19 Purchase Street

by Gerald A. Browne

  Off the south wing ground floor was the most important terrace. It ran for over a hundred feet, the entire length of the wing. The surface of the terrace was composed of beige granite blocks a yard square and a half-foot thick, laid out so there was precisely all around a one inch space between them. Within those planned crevices fragrant white alyssum was set out, encouraged to squeeze up and cluster, determining one’s stride there.

  Thirty wide steps below the terrace and across a half acre of lawn was the swimming pool. Off to the left was the fenced and lighted tennis court, a clay court that required and got daily attention.

  Altogether the atmosphere around Number 19 was tranquil appreciation for the finer things, a place where venality and violence would be foreign.

  ON the last Wednesday in that July, Edwin Darrow stood at the open french doors of his study. For the moment he watched a purple finch go from a begonia bed that bordered the outside walkway to its nest in the ivy on that side of the house. The tiny ball of a bird made trip after trip, nervously carrying twigs and fibers.

  “Yesterday’s flow,” Darrow said still looking out.

  “On your desk.”

  “It wasn’t there when I came down.”

  “You were early.”

  “No matter.” Darrow refused the excuse, turned to Arnold Hine but didn’t give him his eyes. Hine was Darrow’s thirty-five-year-old nephew, the son of Darrow’s older sister who had married and divorced well. Darrow seldom exchanged looks with the man although he frequently observed him.

  On the huge directoire desk was a single sheet of paper. Darrow made a ritual of cleaning his gold wire-rimmed glasses with his breath and a tissue.

  Every day, Hine thought, same damned thing.

  Darrow sensed the impatience, took his time putting the glasses on, careful not to resmudge them. He remained standing, leaned over and read from the paper without touching it.

  There were two figures, one above the other on the paper, hand-printed about twice as large as normal. The upper figure was five comma eight. The figure below was four comma seven. They were what had come in and what had gone out yesterday. The flow.

  Darrow was slightly pleased, at least not upset. He didn’t show it.

  Hine didn’t expect Darrow to show it. He hitched up with a smile, said how much he admired Darrow’s navy flannel blazer, asked was it new.

  Darrow nodded once. No need for reassurance that he looked well in clothes. He always had. Even any old shirt and slacks seemed upgraded when he put them on. It was something he’d taken for granted all his life, just as it was natural for him never to be without a sun tan regardless of the season.

  He was sixty and lean, ten pounds under for his height. His posture made good use of all his five foot eleven. It was erect, effortlessly erect without even the suggestion of a stoop. His face was consistent with that. Square shaped. A slightly aggressive jaw set with lips somewhat thin, a strong forehead and narrow nose.

  The immediate impression of Darrow was a man of means, one who had benefited from conscientious breeding and omnipresent wealth. The sort who could make it through the guarded gate of any yacht club in the world, without question.

  Old eastern money?

  Actually, Darrow was only two generations away from Nebraska farmland athough he had never stood in a field of wheat. His great grandfather had never seen a lobster.

  “Do you want to go up today?” Hine asked him.

  Darrow was undecided. He held up his right hand and examined the back of it while he made up his mind. He was especially proud of his hands, the unusual length of them. He tensed his fingers, to define their ligaments and appreciate seeing them work. No, he thought, he didn’t want to go up. He would rather leave all that to Hine. However, if there was a discrepancy, he as Custodian, not Hine, would have to face the consequences. That was the established code, the thing his predecessor, Gridley, had not taken seriously enough. “Of course,” he said, as though it had been ridiculous of Hine to ask, “I’ll go up.” He folded the sheet of paper with yesterday’s figures on it, put it in his jacket pocket.

  Hine led the way from the study and down the wide ground floor hallway. Persian runners underfoot, a Gainsborough and a Sir Joshua Reynolds among others on the walls. When they reached the main entry they went up the triple-wide staircase to the second floor landing, turned left, headed for that half-wing at the northern extreme of the house.

  Walking behind, Darrow’s eyes were level with the strip of white that was the back of Hine’s shirt collar. Hine was that much taller, about two-thirds of a head. Darrow resented the fact Hine was able to look down on almost everyone. He also noticed the younger man’s dark hairline, evenly trimmed, neck skin showing. Hine always wore his hair cut short, parted high and combed to the side like a good schoolboy. It emphasized all the more his knubby and somewhat elongated features and it also made the most of his eyes. His pale blue eyes with a soft, benevolent quality to them that Darrow knew was a lie.

  At the end of the hall the grinding sound of a motor stopped Hine. He looked out of the window to the service area directly below. There was a garbage truck and three men. The truck had Santiano & Son and a Bronx address lettered on its housing. The men worked with an automatic efficiency, detached from their task. They raised the hatches of the enclosed garbage bins situated along that rear side of the house. In the bins were six regular garbage containers, green plastic with black covers. The men emptied the trash and garbage from five of the containers into the jaws of the truck. The sixth container had nothing in it. One of the men shouldered an ordinary black plastic trash bag. It was full, bulging, but securely tied. He dropped it into the sixth container, put the cover on. They slammed the bin hatches shut and got aboard the truck that growled down the drive in second gear.

  “The northeastern ‘bring’,” Hine said.

  “Get it,” Darrow told him.

  “I’ll have Sweet go down.”

  Darrow let it go at that. In his estimation, Hine and Sweet were of the same cut.

  Hine continued on down the hall of the north wing. Darrow followed. Past secondary bedrooms to a closed door at the end of the hall that appeared identical to all the other doors in that area, solid wood with several inset panels. Hine, tall as he was, hardly had to reach for the upper right corner of the door trim. He placed his fingers lightly there and electronically snapped the door open.

  It gave access to two adjoining rooms, each about twelve feet by twelve feet. No windows.

  The first room had two long counters, waist-high. Several electronic calculators were plugged in, and there was various other office equipment for collating and packing, including an electronic scale that could weigh from a thousandth of an ounce to three hundred pounds. Underneath the counter stood ten suitcases of various types, leather and canvas, men’s and women’s styles. Each had a red and white identification tag attached to its handle. In the center of the room were two canvas bins, like those used by the U.S. Postal Service. One of the bins was half full with money, loose bills, some fifties and five hundreds, but mostly hundreds.

  Two older women in pale blue housekeeper uniforms were at work. The second fingers of their right hands were almost a blur as they counted the bills into twenty-five thousand dollar sheaves nearly an inch thick. It was something they were very skilled at. They dropped their finished work into a wire basket, turned and dipped a similar basket into the loose money bin for more. A man in olive drab slacks and shirt, suitable for a gardener, placed the counted money, one sheaf at a time, on the scale to check it, then bound each sheaf with a wide, self-sticking paper band and tossed it, as though it were a mere brick, into the second canvas bin.

  F. Hugh Sweet was supervising.

  He was as tall as Hine but about seventy pounds heavier. Round faced, sandy haired. Like a huge football lineman. He said hello to Darrow with a Mister. His voice didn’t match him, was too small and high for his size.

  Hine told him: “The garbage came.”


  Sweet hurried out.

  Darrow smiled and nodded to the two women and the so-called gardener, told them not to let him interrupt their work. He and Hine went into the second room.

  Darrow stood in the middle of it and inspected, slowly turned a complete circle. All appeared to be in order. Of course, there was no way he could be certain without counting. Someday, he thought, perhaps soon, he’d call for a count of The Balance and see if Hine’s total jibed. For now, as usual, he’d just transmit by his attitude that he had his own way of knowing whether or not it was all there.

  The Balance.

  That upper room contained it.

  On floor to ceiling shelves that took up half the space.

  A hundred hundreds is three-eighths of an inch thick.

  A thousand hundreds is three and three-quarters inches thick.

  A million dollar stack of hundreds is only thirty-seven and a half inches tall.

  The ceiling in that room was ten feet high, so each single stack, floor-to-ceiling, amounted to three million.

  There were twenty-four such stacks in each row on the shelves. Seventy-two million dollars.

  Twelve rows to each wall. Eight hundred and sixty-four million.

  Times four and allowing for the doorway.

  Three billion, two hundred and forty million dollars.

  In cash.

  In that room above the servants’ quarters of that house at 19 Purchase Street.

  It came there in the most inconspicuous ways.

  On the average, thirty million dollars each week.

  Brought by practically anyone who came and went for any commonplace reason. The groundkeepers brought it along with their equipment. The men who kept the swimming pool clean and those who tended the tennis court brought. Two maids, the cook and the handyman lived away from the premises and were able to bring everyday in the satchels that were supposed to contain their personal things. There were deliveries by what appeared to be United Parcel and Parcel Post and a “bring” at least once a week by the dry cleaners. Even the newspaper boy also brought this other kind of paper.

  Three billion, two hundred and forty million dollars.

  The Balance.

  At times it had been more than that amount, as much as four billion and some. At other times it had gotten down as low as two billion. Never less.

  Where was it from?

  From banks, mainly.

  Many of the most prominent and highly respected banks.

  But before that: from the losers, the chumps, the sickies, those bettors who phoned in their convictions to voices they’d never seen the faces of, and every following Tuesday in bars and coffee shops and other such places they passed to men who were practically strangers more cash money than they’d ever thought of giving to a close friend. From the tricks of cold hookers on the hot streets around every downtown. From the high price of admission into narrow theaters for close-ups of glistening membranes. From the turned-downs, the discredited, marked by their own names and social security numbers. The great computerized memories never forgot to disqualify them, so they had to borrow from the sharks and pay twenty percent interest per week. From the tooters, those who got up by the nose, didn’t want to do without snort, blow, snow, even at a hundred dollars a smidgen. From the vendors of the cigarettes trucked up by a steady convoy from the cigarette states, avoiding all the taxes. From the one-third-the-price brand new stolen television sets, furs, air-conditioners. Entire vanloads pulled over, taken over, most often not actually by surprise, and pushed out into the effluvia of swag. Who wouldn’t come up with two hundred for a Betamax still in its shipping carton?

  Goods and services.

  All cash business.

  Dirty money.

  The three billion, two hundred and forty million in The Balance at Number 19 Purchase Street wasn’t even the half of it. The larger, total amount was put before the eyes of America in the May 16, 1977, issue of Time magazine. A ten-page article dealing with crime and showing how much money it was making each year. The breakdown went:

  Gambling

  7 billion 600 million

  Loan sharking

  10 billion

  Narcotics

  4 billion

  Hijacking

  1 billion 200 million

  Pornography & prostitution

  1 billion 200 million

  Cigarette bootlegging

  800 million

  These weren’t figures out of the air. They were compilations based on the data from the National Gambling Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Tobacco Tax Council, the Senate Small Business Committee, the New York State Commission of Investigation and various other law enforcement agencies.

  Twenty-four billion, eight hundred million a year.

  For a comparison, General Motors in its good times made only three billion, five hundred million and Exxon only two billion, seven hundred million. With the profits of Ford, Mobil, IBM and General Electric thrown in, it still came to about half as much. By many billions, the most profitable business in the country was crime.

  Organized crime.

  That’s what the Time magazine report called it, along with such familiar synonyms as the Mob and the Mafia. The report wasn’t really an expose as much as it was another rundown on the latest in the underworld, who had been recently killed and who of that element most likely did the killing. A rehash. Who had passed on and who was coming on. The struggle for territories and various rackets. It was the hanging of enemies on meat hooks and the puncturing of informers with ice picks. The usual stuff, sort of low-life gossip that those criminals who rated being named in the article probably called attention to with pride, while those not mentioned felt slighted.

  Was the Time article accurate?

  As far as it went.

  However, was it supposed to be accepted that twenty-four billion, eight hundred million in cash ended up in the hands of those guys with the funny-sounding Italian names who so frequently made headlines and gruesome messes of one another? What could they do with all that dirty cash money? They had bad language, bad teeth and bad old hearts, and they held sway while winding pasta or slurping clams in linoleum-floored restaurants in Brooklyn. They would drown in that much money. Five hundred thousand pounds of it. It would overflow their dark walk-ups down around Mulberry Street or their overdone houses faced with false brick, close as a spit to everyone, on less than a half acre in the Bath Beach section. Were the Luccheses and Gambinos, Genoveses, Colombos and Bonannos of Organized Crime really that much organized? It was ridiculous to think that any of them possessed the executive mentality, the business acumen to create the sophisticated financial structure needed to receive an average of over two dirty billion month after month and make it come out clean.

  Who then?

  THE answer reached back to the year 1935 in New York City.

  A bad February night of freezing rain, a coat of ice on everything.

  Gordon Winship and Millard Cabot were pleased with the weather. It provided an unassailable excuse when they phoned home to Larchmont to tell their wives they’d be staying in town that night, not to worry.

  Winship and Cabot were senior account men with seats on the New York Stock Exchange bought for them by their fathers when they had graduated from Harvard fifteen years earlier. They were right next to the top at the New York branch of Ivison-Weekes, considered to be the most prestigious and powerful investment banking firm in the world. The home office of Ivison-Weekes was in Boston.

  Winship and Cabot had been looking forward to that particular February night for the past two weeks. Winship had let Cabot in on it. At a crowded Christmas party up in the East Seventies, he had been introduced to a man named Frank Costello and within minutes someone’s whisper had informed him that Costello was a gangster. That was the term used, gangster. Winship saw it as a chance to stock up on some colorful conversational material. After two more Old Fashioneds he sought out Costello.

&nb
sp; Winship never got Costello onto the subjects that intrigued him. Once or twice he tried to delicately steer their conversation to the areas of gangland killings and other aspects of underground life, but Costello sidestepped. Mainly they talked about foreign-made limestones, Renaissance art and even some of the machinations of Wall Street. Winship nearly forgot the kind of man he was talking to. Costello was charming, as well-mannered as he was well-dressed. No flash to his personality or appearance. He had a large oblong face with a slightly prominent nose. His voice was naturally a bit hoarse, deep-timbered, as though everything he said came through a congestion from his chest. He was at the party with his friend, the father of a President, he said. He asked for Winship’s business card. Winship didn’t think twice about giving it. What possible harm?

  The first week in January, Costello sent Winship a gold-tooled leather portfolio containing hand-tinted lithograph prints of the most elaborate foreign-made limousines. Winship, being correct, learned Costello’s address and got off a thank-you note.

  The first week in February, Costello called Winship. Said he and a few friends needed some advice regarding an investment. Could they set up a meeting?

  Winship pictured a line of gangsters parading down the hall and into his office. Couldn’t have that.

  As though reading his thought, Costello suggested an evening meeting which would also allow him to arrange for some interesting entertainment.

  There was no doubting what Costello meant by that. It caused Winship to create altogether different mental images.

  The date was set.

  The night had arrived.

  Winship and Cabot put on their black chesterfields with velvet collars and their black homburgs and took a taxi from the office up to the Harvard Club on West Forty-fourth. They spruced up a bit, had a nourishing dinner but not as many drinks as usual. They both had the sexual jitters. At nine o’clock, precisely the appointed time, they were in the Fiftieth Street lobby of the Waldorf Towers. They asked for Charles Ross. The attendant at the desk phoned their names up, and they went up express to the thirty-ninth floor.