"I'll be dammed! The Tank's really got it! He really has got it!" "Oh, we're rich, we're rich, we're rich!" chanted the hysterical Hannigan, dancing his macabre dance of the human puff-ball. There was a knock at the door and Hannigan, still chanting, danced to the door and opened it. The relaxed puffy flesh drew tight, his back stiffened. Charlie Jingle peered around his girth to see who stood there. Harry Belok, in a black Homburg and a blue pin-stripe suit, stepped smiling into the room, twirling an ebony cane. He doffed his hat, bowing slightly. Behind him a small man slid in next to the wall, his whole body screwed up tightly into his neck. Hannigan, with a pale, sickly smile, shut the door. "If it ain't Harry Belok! Hello, Harry." Harry Belok, smiling, looked straight at Charlie Jingle. "Whadayasay, Hannigan! How's things, Charlie? Long time no see, hah?" Charlie Jingle, with a tightness in his throat, mirrored the sick expression of Mischa Hannigan. He smiled a smile so forced his flesh stretched like a rubber mask out of control. "Hello, Harry. What can I do for you?" "'S this way, Charlie-mo. I just seen your boy work out. I just seen him club the Hammerhead to the deck with the weirdest combination I ever seen. It's somethin' new, he's got. Somethin' original! Know what I mean?" Harry Belok stopped pacing, stopped twirling, to look at Charlie Jingle. Charlie Jingle waited. "Well--I hear around the grapevine that Pugs, Inc., don't relish the thought of givin' your boy a crack at Iron-Man. Is that true, Charlie-mo?" Charlie Jingle shrugged. "It don't mean a thing, Harry. You know that as well as anybody." "Yeah, Charlie-mo. But you know as well as anybody that the Fight Commission has got a rules book as thick as this room. If Pugs, Inc., really wants to, they'll find some kinda statute that disqualifies your boy for the championship. Now, you don't want _that_ to happen, do you?" Charlie Jingle began to feel the heat flushing up behind his eyeballs. "What's the pitch, Harry?" "I think maybe what you ought to do, Charlie-mo, is lemme buy a chunk out of your boy. Then I guarantee you get the match." "What makes you think I don't get the match anyway, Harry?" Harry Belok turned, pointing his stick through the glass to the gym. "Look down there. You see any reporters there? You see any cameras shootin'?" Charlie Jingle did not move, keeping his eyes unblinking on Belok. "Okay. There's no reporters. No press build-up. Pugs, Inc., has put the freeze on. So? What's the point?" "The point," said Harry Belok, tapping Charlie Jingle's chest with the white-tipped stick, "the point, is that you don't get no match from Iron-Man unless you play ball with me!" Charlie Jingle squinted at him through a cloud of brown-blue smoke. "Can't do it, Harry-mo," he said quietly. "You serious?" "Dead serious," said Charlie Jingle.