Hine said: “You could kill Darrow, couldn’t you? Especially now that you have access to him, just do it, point-blank?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m not that stupid.”
“But you are plenty pissed.”
“That what you want, for me to kill Darrow for you?”
“You’re dead anyway.”
“Not yet.”
“Darrow is just fucking with your head, keeping you around to sweat and kiss ass for a while. Not for long, though.”
“He offered me a job.” Baiting, drawing Hine out again.
“Carrying?”
“Yeah.”
“You believe him?”
“No …”
“No matter, you’re going to like my offer better.”
“Not if it includes suicide. Why do you want Darrow dead?”
“I’m running up his back.”
“Hire someone.”
“I could, but it would be too obvious, risky. Besides, even if Darrow got hit by a car or someone this afternoon, chances are I might not be moved up into his spot. I’m in line to become Custodian, but they might put someone else in and I’d be no better off. Other measures are indicated.”
Gainer wondered who “they” were. And what the “measures” were. “You’ve got a problem,” he said.
“So have you.”
“I’m working on mine.”
“You’ll work yourself to death,” Hine told him.
Gainer’s toes were sunk in and his squat had given way so that now the base of his spine took most of his weight. He brought himself up slowly, grateful that his legs were that strong. Standing, he saw over the lip of the dune, saw the drift fences awry and buried to various degrees across the beach. The wind had picked up, broken the ocean into uncountable repetitive scallops. Hine was right. There would be rain soon. Gainer saw a gull dive, dip into the calmer area between breakers, come up with a fish, only to have it beaked from him by another gull that swallowed it more quickly. Gainer sat down on the dune and after a moment went eyes to eyes with Hine, allowing Hine to read him.
Hine opened with: “The money our people carry, where do you think it’s kept?”
“I don’t know. Some bank, I suppose.”
“What about right there at Number 19?”
Gainer thought of all those formidable servants. “Probably better than a bank, more convenient.”
“How much would you say is there?”
Norma’s carries had usually been three million, so maybe they kept ten around. That was his guess: “Ten million.”
“Tell him how much Sweet.”
“Today?”
“Today.”
“Three billion, one hundred seventy-four million and change.”
Gainer’s mouth was open. “You’re shitting me.”
“It’s there, I’ll show it to you if I have to,” Hine told him.
“Say that number again,” Gainer said.
Sweet repeated it.
“That’s the amount waiting to be washed,” Hine said. “We call it The Balance. Last night you slept no more than a hundred feet from it.”
“Where?”
“On that same upper floor but in the opposite wing.”
Gainer recalled the windowless upper area he’d noticed a few days ago. Now he knew the reason for it. At various times over the years he’d heard there was a lot of dirty money, Mob money, stashed in a private house somewhere. But the rumors always had it in New Jersey. He’d never believed it. His mouth wasn’t open now, however, he felt like snapping his head to get it to register. Three billion in that house?
The nearly paralytic way lower-class people were affected by huge sums always amused Hine. He had to suppress a grin. He waited for Gainer’s mind to absorb the amount, then told him, “What I want you to do is steal it.”
“Is that all?”
“The money is key. If anything happens to it, Darrow dies.”
“He cries himself to death?”
“He dies as a matter of course.”
“Who sees to that?”
“Don’t ask,” Hine advised him.
Gainer knew better than to want to know.
“You must understand, of course, I only want you steal the money temporarily,” Hine said. “After Darrow is blamed and pays the price the money gets recovered.”
“By you.”
“Yes, and for that I am made Custodian and you’re off the hook.”
“The way I see it, I’m still on and wiggling.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The code is specific. When a Custodian dies or is replaced, his orders are automatically cancelled.”
“Tell me about that.”
Hine ran it down briefly for him. The procedure for orders, the unequivocal intolerance of mistakes, the extreme penalty. He used the case of Gridley as an example.
“Nice genteel folk, you whiteshoes,” Gainer said.
Hine agreed with a shrug, not altogether without pride.
“So, I’d be stealing for my life.”
“And to be a little richer. Let’s say ten million.”
“Cash.”
“Cash.”
“Ten million of the dirty—”
“Naturally.”
“Make it twenty,” Gainer said.
Hine was sure he had his man. “Tell you what, to show that my heart is in the right place, you can also keep the three million you got from Norma, with no further questions.”
“What three million from Norma?”
“Her last carry, you know.”
“I don’t know.”
“It never reached the bank. Darrow and everyone, including myself, have been convinced all along that you got it somehow.”
“Is that why Darrow had me watched in Zurich?”
“Sharp boy.”
“Just for that make my end thirty million,” Gainer said.
“You’re getting greedy.”
“Thirty million is crumbs.”
Hine, with a shrug, admitted that it was. “One thing more,” he said. “You mustn’t count on me. I’ll pass on whatever helpful information I can whenever I can, but otherwise I won’t have any part in it.”
“Just me,” Gainer said.
“Fuck up and I’ll be facing the other way.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll be no worse off than you are now.”
He had a point there, Gainer thought. “Tell me, Hine, if I take your proposition and Darrow’s to die, how will he die? Can you guarantee some slow, excruciating, painful way?”
“I can’t promise that.”
“But he’ll know he’s dying?”
“From the moment the money is missing, he’ll know that.”
Gainer had to smile.
“Then we have a deal?” Hine asked.
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I want to give it some thought. I’ll be back to you.” Spoken like a true hot shit executive, he thought.
THAT night at a middling Szechuan restaurant on the Post Road, Gainer told Leslie all about his meeting with Hine. Going over with her the points of Hine’s proposition helped make clearer his own thoughts on them.
Leslie set a new personal record for not interrupting. She took it rather like a wife whose husband had been offered a much better job. It was, she believed, a splendid opportunity. “Three billion dollars,” she half-whispered, as though they were holy words. “I’ll bet it would be the largest amount ever stolen.”
“At least right up there.”
“I think we could pull it off,” she said.
Arguing with her now about the we would be wasted effort, Gainer realized, and told her: “We don’t even have any idea what it involves yet.”
“Doesn’t matter, I know we could.” She was so excited she gave up on her chopsticks, forked at the eggplant garlic dish she’d ordered triple hot. S
he’d already extended a sample of it across to Gainer and burned his taste buds so they didn’t seem to trust anything else he offered them.
To divert and calm her, Gainer asked: “How did your day go?”
“I read, explored the garden and waited. You must have left very early. Your toothbrush was dry.”
A cue for the Millicent foolishness. Gainer let it slip by. “You were bored, huh?”
“At least I didn’t get the mopes or the monies,” she said. “I usually do when I’m lonely and alone like that.”
“But never when you’re with me.”
“Never,” she fibbed. “You know, love, the Hine thing is an all-around answer if you want to see it like that.”
“Yeah.”
“We get to live and we get—”
“You get to live no matter what,” he said.
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
“I have to be.”
“You’re my lifeline,” she said.
“I thought Rodger was.”
“He just gives transfusions.”
“That you require.”
“Less and less. But you, love, you’re essential. Without you I’d be broke under any circumstances.”
“Everything you say is true.”
“I love you.”
“Especially that.”
She ate the eggplant as though it was as bland as a New England boiled vegetable dinner. Didn’t even need to extinguish it with water. “You did say thirty million?” she asked.
“That would be my take-home pay.”
“Nice, long figure, thirty million.”
“Enough?”
“We could invest it,” she said brightly.
“What in?”
“Us. We’ll live on the interest and never touch the principal.”
He loved that sweet play on words, so much that he allowed her to stroke another forkful of her hot stuff into his mouth.
“You know what’s best about us?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Including that, naturally.”
“What?”
“We get better,” she said. “We keep getting better even when there doesn’t seem to be any possibility for improvement.”
“True.”
“I want to admit something I’ve never admitted to any man—although, perhaps I’ve come close a couple of times. Anyway, when I’m not with you I’m terribly deficient, inside and out. I don’t function well. My arms feel heavy, my head gets short-circuited and I’m awfully unfilled. I mean by that worse than ordinary empty.”
“I think a lot about filling you.”
“It’s sexual. Oh God yes, it’s sexual, but not only. My eyes need to be filled with you, and my ears and my lungs and hands. It’s a dreadful admission, isn’t it?”
“No, not at all.”
“It imposes on you and reveals me. I’d keep it to myself if I could.”
“What if I feel the same?”
“I believe I could handle it.” She lowered her eyes, they clouded. “I was remembering something a man once said to me. I don’t recall him particularly but what he said must have impressed me because it stuck. He was trying to seduce me in a cold roundabout way, wanting to use me like a whore and have me like a whore use him, hoping, you know, for that sort of mutual irresponsibility. Come to think of it, that approach was tried often in one form or another by several others. Have you ever come on like that with anyone?”
“No,” Gainer fibbed.
“Anyway, this man said romantic love was never fair, not the equitable thing it was made out to be. Rather, it was like a surgical operation with one person making incisions while the other cried for anesthesia.”
“Believe that?”
“It used to get proved to me a lot.”
“Not this time. I need the hell out of you, Leslie.”
“Dependency …”
“I honestly, straight out, lay it on the line need—”
“… dependency takes courage.”
“When I was on that carry for Darrow and out of touch, it wasn’t just that I was concerned about you or that I missed you. For sure it wasn’t ordinary missing. I felt that it was unfair that I should have to give any of my time to anyone other than you.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Grateful.”
He got up and went around to her, oblivious to the place, the other people there. He tilted her face up and brought his own down to kiss her. A long, light kiss. The Szechuan pepper on her lips made his own burn.
“Let’s go find Hine and tell him he’s on,” she said.
“Too soon.”
“What’s soon have to do with it?”
“First we need some insurance.”
JIMMY Chapin.
Gainer spent all the next morning and half the afternoon trying to locate him. Called the last number he had on him and even a back-up special number but got no answer. Went by Chapin’s apartment on East Forty-ninth, buzzed for five minutes before giving that up.
There were other likely places.
The sublevel, swimming pool whorehouse on West Forty-second where Jimmy had a favorite working girl.
An early bar on Eighth Avenue. Six people there but only the bartender capable of rational speech.
“Jimmy Chapin been around?”
The usual reply to that would have been, “Who’s Jimmy Chapin?” Gainer was known so he got a wary, “What’s up?”
“Business, no beef,” Gainer assured him.
“Haven’t seen him in a week. Try his brother, Vinny, why don’t you?”
“Where?”
“Down around Canal probably. Otherwise I don’t know.”
Gainer was sure his chances of running into Vinny on Canal Street were slim, but he went downtown and stood on one of the prime jewelry corners for an hour. Recognized several sleepless fences looping around, getting swag priced. But no Vinny.
By then it was noon. Gainer recalled that Jimmy often had lunch on Third Avenue, between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth, a blue-fronted place called Elmer’s. He went there, stood at the end of the bar with a draught Heineken. Down the way was Rocky Graziano, as good-natured as ever, knowing everyone. And, more restrained, Jake LaMotta. There were fight people and people who admired fight people. There were also racing people. No Phippses or Whitneys, but some takers and players and a few jockey-sized older guys who got information now and then.
Gainer helped himself to four toothpicked meatballs and three fried chicken wings from the free lunch hot trays. A waiter came with a fresh batch of meatballs. He was a waiter Gainer had overtipped at least three times in the past. A good one to ask.
“At the track, I think,” the waiter said. “Last night when he was in I heard him mention something about going to the track.”
Belmont racetrack was an hour’s drive out, and a mention overheard by a waiter wasn’t much to go on. Gainer almost decided to hang around places and let Chapin eventually come to him, if not today, tomorrow. He wished he had when he got into a traffic tie-up in the Midtown Tunnel behind a truck with a killer exhaust.
He arrived at Belmont and got parked just as the fifth race went off. Heard from outside the roar of the crowd, the loud urge of it abruptly changing into a sort of mumbling moan the moment the horses crossed the finish line and losers became the majority. Gainer bought his way into the clubhouse, let the escalator take him up to the unique atmosphere of tickets underfoot like worthless printed money, and greed and desperation almost deoxygenating the air.
He crossed over to the thick pipe railing that kept the common weekday player from the private boxes. The bright blue uniformed ushers stationed at entry points made sure.
Gainer scanned the boxes for Chapin. It was where he’d be if he was there. On his third scan Gainer caught on the back of a head that might be the man. A half-turn of that head revealed it was him. Six boxes down and off to the left, almost in line with the finish line.
Gainer bo
rrowed a pen from a player to jot a note on the back of a discarded ticket. He put a ten dollar bill in an usher’s hand and then the note, and moments later Chapin was standing, turning around, gesturing to him to come down to the box. The usher returned and stepped aside for him as though there had never been a doubt.
“Take any seat,” Chapin told Gainer.
The box accommodated six on two tiers. It was the box of a well-known trainer kept for his new or faraway owners. Most weekdays it was unoccupied, as were many of the other boxes.
Chapin was with his brother, Vinny. They both had small, very expensive binoculars suspended from around their necks. From Vinny’s sources, Gainer assumed.
“Got something going?” Chapin asked Gainer. He knew Gainer seldom, if ever, bet on a horse unless it was a special occasion, such as a ten-length lock.
“Something important,” Gainer told him.
“What race?”
“Be a joke if it was the sixth,” Vinny put in.
“It has nothing to do with a horse,” Gainer said.
“Then keep it for later,” Chapin said, a bit curt. “Right now I’ve got everything to do with a horse.”
Chapin appeared relaxed enough unless one knew him as well as Gainer did. Gainer noticed the little giveaways. The tip on the cigarette Chapin was smoking was oval from extra lip pressure, and he didn’t smoke it down short as usual, dropped it, overdid grinding it out. Normally he would have just made one stab at it with his heel. Also, his ears were florid.
Chapin was forty. He physically resembled the one-time, late mayor of New York, James Walker. Had that sort of small-boned build and Irish durability. He didn’t look to be strong but it was said around that once at Jimmy Weston’s he had, on a thousand dollar bet, lifted by its leg a chair containing a hundred and fifty pound hooker ten inches off the floor using only his left hand—and he was right-handed. Gainer hadn’t seen it but he believed it. Actually, it was one of Chapin’s lesser exploits. He enjoyed being talked about, doing the unexpected. “There are those who make news and those who merely read it,” he’d said to Gainer one night when they were out running together.
Chapin was indeed a character.
By choice.
He’d earned a B.S.E.E. degree at Cal Tech and done graduate work at MIT. All the leading electronic firms had wanted him, recruited hard, and the two that he’d worked for had put him right in the middle of their most sophisticated projects. A lot of Chapin’s subminiature circuitry creations had landed on the moon.
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