M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link by Robert Asprin & Walter Velez

Author:Robert Asprin & Walter Velez [Asprin, Robert & Velez, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, General, Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fiction - Fantasy, Fantasy - General, Adult, Humour
ISBN: 9780441014491
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1986-06-01T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four:

“If you’re too busy to help your friends, you’re too busy!”

-L. IACOCCA

ACTUALLY, I WASN’T all that wild over The Fun House. I mean, it was making us money hand over fist, but I somehow never figured on owning a hotel/casino. In particular, I didn’t think it was a good idea to set the precedent of buying out dissatisfied customers, no matter how profitable the deal turned out to be. As it was, Hysterium’s relatives (on his wife’s side) were trying to get the deal invalidated on the basis that he must have been out of his mind, or at least not in his right mind, to sell such a lucrative business at the price he did. I wasn’t particularly worried, as this was still the Bazaar at Deva, and if everyone who signed off on a bad deal here was declared insane, the economy would collapse.

The part that really bothered me about the deal was that it meant associating with the Geek again. In past dealings with him, he had consistently proven to be primarily concerned with lining his own pockets without much regard for anyone else, and I felt it was dangerous to place him in a position where he had such temptingly easy access to our money, or even a piece of it.

Still, I couldn’t argue with Massha’s logic in including him in the scheme, and at the time she approached him she had no idea he was going to end up reporting to us. Bunny assured me that she was personally auditing the financial reports for the casino that the Geek turned in along with our share of the take, but I found that in spite of that I tended to spend inordinate amounts of time studying the spreadsheets myself, half expecting to find some indication that he was somehow skimming a little off the top for his personal accounts.

That’s what I was doing this particular afternoon, setting aside the countless letters and chores that were pressing on my time to take one more pass at auditing the Geek’s financial reports. Bunny had told me once that a hefty percentage of accountants and financial analysts operated more out of spite than from any instinctive or learned insight. That is, rather than detecting that there’s anything wrong from the figures they study, they single out some ‘department that’s been giving them grief or a manager who made snide comments about them at the company party, then go over their reports very carefully. She maintains that anyone’s reports will come up flawed or suspicious if reviewed closely enough.

That may well be, if one is a skilled numbers cruncher. All I discovered was that prolonged periods of time spent staring at rows of little numbers are a pain … literally and figuratively. Specifically, after a few hours hunched over the reports, I was feeling cramps and stabbing pain in my eyes, my neck, my back, and regions lower.

Leaning back to ease the strain and stretching a bit, my eye fell on the pencil I had tossed down on my desk from disgust and frustration.

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