The Moneychangers (49 page)

"He can use the card if he's on to something hot and wants support, or if he knows he's in danger. Depending on what's happened up to then, I'll decide what to do. Tell him to buy something worth more than fifty dollars; that way the store will be certain to phone in for confirmation. After that phone call, he should dawdle as much as he can, to give me time to move."

Wainwright added, "He may never need the card. But if he does, it's a signal no one else will know about."

At Wainwright's request, Juanita repeated his instructions almost word for word. He looked at her admiringly. "You're pretty bright." "`De que me vale, muerta?" "What does that mean?"

She hesitated, then translated, "What good will it do me if I'm dead?"

"Stop worrying!" Reaching across the car he gently touched her folded hands. "I promise it'll all work out."

At that moment his confidence was infectious. But later, back in her a
partment with Estela sleeping, J
uanita's instinct about impending trouble persistently returned. .

The Double-Seven Health Club smelled of boiler steam, stale urine, body odor, and booze. After a while, though, to anyone inside, the various effluvia merged into a single pungency, curiously acceptable, so that fresh air which occasionally blew in seemed alien.

The club was a boxlike, four-story brown brick building in a decaying, dead-end street on the fringes of downtown. Its facade was scarred by a half century of wear, neglect, and more recently graffiti. At the building's peak was an unadorned stub of flagpole which no one remembered seeing whole. The main entrance consisted of a single, solid, unmarked door abutting directly on a sidewalk notable for cracks, overturned garbage cans, and innumerable dog turds. A paint-flaking lobby just inside was supposed to be guarded by a punch-drunk bruiser who let members in and churlishly kept strangers out, but he was sometimes missing, which was why Miles Eastin wandered in unchallenged.

It was shortly before noon, midweek, and a dissonance of raised voices drifted back from somewhere in the rear. Miles walked toward the sound, down a main-floor corridor, none too clean and hung with yellowed prizefight pictures. At the end was an open door to a semi-darkened bar from where the voices came. Miles went in.

At first he could scarcely see in the dimriess and moved uncertainly so that a hurrying waiter with a tray of drinks caromed into him. The waiter swore, somehow managed to keep the glasses up
right, and moved on. Two men
perched on barstools turned their heads. One said, "This
is
a private club,
buster. If you aina member out!
"

The other complained, " 'S 'at lazy bum Pedro goofin' off. Some doorman! Hey, who are ye? Wadda ya want?" Miles told him, "I was looking for Jules LaRocca."

"Look someplace els
e," the first man ordered. "No
wunna that name here."

"Hey, Milesy baby
" A squat pot-bellied figure bustled forward through the gloom. The familiar weasel face came into focus. It was LaRocca who in Drummonburg Penitentiary had been an emissary from Mafia Row, and later attached himself to Miles and his protector Karl. Karl was still inside, and likely to remain there. Jules LaRocca had been released on parole shortly before Miles Eastin. "Hi, Jules," Miles acknowledged.

"Come over. Meet some guys." LaRocca seized Miles's arm in pudgy fingers. "Frenna mine," he told the two men on barstools who turned their backs indifferently.

"Listen," Miles said, "I won't come over. I'm out of bread. I can't buy." He slipped easily into the argot he had learned in prison.

"forget it. Hava couple beers on me." As they passed between tables, LaRocca asked, "Whereya bin?"

"Looking for work. I'm all beat, Jules. I need some help. Before I got out you said you'd give it to me."

"Sure, sure." They stopped at a table where two other men were seated. One was skinny with a mournful, pockmarked face; the other had long blond hair, cowboy boots, and wore dark glasses. LaRocca pulled up an extra chair. "Thissa my buddy, Milesy."

The man with dark glasses grunted. The other said, '.The guy knows about dough?"

"That's him." LaRocca shouted across the room for beer, then urged the man who had spoken first to,-"Ask him sumpum." "Like what?"

"Like about money, asshole," dark glasses said. He considered. "Wh
ere'da first dollar get started
'

"That's easy," Miles told him. "Lots of people think America invented the dollar. Well, we didn't. It came
from Bohemia in Germany, only first it was called a thaler, which other Europeans couldn't pronounce, so they corrupted it to dollar and it stayed that way. One of the first references to it is in Macbeth 'ten thousand dollars to our general use."' "Mac who?"

"Macshit," LaRocca said. "You wanna printed program?" He told the other two proudly, "See what I mean? This kid knows it all."

"Not quite," Miles said, "or I'd know how to make some money at this moment."

Two beers were slapped in front of him. LaRocca fished out cash which he gave the waiter.

"Before ya make dough," LaRocca said to Miles, "ye gotta pay Ominsky." He leaned across confidi
ngly, ignoring the other two. '
The Russian knows ya outta the can. Bin askin' for ye."

The mention of the loan shark, to whom he still owed at least three thousand dollars, left Miles sweating. There was another debt, too roughly the same amount to the bookie he had dealt with,
but the chance of paying either
seemed remote at this moment. Yet he had known that coming here, making himself visible, would reopen the old accounts and that savage reprisals would follow if he failed to pay.

He asked LaRocca, "How can I pay any of what I owe if I can't get work?"

The pot-bellied man sho
ok his head. "First off, ya got
ta see the Russian."

"Where?" Miles knew that Ominsky had no office but operated wherever business took him.

LaRocca motioned to the
beer. "Drink up, then you in me go look."

"Look at it from my point of view," the elegantly dressed man said, continuing his lunch. His diamond ringed hands moved deftly above his plate. "We had a business arrangem
ent, you and me, which both of u
s agreed to. I kept my par
t. You've not kept yours. I ask
yo
u, where does that leave me?"

"Look," Miles pleaded, "you know what happened, and I appreciate your stopping the clock the way you did. But I can't pay now. I want to, but I can't. Please give me time
.
Ominsky shook his expensively barbered head; manicured fingers touched a pink clean-shaven cheek. He was vain about his appearance, and lived and dressed well, as he could afford to.

'Time," he said softly, "is money. You've had too much of both already."

On the opposite side of the booth, in the restaurant where LaRocca had brought him, Miles had the-feeling of being a mouse before a cobra. There was no food on his side of the table, not even a glass of water, which he could have used because his lips were dry and fear gnawed at his stomach. If he could have gone to Nolan Wainwright now and canceled their arrangement, which had exposed him in this way, Miles would have done it instantly. As it was, he sat sweating, watching, while Ominsky continued his meal of Sole Bonne Femme. Jules LaRocca had strolled discreetly away to the restaurant's bar. - The reason for Miles's fear was simple. He could guess the size of Ominsky's business and knew the absoluteness of his power.

Once, Miles had watched a TV special on which an authority on American crime, Ralph Salerno, was asked the question: If you had to live illegally, what kind of criminal would you be? The expert's answer instantly: A loan shark. What Miles knew, from his contacts in prison and before, confirmed this view.

A loan shark like Russian Ominsky was a banker harvesting a staggering profit with minimal risk, dealing in loans large and small, unhampered by regulations. His customers came to him; he seldom sought them out, or needed to. He rented no expensive premises and did his business in a car, a bar or at lunch, as now. His record keeping was the amplest, usually in code, and his transactions largely in cash were untraceable. His losses from bad debts were minor. He paid no federal, state, or city
t
axes. Yet interest rates or "vig
" he charged were normally 100 percent p.a., and often higher.

At any given time, Miles guessed, Ominsky would have at least two million dollars "on the street." Some of it would be the loan shark's own money, the rest invested with him by bosses of organized crime for whom he made a handsome profit, taking a commission for himself. It was normal for an initial $100,000 invested in loan-sharking to be pyramided, within five years, to $1.5 million a 1,400 percent capital gain. No other business in the world could equal it.

Nor were a loan shark's clients always small-time. With surprising frequency, big names and reputable businesses borrowed from loan sharks when other credit sources were exhausted. Sometimes, in lieu of repayment, a loan shark would become a partner or owner of another business. Like a sea shark, his bite was large,

The loan shark's main expenses were for enforceme
nt, and he kept those minimal, kn
owing that broken limbs and hospitalized bodies produced little, if any, money; and knowing, too, his strongest collection aide was fear.

Yet the fear needed a basis in reality; therefore when a borrower defaulted, punishment by hired goons was swift and savage.

As to risks a loan shark ran, these were slight compared with other forms of crime. Few loan sharks were ever prosecuted, fewer still convicted. Lack of evidence was the reason. A loan shark's customers were closemouthed, partly from fear, some from shame that they needed bus services at all. And those who were physically beaten never lodged complaints, knowing that if they did there would be more of the same to come.

Thus, Miles sat, apprehensive, while Ominsky finished his sole.

Unexpectedly, the loan shark sa
id, "Can you keep a set of books
'

"Bookkeeping? Why, yes
; when I worked for the bank.
, He was waved to silence; cold, hard eyes appraised
him. "Maybe I can use you. I
need a bookkeeper at the Double-S
even."

"The health club?" It was news to Miles that Ominsky owned or managed it. He added, "I was there today, before…"

The other cut him off. "When I'm talking, stay quiet and listen; just answer questions when you're asked. LaRocca says you want to work. If I give you work, everything you earn goe
s to me to pay your loan and vig
. In other words, I own you. I want that understood."

"Yes, Mr. Ominsky." Relief flooded Miles. He was to be given time after all. The how and why were unimportant.

"You'll get your meals, a room," Russian Ominsky said, "and one thing I'll warn you keep your fingers out of the till. If I ever find you didn't, you'll wish you'd stolen from the bank again, not me."

Miles shivered instinctively, less for concern about stealing which he had no intention of doing than his awareness of what Ominsky would do if he ever learned a Judas had come into his camp.

"Jules w
ill
take you and get you set up. You'll be told what else to do. That's all." Ominsky dismissed Miles with a gesture and nodded to LaRocca who had been watching from the bar. While Miles waited near the restaurant's outer door, the other two conferred, the loan shark issuing instructions and LaRocca nodding.

Jules LaRocca rejoined
Miles. "You gotta swell break, K
id. Let's move ass."

As they left, Ominsky began to eat dessert while another waiting figure slipped into the seat facing him.

The room a
t the Double-S
even was on the building's top floor and little more than a shabbily furnished cubicle. Miles didn't mind. It represented a frail beginning, a chance to reshape his life and regain something of what he had lost, though he knew it would take time, grave risk, and enterprise. For the moment, he tried not to think too much about his dual role, concentrating instead on making himself useful and becoming accepted, as Nolan
Wainwright had cautioned him to do. .'

He learned the geography of the club first. Most of the main floor apart from the bar he had been in originally was taken up by a gymnasium and handball courts. On the second floor were steam rooms and massage parlors. The third comprised offices; also several other rooms which he learned the use of later. The fourth floor, smaller than the others, contained a few more cubicles like Miles's where club members occasionally slept overnight.

Miles slipped easily into the bookkeeper's work. He was good at the jobs up on a backlog and improving postings which had been done sloppily before. He made suggestions to the club manager for making other record keeping more efficient, though was careful not to seek credit for the changes.

The manager, an ex-fight promoter named Nathanson, to whom office work did not come easily, was grateful. He was even more appreciative when Miles offered to do extra chores around the club, such as reorganizing stores and inventory procedures. Nathanson, in return, allowed Miles use of the handball courts during some of his free time? which provided an extra chance of meeting members.