"Mister Johnson," Pedro said finally, "if you were to call me into your apartment because the bathroom was flooded, would you tell me how to fix the pipes?"

"No, I wouldn't."

"If I worked on them all weekend and then told you that they were so badly damaged that I could not repair them, and the building owner would not pay for new plumbing, would you think I had done a bad job or believe that I did not care that you had water in your apartment?"

"No."

"I did not think so. And neither am I going to tell you how to do your job, or say that you have done it poorly if what we wish for does not come to be. Any money at all will help, but if you feel an offer is too low, then reject it. If we lose, I am in the same position, and you will have worked for nothing. You know we need any money we can get, and I know you do not want to lose the case." He felt awkward trying to express himself to the younger, more educated man. "I believe we want the same thing, and you are the one who should decide what to do."

Raymond nodded. This was the best answer he could have asked for, but also the one which thrust the most responsibility on him. This isn't some legal opinion on a contract dispute. It's a man's wife and daughter he thought solemnly. "That makes it clearer. Let me get back on it. I have a couple of things I want to pursue." He stood to leave.

Raymond's mind was already churning, thinking about what he should do next. He had felt ill-equipped to determine how to get a handle on the money issue, and had been reluctant to ask for help within his own firm. They aren't getting any money out of this case, even if we manage to win he said to himself. I'm not about to drag one of the partners in and press him for advice. Suddenly an idea came to him.

/ wonder if Tony Kearns has ever hunted rats in a dump before Raymond thought with a smile as he walked towards the subway.

"Joe, I want to thank you for coming through for me on the bridge bill. I won't forget it. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you to return the favor."

"You're welcome, Governor. As a matter of fact, there is something." Got to strike while the iron is hot Hammond thought. He'll forget he owes me a thing as soon as the session's over on Friday. "I'd like you to see that a friend of mine gets a State License Bureau Office somewhere in the St. Louis area. His name is Harold Gaines." The jerk doesn't deserve it, not by a mile, but I owe it to Linda and Harold Junior thought Hammond. She's stuck with the marriage for fifteen years, and she should have had a lot better. Not that you cared a lot at the time, Joe Hammond added silently.

Joe Hammond had long suspected that Linda and Harold Gaines' eldest child, Harold Jr., was really his own. In 1948, he had admitted to the young woman he'd been involved with for two years that he did not ever intend to get married. Less than two weeks later Linda Wilson had married Harold Gaines. Harold Junior had been born eight months and ten days after the wedding. Joe Hammond had remained in contact with his old flame, but the issue of paternity had never been mentioned by either of them in fifteen years.

The Governor was startled at the suddenness of Joe Hammond's request for quid pro quo. His mind was racing to catch up. "Ah...I'm not sure a License Bureau Office will be is available in that area next session, Joe."

Hammond laughed softly. "Governor, I'm sure you'll find one available for Harold. I have just as much faith in your ability to do that as you asked me to have in your judgment about the details of the bridge they'll be building." He probably thinks I'm an arrogant prick, but hell, I'm just playing the same ball game he is. The Governor paused for a long moment before answering.

"Okay, Joe, I'll see what I can do. Glad to know we talk the same language, even though you just got started in the Legislature." Joe Hammond chuckled at the Governor's mild barb as he hung up the phone. Always wise to let the other guy have the last word, as long as you get what you wanted.

May 5, 1963 "You sure this is legal, Ray?"

"I told you, it's a grey area of New York law. We aren't within city limits. It's possible we could be charged with disturbing the peace, but that's a bit unlikely. I give the guy who runs this place a fifth of scotch every month, and I think he'd stand up for me. The cops in this area know me, and join me sometimes when it's their day off. One of them even suggested I get registered as a city health official." At this last statement, Tony Kearns set down the Coleman lantern and doubled over with laughter.

"I'll never in my life say that New York cops don't have a sense of humor. Hey," Tony said suddenly. "Behind that old mattress." Raymond saw the reflected red of the two small eyes and snapped the old Winchester pump .22 to his shoulder. As he squeezed the trigger, a mild crack momentarily disturbed the warm evening and was immediately followed by the sound of Raymond working the slide of the rifle, chambering another round. The rat flipped over on his back, his hind feet twitching in extremis, and Raymond engaged the safety and handed the rifle to his friend, taking the lantern in return.

"Nineteen," Ray said softly.

"Damn but you get on fast," Tony said for the third time that night.

"I keep telling you, this is perfect training for when you go to Africa. When a wounded buffalo comes at you out of the bush, you won't have time to set up for the shot."

"I'm beginning to see your point," Tony admitted as he walked over to the dead vermin and lifted the carcass by its tail, examining it. "Tell me about this ammo. Composition, you said? What the hell is that?" "Just gallery loads, Tony," Raymond explained. "Didn't they ever have carnivals where you were a little kid?"

"Yeah, but there was a wooden wall you had to stand behind and shoot over. If you weren't tall enough, you couldn't shoot." Tony, who was a bit over six feet tall, saw his friend staring at him. "I didn't really start growing until I was fourteen, when I grew a foot in less than a year." Raymond nodded at the explanation.

"Well, if you'd ever looked close at the setup," Raymond said, returning to the previous subject, "you'd have noticed that there wasn't much of a backstop. Just a slanted piece of tin with canvas behind it. Not nearly enough to be safe with regular twenty-twos. What they use at the carnival is a special .22 Short with a bullet that's a lot lighter than normal, and made out of compressed lead dust. As soon as it hits anything at all, it disintegrates. They're quiet, no recoil, and as you can see, pure poison on rats."

Suddenly Tony swung the rifle to his shoulder and snapped off a shot. "Got him!" he said triumphantly. "That makes six."

"Nice shooting."

"I'm starting to get the hang of it." Tony kicked at an empty gallon paint can that lay at his feet, snapped the rifle to his shoulder, and fired at it. The can was dented by the bullet, but no hole appeared. He shook his head but made no comment. "You getting hungry? I missed dinner. If you're up for eating, I'll buy."

"Sounds good to me." Raymond took the rifle back from his friend and unloaded it as they walked to the maintenance shack. Ray loosened the takedown screw and broke the rifle down when they got there, and stowed the two sections in the short leather case he had left in the small building.

"Call a cab for you, Mr. Johnson?" said the black man who was sipping scotch from a paper cup. "Yes, please, Robert." The man picked up the telephone, called the taxi company, and ordered a cab. "You do all right tonight?" he asked after he hung up.

"Twenty-five," Raymond replied. Robert gave a huge grin, showing that he was missing one of his upper teeth on the right side. It made his smile even more infectious.

"They still plenty, an' there be more next time you come."

"I think you're right. Hope so. I'm not tired of it yet."

"You have a good time?" Robert asked, addressing Tony Kearns.

"I really did. Never done this before."

"Didn't know nobody who did, before Mr. Raymond here come along. He a pure terror with a rifle."

"That he is," Tony said with a grin. The three men stood in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and then they all looked out the window as the taxi pulled up.

"See you in a couple weeks, Robert," Raymond said, as he and Tony left the shack and headed for the cab. "I'll be here," the man replied as the door banged shut behind the two men.

"So what's going on in your business?" Raymond asked Tony Keams as he took a sip of his coffee. "Only big news lately is this Becker-Allied thing." Tony Kearns took a drink of Coca Cola.

"Yeah, I heard about that. We tried to get their business, but Allied went with MacKinnon instead. Old man Lambert was one irritable senior partner when that happened, I'll tell you that."

"Interesting thing about the deal, word on the street is that there's somebody pissing in the soup. Some potential lawsuit over somebody getting injured at Allied."

"Workmen's comp?" Raymond asked.

"Hell, I don't know. That's the problem with all these rumors and 'inside dope' things. By the time you hear them, they're so watered down and rephrased, the information's worse than useless. Listen, I know you don't have any interest in the stock market, at least not yet, but let me tell you something. Everybody's always looking for a sure thing, and it ruins 'em."

"What do you mean?"

"Nobody wants to do their homework. Everybody wants to steal a copy of the answers to the test. So what happens, somebody hears something. Like, 'I know this guy who plays golf with the chief financial officer of Brunswick. He told me that the CFO said earnings this quarter were going to be almost double what they'd projected, because with these automatic pinsetters, the alleys aren't having to hire juvenile delinquents anymore, and everybody and his little brother is now going bowling.' Well, I threw in the last part, 'cause that's the kind of thinking some of these idiots are doing, but the first part, the line about the earnings, that's the kind of story that's always flying around.

"Anyway, this fellow, the one who knows the guy who plays golf with the CFO of Brunswick, he'll want to load up on Brunswick stock on margin. Margin's where the brokerage firm lends you half the money to buy the stock, so you can buy twice as much. So our hero, who has maybe four grand in savings, goes and buys eight grand worth of Brunswick, and signs a note for four grand to White, Weld. Say the stock's at forty when he does this. He's buying 200 shares with his eight thou. If the stock goes up five points, he makes a quick thousand-five bucks times 200 shares-instead of only five hundred, which is what he's have if he didn't buy on margin and only bought a hundred shares at 40 with his four Gs.

"One big problem with this picture," Tony said as he bit into his ham and cheese sandwich. "That story from the guy who played golf with the CFO. One, it may be bullshit. The golfer may have made it up and then told this fairy tale to our hero, for reasons of his own. Actually, that would probably be the best thing for our intrepid speculator."

"Why?"

Tony shrugged. "It would mean the stock probably wouldn't do anything, either way. Our hero would finally get sick of waiting, sell out his position about where he bought it, and all he'd lose would be the commissions and a couple months interest charges on the margin balance."

"So what would be worse?"

"It would be worse if the story was true. Say his buddy really did play golf with the CFO. What the CFO actually said might easily have been something like, 'Our earnings are going to be up a lot more than last year. Maybe almost double the year-ago numbers, if things keep going as they are.' Well, the golf buddy hears 'almost double', and that's what he focuses on, because that's the nature of people, to believe that the best possible outcome will come to pass.

"And you know damn well the golf buddy isn't the only person to whom the CFO mentioned this little tidbit. And our hero isn't the only one the golf buddy passed it on to. And in a company that size, there are doubtless some other guys in the loop who have let the cat out of the bag, too.

"So what we have now, is a whole bunch of people out there buying stock in Brunswick, expecting an announcement that earnings are double the year-ago same-quarter numbers, so then they can cash out. When our hero buys his stock, it's already three points higher than it was a month before. News comes out that Brunswick's earnings are up 40% from year-ago, which is a new record, and great news if you're head of marketing at Brunswick. But it's terrible news if you just bought the stock at 43 and everyone who'd bid the price up to that level expected an announcement of ninety percent higher earnings, not forty. So the speculators are disappointed, and the ones who are smart enough to cut their losses sell immediately and drive the price down to 39. Our hero has an $800 paper loss, plus the commissions he's paid, plus he's paying interest on the $4300 margin balance at White, Weld.

"My absolute favorite 'hot tip' story crops up at least once a year, and if you ever start following equities, I absolutely guarantee that somebody will hit you with it, and claim it's the gospel truth." Tony Kearns washed down another bite of his sandwich with the last of his Coke and signaled the waitress for a refill.

'This is the one where some guy will tell you that he's got absolute ironclad, hundred-percent accurate info about a company that no one else has. The reason it's the real thing is that it came from a hundred-dollaran-hour call girl who's been fucking the president of the company. She gives such good blow jobs, or gets the old guy hard when his wife can't, or licks his ass, or ties him up and pisses on him, or whatever, that in addition to paying her the regular rate, he's told her to put all her savings into the stock, and she'll make a bundle. Of course there's no way the guy would tell her to do that if it wasn't a sure thing, because then he'd lose his hotsy forever. So it has to be the straight goods, see?

"Now, how does the guy who's telling you this know about it, you ask? Well, he's asshole buddies with the best friend of the broad's cousin, or brother, or some such, and the guy owes him one, of course." Tony Kearns shook his head and laughed. "That one's been around so long, it's old enough to vote."

"On something like this Allied deal," Raymond asked his friend, "do you just ignore the rumor that's going around, about the workmen's comp thing?"

Tony shook his head. "I don't ignore it. There probably is something there. But since I don't know what it is, what that kind of rumor does for me, is it makes me back off and watch for a while, until more facts come out.

"I don't doubt that there's some kind of legal issue worrying the brass at Allied. The question is, is it something trivial, that will ultimately have no effect on Becker buying them? If so, since the rumor has knocked the stock down a few points, Allied would be a buy. On the other hand, if this legal thing is a dealkiller, I'd want to avoid Allied like the plague, maybe even short it. But that view's much too simplistic, as I'm sure you're aware."

"What do you mean?"

"Hell, Ray. Imagine Lambert, Burns had gotten the Allied account, and put you on it. Some guy is trying to sue their ass, and it's going to kill the sale to Becker. What would you do? You'd figure out what it was worth to Allied to buy these guys off and let the sale go through, and you'd advise the company to offer something less than that to the guy with the broken back, or whatever he's got. If the guy won't take it, Allied plays hardball and goes to court, and Becker backs off. Maybe the jury decides the asshole's faking it and throws it out. If so, then Becker's back with another offer, probably about the same, don't you think?" Raymond shrugged. He didn't want to offer anything.

"If the thing goes to court and the jury feels sorry for the guy in the wheelchair, and tells Allied to give him a bunch of money, then their insurance pays it off, and Becker's probably back with another offer, just like before. Point I'm trying to make, right now, all I've got to look at is a bunch of smoke. Who knows what kind of lawsuit it is? Even if I knew exactly, it wouldn't do me much good, because today's deal-killer can turn into tomorrow's happy compromise. Who knows what kind of back-and-forth the legal eagles are going to do, or if someone's going to pick up his ball and decide to go home? "

"So you're saying that this potential lawsuit, whatever it is, is a non-issue?"

"No, it's going to affect the deal, that's certain. I just don't intend to commit the firm's dough until if and when there's a clear way to make some money on it."

"How will you know when that happens?"

"The way I always do, which is the same way anyone who's successful in this business over the long haul does it: You spot a discrepancy between what the crowd is doing with its money, and what you understand to be the facts."

"Can you explain?"

Tony grinned. "Book you should read is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Written over a hundred years ago by a man named Charles Mackey. I'll lend you my copy. Details all the crazy things people have done, just because everyone else was doing them. Like paying the price of a house for a single tulip bulb in Holland in the 17th century, just because it had cost half a house the week before and was apt to cost two houses within the month." Raymond didn't exactly understand what his friend was talking about, but decided silence was still the best policy for the time being.

"Crowd doesn't always lose its head, mind you," Tony said with a wolfish grin, "but it happens often enough to keep my department open and making money."

"I'm in contracts," confessed Raymond. "I have to make sure companies' legal obligations are spelled out. On a deal like this lawsuit thing you're talking about, it seems they'd need numbers guys like you fighting it out. How does the lawyer for the guy with the broken back decide what to ask for?"

Tony Kearns scowled and rubbed his chin. He loved figuring out difficult problems. "I'm not a personal injury lawyer, but you're right-guys like me always have to come up with a dollar value for the legal troubles a company has, so we can assess the appropriate impact on the stock price." He chewed his lip.

"The Krauts are very rigid, big on discipline and not very creative. 'Ve heff vays uff makink you talk' and all that. I know it sounds hokey, but that is indeed the way they run their businesses. There are a few exceptions-Volkswagen conies to mind-but Becker isn't one of them.

"First off, I'll say that Becker would definitely suspend finalizing the deal with Allied until this thing, whatever it is, is settled. They will insist Allied clean up their mess before going ahead with the deal. That will cost some money, because all the hired brains like you guys are getting paid by the hour, and the meter will be running a little longer, but I don't see that as any big deal."

"So you think Becker will just put their plans on hold, tell Allied to fix the problem, then take up where they left off?"

"That's possible, but there's still too much we don't know. For example, the Krauts aren't big on warranty claims, and shit like that. In general, they have a 'you bought it, it's your problem' attitude about that kind of thing. So, I'd say that the folks at Becker, on a personal level, won't feel much sympathy for this injured worker, even if the Allied's CEO himself shoved him into a vat of sulfuric acid and had a film crew record the incident for posterity." Raymond's spirits were sinking as he listened to his friend's words, but he kept an impassive expression on his face.

"However, these guys are buying an American company, and are planning to do business in America, and I have to assume that Becker has someone high up who recognizes the realities of that fact, regardless of his personal opinions."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we don't know what this lawsuit is all about, but what if it's something that could become a P.R. nightmare? You know, something that might catch the interest and sympathy of the public? Hell, it could kill the deal permanently. The Krauts are sure to realize they've got to tread carefully, particularly in New York, for Christ's sake. Jesus, for all we know, twenty years ago Becker may have been a subcontractor making Zyklon-B."

"I see what you mean. If the claim was something that could be a real embarrassment if it came out, how would a lawyer put a dollar value on what Allied could afford to pay to make it go away?"