7
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 façade 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 dimness 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 upright, and moved on. Two men perched on barstools turned their heads. One said, “Thisa private club, buster. If you aina member—out!”
The other complained, “’S’at lazy bum Pedro goofin’ off. Some doorman! Hey, who are ya? Wadda ya want?”
Miles told him, “I was looking for Jules LaRocca.”
“Look someplace else,” 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 coupla 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. “Where’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, “ya gotta pay Ominsky.” He leaned across confidingly, ignoring the other two. “The Russian knows ya outta the can. Bin askin’ for ya.”
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 shook his head. “First off, ya gotta 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 ‘n 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 arrangement, you and me, which both of us agreed to. I kept my part. You’ve not kept yours. I ask you, 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.”
Igor (the Russian) 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 simplest, 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 taxes. 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 enforcement, and he kept those minimal, knowing 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 his 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 said, “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-Seven.”
“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 goes 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 will 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, kid. Let’s move ass.”
As they left, Ominsky began to eat dessert while another waiting figure slipped into the seat facing him.
The room at the Double-Seven 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 job, catching 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.
The club’s all-male membership, as far as Miles could see, was divided broadly into two groups. One comprised those who seriously used the club’s athletic facilities, including the steam baths and massage parlors. These people came and went individually, few of them appearing to know each other, and Miles guessed they were salaried workers or minor business executives who belonged to the Double-Seven simply to keep fit. He suspected, too, that the first group provided a conveniently legitimate front for the second, which usually didn’t use the athletic facilities, except the steam baths on occasion.
Those in this second group congregated mainly in the bar or the upstairs rooms on the third floor. They were present in greatest numbers late at night, when the exercise-seeking members seldom used the club. It became evident to Miles that this second element was what Nolan Wainwright had in mind when he described the Double-Seven as a “mob hangout.”
Something else Miles Eastin learned quickly was that the upstairs rooms were used for illegal, high stakes card and dice games. By the time he had worked a week, some of the night regulars had come to know Miles, and were relaxed about him, being assured by Jules LaRocca that he was “okay, a stand-up guy.”
Shortly after, and pursuing his policy of being useful, Miles began helping out when drinks and sandwiches had to be carried to the third floor. The first time he did, one of a half-dozen burly men standing outside the gaming rooms, who were obviously guards, took the tray from him and carried it in. But next night, and on subsequent ones, he was allowed into the rooms where gambling was taking place. Miles also obliged by buying cigarettes downstairs and bringing them up for anyone who needed them, including the guards.
He knew he was becoming liked.
One reason was his general willingness. Another was that some of his old cheerfulness and good nature were returning, despite the problems and dangers of being where he was. And a third was that Jules LaRocca, who seemed to flit around the fringes of everything, had become Miles’s sponsor, even though LaRocca made Miles feel, at times, like a vaudeville performer.
It was Miles Eastin’s knowledge about money and its history which fascinated—it seemed endlessly—LaRocca and his cronies. A favorite item was the saga of counterfeit money printed by governments, which Miles had first described in prison. In his early weeks at the club he repeated it, under LaRocca’s prodding, at least a dozen times. It always produced nods of belief, along with comments about “stinkin” hypocrites” and “goddam gumment crooks.”
To supplement his fund of stories, Miles went one day to the apartment block where he had lived before imprisonment, and retrieved his reference books. Most of his other few possessions had long since been sold to pay arrears of rent, but the janitor had kept the books and let Miles have them. Once, Miles had owned a coin and banknote collection, then sold it when he was heavily in debt. Someday, he hoped, he might become a collector again, though the prospect seemed far away.
Able to dip into his books, which he kept in the fourth-floor cubicle, Miles talked to LaRocca and the others about some of the stranger forms of money. The heaviest currency ever, he told them, was the agronite stone discs used on the Pacific island of Yap up to the outbreak of World War II. Most of the discs, he explained, were one foot wide, but one denomination had a width of twelve feet and, when used for purchasing, was transported on a pole. “Waddabout change?” someone asked amid laughter, and Miles assured them it was given—in smaller stone discs.
In contrast, he reported, the lightest-weight money was scarce types of feathers, used in New Hebrides. Also, for centuries salt circulated as money, especially in Ethiopia, and the Romans used it to pay their workers, hence the word “salary” which evolved from “salt.” And in Borneo, as recently as the nineteenth century, Miles told the others, human skulls were legal tender.
But invariably, before such sessions ended, the talk swung back to counterfeiting.
After one such occasion, a hulking
driver-bodyguard who hung around the club while his boss played cards upstairs, took Miles aside.
“Hey, kid, you talk big about counterfeit. Take a looka this.” He held out a clean, crisp twenty-dollar bill.
Miles accepted the banknote and studied it. The experience was not new to him. When he worked at First Mercantile American Bank, suspected bogus bills were usually brought to him because of his specialist knowledge.
The big man was grinning. “Pretty good, huh?”
“If this is a fake,” Miles said, “it’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Wanna buy a few?” From an inner pocket the bodyguard produced nine more twenties. “Gimme forty bucks in real stuff, kid, that whole two hunnert’s yours.”
It was about the going rate, Miles knew, for high-grade queer. He observed, too, that the other bills were just as good as the first.
About to refuse the offer, he hesitated. He had no intention of passing any fake money, but realized it was something he could send to Wain-wright.
“Hold it!” he told the burly man, and went upstairs to his room where he had squirreled away slightly more than forty dollars. Some of it had been left over from Wainwright’s original fifty-dollar stake; the rest was from tips Miles had been given around the gaming rooms. He took the money, mostly in small bills, and exchanged it downstairs for the counterfeit two hundred. Later that night he hid the counterfeit money in his room.
The next day, Jules LaRocca, grinning, told him, “Hear ya didda stroka business.” Miles was at his bookkeeper’s desk in the third floor offices.
“A little,” he admitted.
LaRocca moved his pot belly closer and lowered his voice. “Ya wanna piece more action?”
Miles said cautiously, “It depends what kind.”
“Like makin’ a trip to Louisville. Movin’ summa the stuff you bought last night.”
Miles felt his stomach tighten, knowing that if he agreed and were caught, it would not only put him back in prison, but for much longer than before. Yet if he didn’t take risks, how could he continue learning, and gaining the confidence of others here?
The Moneychangers Page 36
