Fat Tony -- Section Seven

    Fat Tony’s afternoon and evening went by in a blur of unanswered phone calls to Grandma, worrying, and attempts to focus on a novel.  It was a work of fiction of the serious variety, and it appealed to him about as much as athlete’s foot, but the Major had given it to him as a give eight years ago and he had yet to read it.  The trip to the base had awakened his sense of obligation enough to give it another try, but Grandma’s failure to answer her phone drove Fat Tony’s attention span from short to miniscule.  A quick drive by her house showed that her car was gone, so he finally settled for a chicken Caesar salad—home made dressing, of course—and an early bedtime.
    He felt better after an early-morning run, some calisthenics, and an omelet.  A quick shower and he was on his way to the address of a Mr. Robinson, God bless him please.  Turned out the mansion—and it was a mansion—sat waaaay up on the hill, surrounded by nothing but saguaros and security. 
    Fat Tony had a theory about wealthy people and remote locations.  He used to think that after people got money, they moved someplace far away and paid everyone else to come to them.  Recently, though, he wondered if it weren’t backwards.  Maybe, if he bought a house in some hard-to-find corner of the wilderness, the money would start rolling in.  It was something to think about, at least, as he sat outside the gate to Mr. Robinson’s estate-let, staring at the camera and intercom built into a post.
    The speaker popped to life.
    “Yes?”
    “Tony, from Merlin’s Computing, for Mr. Robinson.”  Yet again, Fat Tony wondered about the name of their company.  Malcolm liked it, but every time Tony said it, he wished he’d been horrendously sleep-deprived when he’d come up with it.  Then he might have had an excuse.
    The voice on the other end didn’t answer, but the gate started to swing open, so Fat Tony rolled his window back up and made his way down the long driveway.  Out of curiosity he took some deep breaths and opened up to a magical view of the property.  Nothing.  Well, the usual washes and waves, but minor stuff.  He and Malcolm got two kinds of calls with their business: most were from wizards running magic and computing in parallel, but some were from people with mundane computer problems who somehow made it past the top twenty results on a Google search.  Looked like Mr. Robinson was part of the second variety.
    Fat Tony pulled his car into the looped driveway and parked near the oversized front doors, pulling his tool bag from the back seat.  A simian butler was waiting at the door, if a man with that much muscle could get a job as a butler.  Tony decided to ignore the (very likely) possibility that the butler also had a firearm.
    “Mr. Robinson?” he asked.
    “In his office.  This way.”  They walked over marble floors that were polished to an intimidating shine.  The art on the walls was modern, ugly, and clearly expensive.  Fat Tony wasn’t sure that any of the furniture had been designed to be sat on.  Maybe that was part of the design: it’s a chair or a bed or a table!
    Fat Tony’s solid wall of guard came to a set of double doors and opened one, gesturing to the inside.
    “By the way,” said Tony, “how’s Dr. Goodall?”
    “Excuse me?” asked the gorilla.
    “Obscure joke,” said Fat Tony.  “Sorry.  Besides, she worked with chimpanzees.  In here?  Thank you.”
    Mr. Robinson was already walking across the room, hand outstretched.  Smaller than Fat Tony in every way, he wore his smile like he was trying to compensate for his size.  Tony imagined falling on him then taking a long shower to wash him off.
    “Fat Tony!  That is what people call you, right?  So glad you could make it.  I know it was short notice, but there are deadlines in every business, aren’t there?  Sell-by dates, expiration dates, best-if-used-by dates.  My business, too, you know, so as I said, I’m glad you could make it on short notice.  Have a seat, have a seat, feet get tired.”
    Fat Tony looked around the room as he sat.  “Is this where I’ll be working?  I don’t see any computers.”
    “Computers?  Is that what they said this was about?  No, no, this is about something much more profitable and enjoyable computers.  This is about money for your family, about profitable business arrangements for everyone.  This is about sitting you back in a lounge chair, feet up on an ottoman, eyes looking out on whatever view you like best.  This is about success like you’ve never seen.  Your ship has come in, Fat Tony.  Opportunity is knocking.  Are you home?”
    “Let’s say that my porch light is on,” said Tony.
    Mr. Robinson’s eyebrows went up.  “Witty!  I’d heard you were clever with electronics, but I didn’t know you were clever with words.  You are clearly an intelligent man, Fat Tony.  I think we can work together.  What do you say?”
    “I say I never buy a pig in a poke.”
    “I get you,” said Mr. Robinson.  “I get you.  Caution.  Moving one step at a time, never two.  Test the ground ahead of you.  I respect  that.  That’s why I came to you.  So let me lay it out for you.”
    The small man picked up a remote, pushed a button, and two wooden panels on the wall slid apart to reveal a massive flat-screen.  Already a company logo was swirling its way across, something made mostly of lots of shine and the letter ‘R.’  Mr. Robinson was talking.
    “We all have assets.  Things we can contribute to any business.  The largest asset I can offer you is access to the eyes and ears of over five-thousand of the world’s wealthiest individuals.  People with so much money that if they started flushing it, they could clog every toilet in New York.  People with so much wealth, they could buy Washington and still have enough to rent the Presidents of France, Germany, and jolly old England.  People so bored, so jaded, they’re only missing one thing in their lives: something to love.”
    England doesn’t have a president, thought Fat Tony, but he kept his mouth shut.  Mr. Robinson had lost him at ‘hello,’ but he wanted to see where this was going.  Numbers started flashing onto the screen, accompanied by a pie-chart or two.
    “This is where you bring your assets to the table, Fat Tony.  You provide the something to love, and I find the buyers.  I can guarantee you sales of fifteen to thirty per unit, with profit split evenly between my side of the business and your side, minus overhead and finder’s fee, of course.”
    “Fifteen to thirty?” asked Tony.
    “Million, my friend.  Fifteen- to thirty-million dollars for each and every one.  Heck, if we auction them, we might pull in even more.  Everyone needs something to love, Tony.  Wealthy people more than anyone.  They wake up one morning, surrounded by two kinds of people: those who want their money, or those who are as bitter and heartless as themselves.  Then we appear, offering them something that doesn’t want their money, that doesn’t know the heartbreak of betrayal.  We sell them happiness.  And what won’t people pay for even a glimpse of happiness?”
    A serious suspicion was waking up in Fat Tony’s mind.  “I’m sorry,” he said, blinking quickly, “but I’d have to talk with my grandma.”
    The twitch of anger across Mr. Robinson’s face was the confirmation he needed.  In his head he heard Simon and Garfunkel playing: Every way you look at it you lose.  Mr. Robinson’s smile was back, and Fat Tony found himself checking for extra rows of teeth behind the first.
    “Believe me, we approached your grandmother as soon as we learned what she had.  A lovely lady, lots of spunk.  She was excited at first, but then she pulled back.  I can’t tell you what it was that chilled her feet, but I find myself convinced that she simply didn’t see the potential for what we have here.  We’re sitting on an oil-field, Tony.  Just the slightest bit of luck, and up from the ground comes a’bubblin’ crude.  Oil that is.  Or in our case, money.  Plenty of money for everyone, and the more we can sell, the better taken care of your grandmother is as she moves into her twilight years.  No worries for you then, no need to find some under-funded retirement home or, worse yet, have her move in with you.  You’ll sleep at night like a koala, lazy and contented, knowing you are free from anything holding you down.”
    Fat Tony couldn’t remember the last time he had felt really, really angry.  Wait—that mundane sergeant who rode him, and rode him, and rode him about his weight.  He still remembered how the rest of the world had melted away, leaving only a tunnel in front of his eyes that led straight to the sergeant.
    Now, ten years later, he started to feel the tunnel closing in again.  Free from Grandma?  Why would he ever want to be free from family?  Mr. Robinson was not only small and plastic, he was also a lousy judge of character.  Fat Tony held back the hot and red inside him and thought blue, calming thoughts.
    “If Grandma said no,” he said finally, “I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”
    “Of course there is!”  Mr. Robinson was pacing now.  “She just needs convincing, and who could be better at that than her closest family?  A smart grandson like yourself, you’ll know how to help her—because that’s what we’re doing.  We’re helping.  We’re making rich people happier, and those happy people make us richer.  Everyone wins.”
    “Mr. Robinson, how much do you know about the product?”
    A hint of longing melted its way into the small man’s eyes.  “What is there to know?  I’ve seen the pictures.  Easy to care for, easy to love, like Shirley Temple in a bottle.  Those little babies are the future of exotic pets.”
    “Then,” said Fat Tony, “you also know how extraordinarily rare they are?  There can’t be more than six or eight in the United States.”
    Mr. Robinson laughed, but it was an arid laugh, dry like Tucson before the monsoons.  “Don’t mess with me, Fat Tony.”
    “I never mess with anyone,” lied Tony, though he wasn’t messing with Mr. Robinson this time.  “Those little guys only manage a child every thirty, forty years.  Not exactly a booming business.  They look like rabbits, from what I hear, but they apparently don’t share the same interests as rabbits.  I guess they’d rather watch TV.”
    All the smiling must have worn out Mr. Robinson’s jaw muscles, because the smile wasn’t holding up so well.  “Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” he said.  “People don’t mess with me.  It’s how I run my business, how I run my personal life.  If I were a state, I would be California, and people would not tread on me.  Ever.”
    “I’m giving it to you as straight as I can, Mr. Robinson.”
    The small man’s eyes were narrow and twitching.  “Twenty was the number I heard.  Twenty and more to come within the month, all outside the every-benevolent grasp of Big Brother.  Are you implying that your grandmother was exaggerating her available stock?  I would find that disappointing, and I don’t handle disappointment well.”
    Fat Tony found himself less than intimidated, personally speaking, but Grandma was another matter.  That, and he was puzzled.  Mr. Robinson, at least, was convinced Grandma had twenty of the Livingstone’s Cottontails.  Fat Tony wasn’t positive what effect twenty of those little guys in one place would have, magically speaking, but not finding out was high on his lists of priorities.  It was time to talk with Grandma.  That, and get out of here without needing to discover how quick on the draw the big guy in the hallway was.
    “I don’t think you need to be disappointed just yet,” said Fat Tony.  “Grandma hasn’t kept me in the loop.  In fact, this is the first I heard that they were for sale, so this is all a bit overwhelming for me.”  Fat Tony did his best to look overwhelmed.  Should he rub his hair?  He decided to skip it.  “Let me talk with her.  I’m sure we can get this big ball of cute rolling along.  Grandma was probably just hoping for a bigger cut.”
    “That’s not the impression I was given.”
    “She wouldn’t say that outright, would she?  No, she’d tell you something ambiguous about property damage or some other nonsense, and you’d get more desperate, and when you raised the price she’d finally give in.”
    Mr. Robinson’s face relaxed as Fat Tony moved the conversation back onto familiar ground—it was clear that the man understood greed.
    “See?” he said, smiling again.  “You’re already earning your share in all this.  A smart man who knows his grandmother and wants what’s best for her.  You’ll talk with her?”
    “Believe me,” said Fat Tony, “that is the first stop I’ll be making after I leave your home.  Which is lovely, by the way.”  Fat Tony stood up out of the chair.
    “You like it?  I had it specially designed by a famous architect—his name escapes me.  He made it one-of-a-kind, and then, when it was finished, I had him killed.”  Mr. Robinson burst out laughing and slapped Fat Tony on the shoulder.  “Come on, I’ll show you out.  Care to stay for a late breakfast?  Early lunch?  Business always makes me hungry, and you look like a man who enjoys his food.”
    “Will you forgive me if I hold off for another day?  I’m afraid I’m on a diet.”
    Mr. Robinson laughed again, and with more shoulder slapping walked Fat Tony past the body-butler-guard and to the front door.  They exchanged more small-talk, but Tony couldn’t remember what he heard or said.  His mind was already bursting into Grandma’s house and sitting her down for a talk.
    A long talk.  He hoped it wasn't on a new couch.