legitimate expenses, all low. I had no complaints.
But I was waiting for the big one. There had to be a big one.
Of course, it could maybe wait until the TV program itself. They'd be asking me what was on my mind when I was selling Eksar all that crap, and I'd be explaining, and they'd start handing out refrigerators and gift certificates at Tiffany's and...
Eksar had said something while I was away in cloud-land. Something damn unfamiliar. I asked him to say it again.
"The Sea of Azov," he told me. "In Russia. I'll give you three hundred and eighty dollars for it."
I'd never heard of the place. I pursed my lips and thought for a second. A funny amount—three hundred and eighty. And for a whole damn sea. I tried an angle.
"Make it four hundred and you've got a deal."
He began coughing his head off, and he looked mad. "What's the matter," he said between coughs, "three hundred and eighty is a bad price? It's a small sea, one of the smallest. It's only 14,000 square miles. And do you know what the maximum depth is?"
I looked wise. "It's deep enough."
"Forty-nine feet," Eksar shouted. "That's all, forty-nine feet! Where are you going to do better than three hundred and eighty dollars for a sea like that?"
"Take it easy," I said, patting his dirty shoulder. "Let's split the di
fference. You say three eighty, I want four hundred. How about leaving it at three ninety?" I didn't really care: ten bucks more, ten bucks less. But I wanted to see what would happen.
He calmed down. "Three hundred and ninety dollars for the Sea of Azov," he muttered to himself, a little sore at being a sucker, at being taken. "All I want is the sea itself; it's not as if I'm asking you to throw in the Kerch Strait, or maybe a port like Taganrog or Osipenko..."
"Tell you what." I held up my hands. "I don't want to be hard. Give me my three ninety and I'll throw in the Kerch Strait as a bonus. Now how about that?"
He studied the idea. He sniffled. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "All right," he said, finally. "It's a deal. Azov and the Kerch Strait for three hundred ninety."
Bang! went the druggist's stamp. The bangs were getting louder.
Eksar paid me with six fifties, four twenties and a ten, all new-looking bills from that thick roll in his pants pocket.
I thought about the fifties still on the roll, and I felt the spit start to ball up in my mouth.
"Okay," I said. "Now what?"
"You still selling?"
"For the right price, sure. You name it."
"There's lots of stuff I could use," he sighed. "But do I need it right now? That's what I have to ask myself."
"Right now is when you've got a chance to buy it. Later—who knows? I may not be around, there may be other guys bidding against you, all kinds of things can happen." I waited a while, but he just kept scowling and coughing. "How about Australia?" I suggested. "Could you use Australia for, say, five hundred bucks? Or Antarctica? I could give you a real nice deal on Antarctica."
He looked interested. "Antarctica? What would you want for it? No—I'm not getting anywhere. A little piece here, a little piece there. It all costs so much."
"You're getting damn favorable prices, buddy, and you know it. You couldn't do better buying at wholesale."
"Then how about wholesale? How much for the whole thing?"
I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about. What whole thing?"
He looked impatient. "The whole thing. The world. Earth."
"Hey," I said. "That's a lot."
"Well, I'm tired of buying a piece at a time. Will you give me a wholesale price if I buy it all?"
I shook my head, kind of in and out, not yes, not no. Money was coming up, the big money. This was where I was supposed to laugh in his face and walk away. I didn't even crack a smile. "For the whole planet—sure, you're entitled to a wholesale price. But what is it, I mean, exactly what do you want to buy?"
"Earth," he said, moving close to me so that I could smell his stinking breath. "I want to buy Earth. Lock, stock and barrel."
"It's got to be a good price. I'll be selling out completely."
"I'll make it a good price. But this is the deal. I pay two thousand dollars, cash. I get Earth, the whole planet, and you have to throw in some stuff on the Moon. Fishing rights, mineral rights and rights to Moon buried treasure. How about it?"
"It's a hell of a lot."
"I know it's a lot," he agreed. "But I'm paying a lot."
"Not for what you're asking. Let me think about it."
This was the big deal, the big giveaway. I didn't know how much money the TV people had given him to fool around with, but I was pretty sure two thousand was just a starting point. Only what was a sensible, businesslike price for the whole world?
I mustn't be made to look like a penny-ante chiseler on TV. There was a top figure Eksar had been given by the program director.
"You really want the whole thing," I said, turning back to him, "the Earth and the Moon?"
He held up a dirty hand. "Not all the Moon. Just those rights on it. The rest of the Moon you can keep."
"It's still a lot. You've got to go a hell of a lot higher than two thousand dollars for any hunk of real estate that big."
Eksar began wrinkling and twitching. "How—how much higher?"
"Well, let's not kid each other. This is the big time now! We're not talking about bridges or rivers or seas. This is a whole world and part of another that you're buying. It takes dough. You've got to be prepared to spend dough."
"How much?" He looked as if he were jumping up and down inside his dirty Palm Beach suit. People going in and out of the store kept staring at us. "How much?" he whispered.
"Fifty thousand. It's a damn low price. And you know it."
Eksar went limp all over. Even his weird eyes seemed to sag. "You're crazy," he said in a low, hopeless voice. "You're out of your head."
He turned and started for the revolving door, walking in a kind of used-up way that told me I'd really gone over the line. He didn't look back once. He just wanted to get far, far away.
I went through the door after him. I grabbed the bottom of his filthy jacket and held on tight.
"Look, Eksar," I said, fast, as he pulled. "I went over your budget, way over, I can see that. But you know you can do better than two thousand. I want as much as I can get. What the hell, I'm taking time out to bother with you. How many other guys would?"
That got him. He cocked his head, then began nodding. I let go of his jacket as he came around. We were connecting again!
"Good. You level with me, and I'll level with you. Go up a little higher. What's your best price? What's the best you can do?"
He stared down the street, thinking, and his tongue came out and licked at the side of his dirty mouth. His tongue was dirty, too. I mean that! Some kind of black stuff, grease or grime, was all over his tongue.
"How about," he said, after a while, "how about twenty-five hundred? That's as high as I can go. I don't have another cent."
I didn't think so. I've got a feeling when a guy says this is as high as he can go that actually he's prepared to go a little higher. Eksar wanted to make the deal real bad, but he couldn't resist pulling back just a little. He was the kind of guy, he could be absolutely dying of thirst, ready to kick off in a second if he didn't get something to drink. You offer him a glass of water, and you say you want a buck for it. He looks at it with his eyes popping and his tongue all swollen, and he asks will you take ninety-five cents?
He was like me: he was a natural bargainer.
"You can go to three thousand," I urged. "How much is three thousand? Only another five hundred. Look what you get for it. Earth, the whole planet, and fishing and mineral rights and buried treasure, all that stuff on the Moon. How's about it?"
"I can't. I just can't. I wish I could." He shook his head as if to shake loose all those tics and twitches. "Maybe this way. I'll go as high as twenty-six hundred. For that, will you give me Earth and just fishing rights and buried treasure rights on the Moon? You keep the mineral rights. I'll do without them."
"Make it twenty-eight hundred, and you can have the mineral rights, too. You want them, I can tell you do. Treat yourself. Just two hundred bucks more, and you can have them."
"I can't have everything. Some things cost too much. How about twenty-six fifty, without the mineral rights and without the buried treasure rights?"
We were both really swinging now. I could feel it.
"This is my absolutely last offer," I told him. "I can't spend all day on this. I'll go down to twenty-seven hundred and fifty, and not a penny less. For that, I'll give you Earth, and just fishing rights on the Moon. Or just buried treasure rights. You pick whichever one you want."
"All right," he said. "You're a hard man: we'll do it your way."
"Twenty-seven fifty for the Earth, and either fishing or buried treasure rights on the Moon?"
"No, twenty-seven even, and no rights on the Moon. I'll forget about that. Twenty-seven even, and all I get is the Earth."
"Deal!" I sang out, and we struck hands. We shook on it.
Then, with my arm around his shoulders—what did I care about the dirt on his clothes when the guy was worth twenty-seven hundred dollars to me?—we marched back to the drug store.
; "I want a receipt," he reminded me.
"Right," I said. "But I put the same stuff on it: that I'm selling you whatever equity I own or have a right to sell. You're getting a lot for your money."
"You're getting a lot of money for what you're selling," he came right back. I liked him. Twitches and dirt or not, he was my kind of guy.
We got back to the druggist for notarization, and, honest, I've never seen a man look more disgusted in my life. "Business is good, huh?" he said. "You two are sure hotting it up."
"Listen, you," I told him. "You just notarize." I showed the receipt to Eksar. "This the way you want it?"
He studied it, coughing. "Whatever equity you own or have a right to sell. All right. And put in, you know, in your capacity as sales agent, your professional capacity."
I changed the receipt and signed it. The druggist notarized.
Eksar brought that lump of money out of his pants pocket. He counted out fifty-four crisp new fifties and laid them on the glass counter. Then he picked up the receipt, folded it and put it away. He started for the door.
I grabbed the money up and went with him. "Anything else?"
"Nothing else," he said. "It's all over. We made our deal."
"I know, but we might find something else, another item."
"There's nothing else to find. We made our deal." And his voice told me he really meant it. It didn't have a trace of the tell-me-more whine that you've got to hear before there's business.
I came to a stop and watched him push out through the revolving door. He went right out into the street and turned left and kept moving, all fast, as if he was in a hell of a hurry.
There was no more business. Okay. I had thirty-two hundred and thirty dollars in my wallet that I'd made in one morning.
But how good had I really been? I mean, what was the top figure in the show's budget? How close had I come to it?
I had a contact who maybe could find out—Morris Burlap.