Vic was afraid the impact of the whole operation was a bit bright, but I argued that the whole idea was ta stand out from the crowd and let people know we were there. I did, however, unbend enough to agree that we should have Skeeve on hand for our meetin' with Hysterium the night before our opening. I mean, negotiatin' never was my strong suit, and I had no idea how the client was going to react to our rather innovative ideas.
"You've ruined me! That's what you've done! Ruined me!"
That was our client speakin'. You may guess from the sound of it that he was less than pleased with our work. When you realize that that was how he was soundin' after we had spent an hour calmin' him down, you've got an idea of exactly how unhappy he was.
"I'm not sure I understand what your problem is, Mr. Hysterium," Vic said. "If you have a complaint..."
"A complaint?" the Deveel shrieked. "I wouldn't know where to start! What did you people think you were doing, anyway?"
"We were tumin' your dump into a profit-makin' hotel. That's what we were supposed to do."
I was tryin' to stay out of this ‘cause a my temper, but I had to get a word or two in here somewhere.
"A hotel? A hotel? This isn't a hotel! What I left you with was a hotel! What I came back to is a sideshow! And what do you mean by profitable? All the rooms on the first floor are gone! That cuts my rental earnings by twenty percent!"
"Twenty percent of an empty hotel is still nothing!" I shot back.
"Massha's right," Vic said, stepping between us. "We needed that space for attractions to draw in some customers. Besides, everything we put in there generates revenues for the hotel."
"Not if they don't sell anything!" Hysterium argued. "Have you been in any of those places? Have you seen the junk they're selling? And the prices... they're charging more for a cup of coffee in that club you put in than I'm used to paying for a whole meal!"
"Not everybody eats as cheap as you do," I muttered under my breath.
"What?"
"I said you stand ta clear a heap when they do ... sell stuff to the customers, that is."
"But there aren't going to be any... Ohhh! I'm ruined!"
The Deveel sank into a chair and hid his face in his hands.
"Of course, if you had wanted design approval, you should have stayed around. As it was, Massha and Vic had no recourse but to use their own judgment." That was Skeeve speakin' from his chair in the comer. So far, he hadn't done much more than listen to the rantings.
"Stayed around?" Hysterium's head came up with a snap. "They made me go! They said I'd have to trust them if I wanted to use your outfit's services."
"Precisely," Skeeve nodded, changin' tactics without batting an eye. "You wanted our services, you trusted us, and we serviced you. I don't see what the complaint is."
"What the complaint is, is that you charged me an arm and a leg ... in advance ... to put me out of business! If I had lost money on a regular hotel it would have been bad enough, but to lose money and be made a laughing-stock to boot... ." There were tears formin' in the developer's eyes. "That was my wife's family money I invested. I could turn a profit if I only had the capital, I told them. Now ..."
His voice broke and his head sank again.
"If that's the only problem, maybe we can work something out."
"Forget it! Cutting your fee wouldn't help. I need to make money, not lose less."
"Actually, I was thinking more of taking the hotel off your hands. Buying it outright."
I shot a glance at Skeeve. He was leanin' back in his chair studyin' the ceiling.
"Are you serious?" the Deveel said hopefully.
"Why not? That way you turn a profit of ... say, fifteen percent over cost? ... for the building and land, and making the place work, much less dealing with its reputation, will be our problem. That's what we agreed to do in the first place... sort of."
Hysterium was on his feet pumpin' Skeeve's hand almost before the Prez had stopped talkin'.
"I'll tell you, Skeeve... Mr. Skeeve... you're, a real gent. This is terrific! Just when I thought... I can't tell you how much I appreciate ..."
"Don't mention it," Skeeve said, retrievin' his hand. "Why don't you go on over to my office right now? My secretary is still there. Just explain everything to her, and she'll start drawing up the papers. I want to have a few words with my agents, then I'll be along to sign off on the deal."
"On my way," the Deveel waved. "Gee. I can't get over ..."
"Now, you realize, of course, we don't have that kind of cash on hand. We'll have to give a down payment and arrange some kind of payment schedule."
"Fine. Fine. As long we get a contract guaranteeing my profit."
Then he was gone, leavin' us ta stare at each other in silence. Finally, Skeeve gathered us up with his eyes.
"The placed is booked solid?" he said, confirmin' what we had told him in our debriefing.
"... For three weeks, with a waiting list for cancellations," Vic confirmed. "We're taking reservations for as much as a year and a half in advance."
"... And Hysterium doesn't know?"
"He never asked, and we never got the chance to tell him," I shrugged. "You saw how he was."
Skeeve nodded thoughtfully.
"That means, if my calculations are correct, we'll be able to pay him off in full in less than three months... not including the take from the casino and the shops."
He rose and stretched, then gave us a wink.
"C'mon, you two," he said. "I think I'll invest an arm and a leg and buy you both a drink!"
Chapter Four:
"If you're too busy to help your friends, you're too busy!"
-L. IACOCCA
ACTUALLY, I WASN'T all that wild over The Fun House. I mean, it was making us money hand over fist, but I somehow never figured on owning a hotel/casino. In particular, I didn't think it was a good idea to set the precedent of buying out dissatisfied customers, no matter how profitable the deal turned out to be. As it was, Hysterium's relatives (on his wife's side) were trying to get the deal invalidated on the basis that he must have been out of his mind, or at least not in his right mind, to sell such a lucrative business at the price he did. I wasn't particularly worried, as this was still the Bazaar at Deva, and if everyone who signed off on a bad deal here was declared insane, the economy would collapse.
The part that really bothered me about the deal was that it meant associating with the Geek again. In past dealings with him, he had consistently proven to be primarily concerned with lining his own pockets without much regard for anyone else, and I felt it was dangerous to place him in a position where he had such temptingly easy access to our money, or even a piece of it.
Still, I couldn't argue with Massha's logic in including him in the scheme, and at the time she approached him she had no idea he was going to end up reporting to us. Bunny assured me that she was personally auditing the financial reports for the casino that the Geek turned in along with our share of the take, but I found that in spite of that I tended to spend inordinate amounts of time studying the spreadsheets myself, half expecting to find some indication that he was somehow skimming a little off the top for his personal accounts.
That's what I was doing this particular afternoon, setting aside the countless letters and chores that were pressing on my time to take one more pass at auditing the Geek's financial reports. Bunny had told me once that a hefty percentage of accountants and financial analysts operated more out of spite than from any instinctive or learned insight. That is, rather than detecting that there's anything wrong from the figures they study, they single out some ‘department that's been giving them grief or a manager who made snide comments about them at the company party, then go over their reports very carefully. She maintains that anyone's reports will come up flawed or suspicious if reviewed closely enough.