"What kind of craps will show up on the dice?" asked Rizzuto, with the dourness of a man who has just lost his seventh sure thing in a row.
"Just wait one moment," came Dastrow's voice on the conference speaker box hooked up to the Palmer, Rizzuto telephone line.
"I'm waiting," said Palmer, who wanted to give this Midwest tinkerer not one more moment of PRS time.
"You should have a package out in your reception room. Have it brought into your office, but don't open it," said Dastrow.
"Certainly," said Palmer. Well acquainted with Dastrow's tricks, Palmer hung up the phone and called the bomb squad. He wasn't going to let Dastrow erase the only link to himself with one simple little explosion, not that Dastrow ever did anything that obvious.
The bomb squad cleared out the office and cautiously ran a portable X-ray scanner around the package, while men in Teflon armor jackets cringed outside in the hallway. But the picture on their screens set them laughing.
"An enemy didn't send you that package, Mr. Palmer. If he did, I wish I had enemies like that," said the chief of the bomb squad. "It's filled with dollar bills."
"Oh," said Palmer.
"He's up to something," said Schwartz.
"Turning on us at a moment like this," said Rizzuto.
"It's when you're down the world steps on you 'cause it can't do it while you're up."
Even the secretaries were moved by that little summation.
Remembering that Dastrow did warn them not to open the package, Palmer brought it to the conference room, past the old wooden desk from their storefront days.
Dastrow was on the phone in minutes.
"All right, now you know it's not a bomb," said Dastrow.
"Do you have us bugged?" asked Schwartz.
"Of course I have you bugged. And I'm not the only one who has you bugged. I've been protecting you for some time now from some interference from your attackers. But never mind. I didn't have to listen to you to know you'd have the package checked for a bomb. You think I'm running out on you and cleaning up the evidence. I knew you'd think that. You're still lawyers. You think like lawyers. You act like lawyers. You work like lawyers, at least most of them. "
"I resent that," said Rizzuto.
"Shhhh," said Schwartz. "Go ahead, Dastrow."
"Yes, Robert, please do," said Palmer.
"I want you to follow my directions precisely. Call in a secretary, have her open the package and take a handful of what's in there."
"Money is in there," said Palmer.
"Right," said Dastrow. "Do it."
Palmer called in the best secretary in the office, the one who could spell. Palmer knew she was the one who could spell because a client once commented that this was the first letter he had ever received without a spelling error. None of the partners knew that because they couldn't spell either. No one ever got rich by spelling.
The secretary was a bit mistrustful at first but when she saw the new dollar bills, she grabbed a handful with thanks.
"All right, now what?" asked Palmer.
"First, don't any of you dare touch that money."
"All right," said Palmer, looking at the stacks of dollar bills. If they were his he just wanted to pocket a handful. Rizzuto thought of how they would look stacked in front of him at a poker table. Schwartz knew he could leverage that little box of money into a prime inwestment on margin.
"If you got that out in the street, would you refuse to take it?"
"Of course not," said Palmer icily.
"Now go out into your outer office and say hello to your secretary."
"What's going on here? I'm not going to a secretary. She's going to come in here."
"Won't work that way," said Dastrow.
"Don't tell me how my office works."
"Suit yourself," said Dastrow, and all three heard him whistle away the time while Palmer buzzed for the secretary who could spell. But she didn't come. Another one burst into the room.
"Mr. Palmer, she can't move. She says her hands feel numb and she's nauseous."
"I told you so," came the voice from the box.
"Who's that?"
"Never mind," Palmer told the secretary who had just entered.
When she had gone, Dastrow told Schwartz to take away the woman's pocketbook but be sure to wear gloves. He assured all of them their secretary would get better.
"But if she kept those dollar bills longer than a few moments, if she actually fingered them awhile, the damage would be permanent. She would lose her ability to perform good work, possibly even the ability to recognize loved ones, and she would never have a decent night's sleep again in her life. She's been poisoned."
On those words, Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz began to understand the magnitude of their salvation. "The United States government, through its carelessness, has printed money that is toxic. You've got the United States government as your target. It's got all the money in the world. You've got everyone who handles money as your client. You're rich."
And then the laughter began. Dastrow even explained how it worked.
"At certain times during its destruction, paper money is naturally toxic. I just made sure that certain people readjusted the formula for the ink so that it would be toxic right away. The new ink isn't in place quite yet. But now is the time to get yourself on the ground floor. Now is the time for you to start accusing the Treasury of sloppy practices, perhaps even hint at the poisoning of innocent victims, everyone who trusts the American dollar."
Harold W. Smith could not miss the signs coming from Palmer, Rizzuto They were not only going to do it again, they were going to do it to America. But this time they made their biggest mistake.
At Grand Booree they had advertised they were coming. But in the new attack on the government money supply, Palmer, Rizzuto had made the fatal slip. Previously there had always been some form of protection on certain calls. Smith could tell when the blockages came up. But now these very calls from that source that had to be the source of all the accidents was open. And they had made the mistake of communicating with the government printing plant in Nevada, the one just outside the atomic testing range.
It was to this one that Harold W. Smith had ordered Remo, praying that it was not another trap like the Grand Booree. He really had no choice. If money could be made toxic, then there would be more than a negligence case. A whole nation would be crippled.
And Remo knew this. He knew the dangers as much as Smith. But someone, he said, had taught him a lesson about courage. Someone, he said, who had surprised him with her courage.
"We are not going down without a fight," he had said.