Page 31 - The Gluckman Occasional 7

pretty corny stuff, amateurish; but he’s used to that, all right. So
then he casually enquires about the money. Oh, she says, without
batting an eyelash, since you’ll be the star, you’ll get fifty
thousand. Dollars? he asks. Right, she says, and a suite in the big
luxury hotel in Malkuna.

Yep, the very place here he was telling me all about it. And you
know what? It was the first time he’d ever set foot in the
Intercon. Anyhow, he took her up on it. What the hell, he
figured; he had nothing to lose and a lot to gain. By the time he
had made all his arrangements, she had gone back to Eldashti, so
he sent her a wire and she sent him a first-class ticket.

What? No, he didn’t say if it was round-trip. Let me tell you,
brother, I would have made sure my way back to the States was
paid for in advance! I’ve known a lot of guys who got stranded in
the middle of nowhere when the financial wizards decided to bail
out of a project. But this kid from California didn’t know beans
about working overseas. He didn’t even know where Eldashti
was: he asked me if we were in Africa! So he had no idea of the
way things are run in these countries. That’s too bad, because he
should have smelled a rat right away.

No, baby, I don’t want any of that—I don’t care what it is.
Vamos! I swear, the broads in here have no class. Oh, yeah, the
‘Oil Boy’. The first thing happens to him when he gets off the
plane and goes through Customs, is this woman meets him and
takes him away in her car. It’s a big Mercedes with tinted
windows so nobody can see who the passengers are. The
chauffeur is a big ugly guy with scars on his neck and big brass
earrings; obviously a bodyguard, right? Our surfer expects to go
to the hotel and rest up after the long flight, but she says she
wants him to have a drink at her place first and let him meet
some other people involved in the project. Then she asks him for
his passport.

No, he didn’t suspect a thing. She told him she would keep all his
valuables in her own safe, since the hotel didn’t have one and the
room boys were light-fingered. He still thought everything was on
the level. Then he noticed the car doors didn’t have any lock-