With the economy in shambles, his job gone after Lehman Brothers folded, Litvinov was tortured by indecision over the choice before him. Should he risk everything and buy Marvin Gardens, or leave his money in tax-free bonds until he passed Go? The Dow had plummeted another hundred points that day, and a colleague of his had collapsed with a heart attack while on Free Parking. Word was that the man had picked a card that read “You Have Won Second Prize in a Beauty Contest—Collect Ten Dollars” but failed to declare it. Now the I.R.S. had discovered that the ten dollars was hidden in an offshore bank account and had begun investigating. Litvinov’s hands were shaking when he landed on the prime yellow property, and he called his friend Schnabel at Morgan Stanley, who advised him not to buy it. “No one knows where the market is going,” Schnabel said. “If I were you, I’d wait six months. Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner are meeting in Washington tomorrow and one of the topics they’re discussing is the yellows. We’ll know more after.”
Six months, thought Litvinov. By then Schwimmer could have all three yellows if I don’t prevent it. Schwimmer, Litvinov’s former partner, had recently passed Go and was liquid. He could build. Litvinov, for his part, held two gray properties, Vermont and Connecticut, but his ex-wife Jessica owned Oriental, and he knew she would never trade it to him. He’d offered his house in the Hamptons, more generous visitation hours with the children, and Water Works, but she was adamant. Litvinov had always had problems with women. His inability to throw doubles with the dice had led to a terrible fight with his current fiancée, Bea. He was sure she was having an affair with Paul Kindler, who’d somehow gotten Citigroup to finance a hotel for him on Boardwalk. Kindler had traded for Boardwalk, which gave him both blues, but after the economy tanked and travel fell off no one landed on his property. He tried renovating and planned for luxury hotels with a flat-screen TV in every room, but construction costs soared and he had trouble with the unions, who seemed to take forever just to put up a few houses. Kindler was this close to Chapter 11 when Breslau, of Goldman Sachs, coming home drunk from a Christmas party, landed on Park Place with three houses on it. Suddenly, Breslau needed eleven hundred dollars. He begged Kindler to wait, but Kindler had just drawn a card that read “Pay School Tax—One Hundred and Fifty Dollars,” and needed the money. Not wanting to mortgage any of his properties, Breslau borrowed from loan sharks. When he couldn’t pay on time, they threatened to break his kneecaps. He finally made a deal, offering them St. Charles Place in return for breaking only one kneecap.
Breslau’s wife, Rita, was sexy. They’d had what Hollywood screenwriters called a “cute meet.” He’d picked a card that read “Take a Ride on the Reading Railroad.” She picked that exact same card and they wound up sharing a compartment. At first they didn’t get along, but after a few drinks she removed her clothes and explained the concept of the risk-reward ratio to Breslau and he fell in love with her. Rita stood by him during a crisis when the pieces were being distributed and Breslau wanted the little silver top hat. When it went to Litvinov Breslau was bitterly disappointed. He was forced to take the thimble, which the doctors felt had brought on his depression and led to years of intense psychotherapy. In a listless stupor, he would fail to notice when someone landed on his property, and his demands for rent after the next person had thrown the dice led to complicated litigation (Parker Brothers v. Board of Education).
Lou Daimler was a different story. Growing up in poverty, he vowed that he would make something of himself, but when he came up with the idea of introducing puce and fuchsia properties everyone thought he was a visionary or a fool. He attended Harvard on a scholarship and fell in love with a Boston girl. Family owned the three greens. Hotels on all, of course. They believed Daimler was a fortune hunter, but when he picked “Bank Error in Your Favor—Collect Two Hundred Dollars,” he used the capital to start an Internet company, for which he was offered six billion dollars, although he refused to sell unless the buyer threw in at least one “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Then, there was Porchnick, at Quadrangle, who owned several minor properties and had filed for bankruptcy. Treasury agents learned that he had hidden several hundred thousand dollars in bright-yellow five-hundred-dollar bills under the board, planning to transfer them to Swiss accounts. Poor Porchnick had found himself jobless and broke at fifty-eight and took a bottle of sleeping pills. His note said it all: “To my beloved wife, Claire, I leave Mediterranean Ave. I hope the two-dollar rent enables you to live in the style to which you’ve become accustomed.”
The final tragedy was Milo Vorpich. When Merrill Lynch went under, Vorpich put everything he owned into his mattress. All deposits and withdrawals were made from his Sealy Posturepedic. Then the new Administration set aside two billion dollars of the stimulus package for people with money in their mattresses, and the Fed allotted it by size. Vorpich had a queen-size bed and received substantial help. He decided to marry his childhood sweetheart, but when he obeyed a card that said “Go Back Three Spaces” she refused to wait for him. He could never catch up with her again. If this weren’t sad enough, he landed on Go to Jail. He remained in jail for several years, and finally tunnelled out, emerging on Illinois Avenue, where he was met by a friend with a private Cessna and a Mexican passport. His plan was to fly over Park Place and Boardwalk, thus avoiding the high rents, and settle in Cuernavaca. Unfortunately, his plane ran out of fuel and he was forced to land on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he was slain in a shoot-out with federal agents. ♦
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/01/24/110124sh_shouts_allen
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