The Moneychangers

by Arthur Hailey

  Estela followed Juanita. Lou came in after them, fastened the blindfolds and sat on the rear seat. He pushed Juanita’s shoulder. “Down on the floor, botha ya. Make no trouble, ya won’t get hurt.” Squatting on the floor with Estela close beside her, Juanita curled her legs and managed to keep facing forward. She heard someone else get in the car, the motor start, the garage doors rumble open. Then they were moving.

  From the instant the car moved, Juanita concentrated as she had never done before. Her intention was to memorize time and direction—if she could. She began to count seconds as a photographer friend had once taught her. A thousand and ONE; a thousand and TWO; a thousand and THREE; a thousand and FOUR … She felt the car reverse and turn, then counted eight seconds while it moved in a straight line forward. Then it slowed almost to a stop. Had it been a driveway? Probably. A longish one? The car was again moving slowly, most likely easing out into a street … Turning left. Now faster forward. She recommenced counting. Ten seconds. Slowing. Turning right … A thousand and ONE; a thousand and TWO; a thousand and THREE … Turning left … Speed faster … A longer stretch … A thousand FORTY-NINE; a thousand FIFTY … No sign of slowing … Yes, slowing now. A four-second wait, then straight on. It could have been a traffic light … A thousand and EIGHT …

  Dear God! For Miles’s sake help me to remember!

  … A thousand and NINE; a thousand and TEN. Turning right …

  Banish other thoughts. React to every movement of the car. Count the time—hoping, praying that the same strong memory which helped her keep track of money at the bank … which once saved her from Miles’s duplicity … would now save him.

  … A thousand TWENTY; One thousand and twenty dollars. No! … Mother of God! Keep my thoughts from wandering …

  A long straight stretch, smooth road, high speed … She felt her body sway … The road was curving to the left; a long curve, gentle … Stopping, stopping. It had been sixty-eight seconds … Turning right. Begin again. A thousand and ONE; a thousand and TWO …

  On and on.

  As time went by, the likelihood of remembering, of reconstructing, seemed increasingly less likely.

  23

  “This’s Sergeant Gladstone, Central Communications Bureau, City Police,” the flat, nasal voice on the phone announced. “Says here to immediately notify you people if Juanita Núñez or child Estela Núñez located.”

  Special Agent Innes sat up taut and straight. Instinctively he moved the phone closer. “What do you have, Sergeant?”

  “Car radio report just in. Woman and child answering description and names found wandering near junction of Cheviot Township and Shawnee Lake Road. Taken into protective custody. Officers bringing ’em to 12th Precinct now.”

  Innes covered the mouthpiece with his hand. To Nolan Wainwright, seated across the desk at FBI Headquarters, he said softly, “City Police. They’ve got Núñez and the kid.”

  Wainwright gripped the desk edge tightly. “Ask what condition they’re in.”

  “Sergeant,” Innes said, “are they okay?”

  “Told you all we know, chief. Want more dope, you better call the 12th.”

  Innes took down the 12th Precinct number and dialed it. He was connected with a Lieutenant Fazackerly.

  “Sure, we got the word,” Fazackerly acknowledged crisply. “Hold it. Follow-up phone report just coming in.”

  The FBI man waited.

  “According to our guys, the woman’s been beaten up some,” Fazackerly said. “Face bruised and cut. Child has a bad burn on one hand. Officers have given first aid. No other injuries reported.”

  Innes relayed the news to Wainwright who covered his face with a hand as if in prayer.

  The lieutenant was speaking again. “Something kind of queer here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Officers in the car say the Núñez woman won’t talk. All she wants is pencil and paper. They’ve given it to her. She’s scribbling like mad. Said something about things being in her memory she has to get out.”

  Special Agent Innes breathed, “Jesus Christ!” He remembered the bank cash loss, the story behind it, the incredible accuracy of Juanita Núñez’s circus freak memory.

  “Listen,” he said. “Please take this from me, I’ll explain it later, and we’re coming out to you. But radio your car right now. Tell your officers not to talk to Núnez, not to disturb her, help her in any way she wants. And when she gets to the precinct house, the same thing goes. Humor her. Let her go on writing if she wants. Handle her like she was something special.”

  He stopped, then added, “Which she is.”

  Short reverse. From garage.

  Forward. 8 secs. Almost stop. (Driveway?)

  Turn left. 10 secs. Med. speed.

  Turn right. 3 secs.

  Turn left. 55 secs. Smooth, fast.

  Stop. 4 secs. (Traffic light?)

  Straight on. 10 secs. Med. speed.

  Turn right. Rough road (short dist.) then smooth. 18 secs.

  Slowing. Stop. Start immed. Curve to right. Stop-start. 25 secs.

  Turn left. Straight, smooth. 47 secs.

  Slow. Turn right …

  Juanita’s finished summation ran to seven handwritten pages.

  They worked intensively for an hour in a rear room at the precinct house, using large-scale maps, but the result was inconclusive.

  Juanita’s scribbled notes had amazed them all—Innes and Dalrymple, Jordan and Quimby of the U. S. Secret Service who had joined the others after a hurry-up call, and Nolan Wainwright. The notes were incredibly complete and, Juanita maintained, entirely accurate. She explained she was never confident that whatever her mind stored away could be recalled—until the moment came to do so. But once the effort had been made, she knew with certainty if her recollections had been correct. She was convinced they were now.

  Besides the notes, they had something else to go on. Mileage.

  The gags and blindfolds had been removed from Juanita and Estela moments before they were pushed from the car on a lonely suburban road. By contrived clumsiness and luck, Juanita had managed to catch a second glimpse of the odometer. 25738.5. They had traveled 23.7 miles.

  But was it a consistent direction, or had the car doubled back, making the journey seem longer than it was, merely to confuse? Even with Juanita’s summary, it was impossible to be certain. They did the best they could, working painstakingly backwards, estimating that the car might have come this way or that, turned here or there, traveled thus far on this road. Everyone, though, knew how inexact it was since speeds could only be guessed at and Juanita’s senses while she was blindfolded might have deceived her so that error could be piled on error, making their present exercise futile, a waste of time. But there was a chance they could trace the route back to where she had been captive, or come close. And, significantly, a general consistency existed between the various possibilities worked out so far.

  It was Secret Service Agent Jordan who made an assessment for them all. On an area map he drew a series of lines representing the most likely directions in which the car carrying Juanita and Estella would have traveled. Then, around the origins of the lines, he drew a circle. “In there.” He prodded with a finger. “Somewhere in there.”

  In the ensuing silence, Wainwright heard Jordan’s stomach rumble, as on all the occasions they had met before. Wainwright wondered how Jordan made out on assignments where he had to stay concealed and silent. Or did his noisy stomach preclude him from that kind of work?

  “That area,” Dalrymple pointed out, “is at least five square miles.”

  “Then let’s comb it,” Jordan answered. “In teams, in cars. Our shop and yours, and we’ll ask help from the city police.”

  Lieutenant Fazackerly, who had joined them asked, “And what will we all be looking for, gentlemen?”

  “If you want the truth,” Jordan said, “damned if I know.”

  Juanita rode in an FBI car with Innes and Wainwright. Wainwright drove, leaving Inne
s free to work two radios—a portable unit, one of five supplied by the FBI, which could communicate directly with the other cars, and a regular transmitter-receiver linked directly to FBI Headquarters.

  Beforehand, under the city police lieutenant’s direction, they had sectored the area and five cars were now crisscrossing it. Two were FBI, one Secret Service, and two from the city. The personnel had split up. Jordan and Dalrymple were each riding with a city detective, filling in details for the newcomers as they drove. If necessary, other patrols of the city force would be called for backup.

  One thing they were all sure of: Where Juanita had been held was the counterfeit center. Her general description and some details she had noticed made it close to a certainty. Therefore, instructions to all special units were the same: Look for, and report, any unusual activity which might relate to an organized crime center specializing in counterfeiting. All concerned conceded the instructions were vague, but no one had been able to come up with anything more specific. As Innes put it: “What else have we got?”

  Juanita sat in the rear seat of the FBI car.

  It was almost two hours since she and Estela had been set down abruptly, ordered to face away, and the dark green Ford had sped off with a screech of burned rubber. Since then Juanita had refused treatment—other than immediate first aid—for her badly bruised and cut face, and the cuts and lacerations on her legs. She was aware that she looked a mess, her clothing stained and torn, but knew too that if Miles was to be reached in time to save him, everything else must wait, even her own attention to Estela, who had been taken to a hospital for treatment of her burn and for observation. While Juanita did what she had to, Margot Bracken—who arrived at the precinct house shortly after Wainwright and the FBI—was comforting Estela.

  It was now midafternoon.

  Earlier, getting the sequence of her journey down on paper, clearing her mind as if purging an overburdened message center, had exhausted Juanita. Yet, afterward, she had responded to what seemed endless questioning by the FBI and Secret Service men who kept on probing for the smallest details of her experience in the hope that some unconsidered fragment might bring them closer to what they wanted most—a specific locale. So far nothing had.

  But it was not details Juanita thought about now, seated behind Wainwright and Innes, but Miles as she had last seen him. The picture remained etched—with guilt and anguish—sharply on her mind. She doubted it would ever wholly disappear. The question haunted her: If the counterfeit center were discovered, would it be too late to save Miles? Was it already too late?

  The area within the circle Agent Jordan had drawn—located near the city’s eastern edge—was mixed in character. In part, it was commercial, with some factories, warehouses, and a large industrial tract devoted to light industry. This last, the most likely area, was the segment to which the patrolling forces were paying most attention. There were several shopping areas. The rest was residential, running the gamut from regiments of box bungalows to a clutch of sizable mansion-type dwellings.

  To the eyes of the dozen roving searchers, who communicated frequently through the portable radios, activity everywhere was average and routine. Even a few out of the ordinary happenings had commonplace overtones. In one of the shopping districts a man buying a painter’s safety harness had tripped over it and broken a leg. Not far away a car with a stuck accelerator had crashed into an empty theater lobby. “Maybe someone thought it was a drive-in movie,” Innes said, but no one laughed. In the industrial tract the fire department responded to a small plant blaze and quickly put it out. The plant was making waterbeds; one of the city detectives inspected it to be sure. At a residential mansion a charity tea was beginning. At another, an Alliance Van Lines tractor-trailer was loading household furniture. Over amid the bungalows a repair crew was coping with a leaky water main. Two neighbors had quarreled and were fistfighting on the sidewalk. Secret Service Agent Jordan got out and separated them.

  And so on.

  For an hour. At the end of it, they were no further ahead than when they started.

  “I’ve a funny feeling,” Wainwright said. “A feeling I used to get in police work sometimes when I’d missed something.”

  Innes glanced sideways. “I know what you mean. You get to believe there’s something right under your nose if you could only see it.”

  “Juanita,” Wainwright said over his shoulder, “is there anything, any little thing you haven’t told us?”

  She said firmly, “I told you everything.”

  “Then let’s go over it again.”

  After a while Wainwright said, “Around the time Eastin stopped crying out, and while you were still bound, you told us something about there being a lot of noise.”

  She corrected him, “No, una conmoción. Noise and activity. I could hear people moving, things being shifted, drawers opening and closing, that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe they were searching for something,” Innes suggested. “But what?”

  “When you were on the way out,” Wainwright asked, “did you get any idea what the activity was about?”

  “Pot última vez, yo no sé.” Juanita shook her head. “I told you I was too shocked at seeing Miles to see anything else.” She hesitated. “Well, there were those men in the garage moving that funny furniture.”

  “Yes,” Innes said. “You told us about that. It’s odd, all right, but we haven’t thought of an explanation for it.”

  “Wait a minute! Maybe there is one.”

  Innes and Juanita looked at Wainwright. He was frowning. He appeared to be concentrating, working something out. “That activity Juanita heard … Supposing they weren’t searching for something but were packing up, preparing to move?”

  “Could be,” Innes acknowledged. “But what they’d be moving would be machinery. Printing machines, supplies. Not furniture.”

  “Unless,” Wainwright said, “the furniture was a cover. Hollow furniture.”

  They stared at each other. The answer hit them both at the same time. ‘Tor God’s sake,” Innes shouted. “That moving van!”

  Wainwright was already reversing the car, spinning the wheel hard in a tight, fast turn.

  Innes seized the portable radio. He transmitted tensely, “Strongthrust group leader to all special units. Converge on large gray house, stands back near east end Earlham Avenue. Look for Alliance Van Lines moving van. Halt and detain occupants. City units call in all cars in vicinity. Code 10-13.”

  Code 10-13 meant: Maximum speed, wide open, lights and siren. Innes switched on their own siren. Wainwright put his foot down hard.

  “Christ!” Innes said; he sounded close to tears. “We went by it twice. And last time they were almost loaded.”

  “When you leave here,” Marino instructed the driver of the tractor-semi, “head for the West Coast. Take it easy, do everything the way you would with a regular load, and rest up every night. But keep in touch, you know where to call. And if you don’t get fresh orders on the way, you’ll get them in L.A.”

  “Okay, Mr. Marino,” the driver said. He was a reliable joe who knew the score, also that he would get a king-sized bonus for the personal risk he was running. But he had done the same thing other times before, when Tony Bear had kept the counterfeit center equipment on the road and out of harm’s way, moving it around the country like a floating crap game until any heat was off.

  “Well then,” the driver said, “everything’s loaded. I guess I’ll roll. So long, Mr. Marino.”

  Tony Bear nodded, feeling relief. He had been unusually antsy during the packing and loading operation, a feeling which had kept him here, overseeing and keeping the pressure on, though he knew he was being un-smart to stay. Normally he kept safely distant from the working front line of any of his operations, making sure there was no evidence to connect him in the event that something fouled up. Others were paid to take those kinds of risks—and raps if necessary. The thing was, though, the counterfeit caper, starting as chickenshit, had bec
ome such a big-time moneymaker—in the real sense—that from once having been the least of his interests, it was now near the top of the list. Good organization had made it that way; that and taking ultra-precautions—a description Tony Bear liked—such as moving out now.

  Strictly speaking, he didn’t believe this present move was necessary—at least not yet—because he was sure Eastin had been lying when he said he had found out this location from Danny Kerrigan and had passed the information on. Tony Bear believed Kerrigan on that one, though the old fart had talked too much, and was going to have some unpleasant surprises soon which would cure him of a loose tongue. If Eastin had known what he said he. did, and passed it on, the cops and bank dicks would have swarmed here long ago. Tony Bear wasn’t surprised at the lie. He knew how people under torture passed through successive mental doors of desperation, switching from lies to truth, then back to lies again if they thought it was something their torturers wanted to hear. It was always an interesting game outguessing them. Tony Bear enjoyed those kinds of games.

  Despite all that, moving out, using the emergency rush arrangements set up with the mob-owned trucking company, was the smart thing to do. As usual—ultra-smart. If in doubt, move. And now the loading was done, it was time to get rid of what was left of the stoolie Eastin. Garbage. A detail Angelo would attend to. Meanwhile, Tony Bear decided, it was high time he got the hell away from here himself. In exceptional good humor, he chuckled. Ultra-smart.

  It was then he heard the faint but growing sound of converging sirens and, minutes later, knew he had not been smart at all.

  “Better move it, Harry!” the young ambulance steward called forward to the driver. “This one doesn’t have time to spare.”

  “From the look of the guy,” the driver said—he kept his eyes directed ahead, using flashers and warbling siren to weave daringly through early rush hour traffic—”from the look of him, we’d both be doing the poor bastard a favor if we pulled over for a beer.”

  “Knock it off, Harry.” The steward, whose qualifications were somewhat less than those of a male nurse, glanced toward Juanita. She was perched on a jump seat, straining around him to see Miles, her face intent, lips moving. “Sorry, miss. Guess we forgot you were there. On this job we get a bit case-hardened.”