19 Purchase Street (16 page)

The Mafia.

It was essential to the High Board that whenever the public considered organized crime, it should think no further. To whatever extent the High Board went to cultivate and keep up that impression it was well worth it.

Over the years, the income the High Board received from crime increased. There were those on the board who believed the original projections of profits were exaggerated. However, the money came in at a rate that exceeded even Winship's expectations.

Probably no group of men in the world were more capable of surreptitiously dealing with such enormous cash sums. They had both the financial knowledge and clout for it. Their banks were most useful. Three vast commercial banks with branches throughout the country where the various bosses and underbosses made regular cash deposits into accounts that existed solely for that purpose, accounts coded in such manner that they were automatically kept separate and never entered into the books at the end of any day.

At regular intervals that cash was sent on to the main branches of those banks. The actual handling of it was not a problem. There was no need to be self-conscious about it. Who was to know which cash was which in all those bulging cloth bags transported apparently by Brinks or Wells Fargo trucks. As for holding the accumulated cash in the vaults, many millions were not discernible from other many millions. Besides, the traditional concern was a shortage, not a surplus.

Bank examiners came in each year.

From the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency or the Federal Reserve.

The examiners usually spent a week poking into every column and corner, hardly speaking to anyone. It was assumed they were looking for discrepancies; actually they were making sure for the High Board that there were no loose ends. They seldom found one. When they did, they trimmed it off with their accounting expertise and tucked it cleanly into place.

The dirty cash in the main vaults moved steadily from limbo. Some of it seeped into the bank's regular excess reserve. And from there, out in the form of loans. (By 1982 the High Board held two hundred and twenty-five billion dollars in residential mortgages, one out of every five in America.)

Some of the dirty cash was put into certain business accounts, where it showed as legitimate profit. Typical was a string of three hundred and twelve motion picture theaters in the midwest that, on the average, had about half its seats unsold but its income reflected capacity audiences. The same sort of cash take on a much larger scale was facilitated by two fast food chains with their thousands of outlets. And by service stations, amusement parks and supermarkets. The intention, obviously, was not to avoid paying taxes on the money, rather to place it in conduits where it would be taxed and thereby cleaned. (A legion of lawyers for the High Board were continually finding and opening such ways to accommodate the cash.)

Wash.

The most significant way the High Board pulled it off was with its strength on Wall Street. Never mind the laws that prohibited banks from dealing in or owning corporate stocks. The Banking Act of 1933. The Bank Holding Act of 1956. Both had such large holes in them they weren't even a squeeze for the High Board. As well, whenever the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency happened to look in the High Board's direction, they did so with such self-serving myopia, they saw only the impeccable foreground.

Sizable chunks of the dirty money were regularly passed through the trust departments of the banks to be converted into stocks and other securities. The powerful investment banking houses owned by the High Board were in on it, especially Ivison-Weekes. They bought large blocks of issues, often from stock offerings they themselves packaged for important corporate clients.

As the stock was acquired, it was registered to Hartco, Ninco, Vasco, Bostco or any of forty-some such entities. These were corporate code names, or
street names
, as they were called. For hiding behind. The real beneficial owner, of course, was the High Board, but there was less than a speck of a chance of anyone being able to determine that. A look beyond any of those front companies would find only another front, and beyond that, still another. Like the amusing futility of one of those hollow Spanish toy figures of wood that opened to reveal only a replica of itself, that in turn opened to reveal only a replica of itself, and so on, until what it got down to was nothing.

The dirty money never stopped flowing in.

Stock was continually bought with it.

Not even a hesitation when it came to the law that limited an anonymous investor in a corporation to five percent. The High Board exceeded that amount in nearly every instance. Got around it by simply slicing its share into such portions and arranging for them to be owned by one or the other of its investment firms and certain individuals not apparently affiliated.

By the early 1980s the High Board had its hold over many of the largest industrial corporations in America. Out of the leading five hundred in
Fortune
magazine's directory, the High Board had fifty, was close to having fifty more, and none of those was very far down the list.

This was what Winship had foreseen early on, that his eastern establishment accomplices had found so compelling.

Not the profit so much as the control.

Power over the being and well being of so many.

Most people sensed it was there, over them, but they couldn't say really what it was, or who. Something omnipresent but elusive in the upper reaches of the American system was moving their destinies more than they were led to believe. It was too vast to get one's mind around.

The High Board. By way of crime, seven hundred and fifty billion dollars had come into its system so far.

It made the three billion at 19 Purchase Street seem a pittance.

That house at Number 19 was a thread in the High Board's tapestry. Important, but not vital. It served to take care of The Balance, whatever amounts of cash were left over from all the other ways of washing. The place had been set up for that particular purpose, and the way it should operate had been well thought out in advance. No need to deviate from those ways, the High Board said. Nor was there margin for incompetence. An error would remain an error, despite excuse. It was to be understood.

Edwin L. Darrow, the Custodian of Number 19, was well aware of the High Board's inflexibility. It was something he tried to keep in mind. He did not believe the fatal heart attack of Gridley, the man who had been Custodian before him. No one seemed to know exactly how much of a mistake Gridley made, but rumor had it in the neighborhood of a hundred million.

Darrow begrudged Gridley's death. Believed it had impeded him. If not for it, by now he, Darrow, would have been at least a director of one of the High Board's conglomerates. Out in the public sun, basking in philanthropy, Penobscot Bay, Palm Beach and America's Cup. That had been his direction until Gridley's heart attack and he was told to take over at Number 19. It wasn't at all what he wanted, being on the shady underside. It required too low a profile and relatively modest lifestyle.

Temporary, they had said.

But now, eleven years later, there he was. With his nephew Arnold Hine. Making his daily visit to those two upper rooms where The Balance was kept.

He told Hine firmly now: “We'll have none of that.”

“What?”

“You know the rule against having food up here.” He indicated two cartons of groceries set aside on the floor.

“They're not just groceries, they're a bring. One of the security men found them this morning down by the gate.”

“I know all about that. I'm talking about eating up here.” From one of the cartons, he took up a tin of Carr's wheatmeal biscuits. Its lid was on crooked and half its contents was gone. He showed it to Hine and then, to reinforce his case, brushed some crumbs from the nearby counter surface.

Hine glanced at the man who looked like a gardener, and the two women dressed as housekeepers. They were pretending total concentration on their work. Hine thought they had probably eaten at least one biscuit each. And Sweet had eaten the rest. It wouldn't do any good to mention it to Sweet. It was just his way.

“Minor things add up,” Darrow cautioned, and to impress the point, tapped with his second finger on Hine's upper arm.

Hine reacted as though burned, jerked his arm out of range.

Darrow had done it purposely, knowing full well about Hine. Hine would rather shove his fist into a public toilet bowl than shake hands with anyone. He avoided crowds so as not to have others brushing against him.

Sweet came back with the bulging trash bag the garbage men had left. He put it down on the scale, untied it and spread it open.

Sheaves of hundreds.

The electronic scale registered a fraction over one hundred and twenty-two pounds. “Six million, one hundred thousand,” Sweet quickly figured, evidently very accustomed to converting weight into sums. It was one of the few things he was mentally quick at.

“Don't just weigh it, count it.” Darrow ordered. “There may be fifties in there.”

Sweet nodded and went about it. He would count until Darrow left and then, as usual, he and the others would randomly go through the heaves for fifties.

The man in gardener's clothes pardoned himself to Darrow, who moved aside so the man could get at the suitcases under the counter. He brought up a two-suiter of leather that was considerably soiled and scarred, much traveled but still sturdy. He placed it on the counter, unbuckled and zipped it open.

Darrow observed as the man packed the bag with individual banded sheaves of twenty-five thousand dollars. Eighty of them, neatly placed to make two million dollars altogether. There was room to spare. The man distributed small white-peanut shell shaped styrofoam around the edges and a layer on top to fill out the bag. He closed it and checked to make sure the red and white identification tag was securely attached to its handle. He set that bag aside and went to work on another.

They were two of the thirteen carries that would be made that week. That was the weekly average, thirteen.

There were one hundred and twelve carriers on the active roll and twenty on standby.

Each carrier made about six carries a year.

At an average of two million a carry, the yearly wash of Number 19 was one billion, three hundred forty-four million.

Carriers worked on commission. One and one-half percent.

On two million, that was thirty thousand. In a year, six times thirty was one hundred and eighty thousand to the carrier, in cash and paid overseas.

The high pay was not because of high risk. It was to make it seem that way. When a carrier felt he was in a precarious legal situation, his mind would more likely be on that rather than on thoughts of running greedy. Besides, who would bite the hand that fed so well? During Darrow's eleven years as Custodian, only two carriers had tried to make off. Both had made elaborate preparations, changed identities and headed for remote places. It had taken Hunsicker's people less than a week to find them. And deal with them.

Take the dirty cash from here to there. Nothing more was expected of a carrier. No transactions, no receipts, merely deliver to a particular bank in Zurich or Geneva or Lucerne, in Lichtenstein or Andorra, or most recently, in Vienna, since Austria had gotten into secret banking. Numerous banks were owned by the High Board, fronted for them by nationals of the country in which they were located. The cash a carrier brought to those banks was converted into gold and held, or it came back clean, as bank-to-bank loans.

Darrow watched the packing of another two million in another bag. Enough, he decided. He had displayed his conscientiousness for the day. Surely they believed he was too interested and aware of what was going on to try to get away with anything. It was a small matter that every day the two housekeepers folded two of the newest hundred dollar bills into a three-quarter inch square that they placed beneath their tongues like wafers and stole away with. As long as they limited it to that, Darrow was not concerned. When they stopped it would mean they were filling their bodies. Then he would call for a physical inspection. It was something he had had to contend with every now and then.

He left The Balance, went with Hine down the wide upper hall. They paused on the landing above the main stairway. A dark-haired young woman was coming up, taking the steps two at a time, not so much in a hurry as to satisfy her energy. She had on silk evening pajamas of a pale peach shade that made them look all the more like lingerie. The pajamas were wrinkled, the bottoms especially creased around the crotch, and the cuffs were dragging and getting underfoot, too long for her now because she'd taken off her four inch high gold evening sandals, had them slung by their ankle straps over the first finger of her left hand.

She was Hine's wife, Lois. Her maiden name was Whitcroft, which was a High Board name.

Lois was very pretty without trying. A fortunate look with fine bones in perfect place. Blue eyes with a drowsy quality to them. An aggressive mouth, not tight, but soft and slightly forward and parted.

At the moment her lipstick was fresh, her eye make-up was not. She said one good morning for the two men and made it sound like more than they deserved. Went right past them, headed for her room in the south wing.

Hine caught up with her, stopped her with: “Where were you?”

“When?”

“Last night.”

Lois shrugged one shoulder.

She'd been away three nights running but Hine was concerned only with the last. Because they were supposed to have had dinner in Greenwich with one of her Whitcroft relatives. Hine had gone alone and lied for her, and felt he'd gotten nothing out of it. Certainly he hadn't made points.

“You cunt,” he said, down to her, and repeated it more gutturally, as though it was a bad taste he had to get from his mouth.

She agreed with a small smile.