"Oh, dear," she said again. She began to get dressed. Heller was still poking into the suitcase, looking glum. The Countess Krak got into her chinchilla coat, put on her white fur hat and picked up her pocketbook. At the door, she stopped and called back, "I'm going to see Mamie Boomp. We have a lot to talk about. See you later, dear." She left.
Well, one thing I didn't want to hear more about was fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes. What the homosexual designers were proclaiming would be spring styles was my idea of pure static. I didn't want to spoil my euphoria. I turned off her viewer. Heller's depression was the source of my extreme well-being.
He really understood he had plunged himself to ruin. The neat, gray flannel suit and silk shirt were a long way from how he felt, apparently. He dug, out of the bottom of the grip, a suit of workman's denim. They were the style for beachwear and maybe he had thought they'd have some time on the sand, as he looked at the cold, gray sea from time to time.
Slowly, he began to get dressed. The most recent denim men's styles required the material be torn, patched and grease-stained like true workmen's clothing. And although he might now be dressed in the beachwear height of fashion, my, didn't he appear a ragged wreck as he looked at himself in the mirror!
Then he sat for a long, long time, staring out the window at the cold, gray sea. What a treat for my eyes! Oh, how the mighty had fallen! He not only hadn't helped their precarious situation in New York, he had become the proud possessor of incalculable sums of utter ruin. I enjoyed it and enjoyed it. He was not only slowed down, he was going backwards!
He looked at his watch, at last. It registered nearly noon, Eastern Standard Time. I remembered that noon was the stated time of foreclosure. He looked at the door. Then he looked at the phone. I realized that he had been waiting around for news from Izzy.
He got up and went to the phone. He picked it up. No dial tone. Dead. He pushed some buttons for an outside line. Still dead.
Aha! I knew what had happened. The phones had been shut off by the phone company! A surge of pleasure raced through me.
Heller put it back on the cradle. Then he looked at the bathroom. The lights there had been on a little earlier. He went in and threw the switch. He threw another switch. Nothing happened. No lights!
Oh, wonderful! The light company had shut off the lights!
He turned on a water tap. Nothing happened! Oho, I gloated. The water company had shut the water off!
He went over to a radiator and felt it. Evidently it was ice cold. The furnaces were off!
He was in a super-posh Atlantic City high-rise hotel-casino. He was, in fact, the proprietor. And all the utilities were shut down tight!
I gloated. Given time, even the pipes would freeze!
Glory, glory! Fate was driving misfortune in with a sledgehammer!
He began to pace slowly back and forth, occasionally glancing at his watch and then at the door. Once he said, "Izzy, where are you?!"
Twelve-thirty came. The room must be getting cold, for he threw his trench coat over his shoulders.
He continued to pace. He continued to glance at his watch. Oh, I enjoyed every second of it!
One o'clock came. The Countess had not come back. No slightest sign of Izzy. Heller sank down in a chair. "Izzy, you have deserted me and I don't blame you one bit."
He saw some smoke rising from down the Boardwalk, quite a distance away. He went to the window. He couldn't see it very well. Some sort of a burning vehicle. There was smoke drifting also from the direction of the beach. He didn't bother to go into the sitting room and look. I guessed that it might be rioting and looting.
One-ten. A knock on the door.
Heller raced across and opened it.
A very mournful Izzy stood there. He looked even shabbier than usual. The Salvation Army Good Will overcoat was faded and shiny with wear. His briefcase was a mottle of scuffs with paper tears showing through. And he looked far sadder and more slumped than usual, a feat which was nearly impossible. Heller let him in.
"Oh, Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "I told you not to do anything foolish. I have never heard of such a catastrophe in the whole history of business. I have told you and told you to keep your name off corporations. Now you're in it up to your skull top. You should leave business to me."
Heller sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. "I know that now."
"You should have known it yesterday. Business is one of the most treacherous tools of Fate. But it is my fault. I saw a gleam in your eye and, when you have it, you always go out and get people to shoot at you. And now they've used submachine guns, cannons and even a hydrogen bomb. Oy, what rubble and wreckage!"
Heller said, miserably, "I know. I know. What is the state of affairs now?"
Izzy said, "There is a little bit of nonpessimistic news which I don't trust and bad news which is reliable. So I will give you the bad news first."
"Probably," said Heller, "the good news is that they will feed me breakfast before they exterminate me. So go ahead."
"You should have been suspicious when they let you win so much for so long. In order to pay the bets you were placing with such wild abandon, they dragged down every casino's cash, every bank account the corporation had. They even wired money in from Las Vegas. They also collected in advance from all hotel guests. They exhausted every possible source of cash they could lay their hands on so it would flow back to them through you, laundered as corporation losses.
"The corporation cash-liquidity picture is minus millions and millions. And it also has to honor the IOU markers issued like an avalanche at the end of the night, and so we come to the nasty subject of debt.
"Money they should have paid for utilities-phone, lights, water-for months has been going into their pockets. So the service was cut off today on all these, and to it is added heating oil. It even includes gasoline charge accounts for the extensive corporation rolling stock.
"All staff of all the corporation's numerous businesses are unpaid and have been for some time. The government IRS withholding tax is also missing.
"The money which went into the staff pension funds was invested in businesses which mysteriously failed, and so the pension fund has to be made up.
"All state and local taxes, including sales tax, are owing for the past year.
"Most of the hotel equipment is on time-payment contracts and those companies want to take the equipment back, even the furnaces.
"It's winter and there is no yacht traffic for the marina and nothing is travelling on the Intracoastal Waterway.
"It's winter and there's nothing one can do with the amusement piers.
"It's winter and there are no vacationers to fill the hotels."
Heller shivered. "Is that all?"
"No," said Izzy. He was unfolding a newspaper. "That spaghetti-eating schlemazel Piegare must have talked to the press right away last night, the schmuck. Have you seen this?" He was holding the front page of the New York Grimes before Heller's eyes. It said:
WHIZ KID STEALS
ATLANTIC CITY
The resort metropolis is the first American city to be stolen since the Indians ripped off Roanoke from Sir Walter Raleigh in A.D. 1590.
In a raging midnight gun battle which local police and the Army did not stop, Jerome Terrance Wister, known as the "Whiz Kid,"...
"Oh, my Gods," said Heller, reading no further.
"It's in every paper, local and national, that I spotted on the stands in New York," said Izzy. "Headlines!"
I really laughed. Izzy thought Piegare had talked to the press. But whether he had or not made no difference. Madison! Good old J. Walter Madison, priceless Madison: that marvel of PR had Rockecenter's Underworld Crime Computer Bank right at his fingertips. He had jumped onto the job, feeding a story to the media within minutes. What a genius!