In other words, a pure frame-up implicating Jack as trying to frame Corrigan. Corrigan couldn’t see for the life of him why Maurice went about doing things this way. “Ah, no,” he said, “that wouldn’t be right at all. There’s no knowing it was him. I might have made a mistake earlier, sure enough.”
Maurice shook his head. “That’s not the point. I don’t care who goofed. I’ve been wanting to get rid of him anyhow. This is all I need.”
“Of course it’s the point,” Corrigan retorted. “I’m not covered, and that’s the fact of it. I’ll not be a party to making up something that says otherwise.”
“You’re too careful to drop thirty,” Maurice persisted. “I say he palmed it and tried to lay it on you.”
“Maybe he did. I guess we’ll never know.”
Maurice shook his head disbelievingly. “Aren’t you gonna fight that?”
“Maurice, there isn’t anything to fight. I didn’t cash up the shift, and that’s all there is to it. For God’s sake take it out of my check like I said, and let’s be done with it.”
Maurice seemed mystified. “I don’t get it. You’ve got nothing to lose by doing it my way. This way you lose thirty bucks. Where’s the logic?”
“You really can’t see it?”
“I can’t see it.”
“I’d be losing my self-respect, and that’s worth far more than what we’re talking about.”
“So if Jack’s made thirty for nothing, that’s okay by you?”
“Well, he’s the only one who knows about that for sure, isn’t he? If he did, then it wasn’t for nothing. He made it at the price of becoming a thief.” Corrigan shook his head. “In my opinion that wouldn’t be a very good deal at all, at all.”
Maurice seemed to freeze for an instant; then he looked at Corrigan with a different expression, as if a switch had clicked in his head somewhere, transforming him into a different personality. “Say, you know, that’s an interesting way to look at it,” he said. “I never thought about it before.”
Try it sometime, Corrigan thought to himself.
Maurice went on. “How would you weight a payoff matrix to express the options? Logically it reduces to the same structure as Prisoner’s Dilemma.”
Corrigan stared at him in surprise. Years before, when he’d worked among engineers and programmers, intellectual topics figured naturally in conversation, and game theory was often one of them. But it was the last thing that he would have expected from Maurice.
Before Corrigan could reply, however, Sherri stuck her head in through the doorway from the bar. “Joe, great, you’re here. We’re filling up out front.”
“Sorry, Maurice,” Corrigan said, glad to get off the subject. “Duty’s calling. We’ll have to talk about it some other time.” And with that, he straightened his jacket and went through to join Sherri in the bar.
In the far corner, a clique of Merlyn Dree fans had penetrated the defenses and were chanting some of his slogans and catchphrases around a table. Two macho-looking characters in sunglasses and pink fedoras were at the bar, waiting to be served. A bearded man in a pirate hat was prefacing every phrase with a loud, rolling “Arr!” to a group sitting near the door. A man in a yellow suit was loudly expounding that the art of selling lay in being a good listener, and a couple with their heads encased in audiovisual helmets were sitting as though in a trance by the far wall.
Normal, sane, ordinary people, Corrigan thought to himself as he checked the register and surveyed the scene. Nothing unusual. Yes, it was going to be another typical night.
Chapter Five
Jonathan Wilbur had had three scotches in the last half hour and was getting loquacious. He waved a hand expansively from the barstool where he was sitting. “New York, London, Tokyo. It moves around the world through computers all the time. Billions of dollars every day. I can buy a company in the morning, sell it at lunchtime, lose my ass in the afternoon.”
“That’s nice,” Corrigan said, collecting empties off the bar.
Privately, he doubted if Wilbur had ever bought and sold more than the office furniture. He was young, dazzled by a world that was obviously new to him, and too anxious to make an impression where it didn’t matter. Hotel bartenders saw it all the time.