"It is a daughter corporation of Service Enterprises of New Rome, Limited, which in turn is owned by Sheffield-Libby Associates. In short, Lazarus owns it."
"Be damned! Who invested my money in that? Andy Libby, bless his sweet shy soul, would be spinning in his grave-if I hadn't placed him spinning in orbit around the last planet we discovered together, where he was killed."
"Lazarus, that's not in your memoirs."
"Ira, I keep telling you, lots of things not in my memoirs. Poor little guy got to thinking one of his deep thoughts and didn't stay alert. I put him in orbit because I promised him, when he was dying, to take him back to his native Ozarks. Tried to, about a hundred years later, but couldn't find him. Beacon dead, I suppose. All right, kids, we'll have a party at my happy house and you can sample anything the place has to offer. Where were we? Ira, you were about to define 'love.'"
"No, you were about to tell us about a blind man on Mars, when you were managing that whorehouse."
"Ira, you're as crude as Gramp Johnson was. This guy 'Noisy'-don't recall his right name, if he had one-Noisy was one of those people like yourself who just will work, regardless. A blind man could get by in those days quite well by begging, and nobody thought the less of him, since there was no way then to restore a man's sight.
"But 'Noisy wasn't content to live off other people; he worked at what he could do. Played a squeeze box and sang. That was an instrument operated by bellows which forced air over reeds as you touched keys on it-quite pretty music. They were popular until electronics pushed most mechanical music makers off the market.
"Noisy showed up one night, skinned out of his pressure suit at the lock dressing room, and was playing and singing before I knew he was inside.
"My policy was 'Trade, Treat, or Travel'-except that the house might buy a beer for an old customer who temporarily wasn't holding. But Noisy was not, a customer; he was a bum-looked and smelled like a bum, and I was about to give him the bum's rush. Then I saw this rag around his eyes and skidded to a stop.
"Nobody throws out a blind man. Nobody makes any trouble for him. I kept an eye on him but left him alone. He didn't even sit down. Just played this broken-down stomach-Steinway and sang, neither very well, and I laid off the pianette not to interrupt him. One of the girls started passing the hat for him.
"When he reached my table, I invited him to sit and bought him a beer-and regretted it; he was pretty whiff. He thanked me and told me about himself. Lies, mostly."
"Like yours, Gramp?"
"Thanks, Ira. Said he had been chief engineer in one of the big Harriman liners, until his accident. Maybe he had been a spaceman; I never caught him out in the lingo. Not that I tried. If a blind man wanted to claim he was the rightful heir to the Holy Roman Empire, I would go along with the gag-anybody would. Perhaps he was some sort of space-going mechanic, shipfitter or something. More likely he was a transported miner who had been careless using powder.
"When I checked the place at closing time, I found him sleeping in the kitchen. Couldn't have that, we ran a sanitary mess. So I led him to a vacant room and put him to bed, intending to give him breakfast and ease him gently on his way-I wasn't running a flophouse.
"A lot I had to say about it. I saw him at breakfast all right. But I hardly recognized him. A couple of the girls had given him a bath, trimmed his hair, and shaved him, and had dressed him in clean clothes-mine-and had thrown away the dirty rag he had worn over his ruined eyes and had replaced it with a clean white bandage.
"Kinfolk, I do not fight the weather. The girls were free to keep pets; I knew what fetched the customers, and it wasn't my pianette playing. If that pet stood on two legs and ate more than I did, I still did not argue. Hormone Hall was Noisy's home as long as the girls wanted to keep him.
"But it took me a while to realize that Noisy was not just a parasite enjoying free room and board, and probably our stock-in-trade as well, while siphoning off cash from our customers-no, he was pulling his weight in the boat. My books at the end of the first month he was with us showed the gross profit up and the net way up."
"How do you account for that, Lazarus? Inasmuch as he was competing for your customers' cash."
"Ira, must I do all your thinking for you? No, Minerva does most of it. But it is possible that you have never thought about the economics of that sort of joint. There are three sources of gross, the bar, the kitchen, and the girls themselves. No drugs-drugs spoil the three main sources. If a customer was on drugs and showed it, or even broke out a stick of kish, I eased him out quickly and sent him down the line to the Chinaman's.
"The kitchen was to supply meals to the girls-who were assessed room and board on a break-even or lose-a-little basis. But it also served food all night to anyone who ordered it, and showed a net since we had its overhead covered anyhow to board the girls. The bar also showed a net after I fired one barkeep with three hands. The girls kept their gross, all the traffic would bear, but they paid the house a flat fee for each kewpie, or a triple fee if she kept a customer all night. She could cheat a little, and I would shut-eye-but if she cheated too much or too often, or a john complained that he was rolled, I had a talk with her. Never any real trouble; they were ladies, and besides, I had means to check on them quietly, as well as eyes in the back of my head.
"The beefs about rolling were the stickiest, but I remember only one that was the girl's fault rather than the john's-I simply terminated her contract, let her go. In the usual beef the slob was not rolled; he simply had a change of heart after he had counted too much money into her greedy little hands and she had delivered what he had ordered-then he tried to roll her to get it back. But I could smell that sort of slob and would be listening via a mike-then would bust in as trouble started. That sort of jerk I would toss so hard he bounced twice."
"Grandfather, weren't some of them pretty big for that?"
"Not really, Galahad. Size doesn't figure much in a fight- although I was always armed against real trouble. But if I have to take a man, I have no compunctions slowing me down about how I take him. If you kick a man in the crotch with no warning, it will quiet him down long enough to throw him out.
"Don't flinch, Hamadear; your father guaranteed that you could not be shocked. But I was talking about Noisy and how he made us money while making some himself.
"In this sort of frontier joint the usual customer comes in, buys a drink while he looks over the girls, picks one by buying her a drink-goes to her room, then leaves. Elapsed time, thirty minutes; net to the house, minimum.
"Pre-Noisy, that is. After Noisy arrived, it went more like this: Buy a drink as before. Maybe buy the girl a second drink rather than interrupt a blind man's song. Take the girl to her room. When he comes back, Noisy is singing 'Frankie and Johnnie' or 'When the Pusher Met My Cousin,' and smiles and throws a verse at him-and the customer sits down and listens to all of it-and asks Noisy if he knows 'Dark Eyes.' Sure, Noisy knows it, but instead of admitting it, he asks the john to give him the words and hum it and he'll see what he can do with it.
"If the customer has valuta, he's still there hours later, having had supper and bought supper for one of the girls and tipped Noisy rather lavishly and is ready for an encore with the girl or another girl. If he's got the money, he stays all night, splitting his cash between the girls and Noisy and the bar and kitchen. If he spends himself broke and has been a good customer-well behaved as well as free with his money-I stake him to bed and breakfast on credit, and urge him to come back. If he's alive next payday, he's sure to be back. If not, all the house is out is the wholesale cost of one breakfast-nothing compared with what he's spent. Cheap goodwill advertising.