It’s exactly what happens with those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart.’
‘Buy,’ Yossarian corrected him.
‘You don’t sell plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them.’
‘No, sell,’ Milo corrected Yossarian.
‘I distribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an assumed name so that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed names at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day for the syndicate at five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece. I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead.’
‘Everybody but the syndicate,’ said Yossarian with a snort.
‘The syndicate is paying five cents apiece for plum tomatoes that cost you only half a cent apiece.
How does the syndicate benefit?’
‘The syndicate benefits when I benefit,’ Milo explained, ‘because everybody has a share.
And the syndicate gets Colonel Cathcart’s and Colonel Korn’s support so that they’ll let me go out on trips like this one.
You’ll see how much profit that can mean in about fifteen minutes when we land in Palermo.’ ‘ Malta,’ Yossarian corrected him.
‘We’re flying to Malta now, not Palermo.’
‘No, we’re flying to Palermo,’ Milo answered.
‘There’s an endive exporter in Palermo I have to see for a minute about a shipment of mushrooms to Bern that were damaged by mold.’ ‘ Milo, how do you do it?’ Yossarian inquired with laughing amazement and admiration.
‘You fill out a flight plan for one place and then you go to another.
Don’t the people in the control towers ever raise hell?’
‘They all belong to the syndicate,’ Milo said.
‘And they know that what’s good for the syndicate is good for the country, because that’s what makes Sammy run.
The men in the control towers have a share, too, and that’s why they always have to do whatever they can to help the syndicate.’
‘Do I have a share?’
‘Everybody has a share.’
‘Does Orr have a share?’
‘Everybody has a share.’
‘And Hungry Joe?
He has a share, too?’
‘Everybody has a share.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ mused Yossarian, deeply impressed with the idea of a share for the very first time.
Milo turned toward him with a faint glimmer of mischief.
‘I have a sure-fire plan for cheating the federal government out of six thousand dollars.
We can make three thousand dollars apiece without any risk to either of us.
Are you interested?’
‘No.’
Milo looked at Yossarian with profound emotion.
‘That’s what I like about you,’ he exclaimed.
‘You’re honest!
You’re the only one I know that I can really trust.
That’s why I wish you’d try to be of more help to me.
I really was disappointed when you ran off with those two tramps in Catania yesterday.’
Yossarian stared at Milo in quizzical disbelief. ‘ Milo, you told me to go with them.
Don’t you remember?’
‘That wasn’t my fault,’ Milo answered with dignity.
‘I had to get rid of Orr some way once we reached town.
It will be a lot different in Palermo.
When we land in Palermo, I want you and Orr to leave with the girls right from the airport.’
‘With what girls?’
‘I radioed ahead and made arrangements with a four-year-old pimp to supply you and Orr with two eight-year-old virgins who are half Spanish.
He’ll be waiting at the airport in a limousine.
Go right in as soon as you step out of the plane.’
‘Nothing doing,’ said Yossarian, shaking his head.
‘The only place I’m going is to sleep.’