Clifford D. Simak
Carbon Copy
The man who came into Homer Jackson's office was wearing his left shoe on his right foot and his right shoe on his left.
He gave Homer quite a start.
The man was tall and had a gangling look about him, but he was smartly dressed?except for his shoes. And his shoes were all right, too; it was just the way he wore them.
'Am I addressing Mr. Homer Jackson?' he asked with a formality to which Homer was entirely unaccustomed.
'That's me,' said Homer.
He squirmed a bit uncomfortably in his chair. He hoped this wasn't one of Gabby Wilson's jokes.
Gabby had an office just down the hall and loved to pester Homer plenty. When Gabby cooked up a joke, he did a massive job on it; he left out not a single detail. And some of Gabby's jokes got pretty rough.
But the man seemed to be dead serious and perhaps a little anxious.
'Mr. Homer Jackson, the suburban realtor?' he persisted.
'That's right,' said Homer.
'Specializing in lake properties and country acreages?'
'I'm your man.' Homer began to feel uncomfortable. This man was spreading it on a trifle thick and Homer thought he could see Gabby's hand in it.
'I'd like to talk with you. I have a matter of small business.'
'Fire away,' said Homer, motioning toward a chair.
The man sat down carefuUy, bolt upright in the chair. 'My name is Oscar Steen,' he said. 'We're building a development on what is known as the Saunders place. We call it Happy Acres.'
Homer nodded. 'I'm acquainted with the place. It's the only good holding on the lake. You were fortunate to get it.'
'Thank you, Mr. Jackson. We think that it is nice.'
'How are you getting on?'
'We have just finished it. But now comes the most important part. We must get people onto the property.'
'Well,' said Homer, 'things are a little tough right now. Money has tightened up and the interest rates are higher. Washington is no help and besides that…'
'We wondered if you'd be interested in handling it for us.'
Homer choked a little, but recovered quickly. 'Well, now, I don't know. Those houses may be hard to sell. You'd have get a solid figure for them and the prices will run high. The stone wall you put around the place and those fancy gates all, I would suspect you have high-class houses. You have gone and made it into an exclusive section. There'll be only a certain class of buyer who might be interested.'
'Mr. Jackson,' said Steen, 'we have a new approach. We won't have to sell them. We're only leasing them.'
'Renting them, you mean.'
'No, sir, leasing them.'
'Well, it all comes out to the same thing in the end. You'll have to get a lot for them.'
'Five thousand.'
'Five thousand is an awful lot of money. At least, out here is. Five thousand a year comes to over four hundred a month and…'
'Not for a year,' corrected Steen. 'For ninety-nine.'
'For what!'
'Ninety-nine. We're leasing at five thousand dollars ninety-nine full years.'
'But, man, you can't do that! Why, that's absolutely crazy! Taxes would eat up…'
'We're not so interested in making money on the houses as we are in creating business for our shopping centre.'
'You mean you have a shopping centre in there, too?'
Steen allowed himself a smile. 'Mr. Jackson, we obtain the property and then we build the wall to have some privacy so there can be no snoopers.'
'Yes, I know,' said Homer. 'It's smart to do it that way. Good publicity. Whets the public's interest. Gives you a chance to have a big unveiling. But that twelve-foot wall…'
'Fourteen, Mr. Jackson.'
'All right, then, fourteen. And it's built of solid stone. I know?I watched them put it up. And no one builds walls of solid stone any more. They just use stone facing. The way you built that wall set you back a hunk…'
'Mr. Jackson, please. We know what we are doing. In this shopping centre, we sell everything from peanuts to Cadillacs. But we need customers. So we build houses for our customers. We desire to create a good stable population of rather well-to-do families.'
Jumping to his feet in exasperation, Homer paced up and down the office. 'But, Mr. Steen, you can't possibly build up enough business at your shopping centre by relying solely on the people in your development. For instance, how many houses have you?'
'Fifty.'
'Fifty families are a mere drop in the bucket for a shopping centre. Even if every one of those fifty families bought all their needs from you?and you can't be sure they will?but if they did, you'd still have little volume. And you won't pick up any outside trade?not behind that wall, you won't.'
He stopped his pacing and went back to his chair. 'I don't know why I'm upset about it,' he told Steen. 'It's no skin off my nose. Yes, I'll handle the development, but I can't handle leasing at my usual five per cent.'
'Oh, I forgot to tell you,' said Steen. 'You keep the entire five thousand.'
Homer gasped like a fish hauled suddenly from water.
'On one condition,' added Steen. 'One has to be so careful. We have a bank, you see. Part of the shopping centre service.'
'A bank,' Homer said feebly.
'Chartered under the state banking regulations.'
'And what has a bank to do with me?'
'You'll take ten per cent,' said Steen. 'The rest will be credited to your account in the Happy Acres Bank. Every time you lease a unit, you get five hundred cash; forty-five hundred goes into your bank account.'
'I don't quite see…'
'There are advantages.'
'Yes, I know,' Homer said. 'It builds up your business. You're out to make that shopping centre go.'
'That might be one factor. Another is that we can't have you getting rich in front of all your friends and neighbours. There'd be too much talk about it and we don't want that kind of publicity. And there are tax advantages as well.'
'Tax advantages?'
'Mr. Jackson, if you lease all fifty houses, you will have earned a quarter million dollars. Have you figured what the income tax might be on a quarter million dollars?'
'It would be quite a lot.'
'It would be a crying shame,' said Steen. 'The bank could be a help.'
'I don't quite see how.'
'You leave that to us. Leave everything to us. You just lease the houses.'
'Mr. Steen, I've been an honest man for years in an occupation where there's opportunity…'
'Honesty, Mr. Jackson. Of course we know you're honest. That's why we came to you. Have you got your car here?'
'It's parked outside.'
