“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 difference. 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.