'Want some more?' The King waited. How well do I know you, Peter? I know you could eat a ton more. But you won't. Not if your life depended on it.
'No thanks. Full. To the brim.'
It's good to know your friend, the King thought to himself. You've got to be careful. He took another spoonful. Not because he wanted it. He felt he had to or Peter Marlowe would be embarrassed. He ate it and put the rest aside.
'Fix me a smoke, will you?'
He tossed over the makings and turned away. He put the rest of the bully in the remains of the stew and mixed it up. Then he divided this into two mess kits and covered them and set them aside.
Peter Marlowe handed him the rolled cigarette.
'Make yourself one,' said the King.
'Thanks.'
'Jesus, Peter, don't wait to be asked. Here, fill your box.'
He took the box out of Peter Marlowe's hands and stuffed it full of the Three Kings tobacco.
'What're you going to do about Three Kings? With Tex in hospital?'
asked Peter Marlowe.
'Nothing.' The King exhaled. 'That idea's milked. The Aussies have found out the process and they've undercut us.'
'Oh, that's too bad. How do you think they found out?'
The King smiled. 'It was an in and out anyway.'
'I don't understand.'
'In and out? You get in and out fast. A small investment for a quick profit.
I was covered in the first two weeks.'
'But you said it would take you months to get back the money you put out.'
'That was a sales pitch. That was for outside consumption. A sales pitch is a gimmick. A way of making people believe something. People always want something for nothing. So you have to make 'em believe they're stealing from you, that you're the sucker, that they — the buyers — are a helluva lot smarter than you. For example. Three Kings. The sales force, the first buyers, believed they were in my debt, they believed that if they worked hard for the first month, they could be my partners and coast forever after on my money. They thought I was a fool to give them such a break after the first month. But I knew that the process would leak and that the business wouldn't last.'
'How did you know that?'
'Obvious. And I planned it that way. I leaked the process myself.'
'You what?'
'Sure. I traded the process for a little information.'
'Well, I can understand that. It was yours to do as you pleased. But what about all the people who were working, selling the tobacco?'
'What about them?'
'It seems that you sort of took advantage of them. You made them work for a month, more or less for nothing, and then pulled the rug from under them.'
'The hell I did. They made a few bucks out of it. They were playing me for a sucker and I just outsmarted them, that's all. That's business.' He lay back on the bed, amused at the naivete of Peter Marlowe.
Peter Marlowe frowned, trying to understand. 'When anyone starts talking about business, I'm afraid I'm right out of my depth,' he said. 'I feel such an idiot.'
'Listen. Before you're very much older, you'll be horse-trading with the best of them.' The King laughed.
'I doubt that.'
'You doing anything tonight? Oh, about an hour after dusk?'
'No, why?'
'Would you interpret for me?'
'Gladly. Who, a Malay?'
'A Korean.'
'Oh!' Then Peter Marlowe added, covering at once, 'Certainly.'
The King had marked Peter Marlowe's aversion but didn't mind. A man's a right to his opinions, he'd always said. And so long as those opinions didn't conflict with his own purposes, well, that was all right too.
Max entered the hut and crumpled on his bunk. 'Couldn't find the son of a bitch for a goddam hour. Then I tracked him down in the vegetable patch.
Jesus, with all that piss they use for fertilizer, that son-of-a-bitching place stinks like a Harlem brothel on a summer's day.'
'You're just the sort of bastard who'd use a Harlem brothel.'
The King's snarl and the raw grate of his voice startled Peter Marlowe.
