“May I ask the source of your information?”
“A little bird.”
“Am I expected to show interest or indignation?”
Bertha Cool’s personality broke from its shell to rise superior to the man’s cool detachment. “I don’t give a damn what you do. I’m a sharpshooter. When business gets quiet with me, I go out and make business.”
“Very interesting.”
“I’ll put my cards on the table. You’ve got a judgment against a man by the name of Belder. You haven’t collected. You can’t collect. You’ve had attorneys bleeding you white. They can’t get to first base. I can’t afford to split my take with a lawyer. I’m not going out and grab the gravy and then hand a percentage on a silver platter to some lawyer. I can’t afford to. And when you do business with me, you can’t afford to either. Fire your lawyers, put yourself in a position where you can deal with me without anybody else butting in, and I can make you some money.”
“What’s your proposition?”
“You’ve got a judgment for twenty thousand. You can’t collect it. You never will collect it.”
“That’s a matter that is open to argument.”
“Certainly it’s open to argument. You and your lawyers argue one way, and the other man and his lawyers argue the other. You keep paying your lawyers, he keeps paying his lawyers. What he pays isn’t deducted from the twenty thousand he owes you and what you pay is water down the rat hole. You think you have a twenty-thousand-dollar asset, but so far it’s simply been an opportunity to pay out lawyer’s fees.”