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was one of the three general partners. He assured me, however, that he “controlled the deal” and that there would be no problem.

When Mr. Biggshotte finally signed my commission agree-ment, he inserted a handwritten clause at the bottom of the last page that stated that the agreement was not valid unless executed by his two partners. He assured me that this was merely a “ges-ture of respect” so as not to offend his Washington, D.C., partner (“Sam Sewage”) by making it look as though he had entered into a deal without his knowledge. Mr. Biggshotte also assured me that Sam Sewage would do whatever he asked of him. Further, he told me that even if his partner refused to sign the agreement, he still possessed the legal authority to bind the partnership. The bot-tom line was that Mr. Biggshotte verbally guaranteed me that he would make the commission agreement valid with or without Sam Sewage’s signature.

Mr. Biggshotte then called Sam Sewage and set up an ap-pointment for me to come to Washington to talk to him in per-son. The next day, I flew to D.C. and, shades of my early days at Screw U., spent a couple of hours sitting in Sam’s reception room, waiting for him to see me. Finally, my self-respect came to my rescue. I asked myself how in the world I had gotten into a situa-tion where I was again sitting dutifully in some rude monger’s re-ception room, waiting for him to bless me with a few minutes of his valuable time.

Having come to my senses, I got up, walked over to the re-ceptionist’s desk, and asked her if I could use the telephone. I then called Mr. Biggshotte and told him that I was going to leave unless Sam Sewage met with me immediately. Mr. Biggshotte tried to calm me down, and assured me that he would call Sam as soon as I got off the line.

Sure enough, within a few minutes Sam Sewage granted me an audience. I restrained my urge to spill a bottle of Liquid Paper on his powder-blue polyester suit, and instead suggested that we go over the details of the deal. After a few minutes of prefacing re-marks, I explained the commission agreement to him, but, to my The Tortoise Dons His Hare Costume

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dismay, Sam said that he would need a day or two to study the agreement before signing. Though he emphasized that he didn’t see anything wrong with the agreement, he said that, as a matter of principle, he didn’t like to “rush into things.”

I was pretty fed up after having to sit in Sam’s waiting room so long, particularly after traveling all the way to Washington, so I was not about to lower myself and try to pressure him into sign-ing against his will. Instead, I acted casual and told him to look over the agreement and get back to Mr. Biggshotte when he was ready to sign.

On the way home, one of those fateful coincidences of life occurred. During an hour’s layover at the Pittsburgh airport (my Learjet was down for repairs), I bumped into none other than the third partner in the deal (“Eddie Enigma”). I was never quite cer-tain exactly what Eddie contributed to the partnership. He had no real estate expertise, had apparently done none of the work with regard to the financing or building of the project, and, I was told, had liquid assets that would make dinner at Taco Bell seem like a big night on the town. Mr. Biggshotte had simply told me that Ed-die was not a factor in the deal and that I should just ignore him.

On the flight home, I told Eddie that I had just come from Washington and that, though Sam Sewage had not yet signed the agreement, he had assured me that he would do so shortly. I then showed him several copies of the agreement, which contained Mr. Biggshotte’s signature, and suggested that he also may as well sign it since it was not valid anyway until Sam Sewage signed.

Surprisingly, Eddie Enigma actually signed the document as per my request, so I was now missing only Sam Sewage’s signa-ture. At this point, I was pretty confident, because all the evi-dence indicated that Mr. Biggshotte really was the one who was in control of the deal. Regardless, he had already promised me that he would honor my commission agreement even if Sam Sewage refused to sign it.

As you might have guessed, after reviewing the agreement for a few days, Sam Sewage did, in fact, refuse to sign.

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standing, Mr. Biggshotte urged me to proceed with working on a sale of the Dayton property. He deleted the clause he had added at the bottom of the agreement regarding the other partners’ signa-tures, then initialed the deletion. (At a later date, I also got Eddie Enigma to initial the deletion.) Mr. Biggshotte explained that he and Eddie controlled more than two-thirds of the partnership, and, as a result, they had the legal power to bind it and enter into an agreement with me.

Even though the agreement was not as ironclad as I would have liked, I decided to move forward with working on a sale of the Dayton apartment development anyway. There were three reasons for my decision.

First, as I pointed out, from all indications it appeared that Mr. Biggshotte really was in control of the deal, which even Eddie Enigma had confirmed, and it was Mr. Biggshotte with whom I was dealing.

Second, in order for a sale to be consummated, Sam Sewage would have to sign the closing documents, and his signing would be de-facto proof that he did, in fact, approve of the terms of the sale.

Third, I was on strong legal ground, because I was licensed to sell real estate in Ohio, and, in addition, I planned to make cer-tain that there would be plenty of certified mail in my files as evi-dence of my involvement. In fact, the real estate laws of Ohio, like most states, protected the “procuring broker” even if he only had a verbal agreement.

As always, I gathered extensive data on the property and put together an impressive package. This soon led to a serious inter-est on the part of the same company that had purchased the St. Louis apartment development where I had undergone my most painful commissiondectomy. My contact at that company (“Arnold Apathy”) was also the same person with whom I had negotiated the St. Louis deal, which should have been another red flag for me had I not been sleepwalking. After all, Arnold had spoken nary a word on my behalf when my Type Number Two The Tortoise Dons His Hare Costume

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professor stuck it to me in the Missouri Massacre. Looking back on it now, it’s hard for me to believe that I moved forward with working on this deal with the knowledge that there were poten-tial problems with both the buyer and seller. My only excuse is that this took place many years before I had undergone my first brain-transplant surgery.

It goes without saying that I sent the deal to Arnold Apathy by certified mail, and that I also registered his company by certi-fied mail with Mr. Biggshotte. Before inspecting the property, however, Arnold sent an outline of an offer to me, and asked that I have the seller sign it if it was acceptable. It was a reason-able offer—$800,000 over the mortgage, subject only to Arnold’s inspection of the property—and I was successful in getting Mr. Bigg-shotte to sign it.

About a week later, Arnold Apathy came to Dayton to in-spect the property. It was the usual, meaningless staring at bricks, touring of bathrooms and laundry rooms, looking down garbage disposals, and opening closet doors. Arnold let it be known that he was satisfied with what he had seen, and at that point I thought we were headed for a quick closing.

Mr. Biggshotte, who had let me know from the outset that he was in desperate financial straits, said that the only way he was interested in going through with the deal was if the buyer could close it right away. So, to expedite the handling of the myriad de-tails that would have to be taken care of before a closing could oc-cur, Mr. Biggshotte and I flew to New York a couple weeks later to meet personally with Arnold Apathy.

It was during that New York trip that I began to get lulled into a false sense of security. Even before we went to New York, Mr. Biggshotte and I had become pretty chummy, and he continu-ally praised me for the great job I was doing in handling all as-pects of the deal. He told me point blank that he had never seen a real estate broker do such a thorough, efficient job and be so ag-gressive in moving a deal forward. In fact, he lavished so much praise on me that, much like my eternal nemesis The Hare, I

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“Gosh––real, live bricks. I’m overwhelmed.”

began to relax and think to myself, “How sweet it is.” I hadn’t ex-perienced this kind of infatuation since my White Hatted profes-sor at Screw U. flunked me in Holier-Than-Thou 401.

Another reason for our buddy-buddy relationship was that I liked Mr. Biggshotte’s candor. He didn’t exactly have a sterling reputation, which was understandable given that he was an ex-treme Type Number One who had no qualms about trying to grab both his and everyone else’s chips. During one of our conversa-tions, when he and I were chatting about business philosophy, he said to me, “Let’s face it, in business every guy grabs his best hold and goes for all he can get, any way he can get it. Everything else is B.S.” This hardly shocked me, considering what I had been through both during and after my days at Screw U. How could I deny that there was a certain amount of truth to what he was say-ing, considering my firsthand experience with disorganized crime in the Jungle. It wasn’t the way I wished things would be, but the way I had to admit they really were.

During our New York trip, Mr. Biggshotte and I tied the bow around our friendship. He continued to praise me, and I contin-ued to lap up every word. Ignoring reality and displaying a shock-ing ability to rationalize away the facts, I figured I had nothshock-ing to fear, because I not only possessed an Ohio real estate license, a signed commission agreement with Mr. Biggshotte and Eddie Enigma, and plenty of certified-mail slips as proof of my involve-ment, I also had the advantage of knowing Mr. Biggshotte’s busi-ness philosophy. My impeccable lack of logic was analogous to a person deciding that even though he had advance word that armed bandits were going to rob a bank within the next five min-utes, it was safe for him to go inside because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

About two weeks after our New York trip, Arnold Apathy sent me a purchase agreement for the Dayton property. To be sure, the fact that all mail and communications were being chan-neled through me gave me a great sense of security. Mr. Bigg-shotte continued to praise me for the outstanding job I was doing,

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and Arnold Apathy displayed considerably more respect for my position in this deal than he had in the Missouri Massacre. It looked like a slam-dunk.

As we got nearer to a closing, however, Arnold Apathy de-manded that Mr. Biggshotte supply a considerable amount of ad-ditional information. As usual, I took matters into my own hands and did most of the work. In fact, in this particular deal my staff and I took care of things that normally could be handled only by a seller’s own personnel. With his blessing, my staff virtually took over Mr. Biggshotte’s office and provided such information as rent rolls, tax bills, and a long list of other items that required ex-hausting hours and numerous trips to Dayton.

Finally, the day arrived when Arnold Apathy was satisfied and ready for a closing. Because of Mr. Biggshotte’s desperation, the Attorney Goal Line Defense was almost nonexistent in this deal. Legalman probably figured that the only way he would ever get his bill paid by Mr. Biggshotte was to actually help (blas-phemy!) get the deal closed. Witnessing Legalman wave aside problems is about as common as viewing Halley’s comet.

On the day of the scheduled closing, one of the more com-mon dirty-laundry problems surfaced. The insurance company that held the mortgage on the property refused to allow a transfer of the apartment development to the buyer. The insurance com-pany was unhappy with Mr. Biggshotte because of his delinquent mortgage payments, rent rolls they had found to be less than ac-curate, and a number of other questionable items. Here I was on the one-yard line, a commission of approximately $97,000 within my grasp, and from out of nowhere the insurance company was trying to gum up the works by refusing to allow the sale to go through.

What to do? My old standby, of course: Take matters into my own hands. I flew to Cincinnati (where the insurance company was located) with my attorney and Mr. Biggshotte. What tran-spired at the insurance company’s office that day was like some-thing out of a soap opera. Mr. Biggshotte begged almost to the The Tortoise Dons His Hare Costume

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