Checkpoint Charlie (11 page)

“Vigorish.”

“Yeah. Usury. Whatever. Trouble is, I was already stretched past my limit with the banks and the building-and-loans. Hell, I was kiting checks over the weekend as it was, but I was in too deep to quit. I had to get the building completed so I could sell it. Otherwise the bank was set to foreclose. So I asked around. Sooner or later somebody steered me to Clay Foran.”

“And?”

“Very respectable businessman, Foran. Calls himself an investment broker. Of course he's connected with the Mob. Arizona's crawling with them nowadays, they all moved out here. For their health,” he added drily.

“How big is he?”

“Compared to what?”

“Nickle and dime, or million-dollar loans?”

“In the middle. It didn't pinch his coffers to come up with my fifty K but he did it after I offered him a little extra vigorish on the side. Mostly I imagine he spreads it around, five thousand here, ten thousand there — you know, minimize the risks. But hell, those guys get five percent a week; he's rich enough.”

“Two hundred and sixty percent annual interest?”

“You got it. I know, I know. But I was in a bind, Charlie, I had nowhere else to turn. And I figured to sell the project inside of a month. I figured I could handle it — ten grand interest.”

“But?”

“You see what they did to me. Obviously I came up short. It wasn't my fault. The building next door caught fire. My building didn't burn but the heat set off the automatic sprinkler system and it ruined the place. Seventy thousand damage — carpets, paint, doors, the works. The insurance barely covered half of it, and the damage set me back more than two months behind schedule. I had to bail out, Charlie. What choice did I have? My construction company went into Chapter Eleven. It's not my first bankruptcy and maybe it won't be my last — you know me — but I'd have paid them back. I tried to keep up the payments. I was a few days late a couple of times and we got threatening phone calls, so forth — you know how it goes. Then it wasn't a week any more, it was three weeks, and you see what happened. They took out their vigorish in blood. I guess they wrote me off as a bad debt but they figure to leave me crippled as an example to other borrowers who think about welshing. Nothing personal, you understand.” His lip curled.

Margaret took his hand between hers. Margaret was always there to cushion Eddie's falls: good-humored, fun-loving, careless of her appearance. She had endured all his failures; she loved the real Eddie, not the man he ought to have been. If I ever find a woman like Margaret I'll have won the grand prize.

Eddie said, “I know the ropes, I had my eyes open, I'm not naive. But they've crippled me for life, Charlie. Both kneecaps. They'll be replaced with plastic prosthetics but I'll spend the rest of my life walking like a marionette. Two canes. I figure they hit me too hard, you know. I almost died. Maybe I still will. We don't know what's bleeding inside me.”

“You knew those guys played rough, Eddie. You knew it going in.”

It sounded lame and self-righteous even as I said it. Eddie's eyes only smiled at me. He knew I'd pick up the baton.

*   *   *

M
Y LONG-DISTANCE CALL
to Myerson was lengthy and exasperating. He kept coming back to the same sore point. “You're asking me to commit Agency facilities to your private vengeance scheme. I can't do it.”

“The Company's got no use for it. Never will have. The press blew its cover in 1969 and it's been sitting there ever since, gathering dust. They're carrying it on the books as a dead loss — they'll be tickled to unload and get some money out of it. From your end it's a legitimate transaction and the profit ought to look pretty good on your efficiency report. And one other thing. If you don't authorize it I'll have to apply for a leave of absence to help my brother out. The Agency will grant it with pleasure— you know how eager they are to get rid of me. And of course that would leave you without anybody to pull your chestnuts out. You haven't got anybody else in the division who can handle the dirty jobs. You'd get fired, you know.”

“You fat bastard.”

*   *   *

F
ORAN WAS
slight and neat. The word dapper is out of fashion but it fits. He had wavy black hair and a swimming-pool tan and the look of a nightclub maître-d' who'd made good.

It took me a week to get the appointment with him, a week of meeting people and letting a word drop here and a hint there, softly and with discretion. I'm good at establishing the bona fides of a phony cover identity and in this case it was dead easy because the only untruth in the cover story was my name: I didn't want him to know I had any relationship with Eddie.

His office on the top floor of a nine-story high-rise had a lot of expensive wood, chrome and leather. The picture windows gave views of the city like aerial postcard photographs. It was cool inside — the air conditioning thrummed gently — but you could see heat waves shimmering in the thin smog above the flat sprawling city: the stuff was noxious enough to thin out the view of the. towering mountain ranges to the north and east. I felt a bit wilted, having come in from that.

Foran had a polished desk a bit smaller than the deck of an escort carrier; it had a litter of papers and an assortment of gewgaws made of ebony and petrified wood. He stood up and came affably around this display to shake my hand. His smile was cool, professional: behind it a ruthlessness he didn't bother to conceal.

He had a deep confident voice. “Tell me about the proposition.”

“I'm looking to borrow some money. I'm not offering a prospectus.”

“If my firm authorizes a loan we have to know what it's being used for.” He settled into his swivel chair and waited.

“What you want to know,” I said, “is whether you'll get your money back and whether I'll make the interest payments on time.”

“I don't know you, Mr. Ballantyne. Why should I lend you money?”

“I'm not being cute,” I said. “If I lay out the details to you, what's to keep you from buying into the deal in my place while I'm still out scrounging for capital?”

“That's a risk you have to take. You'd take the same chance with anybody else, unless you've got a rich uncle. At least give me the outlines of the deal — it'll give us a basis for discussion.”

I brooded at him as if making up my mind. I gave it a little time before I spoke. “All right. Let's assume the government owns a small private company with certain tangible assets that are of limited value to any domestic buyer, but might be of enormous value to certain foreign buyers to whom the present owner is not impowered to sell. You get my drift?”

“An arms deal?”

“In a way. Not guns and ammunition, nothing that bald. The way this is set up, I'll be breaking no laws.”

“Go on.”

“You've had a few days to check me out,” I said. “I assume you know I work for the Government?”

“Yes.”

“I'm about to retire. This deal will set me up for it. I need money to swing it, and it's got to come from somebody like you. But let me make it clear that if you try any odd footwork on me you'll find yourself in more trouble than you want to deal with.”

His smile was as cold as Myerson's. “Did you come here to threaten me or to borrow money?”

I sat back. “The CIA founded, or bought, a number of private aviation companies fifteen or twenty years ago. They were used for various purposes. Cover fronts for all sorts of operations. They used some of them to supply revolutionary forces, some of them to run bombing missions against unfriendly countries, some of them to train Cuban exiles and that sort of thing. It was broken by the press several years ago, you know the story.”

“Yes.”

“All right. A few of those companies happened to be here in Arizona. I'm interested in one of those. Ostensibly it was a private air service, one of those shoestring jobs that did everything from private executive charters to cropdusting. After the CIA bought it the facilities were expanded to accommodate air-crew training for student pilots and gunners from Cuba, Haiti, South Vietnam, Hungary and a couple of African countries. Then the lid blew off and the Agency got a black eye because we're not supposed to run covert operations inside the United States. After the publicity we were forced to close down the operation.”

“Go on.” He was interested.

I said, “The facility's still there. Planes, ammunition, bombs, radar, Link trainers, the whole battery of military training equipment.”

“And?”

“And it's on the market. Been on the market for seven or eight years. So far, no buyers. Because the only people who have a use for those facilities are governments that we can't be seen dealing with. Some of those governments would pay through the nose for the equipment — far above its actual value.”

“You figure to be a go-between?”

“I know those countries. I've got the contacts. And I've recently chartered a little shell corporation in Nassau that I set up for this deal. The way it goes, I buy the company and its assets from the Government. I turn around and sell it to the Nassau shell corporation. The shell corporation sells the stuff wherever it wants — it's in the Bahamas, it's outside the jurisdiction of American laws. When we make the sale, the shell corporation crates up the assets in Arizona and ships them out of the country on a Bahamian bill of lading, and then they're reshipped out of Nassau on a new ticket so that there's no evidence in this country of the final destination. As I said, the buyers are lined up — they'll be bidding against one another and I'll take the high bid.”

He was flicking his upper lip with his fingernail. He looked deceptively sleepy. With quiet brevity he said, “How much?”

“To buy the aviation company and pay the packing and shipping and incidental costs I figure one million nine hundred thousand. I'd rather call it two million in case I run into a snag somewhere — it's better to have a cushion. It's a bargain actually — the Government paid upwards of fifteen million for that stuff.”

“Maybe. But what condition is it in now? It could be rusty or obsolete or both.”

“Obsolete for the U.S. Air Force, maybe, but not for a South American country. And it's all serviceable. It needs a good dusting, that's all. I've had it checked out.”

“How much profit do you expect to realize?”

“That's classified. Let's just say I intend to put a floor under the bidding of three million five.”

“Suppose you can't get that much? Suppose you don't get any bids at all?”

“I'm not going into this as a speculation. I've already made the contacts. The deal's ready to go down. All I have to do is name the time and place for the auction — but I've got to own the facilities before I can deliver them.”

“Suppose we made you a loan, Mr. Ballantyne. And suppose you put the money in your pocket and skipped out to Tahiti.”

“All right. Suppose we draw up contracts. If I don't pay the interest and principal you forclose the company. The assets will remain right here in Arizona until I've sold them and received the cash down payment, which will be enough to repay your loan. If I skip out with the money you'll have the assets — and with them a list of the interested governments. Fair enough?”

“We'll see. Two million is a great deal of money.”

“Did I ask you for two million? I've got my own sources of private capital who want to buy in for small shares. I've raised six hundred thousand on my own. The loan I need is for one million four.” That was elementary psychology: scare him with a big amount, then reduce it attractively.

Then I dropped the clincher on him. I said, “I'll need the money for no more than six weeks. I'll pay one percent a day, no holidays, for six weeks. That works out to just short of six hundred thousand dollars interest. You lend me one million four, you get back two million.”

“I'll have to check this out first. The name of the company?”

I knew I had him.

*   *   *

M
ARGARET LOOKED TIRED
but she covered the strain with her smile. She set out cheese and biscuits in the living room while I mixed the drinks.

She said, “They haven't found any internal bleeding. He's going to be all right.” She cut me a wedge of cheddar. “He's a foolish man sometimes but he didn't deserve this. Money's only money. Eddie — he's like a kid playing games. The money's just a counter, it's the way you keep score. If you lose a game you don't kill your opponent — you just set up the board and start another game.”

“Foran doesn't play by those rules, Margaret. Eddie knew that.”

She drank; I heard the ice cubes click against her teeth. “Did Foran go for it?”

“I won't know for a while. He's checking things out. But I think he'll buy it. He's too greedy to pass it up. The easiest mark for a con man is another crook.”

“If he's checking things out, is there anything for him to find?”

“I doubt it. Most of what I told him was true. My boss set up the Nassau shell corporation for me. It'll be there when Foran looks for it. The Arizona Charter Company exists, it's on the Government's books just as I told him it was, and the assets and facilities are exactly as I described them to him.”

“If you pull if off, Charlie, they'll come after you.”

“I don't think they'll find me. And I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it.” I smiled to reassure her. People had been trying to kill me for more than thirty years and many of them were far more adept at it than the brand of thugs that Foran and his kind employed.

I knew one thing. If Foran didn't fall for this scam I'd just get at him another way. In any case Foran was all finished. Eddie and Margaret didn't know it but they had pitted the most formidable antagonist of all against Foran. I'm Charlie Dark. I'm the best there is.