Solly could have kissed him. How nice of these two men to help him out this way. It was three drinks later that he realized the help was not just altruistic. It was a $2,000 act of assistance, payable in advance.

He could get that much from his mother without a problem. And then he would find a new business. One that the public would be smart enough to patronize. He was tired of having the public's stupidity make him into a failure. The next time, he would give them what they wanted. They wanted stupid, he'd give them stupid. Boy, would he give them stupid. They wanted hamburgers made out of sawdust, they'd get them. They want chicken with coating made of 712 toxic chemicals, they got it. Fish that no one who had ever smelled an ocean could eat? No problem. He was finished with trying to improve America's life. He was going to give them all what they deserved.

When he woke the next morning, Solly Martin had a terrible headache. It got worse when he remembered what had happened the night before. He wondered if Moe Mosoalevitch and Ernie

8

Flammio would be waiting for him at the Little Flower of the East Shoppe, but they weren't. Instead, they called him shortly after 11 a.m.

"It won't do for us to be seen there," Moscale-vitch said.

"No. Right," said Solly. He wondered how he could call this whole thing off.

"It'll be tomorrow night, kid," Moscalevitch said. "Just remember, leave the back door unlocked when you go. We'll bust it up so it looked like burglars. And you make sure you're out of town somewhere, so no one can pin anything on you."

"All right," said Solly. He held onto the telephone a moment, building up his courage to tell them to call it off. Then his eyes lighted on the stack of bills sent him by the Iranian, Faud Bani-degh, and he gulped and said, "Yeah. Tomorrow night. All right."

Served them right. Served them all right. Maybe those two could set a fire that would spread all the way to Iran. Maybe he could take his insurance winnings and get Moe and Ernie to burn down Banidegh's office in New York. Maybe . . . maybe . . . and a glimmer of an idea entered Solly Martin's mind.