"Callahan 08 - Callahan's Legacy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

He-was already three-quarters of the way through, sipping slowly but repeatedly. "Almost a pity," he said between sips, "to mix it," sip, "even with coffee," sip, "even coffee like this." He was done. He paused to savor the sensations he was experiencing, then smiled broadly, set the mug down, and said, "Would your hospitality extend to another, Jake?"
But I had already started it working, the moment I saw his reaction to that first taste; in moments it was ready. I put another i~1ug -on the belt for myself, and brought his to him. "Here you go." -
He had gone back to making money airplanes, but he paused again to drink half of his second cup. "Better get back to work," he said, setting it down. "I've got a lot of it ahead of me, and the night is middle-aged."
"I'd be glad to give you a hand," I offered.
He thought about it. "Sure. Jump in, Jake."
So I fetched my own coffee, took a second packet out of the case, busted it open, and began my owit aeronautical assembly line, on the opposite side of the case from where he was working.
It was distinctly pleasant work, I soon found. There is something fundamentally satisfying about folding a hundreddollar bill into a paper airplane and then sailing it gracefully into a large fire. (I no longer doubted the bills' authenticity in the slightest; they felt and smelled like real money.) I wondered why I'd never tried it before. I had the wild thought that perhaps I had stumbled onto a great, secret, that maybe this was why some people bothered to become rich; I'd always wondered about that. If you had more money than you could possibly spend, why, then, you could do this whenever you felt like it.
"I was wishing I could ask you why you were doing this, Buck," I said after a few minutes. "But I think I understand now. The pleasure is worth the expense. This is fun."
"Tha't it is," he agreed dreamily, pausing in..his work to sip his Blessing. "The best part, I can't get over how nobody's paying the slightest bit of attention to us. I like your customers, Jake. But hey-why couldn't you ask?"
"Because it would've been a snoopy question," I said. "You see that wiry little guy at the piano, Fast Eddie? Anybody asks a snoopy question in here, Eddie has orders to eighty-six 'em-and he ain't gentle about it."
"Even you?"
"Even himself. House rule."
He looked Eddie over, and shrugged. "Man sure plays good. Plays like he's got three hands."
"That he does."
"Well, I'd hate to fight with a three-handed man. Especially one that talented. Why don't I just take you off the hook and volunteer the information?"
"Up to you," I said.
"I can put it in three words. Spain and Portugal."
I frowned. "Spain and-?"
"Didn't you ever wander about them? Spain and Portugal used to rule the world, you know. The whole damn planet: the Pope drew a line on a map of it one day, and gave half to Spain and the other half to Portugal."
"Sure," I agreed. "That's why they speak Portuguese in Brazil."
"And what the hell happened? Third-rate powers at best, today, both of 'em. The two of them together couldn't take France in a fair fight, and just about anybody can take France. How could they fall so far so fast-did you ever wonder?"
"I dunno; I guess like Rome before them and England after them."
He shook his head vigorously. "Totally different thing. What destroyed Spain and Portugal was treasure-the shipload after shipload of gold they took from the New World. They really did, you know, and not all of it ended up on the ocean floor. They thought they were in hog heaven; the poor saps must have thought they were importing wealth by the ton."
I must have looked puzzled. "Weren't they?"
"No. They were importing money. Gold is not wealth. Potatoes is wealth. Corn is wealth. Potable water is wealth. Gold is just money."
I began to get it. "Oh, my-"
"Right. All of a sudden there was much too much money around, arid very little more real wealth than there'd been the day before. Too much money chasing a fixed amount of goods. Their currency inflated; their prices rose; their balance of trade went all to hell; and finally their economies collapsed, so totally that centuries later they're still trying to dig out from under the rubble. The only real wealth to be had in the New World was real estate-but what little wasn't taken away from them, they had to let go at fire sale prices."
"Wow." It was an ironic notion. Death by money.
"That's why I'm doing this," he said, launching another bill toward the fire. "Our own economy's in the toilet for much the same reasons: we've got too many dollars chasing too few potatoes."
"And a vice president who can't spell either one," I couldn't resist adding. (This was in 1988.) "So you mean you're-"
"-doing my civic duty as I see it. If you'll forgive a dreadful pun, the bucks stop here. The damned stupid government is trying to cure the deficit by printing money: I'm opposing them. I'm tightening the money supply one tiny notch. For the same reason you mentioned why your customers don't swipe singles out of that box down there: enlightened self-interest. I figure it's better to be broke in a healthy economy than rich in a dying one."
"You know," I said slowly, "that's so crazy it almost makes sense."
"I think so," he agreed. "Oh, I know this is too small an amount to have any significant effect-I started out with well under two million-but it's all I can do, and I won't shirk it. Like Johnny Lennon said, "We're all doin' what we can.' I'd burn more if I had it."
"I'll be damned," I murmured.

So I thought about it. Suppose I suddenly came into possession of a few million bucks. What would I do with it?
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that being suddenly handed a couple of million dollars would be a fucking disaster.
For a start, I wouldn't particularly want to change my present lifestyle much: I like my life. If I bought all the toys I really crave, and all the books and CDs I could ever use-just went hog-wild-I'd say I could use up a hundred grand or so, tops. Peanuts. I don't think I'd care much for the company of other rich folks, either; the few I'd run across in my time had seemed to me distinctly unenviable-and yet it's hard to bang Out comfortably with anybody else but other rich people once you're worth a few million: the imbalance inevitably puts a strain on both sides of any such relationship. Educating myself to the point where I'd be capable of intelligently and ethically managing or investing that much money would take years of distasteful skullsweat for which I am spectacularly ill suited: I'm just this side of innumerate, and I gave up trying to do my own taxes when I was twenty years old.
God, think of the tax headaches! Inspire the IRS to shine that big a flashlight on my tax situation and history, and I'd be-in perpetual audit for the rest of my life, long past the point where all the money had hemorrhaged away into the federal coffers. If I let the IRS have my millions, then I would be much more personally responsible than ever before for what the government would ultimately do with them, and I didn't want that on my conscience. But even just learning to protect myself from the IRS was probably beyond my abilities, and who could I trust to do it for me? Who said I had better judgment than, say, the Beatles? The record of history was clear: the only kind of people who could hang on to sums of money on that scale without beingbled dry by their agents and fri-ends were the people who had been born to that calling ... and none of those people ran a bar or played folk music for a living.
Think of the horrid publicity alone! Okay, my name isn't Buck Rogers-but the name Jake Stonebender-is, let's face it, just weird enough to catch the eye of the fine folks at Haxd Copy and the National Enquirer in the same way. I'd end up spending every dime the government left me just to try and get some peace.
I remembered a guy back in the Sixties who inherited a bundle, and went on TV talk shows soliciting worthy causes to donate it to. I seemed to recall he had ended up in a rubber room. Ethically disposing of several million bucks sounded like a job as complex and demanding as that of, say, a mayor or a governor, but without the glamour or the perks.
I found myself concluding that if someone ever gave me a guitar case full of hundred-dollar bills, the smartest thing I could do would be to find me a reasonably crowded bar-so there'd be lots of witnesses if the IRS ever asked-and pitch the whole kit and kaboodle into the fireplace.

"You know, Buck," I said, as we folded and threw his money together, "this may be one of the smartest ideas you ever had."
"I think so," he said, nodding. "I was this close to hearing Geraldo Rivera's talent coordinator on my answeung machine."
"Among many others," I agreed. "Well, anyway, I just want to say it's a privilege to be a part of this. Thanks."
That made him smile. "No problem." Then he glanced into the guitar case, and frowned slightly. "Except that this isn't going near as fast as I expected it woukl. We'll be at this all night."
"Would you be willing to accept more help?"
He looked around the bar. "Let me guess. You personally vouch for the honesty of everybody here."
"Better," I said. "I personally vouch for the self-respect of everybody here."