A couple of girls and a young man drifted by. One of the girls said, “Ooo! Are you on the baseball team?”

“I didn’t know they were still turned out,” said the boy. “Why, you’re wearing spikes!”

Heller looked at one of the girls. “You can’t get to first base if you don’t.”

They all of them burst into screams of laughter. I tried and tried to figure out what they were laughing about. (Bleep) that Heller, anyway. Always so obscure. And he had no right to start currying popularity. He was an extraterrestrial, an interloper! Besides, they were pretty girls.

“Name’s Muggins,” said the boy. “This is Christine and Coral — they’re from Barnyard College: that’s part of Empire but all women, oh boy!”

“My name’s Jet,” said Heller.

“C’m up’n see us s’m’time,” said Christine.

They all laughed again, waved and walked on down the broad steps.

And here came Epstein!

He was dragging an enormously long roll of something behind him. It was about a foot in diameter and certainly over twelve feet long! He passed the fountain and then the statue. He stopped a couple steps below Heller. He was dressed in a shabby gray suit and a shabby gray hat and, in addition to the roll, he was carrying a very scuffed up, cheap attache case. He sank down on a step, puffing.

“And how is Mr. Epstein?” said Heller cheerfully.

“Oh, don’t call me that,” said Epstein. “It makes me uncomfortable. Please call me Izzy. That’s what everybody does.”

“Good. If you’ll call me Jet.”

“No. You are really my superior as you have the capital. I should call you Mr. Wister.”

“You have forgotten,” said Heller, “that you are responsible for me now. And that includes my morale.” Then he said very firmly, “Call me Jet.”

Izzy Epstein looked unhappy. Then he said, “All right, Mr. Jet.”

Heller must have given it up. “I see you found some clothes. I was worried that they’d all been destroyed.”

“Oh, yes. I took a bath in the gym and I got two suits, this hat and this briefcase from the Salvation Army Good Will. They wouldn’t do for you, of course, but if I dressed too well, I would attract attention and invite bad luck. One must never appear to be doing too well-the lightning will strike.”

This Izzy Epstein was turning my stomach. It was quite obvious that he was a neurotic depressive with persecution complexes and had overtones of religio-mania, evident in his fixations on fate. A fine mess he would make for Heller. Neurotics are never competent. But on the other hand, it was really a break for me that Heller had run into him. The fellow couldn’t even manage his own affairs, much less Heller’s.

“Well, you look better, anyway,” said Heller.

“Oh, I’m exhausted! I have been working flat out all night to prepare a proposal for you. The only building I could find open was the Art College, so I had to use their materials.”

“Is that what that is?”

“This roll? Yes. All they had left out was studio paper — the kind they use behind models, twelve feet wide, a hundred feet long. And they didn’t leave out any scissors. So I used that.”

He tried to unroll it. But he didn’t have enough arm reach. Heller started to help him but Izzy said, “No, no. You’re the investor. You there!” he called out suddenly.

A couple of new students had come out of the library. Izzy stopped them at the top of the huge, wide stairway. “You hold this end,” he said to one. “And you this end,” he said to the other. “Now, hold it tight.” The two stood there, twelve feet apart, holding the top of the roll.

Heller had followed Izzy up. Izzy took the roll and backed down two steps, unreeling it. At the top, in wild, garish ink, all along it, it said: Confidential Draft.

“You will probably find it too colorful,” said Izzy, understating it like mad, for it was blazing in the sunlight, “but they had only left around old dried-up pots of poster paint and I had to mix it with water. And there were only some discarded brushes. But, it will give you the idea.”

He backed down two more steps. Revealed to view were some odd lines and symbols. It looked like three wooden hay forks raking apples — and all of different colors, all bright.

“Now, that first row is what we call the mask corporations. We incorporate those separately in New York, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. They all have different, noninterlocking boards of directors.”

He backed down another step unrolling the roll further. But there was a bit of wind. Two more students, eating sandwiches, were paused nearby. Izzy sent one to the far side and one to the right side and told them to hold it steady and they did.

Izzy pointed to the newly displayed mad thunder of color, lines and symbols. “Now, those are the bank accounts for those corporations.”

He backed down another step, got two more students to hold the sides and two more to hold the extreme top which was buckling. “Now there, and notice the arrow’s as they intertwine, are the various brokerage firms which will handle orders placed with the mask corporations.”

Izzy backed another step, unrolling the roll further.

“What is this?” one student, wandering up, asked another.

“Psychedelic art,” said one already holding.

“Now, here we are getting to the more important stages,” said Izzy. “The corporation on the right is in Canada. The one on the left is in Mexico. And these two corporations invisibly control the center one which is in Singapore. Get it?”

Izzy backed further. He needed more students and got them. Several were now up on a big stone parapet, looking down on it.

“Now, this series of arrows — the green series is the most important although the purple ones there are useful — transfer the funds of the above corporations in such a way as to bypass all reporting to governments.”

“Is it a poster?” asked a student.

“Poster for some new riots, I heard them say,” said another.

Izzy stepped down another broad step and unrolled it further. He got more holders. “Now, this is the Swiss-Liechtenstein consortium of corporations. You may wonder why these seem so independent. Well, actually they are not.”

He unrolled more chart, got some newcomers to hold it. “The Swiss-Liechtenstein fund flow goes underground to West Germany and thence to Hong Kong. Do you get it? No?”

More of the chart was unrolled and held, “You can see why, now. The Hong Kong funds — see the purple arrow there — flow to Singapore, come back to Tahiti and…”

He unrolled more chart, “…arrive right in our own backyard in the Bahamas. Clever, eh? But look at London.”

He unrolled more chart. One whole width was devoted to three corporations, three stockbrokers and three bank accounts, all in London. Orange lines radiated out and came back to Hong Kong. “And that is how we get the funds into the Bahamas from the City as they call it. But you will be interested in this.”

He unrolled more chart and got more holders. There was an interlocking series of lines which stretched out to every bank account and brokerage house, a spider web of royal blue. “That is the arbitrage network. By means of a centrally controlled system, we can take advantage of the differences of currency prices throughout the whole network and every time we transfer any funds, we also make a mint! It requires telexes and lease lines from RCA, of course. But it will pay for itself every week.”

He unrolled more chart, got more holders. The steps were pretty thronged by now.

“What was the artist thinking when he drew it?” asked a girl.

“Soul music,” said a learned boy.

“I think it’s quite lovely,” said another girl. “It certainly makes one tranquil.”

“And now,” Izzy said to Heller, “I’ll bet you’ve been holding your breath waiting until I got around to this.” He waved his arm in a grand gesture at a single corporation marked with a circle and red arrows. “That,” said Izzy, “is MULTINATIONAL! By reason of nominee shares, noninterlocking controlled boards, it orchestrates the entire conduct of the entire remaining chart. And listen, here is the best part: it calls itself a MANAGEMENT company! It isn’t visibly liable for a single thing any other company does! Isn’t that great?”