Read Online The Best Revenge by Sol Stein - Free Book Online

children.

6
    Nick
    It was time for me to say the thing that always cleared the air. “Mr. Riller, I’m listening to you to find out if I can make money on this deal.”
    Riller coughed into his fist. “Mr. Manucci,” he said, “most of my investors make money most of the time.”
    “Not on this turkey. You said you raised only twenty-two percent. Somebody knows something.”
    “In my judgment, it’s the best play I’ve come across in more than ten years.”
    “Maybe something’s happened to your judgment, Mr. Riller. My rule is I get mine, win or lose.”
    Hochman the lawyer decided it was time to earn a living. He said, “What is your proposal, Mr. Manucci?”
    “Okay,” I said. “You gentlemen comfortable? Here’s the way I see this.”
    Riller crossed his legs, trying to look relaxed, but he looked to me like a smoker who just gave up smoking.
    “According to this memo—this is your memo, Mr. Hochman, isn’t it?”
    “The facts in it are mine,” said Riller.
    “I don’t really care whose, this is what you’re selling me, right? This budget for the production is five fifty out of which you’ve raised one hundred twenty-one thousand, leaving me to supply the missing seventy-eight percent, or four hundred and thirty thousand or so.”
    “Correct,” Hochman said. “Actually it comes to four hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars exactly.”
    “Wrong. I think Mr. Riller’s budget is too low. It should be six fifty.” I was enjoying this.
    I could hear Riller breathing ten feet away. He said, “I can’t renegotiate with those who’ve already invested on the basis of a five fifty budget.”
    “You won’t need to,” I said.
    “Besides,” Riller added, “I plan budgets carefully. We don’t need the extra hundred.”
    “Ah,” I said. “The production doesn’t need it, but I do. What happens is I lend the production five hundred and twenty-nine thousand and at closing you give me a hundred back in cash. That’s my management fee.”
    “Management fee?”
    “I’m managing to get your show on the road, ain’t I? On the five twenty-nine, I’m not charging street vigorish, which is six for five. I’m charging—”
    Hochman butted in. “What’s six for five?”
    “Twenty percent a week,” I said.
    “That’s illegal,” said Hochman.
    “Sure it’s illegal. I said I’m not charging that. You need Q-tips for your ears? I’m charging on a per annum basis, prime plus six, just like a factoring division of whatever bank you do business with, very fair.”
    “I can’t pay interest out of the budget,” Riller said.
    “Oh, I know that. It’ll have to come out of your share of the general partnership, which will be forty-nine percent because the other fifty-one percent is my payoff if the play works.”
    I could see Hochman straining to keep from going into his briefcase for his calculator. Riller leaned back like a real gentleman and did it in his head.
    Riller’s face got formal. “Mr. Manucci,” he said, “let me be sure I understand. As a limited partner, you get what you’d normally get, seventy-eight percent of fifty percent, the rest going to the other investors. But in addition, you would be getting fifty-one percent of my half plus a payback of the whole five twenty-nine, including the hundred thousand I paid as a management fee? Even if the play is a smash, what’s left might not be worth the candle.”
    Carefully, like tightening my finger on a trigger but not pulling it, I said, “I didn’t realize you were ready to ditch the play.”
    Riller clasped his hands together like a kid making a London bridge. Maybe his left hand and right hand were teaming up to hold each other from doing something they shouldn’t do.
    “Mr. Manucci,” he finally said.
    I said, “Yes,” to help him along.
    “I can’t abandon the production because I can’t return the money already invested. It’s been spent. And I’ve committed to expenses well beyond that.”
    “How