The Get Rich Quick Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

photos.”
    I described the photo and the envelope it was in. Eve Stropper put me on hold while she looked around her office.
    â€œOh yeah, got it right here,” she finally said. “But something tells me your name isn’t Herb Dunn.”
    Oops! I had forgotten I’d written the cover letter saying I was a fifty-five-year-old man.
    â€œI…uh…well…”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter, kid,” Eve Stropper said. “You did a nice job on this picture.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked.
    â€œWho’s kidding who, kid? This picture is as phony as a three-dollar bill.”
    â€œHow can you tell?”
    â€œBecause all UFO photos are phonies.” She laughed.
    My heart sank. Quincy, Rob, and the Bogle twins were looking at me, trying to figure out what was going on. “How much are they going to pay us?” Rob whispered.
    â€œThen you won’t print it?” I said into the phone.
    â€œI didn’t say that,” Eve Stropper replied. “Kid, we print phony UFO pictures all the time. The only problem is we just ran a big UFO piece a couple of weeks ago. Didn’t you see it? It was a story about aliens taking over the Earth by hiding secret messages in McDonald’s Happy Meal toys. You see, there’s a secret code on the bottom of each toy. When three-year-olds see the code, they go insane.”
    â€œBut three-year-olds can’t even read yet!” I told her.
    â€œWho cares?” Eve Stropper said. “It was our bestselling issue since the one with exclusive photos of Laura Bush sneezing.”
    â€œThat was news?” I asked, amazed.
    â€œShe had never been photographed in mid sneeze before,” she replied. “Anyway, we can’t run another UFO piece for a while. Try me again in about a year.”
    â€œA year!” I exclaimed. “That’s like forever.”
    â€œSorry, kid,” Eve Stropper said. “If we ran UFO photos every week, they’d have no shock value. We’d lose our credibility. Readers would start to believe the pictures were faked.”
    â€œBut your pictures are faked!”
    â€œWell, we don’t want them to know that,” Eve Stropper said with a chuckle. “Hey kid, you sound likeyou’re pretty bright. Did you shoot any pictures of Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe lately?”
    â€œDidn’t they die a long time ago?” I asked.
    â€œSo what?” she said. “They still sell papers. To their millions of fans, they live forever.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I don’t have any photos like that.”
    â€œToo bad. We haven’t run a good Elvis sighting in a long time.”
    I asked her to send the photo back to us and hung up the phone. The National Truth was not going to pay us a dime, much less a million dollars.

9
The Big Payoff
    W hen I told everybody that the National Truth wasn’t going to use our photo, they all acted like it was the end of the world. They were moping around, hanging their heads, all depressed. As CEO of the company, it was part of my job to keep up the company morale.
    â€œAre you going to let one little failure knock you down?” I said, pacing around the gazebo. “What do you think GRQ stands for? The Gang of Real Quitters?”
    â€œMaybe shooting fake UFO pictures wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Rob grumped. “It was dishonest. It was cheating. It was—”
    â€œIt was brilliant,” I interrupted. “Do you think Bill Gates gave up the first time somebody told him no?”
    â€œDid Bill Gates try to flog fake UFO snaps too?” Quincy asked.
    â€œThat’s not the point,” I told her. “The point is that we’re not quitters. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, right?”
    â€œTry what again?” Teddy asked.
    â€œTry another paper,” I told him. “If the National Truth doesn’t want our photo,