“Well, the manufacturing company—Yicheng Electronics—came back with all guns blazing. Probably not because of the money at stake, but because they were worried about their reputation. Can’t blame them there, can you?”

“No.” Hodges can’t wait any longer for pain relief. He takes out his bottle of pills, shakes out two, then reluctantly puts one back. He puts it under his tongue to melt, hoping it will work faster that way. “I guess you can’t.”

“Yicheng claimed the defective units were damaged in shipping, probably by water. They said if it had been a software problem, all the games would have been defective. Makes a degree of sense to me, but I’m no electronics genius. Anyway, Zappit went under, and Sunrise Solutions elected not to proceed with the suit. They had bigger problems by then. Creditors snapping at their heels. Investors jumping ship.”

“What happened to that final shipment?”

“Well, they were an asset, of course, but not a very valuable one, due to the defect issue. I held onto them for awhile, and we advertised in the trades to retail companies that specialize in discounted items. Chains like the Dollar Store and Economy Wizard. Are you familiar with those?”

“Yeah.” Hodges had bought a pair of factory-second loafers at the local Dollar Store. They cost more than a buck, but they weren’t bad. Wore well.

“Of course we had to make it clear that as many as three in every ten Zappit Commanders—that’s what the last iteration was called—might be defective, which meant each one would have to be checked. That killed any chance for selling the whole shipment. Checking the units one by one would have been too labor intensive.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, as bankruptcy trustee, I decided to have them destroyed and claim a tax credit, which would have amounted to . . . well, quite a lot. Not by General Motors standards, but mid-six figures. Clear the books, you understand.”

“Right, makes sense.”

“But before I could do that, I got a call from a fellow at a company called Gamez Unlimited, right there in your city. That’s games with a Z on the end. Called himself the CEO. Probably CEO of a three-man operation working out of two rooms or a garage.” Schneider chuckles a big business New York chuckle. “Since the computer revolution really got rolling, these outfits pop up like weeds, although I never heard of any of them actually giving product away. It smells a trifle scammy, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Hodges says. The dissolving pill is exceedingly bitter, but the relief is sweet. He thinks that’s the case with a great many things in life. A Reader’s Digest insight, but that doesn’t make it invalid. “It does, actually.”

The legal shield has gone bye-bye. Schneider is animated now, wrapped up in his own story. “The guy offered to buy eight ­hundred Zappits at eighty dollars apiece, which was roughly a hundred dollars cheaper than the suggested retail. We dickered a bit and settled on a hundred.”