Mile High

by Richard Condon

  “Let me know what you think after you look Goff over,” West said.

  It was Wednesday night and Eddie and Goff had dined at Mouquin’s. “I’m selling you the three gambling houses,” Eddie explained, “then you’ll assign them back to me. Think you can run them?”

  Goff gave him a wintry smile.

  “Two percent of the net to you. My man keeps the books. As soon as I sell out to you we won’t know each other, except as depositor and banker. This is the last time we’ll be together in public. You are about to become a famous gambler. I’m just a banker, nothing more or less. If you want to talk on the phone, call Willie Tobin. If you have straight political problems with cops or with muscle, call John Kullers. This is the operating policy: Any client is entitled to win up to twenty-five hundred dollars. That’s fair both ways. But if a client pushes to win more than twenty-five hundred, then you send a mechanic in to take it back from him. Don’t take it all. Drop him down to a thousand ahead, then pull the mechanic and let him try to start to run it up again.”

  “You must have three marvelous operations.”

  “Yes. My father thought so. He established the bank with a lot of that money. You’ll think so, too, when you count your two percent of the handle. But I have other plans in work, and in a few years, when you count your two percent from all that, you’ll know that the three gambling houses were only your front, my friend.”

  He left Goff at the 45th Street house at two-fifty the next morning and went to a brownstone on West 37th Street. He strode past the parlor and went to the back of the building on the main floor, entered what appeared to be a cloakroom, then let himself into a small, cosy room where a colored waiter in rich gold and purple brought him a bottle of Vichy water. Five minutes later Rhonda Healey came in, an extremely handsome, thirtyish woman who wore a long sequined gown and long sequined gloves and hair piled on top of her head in a haute-bouffante style that had expired about nine years before. She greeted Eddie warily and sat down at the small table. She had been Paddy’s last sweetheart because he had been certain she had never been a whore. “I know whores for over sixty years,” he told Eddie, “and Rhonda was either big-time show business someplace or she’s from a rich family and just likes to be around this business. Aaron Burr was in and outta fifty notch joints and never fooled once.”

  “I missed you at the funeral,” Eddie told her.

  “I was there.”

  “They told me.”

  “He was a great man.”

  “He was.”

  “What can I do for you, Eddie?”

  “Before Paddy passed on we had talked about plans for reorganization when the right time came and—”

  “Am I being fired?” She started to stand up. He waved her back into the chair.

  “Why should you be fired?” he asked after she had perched on the edge of her chair for a while.

  “That’s what I meant—I was shocked to think—”

  “But why should you think it?”

  She couldn’t look at him. Paddy had proved she wasn’t a whore but he hadn’t proved she wasn’t a thief.

  “The way you did that—it was as though you wanted to run away,” he said regretfully. “Now I’ll have to run an audit on you and your bar and your towel count and your financial life.” They stared at each other. She shrugged. She said, “I’ve been dragging two hundred a week. You couldn’t have found it. I sell them my own wine.”

  “If I couldn’t have found it why did you tell me?”

  “Because before you’d let a woman beat you out of anything you’d tear this whole business apart.”

  “You’re smart.”

  “Okay, Eddie. I’ll be gone in the morning.”

  “No. I’m glad we had this talk. You were too good to be true, and to be honest, it had me worried. I mean, Paddy trusted you, and that was preposterous for Paddy. Let it go. What I came in to tell you is that I want to sell all eight cat-houses to you, then have you sign them back to a few companies of mine. After that you’ll be in charge of the whole operation.”

  “You mean Paddy owned eight of these joints?”

  “This is the best one. Your end of the operation will be two percent of the net, and when the word gets out you are the owner maybe some people will try to move in. If that happens call Willie Tobin at the Franklin Street saloon or at the New York A.C. He’ll take care of everything. As always, I’m just another customer. Okay?”

  “Sure, Eddie. Gee, thanks.”

  “You’ll have eight times the field to look over for me, Rhonda.”

  “I understand, Eddie.”

  “When anything new, strictly along my lines, my particular taste, comes in, just call me at the hotel and leave a message. Just say, ‘Miss Healey called.’ Okay?”

  “Sure, Eddie. Certainly.”

  Edward Courance West saw everything with dimensional, indefectible clarity. He was able to compute all odds at a single glance. He observed with almost superhuman keenness, weighed what he saw instantly, then acted upon it. All factors were balanced to the milligram and were made to march toward the great objectives, no matter how distant. The alarming flaw in his psychological equipment—although in the American history he would write with his life nothing would appear to be flawed—was that the terrain he viewed and judged and acted upon could have been that of another planet. It had no connection with what was really there, with what needed to be coped with in other people’s reality. His bank, which was to grow into a repository for several billions of dollars, he regarded as a sort of useful front, a status symbol to anchor and justify all his other activities within the societies of the planet he was visiting. He dusted a large amount of capital with a wistful greed for power; sifted both ingredients, stirring well, into a great lump of inevitable circumstance; yeasty and promising; then waited for the dough to rise. In commerce this is vision; in politics and war-making, statesmanship. In that more invidious branch of self-serving, patriotism, it would be called unselfish courage; in religion, holiness.

  To Edward Courance West the prohibition of alcohol was merely the greatest business opportunity since the Industrial Revolution. He did not see it as an infringement of rights. He felt that the mighty mass of Americans would rather vote as they were told as a welcome alternative to thinking. He did not judge that the consequences of prohibition, which he most surely foresaw—because the extent of those consequences was the measure of his business opportunity—were anyone’s business but his own. When he got his plans moving he was amazed that so few others immediately grasped what he was trying to do—only C. L. Pick and Arnold Goff. It neither surprised him nor dismayed him that as he took his plan forward into realization it was only the criminal element/politicians and the people who actually owned the nation he was about to ruin (the financial establishment) who understood where his banner of The New Businessman would lead them all. All he saw, very simply, was a chance to make two or three billion dollars and to evade taxes on all but a minuscule fraction of it. That simple fact justified every minute move upon the landscape of that other planet that he had examined so carefully through his strange telescope. Chaos has always been the legacy of mystics.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took eleven weeks to type, correct, print and bind thirty-two copies of the book The Business of Prohibition, by Edward Courance West, President, West National Bank, New York. Each copy had a printed fly leaf that said: “This Is Copy No.—of a Limited Edition of Thirty Copies: Eastern Edition” (or “Midwestern Edition”). Each edition was numbered up to five only, so that the value of the volume and the reader was increased, the distribution of the over-all printing going to six national regions of the country. It was a fat book, printed in eminently readable but not large type. One-third of it assessed the historic side of the prohibition movement. One-third exposed the corporate side of the alcoholic-beverage industries. Everything built to the final section, which showed the value of plants and factories and agricultural investments that produc
ed ardent spirits, beer and wines; values of stocks on hand by case and barrel; locations of warehouses and their inventories; values of buildings, plants and retail sites; over-all gross income, net income, taxes paid. This section listed retail outlet groups by number and kind: bars, package stores, food stores, sales by railroads, hotels, restaurants and steamship companies. It established the average cost per drink per region, profit per drink, drink sale totals, bottle sale totals, bulk sale totals. It reflected on the greatly reduced values of all investments in every area of the alcoholic-beverage industries and their suppliers of raw materials and offered financial projections of the reduced worth of all economic units within sections represented by the agricultural, transportation, distilling, brewing, restaurant, hotel, bar and other related industries should prohibition become a law. It compared tables showing how investors might divest themselves of holdings in all related industries and what prices they could command under the controlled circumstances and at what prices it was estimated they could reinvest in the same industries and divisions of industries (a fraction of the original values).

  In almost all ways it was a mystifying book. It was as though a fascinating message had been torn in half, then only one half of it exhibited. In a sense, at least to the casual eye, it did not seem to be trying to establish any point. The only flat recommendation it made toward prohibition (if it really did favor one side of the question) demonstrated why it was likely that once the movement renounced its historic drive to secure local options and state-wide prohibition and aimed its strategy at winning a national law, the prohibition movement could win forever by gaining a constitutional amendment in its favor. How this single, seemingly elemental strategy was to be carried out was not examined.

  Eddie sent the thirty books to Pick, Heller & O’Connell with a list of thirty designated recipients who in his educated opinion as a politician, gambling-house proprietor, banker, and bordello keeper represented the eighteen greediest, the seven most hypocritical and the five wealthiest families in the country. The silent approval that would accompany the offering of the books by such an exalted law firm, the keepers of the keys, was the most vital and essential part of the plan. Four months had passed since he had rescued them from disaster. Paul Kelly had willingly agreed to sit in their offices and admit that he had been paid to undertake their disgrace, but refused to state who had employed him. They were more than grateful to Edward West, they were restive to be shown the way in which they could discharge their obligation.

  The three partners were waiting for him in C. L. Pick’s slightly renovated office. Mr. Pick was staring dreamily at the new door that now led into the room at the unlikely place where the fire axes had destroyed the priceless Littlecot paneling. The panel destruction, the incomparably formidable client’s reaction, and his own visit to the Tombs had marked the beginning of his decline, and he was to retire from the practice of law not five months later. The unexpectedly placed door drew his attention away from clients and what they needed urgently to say to him. A glazed look would come over his eyes and his vaunted ability to concentrate and achieve had simply faded away.

  Marxie Heller was smoking a very large cigar but not enjoying it. He hated cigars but believed they cut his appetite. A helpless food addict, he was constantly fighting his enormous weight; he could resist almost everything except eating.

  F. A. O’Connell wore a fitted green suit with high-slash back vents and deeply marked lapel stitching. The handkerchief pocket had been placed extremely high to lengthen his line, and he wore a natural linen vest with narrow lapels to lift up that attenuated line. He had already crossed into that part of the afternoon when he brooded about being able to catch the most comfortable train to Long Island. When he had begun the practice of law he rode home on the 8:14 P.M. He now aimed at the 3:10.

  The partners had assigned the reading of West’s book to a junior lawyer and each now had in hand a copy of the lawyer’s report, which said, in part:

  Certain sections of the book constitute a history of the prohibition movement in the United States. Other portions go into vast detail concerning the corporate motivation of the alcoholic-beverage industries and contain extraordinary, almost irrelevant, information relating to almost all phases of those industries. It is difficult to say why. At one moment the author seems hardly interested in whether the prohibition movement succeeds, then in the next he appears to be a fanatic dry. He seems to resent the financial success of the A.B. industries, but not for moral or religious or industrial reasons. His strategic and tactical recommendations to speed the enactment of the prohibition law are lucid and closely reasoned. The author is an attorney and the youngest bank president in New York State (West National Bank, a family-owned institution of this city whose December 1910 statement shows audited assets of $22,000,000; i.e., a small, commercial bank).

  “What does the book mean?” Heller asked Eddie.

  “Why did I send it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The book needs its limited distribution under the best sponsorship, which is your firm.”

  “But—what does the book mean?”

  “Why did I write it?”

  C. L. Pick stared at the new door, looking slightly drugged. They waited for Eddie’s answer, which was not instantly forthcoming because his father had taught him to take his time for maximum results before saying anything, much less answering something. C. L. Pick spoke for him in the interval in a dreamy voice. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “Where Mr. West stands will depend on the reader.”

  Eddie attempted to wag his head and deliver a rueful, boyish grin at the same time, something he was not at all good at.

  “It is the last part of the book that is vital,” Mr. Pick said.

  Eddie took some folded onion-skin paper from his pocket. It opened into three sheets. “You have my list of thirty,” he said smoothly. “It is possible that you represent most of those on the list and know all of them. All I am asking is that you send each one a copy of the book with this letter.” He handed one onion-skin sheet to each of the partners. O’Connell and Heller read what it said. Mr. Pick was content to let it rest on the desk in front of him.

  “Dear—,” the letter said, “It could be extraordinarily vital in a meaning of futures for you to read this book. If you wish to discuss it after you have studied it, that should be arranged as rapidly as possible. Very truly yours,—.”

  “That’s all?” Heller asked.

  “That’s all,” Eddie said.

  “But what the hell does it mean?”

  “What is the objective?” O’Connell asked crossly, irritable that they were getting dangerously close to the time when he should be leaving to catch that train. Mr. Pick tottered to his feet, always facing the new door but walking somewhat in crab fashion toward the door he had always used. “It could be a very good thing, Mr. West,” he said, not looking at Eddie or at anything but the door. “You may be sure we will be happy to distribute your book and to await the outcome with the keenest interest.” He sidled out of the room.

  Eddie followed him at once. O’Connell started for the new door to catch the train.

  “Wait a minute here!” Heller called out. “I’m not clear on this. What the hell is the boy trying to do?”

  Mr. Pick’s sere, distant laugh was ghastly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The water-smooth, indifferent Italianate girl sat in a green rayon wrapper with a poorly embroidered dragon on its back in an ornate bedroom in the 41st Street house that had a big brass bed and a little pile of hand towels between the bed and the bathroom door. Utterly bored, she was staring at the window curtains, her hands reposeful in her lap. She was very dark, with large eyes, and she had large, high tits on an ectomorphic frame—long feet and hands with fingers as thin as pencils, long legs and a short waist. Her head was held fragilely high over her soft, soapy shoulders by a long, narrow neck. She was neither pretty nor not pretty, just effective-looking, her app
earance emphasized with heavy make-up. She was youth racing through transition.

  Mrs. Healey had set her up for the trick she would be turning. She didn’t mind. What the hell, it paid triple and her old lady got the same thing every Saturday night for exactly nothing. And it would keep her on light action for a couple of days, just fooling around with the off-duty girls and making spit-babies.

  His eyes were like muddy winter water when he came into the room. He was holding himself together as if the last twenty yards had been too much to wait through. His nails were digging his thighs. The door opened, and he went in and stood at the middle of the yellow coffin shape of light as it fell into the darkened room from the hall. He closed the door. He smelled to her like the cages at the zoo. They never smelled like people when they were like this.

  “You want a light on?” She felt the excitement rise in her. She wished a priest or a nun would beat her as he was going to beat her. She was guilty; she was slimy with sin and she could feel it all over her, but nobody gave a goddam, not enough to beat hell out of her the way her father would have beat hell out of her if he were alive. She didn’t wait for his answer. She tugged at the beady cords on the floor lamp with the old-rose shade and a soft light surrounded her to let him see what he was doing.

  A tiny stream of spittle was leaking from the left side of his mouth. “You’re so dark you’re almost black,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You Italian?”

  “Well—yeah.”

  He moved toward her. Her teeth were gleaming at him as he hit her on the side of the face heavily. She fell to the floor and looked up at him groggily. “Hey! What’s with you? No marks! Use the belt!” He stared down at her, then began to kick her savagely, listening to her whimper, then scream, with sudden gratitude.