Chapter Ten:
“All financiers are not created equal!”
—R. CORMAN
“So WHERE ARE we off to today, Mr. Skeeve?” Edvik’s words interrupted my thoughts, and I fought to focus my attention on the problem at hand.
“Either to talk with the magicians or some financial types,” I said. “I was hoping that as our trusty native guide you’d have some ideas as to which to hit first . . . and it’s just ‘Skeeve,’ not ‘Mr. Skeeve.’“
The “Mr. Skeeve” thing had been starting to get to me with the bellhop, but it hadn’t seemed worth trying to correct. If I was going to be spending the next few days traveling with Edvik, however, I thought I’d try to set him straight before he got on my nerves.
“All right. Skeeve it is,” the cabbie agreed easily. “Just offhand, I’d say it would probably be easier to start with the financial folks.”
That hadn’t been what I had hoped he’d say, but as I’ve noted before, there’s no point in paying for guidance and then not following it.
“Okay. I’ll go along with that. Any particular reason, though?”
“Sure. First of all, there are a lot of people in the magik business around here. We got schools, consultants, co-ops, entertainers, weather control and home defense outfits . . . all sorts. What’s more, they’re spread out all over. We could spend the next year trying to check them out and still have barely scratched the surface. There aren’t nearly as many financiers, on the other hand, so if they’re on your list I figured we could start with them. Maybe we’ll get lucky and not have to deal with the magik types.”