The Moneychangers

by Arthur Hailey

  Apartment 2G was near the end of the second-floor corridor and the lock proved uncomplicated. Wainwright tried a succession of slim blades from the chamois case he had pocketed, and on the fourth attempt the lock cylinder turned. The door swung open and he went in, closing the door behind him.

  He waited, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, then crossed to a window and drew drapes. He found a light switch and turned it on.

  The apartment was small, designed for use by one person; it was a single room divided into areas. A living-dining space contained a sofa, armchair, portable TV, and meal table. A bed was located behind a partition; the kitchenette had folding louvered doors. Two other doors which Wainwright checked revealed a bathroom and a storage closet. The place was orderly and clean. Several shelves of books and a few framed prints added a touch of personality.

  Without wasting time, Wainwright began a systematic, thorough search.

  He tried to suppress, as he worked, gnawing self-criticism for the illegal acts he was committing tonight. He did not wholly succeed. Nolan Wainwright was aware that everything he had done so far represented a reversal of his moral standards, a negation of his belief in law and order. Yet anger drove him. Anger and the knowledge of failure, four days ago, within himself.

  He remembered with excruciating clarity, even now, the mute appeal in the eyes of the young Puerto Rican girl, Juanita Núñez, when he encountered her for the first time last Tuesday and began the interrogation. It was an appeal which said unmistakably: You and I … you are black, I am brown. Therefore you, of all people, should realize I am alone here, at a disadvantage, and desperately need help and fairness. But while recognizing the appeal, he had brushed it aside harshly, so that afterwards contempt replaced it, and he remembered that in the girl’s eyes too.

  This memory, coupled with chagrin at having been duped by Miles Eastin, made Wainwright determined to beat Eastin at his game, no matter if the law was bent in doing it.

  Therefore, methodically, as his police training had taught him, Wainwright went on searching, determined that if evidence existed he would find it.

  Half an hour later he knew that few places remained where anything could be hidden. He had examined cupboards, drawers and contents, had probed furniture, opened suitcases, inspected pictures on the walls, and removed the back of the TV. He also riffled through books, noting that an entire shelf was devoted to what someone had told him was Eastin’s hobby—the study of money through the ages. Along with the books, a portfolio contained sketches and photographs of ancient coins and banknotes. But of anything incriminating there was no trace. Finally he piled furniture in one corner and rolled up the living area rug. Then, with a flashlight, he went over every inch of floorboard.

  Without the flashlight’s aid he would have missed the carefully sawn board, but two lines, lighter colored than the wood elsewhere, betrayed where cuts had been made. He gently pried up the foot or so of board between the lines and in the space beneath were a small black ledger and cash in twenty-dollar bills.

  Working quickly, he replaced the board, the rug, the furniture.

  He counted the cash; it totaled six thousand dollars. Then he studied the small black ledger briefly, realized it was a betting record and he whistled softly at the size and number of amounts involved.

  He put the book down—it could be examined in detail later—on an occasional table in front of the sofa, with the money beside it.

  Finding the money surprised him. He had no doubt it was the six thousand dollars missing from the bank on Wednesday, but he would have expected Eastin to have exchanged it by now, or have deposited it elsewhere. Police work had taught him that criminals did foolish, unexpected things, and this was one.

  What still had to be learned was how Eastin had taken the money and brought it here.

  Wainwright glanced around the apartment, after which he turned out the lights. He reopened the drapes and, settling comfortably on the sofa, waited.

  In the semidarkness, with the small apartment lighted by reflections from the street outside, his thoughts drifted. He thought again of Juanita Núñez and wished somehow he could make amends. Then he remembered the FBI report about her missing husband, Carlos, who had been traced to Phoenix, Arizona, and it occurred to Wainwright that this information might be used to help the girl.

  Of course, Miles Eastin’s story about having seen Carlos Núñez in the bank the same day as the cash loss was a fabrication intended to throw even more suspicion on Juanita.

  That despicable bastard! What kind of man was he, first to direct blame toward the girl, and later to add to it? The security chief felt his fists tighten, then warned himself not to allow his feelings to become too strong.

  The warning was necessary, and he knew why. It was because of an incident long buried in his mind and which he seldom disinterred. Without really wanting to, he began remembering it.

  Nolan Wainwright, now nearly fifty, had been spawned in the city’s slums and, from birth, had found life’s odds stacked against him. He grew up with survival as a daily challenge and with crime—petty and otherwise—a surrounding norm. In his teens he had run with a ghetto gang to whom brushes with the law were proof of manhood.

  Like others, before and since, from the same slum background, he was driven by an urge to be somebody, to be noticed in whatever way, to release an inner rage against obscurity. He had no experience or philosophy to weigh alternatives, so participation in street crime appeared the only, the inevitable route. It seemed likely he would graduate, as many of his contemporaries did, to a police and prison record.

  That he did not was due, in part, to chance; in part, to Bufflehead Kelly.

  Bufflehead was a not-too-bright, lazy, amiable elderly neighborhood cop who had learned that a policeman’s survival in the ghetto could be lengthened by adroitly being somewhere else when trouble erupted, and by taking action only when a problem loomed directly under his nose. Superiors complained that his arrest record was the worst in the precinct, but against this—in Bufflehead’s view—his retirement and pension moved satisfyingly closer every year.

  But the teenage Nolan Wainwright had loomed under Bufflehead’s nose the night of an attempted gang-bust into a warehouse which the beat cop unwittingly disturbed, so everyone had run, escaping, except Wainwright who tripped and fell at Bufflehead’s feet.

  “Y’ stupid, clumsy monkey,” Bufflehead complained. “Now it’s all kinds of paper and court work you’ll be causin’ me this night.”

  Kelly detested paperwork and court appearances which cut annoyingly into a policeman’s off-duty time.

  In the end he compromised. Instead of arresting and charging Wainwright he took him, the same night, to the police gym and, in Bufflehead’s own words, “beat the b’jesus out of him” in a boxing ring.

  Nolan Wainwright, bruised, sore, and with one eye badly swollen—though still with no arrest record—reacted with hatred. As soon as possible he would smash Bufflehead Kelly to a pulp, an objective which brought him back to the police gym—and Bufflehead—for lessons in how to do it. It was, Wainwright realized long afterward, the needed outlet for his rage. He learned quickly. When the time arrived to reduce the slightly stupid, lazy cop to a punished punching bag, he found the desire to do so had evaporated. Instead he had become fond of the old man, an emotion surprising to the youth himself.

  A year went by during which Wainwright continued boxing, stayed in school, and managed to keep out of trouble. Then one night Bufflehead, while on duty, accidentally interrupted a holdup of a grocery store. Undoubtedly the cop was more startled than the two small-time hoodlums involved and would certainly not have impeded them since both were armed. As investigation afterward brought out, Bufflehead did not even try to draw his gun.

  But one robber panicked and, before running, fired a sawed off shotgun into Bufflehead’s gut.

  News of the shooting spread quickly and a crowd gathered. It included young Nolan Wainwright.

  He
would always remember—as he did now—the sight and sound of harmless, lazy Bufflehead, conscious, writhing, wailing, screaming in demented agony as blood and entrails gushed from his capacious, mortal wound.

  An ambulance was a long time coming. Moments before it arrived, Bufflehead, still screaming, died.

  The incident left its mark forever on Nolan Wainwright, though it was not Bufflehead’s death itself which affected him most. Nor did the arrest and later execution of the thief who fired the shot, and his companion, seem more than anticlimactic.

  What shocked and influenced him above all else was the appalling, senseless waste. The original crime was mean, foolish, foredoomed to failure; yet, in failing, its devastation was outrageously immense. Within young Wainwright’s mind that single thought, that reasoning, persisted. It proved a catharsis through which he came to see all crime as equally negative, equally destructive—and, later still, as an evil to be fought. Perhaps, from the beginning, a streak of puritanism had been latent, deep inside him. If so, it surfaced.

  He progressed from youth to manhood as an individual with uncompromising standards and, because of this, became something of a loner, among his friends and eventually when he became a cop. But he was an efficient cop who learned and rose fast, and was incorruptible, as Ben Rosselli and his aides once learned.

  And later still, within First Mercantile American Bank, Wainwright’s strong feelings stayed with him.

  It was possible that the security chief dozed off, but a key inserted in the apartment lock alerted him. Cautiously he sat up. His illuminated watch dial showed it was shortly after midnight.

  A shadowy figure came in; a shaft of outside light revealed it as Eastin. Then the door closed and Wainwright heard Eastin fumble for a switch. The light came on.

  Eastin saw Wainwright at once and his surprise was total. His mouth dropped open, blood drained from his face. He tried to speak, but gulped, and no words came.

  Wainwright stood up, glaring. His voice cut like a knife. “How much did you steal today?”

  Before Eastin could answer or recover, Wainwright seized him by the coat lapels, turned him and pushed. He fell sprawling on the sofa.

  As surprise turned to indignation, the young man spluttered, “Who let you in? What the hell do you …” His eyes moved to the money and the small black ledger, and he stopped.

  “That’s right,” Wainwright said harshly, “I came for the bank’s money, or what little is left.” He motioned to the bills stacked on the table. “We know what’s there, is what you took on Wednesday. And in case you’re wondering, we know about the milked accounts and all the rest.”

  Miles Eastin stared, his expression frozen, stupefied. A convulsive shudder went through him. In fresh shock his head came down, his hands went to his face.

  “Cut that out!” Wainwright reached over, pulled Eastin’s hands free and pushed his head up, though not roughly, remembering his promise to the FBI man. No bruised potato.

  He added, “You’ve got some talking to do, so let’s start.”

  “Hey, time out, huh?” Eastin pleaded. “Give me a minute to think.”

  “Forget it!” The last thing Wainwright wanted was to give Eastin time to reflect. He was a bright young man who might reason, correctly, that his wisest course was silence. The security chief knew that at this moment he had two advantages. One was having Miles Eastin off balance, the other being unrestricted by rules.

  If the FBI agents were here they would have to inform Eastin of his legal rights—the right not to answer questions, and to have a lawyer present. Wainwright, not a policeman any more, had no such obligation.

  What the security chief wanted was hard evidence pinning the six-thousand-dollar cash theft on Miles Eastin. A signed confession would do it.

  He sat down facing Eastin, his eyes impaling the younger man. “We can do this the long, hard way or we can move fast.”

  When there was no response, Wainwright picked up the small black ledger and opened it. “Let’s start with this.” He put his finger on the list of sums and dates; besides each entry were other figures in a code. “These are bets. Right?”

  Through a muddled dullness Eastin nodded.

  “Explain this one.”

  It was a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bet, Miles Eastin mumbled, on the outcome of a football game between Texas and Notre Dame. He explained the odds. The bet had been on Notre Dame. Texas had won.

  “And this?”

  Another mumbled answer: Another football game. Another loss.

  “Go on.” Wainwright persisted, keeping his finger on the page, maintaining pressure.

  Responses came slowly. Some of the entries covered basketball games. A few bets were on the winning side, though losses outnumbered them. The minimum bet was one hundred dollars, the highest three hundred.

  “Did you bet alone or with a group?”

  “A group.”

  “Who was in it?”

  “Four other guys. Working. Like me.”

  “Working at the bank?”

  Eastin shook his head. “Other places.”

  “Did they lose, too?”

  “Some. But their batting average was better than mine.”

  “What are the names of the other four?”

  No answer. Wainwright let it go.

  “You made no bets on horses. Why?”

  “We got together. Everybody knows horse racing is crooked, races fixed. Football and basketball are on the level. We worked out a system. With honest games, we figured we could beat the odds.”

  The total of losses showed how wrong that figuring had been.

  “Did you bet with one bookie, or more?”

  “One.”

  “His name?”

  Eastin stayed mute.

  “The rest of the money you’ve been stealing from the bank—where is it?”

  The young man’s mouth turned down. He answered miserably, “Gone.”

  “And more besides?”

  An affirmative, dismal nod.

  “We’ll get to that later. Right now let’s talk about this money.” Wainwright touched the six thousand dollars which lay between them. “We know you took it on Wednesday. How?”

  Eastin hesitated, then shrugged. “I guess you may as well know.”

  Wainwright said sharply, “You’re guessing right but wasting time.”

  “Last Wednesday,” Eastin said, “we had people away with flu. That day I filled in as a teller.”

  “I know that. Get to what happened.”

  “Before the bank opened for business I went to the vault to get a cash truck—one of the spares. Juanita Núñez was there. She unlocked her regular cash truck. I was right alongside. Without Juanita knowing, I watched to see her combination.”

  “And?”

  “I memorized it. As soon as I could, I wrote it down.”

  With Wainwright prompting, the damning facts multiplied.

  The main downtown branch vault was large. During daytime a vault teller worked in a cage-like enclosure just inside, near the heavy, time-lock controlled door. The vault teller was invariably busy, counting currency, handing out packages of bills or receiving them, checking tellers and cash trucks in or out. While no one could pass the vault teller without being seen, once they were inside he took little notice of them.

  That morning, while outwardly cheerful, Miles Eastin was desperate for cash. There had been betting losses the week before and he was being pressed for payment of accumulated debts.

  Wainwright interrupted, “You already had an employee bank loan. You owed finance companies. Also the bookie. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Did you owe anyone else?”

  Eastin nodded affirmatively.

  “A loan shark?”

  The younger man hesitated, then admitted, “Yes.”

  “Was the loan shark threatening you?”

  Miles Eastin moistened his lips. “Yes; so was the bookie. They both are, still.” His eyes went to the si
x thousand dollars.

  The jigsaw was fitting together. Wainwright motioned to the money. “You promised to pay the shark and the bookie that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much to each?”

  “Three thousand.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.” Eastin looked nervously at a wall clock and corrected himself. “Today.”

  Wainwright prompted, “Go back to Wednesday. So you knew the combination of the Núñez girl’s cash box. How did you use it?”

  As Miles Eastin revealed the details now, it was all incredibly simple. After working through the morning, he took his lunch break at the same time as Juanita Núñez. Before going to lunch they wheeled their cash trucks into the vault. The two cash units were left side by side, both locked.

  Eastin returned from lunch early and went into the vault. The vault teller checked Eastin in, then went on working. No one else was in the vault.

  Miles Eastin went directly to Juanita Núñez’s cash truck and opened it, using the combination he had written down. It took seconds only to remove three packages of bills totaling six thousand dollars, then close and relock the box. He slipped the currency packages into inside pockets; the bulges scarcely showed. He then checked out his own cash truck from the vault and returned to work.

  There was a silence, then Wainwright said, “So while questioning was going on Wednesday afternoon—some of it by you, and while you and I were talking later that same day—all that time you had the money on you?”

  “Yes,” Miles Eastin said. As he remembered how easy it had been, a faint smile creased his face.

  Wainwright saw the smile. Without hesitating, and in a single movement, he leaned forward and hit Eastin hard on both sides of the face. He used his open palm for the first blow, the back of his hand for the second. The double blow was so forceful that Wainwright’s hand stung. Miles Eastin’s face showed two bright weals. He shrunk backward on the sofa and blinked as tears formed in his eyes.

  The security chief said grimly, “That’s to let you know I see nothing funny in what you did to the bank or to Mrs. Núñez. Nothing at all.” Something else he had just learned was that Miles Eastin was afraid of physical violence.