It took a week, and it took every member of the staff that could be pulled off other programs, as well as the ones assigned to Witch.
The "slum" had been located—three buildings in a short block just up from the Battery, surrounded by new buildings. It was a one-privy-to-a-floor, cold-water only setup, with a family living in every room. It existed on high-value land only because the land and buildings were tied up in an estate and couldn't be sold. But they could be remodeled and thrown into one, and contracts were signed, permissions granted, the paperwork alone filled nearly a complete file cabinet.
It would take double the fifty thousand dollars, of course—maybe more. But Randolph had authorized it, hadn't he? He always named half the figure—or less—than he meant to be used. Anyhow, international ratings and sales would more than make up the purse, because this thing would hit socko. Worry about the cash was the last thing that was bothering Oswald. He had a bear by the tail, and his contract price was tied to the gross....
The show was ballyhooed the whole week while the work went on.
"Clean, clean, Witch clean—what's the witches next big cleanup? Witches of the world, unite—let's cleanup this old world and make it livable...."
The night the new cleanup job was to show, Randolph tuned in his TV as ignorant of the details as the next viewer. It worried him a little that Oswald insisted on keeping him in the dark on everything except the fact that it would be a slum cleanup, but he had the best p.r. men and the best lawyers in the country working on it, he told himself; and certainly the sales charts for the past two weeks had been spectacular.
"We can count on the biggest TV audience of the year tonight," Oswald had told him gleefully at noon. "The buildup's been a natural, and those 'Salem with a new twist and a singing commercial' plugs have been continued on this network—the cost of that was comparatively small—and I've even gotten them onto a few of the really big shows to boot."
Bill Howard came on the screen, his big homely face leaning across the desk toward the TV audience.
"The biggest news in the country right now," Bill said in a solemn tone, "is the biggest single cleanup job in the country today.
"There's a slum," Bill said, "right here in New York that the Witches of the world will unite to cleanup—tonight."