Checkpoint Charlie

Charlie’s Vigorish

When I saw the phone’s red message-light flashing I had a premonition — it had to be Myerson; no one else knew I was in New York.

I rang the switchboard. “This is Mr. Dark in Fifteen Eleven. There’s a message light.” I tossed the folded Playbill on the coffee table and jerked my tie loose.

“Yes, sir, here it is. Please call Mr. Myerson. He didn’t leave a number, sir.”

“That’s all right, I know the number. Thanks.” I cradled it before I emitted an oath. Childishly I found ways to postpone making the call: stripped, showered, counted my travelers’ cheques, switched the television on and went around the dial and switched it off. Finally I made a face and rang through to Myerson’s home number in Georgetown.

“Charlie?”

I said, “I’m on vacation. I didn’t want to hear from you.”

“How was the play?”

“Dreary. Why don’t they write plays with real people in them any more?”

“Charlie, those are real people. You’re out of touch.”

“Thank God. What do you want?” I made it cold and rude.

“Oh I just thought you might be lonesome for my voice.”

“Has Hell frozen over?” Then I said, “If it’s an assignment you can shove it somewhere with a hot poker. You’ve already postponed my vacation once this year.”

“Actually I’ve been thinking of posting you to Rekjavik to spend a few years monitoring Russian submarine signals. You’re designed for the climate — all that blubber insulation.”

“The difference between us,” I told him, “my blubber’s not between my ears. You called me in the middle of my vacation to throw stale insults at me?”

“Actually I wish there were some terrible crisis because it might give me the pleasure of shipping you off to some God-forsaken desert to get stung by sandflies and machine-gun slugs, but the fact is I’m only passing on a message out of the kindness of my heart. Your sister-in-law telephoned the Company this afternoon. Something’s happened to your brother. It sounded a bit urgent. I said I’d pass the word to you.”

“All right.” Then I added grudgingly, “Thanks.” And rang off. I looked at the time — short of midnight — and because of the time zones it was only about nine in Arizona so I looked up the number and rang it.

When Margaret came on the line her voice seemed calm enough. “Hi, Charlie, thanks for calling.”

“What’s happened?”

“Eddie’s hurt.”

“How bad?”

She cleared her throat. “He was on the critical list earlier but they’ve taken him off. Demoted him to ‘serious.’” Her abrupt laugh was off-key. I suspected they might have doped her with something to calm her down. She said, “He was beaten. Deliberately. Nearly beaten to death.”

Eddie isn’t as fat as I am, nor as old — by six years — but he’s a big man with chins and a belly; his hair, unlike mine, is still cordovan but then unlike me he’s going bald on top. The last time I’d seen him — a quick airport drink four years earlier, between planes — the capillaries in his nose had given evidence of his increasing devotion to Kentucky bourbon. His predeliction was for booze while mine was for cuisine.

This time his nose and part of his skull were concealed under neat white bandages and both his legs were cast in plaster. He was breathing in short bursts because they’d taped him tight to protect the cracked ribs. They were still running tests to find out if any of his internal organs had been injured.

He looked a sorry sight on the hospital bed and did not attempt to smile. Margaret, plump and worried, hovered by him. He seemed more angry than pained — his eyes flashed bitterly. His voice was stuffed up as if he had a terrible head cold; that was the result of the broken nose.

He said, “Been a long time since I asked you for anything.”

“Ask away.”

“I want you to get the son of a bitch.”

“What’s wrong with the cops?”

“They can’t touch him.”

The hospital room had a nice view of the Santa Catalina mountains and the desert foothills. There was only one chair; Margaret seemed disinclined to use it so I sat down. “Who did it?”

“This? Three guys. Border toughs. The cops have them — they were stupid enough to let me see their car when they cornered me and I had the presence of mind to get the license number. They don’t matter — they’ve been arraigned and I’ll testify. They’re just buttons.”

“Hired?”

“Ten-cent toughs. You can rent them by the hour. Somebody briefed them on my habits — they knew I’d stop at Paco’s bar on my way home. They were waiting for me in the parking lot.”

Margaret said, “They’re in custody but of course they claim they don’t know who hired them.”

“They probably don’t,” Eddie said. “A voice on the phone, a few hundred dollars in cash in an unmarked envelope. That’s the way it’s usually done. It makes certain the cops can’t trace back to the guy who hired them.”

I said, “The Mob.”

“Sure.”

“You know who hired them.”

“Sure. I know.” Then his lids drooped.

Margaret said, “You’re a sort of a cop, Charlie. We thought you might tell us how to handle it.”

“I’m not a cop.” Around the fourth floor in Langley call us loose stringers, meaning we’re nomadic trouble-shooters — no fixed territorial station — but I’m by no means any kind of cop. Margaret and Eddie didn’t know my actual occupation: they knew I worked for the government and they assumed I was with the CIA but for all they knew I was a message clerk. I found their faith touching but misplaced.

Eddie said, “If you were a cop you couldn’t do me any good. I don’t want somebody to read the bastard his rights — I want somebody to nail him.”

“I’m not a hit man, Eddie. I don’t kill people.”

“I don’t want him killed. He didn’t kill me, did he?” His eyes glittered. “I just want him to hurt.”

“Who is he?”

“Calls himself Clay Foran. I doubt it’s the name he was born with. What he does, he lends money to people who can’t get it from the bank.”

“Loan shark.”

“Yeah.”

“Eddie, Eddie.” I shook my head at him. “You haven’t grown up at all.”

“Okay, I can’t move, I’m a captive audience if you want to deliver yourself of a lecture.”

“No lecture. What happened?”

“An apartment house construction deal. I ran into cost overrides — rising prices on building materials. I had to come up with another fifty thousand or forfeit to the bank that holds the construction mortgage. I figured to clear a four hundred K profit if I could complete the job and sell it for the capital gain, and of course there’s a whopping tax-shelter deduction in that kind of construction. So I figured I could afford to borrow the fifty thousand even if the interest rate was exorbitant.”

“Vigorish.”

“Yeah. Usury. Whatever. Trouble is, I was already stretched past my limit with the banks and the building-and-loans. Hell, I was kiting checks over the weekend as it was, but I was in too deep to quit. I had to get the building completed so I could sell it. Otherwise the bank was set to foreclose. So I asked around. Sooner or later somebody steered me to Clay Foran.”

“And?”

“Very respectable businessman, Foran. Calls himself an investment broker. Of course he’s connected with the Mob. Arizona’s crawling with them nowadays, they all moved out here. For their health,” he added drily.

“How big is he?”

“Compared to what?”

“Nickle and dime, or million-dollar loans?”

“In the middle. It didn’t pinch his coffers to come up with my fifty K but he did it after I offered him a little extra vigorish on the side. Mostly I imagine he spreads it around, five thousand here, ten thousand there — you know, minimize the risks. But hell, those guys get five percent a week; he’s rich enough.”

“Two hundred and sixty percent annual interest?”

“You got it. I know, I know. But I was in a bind, Charlie, I had nowhere else to turn. And I figured to sell the project inside of a month. I figured I could handle it — ten grand interest.”

“But?”

“You see what they did to me. Obviously I came up short. It wasn’t my fault. The building next door caught fire. My building didn’t burn but the heat set off the automatic sprinkler system and it ruined the place. Seventy thousand damage — carpets, paint, doors, the works. The insurance barely covered half of it, and the damage set me back more than two months behind schedule. I had to bail out, Charlie. What choice did I have? My construction company went into Chapter Eleven. It’s not my first bankruptcy and maybe it won’t be my last — you know me — but I’d have paid them back. I tried to keep up the payments. I was a few days late a couple of times and we got threatening phone calls, so forth — you know how it goes. Then it wasn’t a week any more, it was three weeks, and you see what happened. They took out their vigorish in blood. I guess they wrote me off as a bad debt but they figure to leave me crippled as an example to other borrowers who think about welshing. Nothing personal, you understand.” His lip curled.

Margaret took his hand between hers. Margaret was always there to cushion Eddie’s falls: good-humored, fun-loving, careless of her appearance. She had endured all his failures; she loved the real Eddie, not the man he ought to have been. If I ever find a woman like Margaret I’ll have won the grand prize.

Eddie said, “I know the ropes, I had my eyes open, I’m not naive. But they’ve crippled me for life, Charlie. Both kneecaps. They’ll be replaced with plastic prosthetics but I’ll spend the rest of my life walking like a marionette. Two canes. I figure they hit me too hard, you know. I almost died. Maybe I still will. We don’t know what’s bleeding inside me.”

“You knew those guys played rough, Eddie. You knew it going in.”

It sounded lame and self-righteous even as I said it. Eddie’s eyes only smiled at me. He knew I’d pick up the baton.

My long-distance call to Myerson was lengthy and exasperating. He kept coming back to the same sore point. “You’re asking me to commit Agency facilities to your private vengeance scheme. I can’t do it.”

“The Company’s got no use for it. Never will have. The press blew its cover in 1969 and it’s been sitting there ever since, gathering dust. They’re carrying it on the books as a dead loss — they’ll be tickled to unload and get some money out of it. From your end it’s a legitimate transaction and the profit ought to look pretty good on your efficiency report. And one other thing. If you don’t authorize it I’ll have to apply for a leave of absence to help my brother out. The Agency will grant it with pleasure — you know how eager they are to get rid of me. And of course that would leave you without anybody to pull your chestnuts out. You haven’t got anybody else in the division who can handle the dirty jobs. You’d get fired, you know.”

“You fat bastard.”

Foran was slight and neat. The word dapper is out of fashion but it fits. He had wavy black hair and a swimming-pool tan and the look of a nightclub maître-d’ who’d made good.

It took me a week to get the appointment with him, a week of meeting people and letting a word drop here and a hint there, softly and with discretion. I’m good at establishing the bona fides of a phony cover identity and in this case it was dead easy because the only untruth in the cover story was my name: I didn’t want him to know I had any relationship with Eddie.

His office on the top floor of a nine-story high-rise had a lot of expensive wood, chrome and leather. The picture windows gave views of the city like aerial postcard photographs. It was cool inside — the air conditioning thrummed gently — but you could see heat waves shimmering in the thin smog above the flat sprawling city: the stuff was noxious enough to thin out the view of the. towering mountain ranges to the north and east. I felt a bit wilted, having come in from that.

Foran had a polished desk a bit smaller than the deck of an escort carrier; it had a litter of papers and an assortment of gewgaws made of ebony and petrified wood. He stood up and came affably around this display to shake my hand. His smile was cool, professional: behind it a ruthlessness he didn’t bother to conceal.

He had a deep confident voice. “Tell me about the proposition.”

“I’m looking to borrow some money. I’m not offering a prospectus.”

“If my firm authorizes a loan we have to know what it’s being used for.” He settled into his swivel chair and waited.

“What you want to know,” I said, “is whether you’ll get your money back and whether I’ll make the interest payments on time.”

“I don’t know you, Mr. Ballantyne. Why should I lend you money?”

“I’m not being cute,” I said. “If I lay out the details to you, what’s to keep you from buying into the deal in my place while I’m still out scrounging for capital?”

“That’s a risk you have to take. You’d take the same chance with anybody else, unless you’ve got a rich uncle. At least give me the outlines of the deal — it’ll give us a basis for discussion.”

I brooded at him as if making up my mind. I gave it a little time before I spoke. “All right. Let’s assume the government owns a small private company with certain tangible assets that are of limited value to any domestic buyer, but might be of enormous value to certain foreign buyers to whom the present owner is not impowered to sell. You get my drift?”

“An arms deal?”

“In a way. Not guns and ammunition, nothing that bald. The way this is set up, I’ll be breaking no laws.”

“Go on.”

“You’ve had a few days to check me out,” I said. “I assume you know I work for the Government?”

“Yes.”

“I’m about to retire. This deal will set me up for it. I need money to swing it, and it’s got to come from somebody like you. But let me make it clear that if you try any odd footwork on me you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you want to deal with.”

His smile was as cold as Myerson’s. “Did you come here to threaten me or to borrow money?”

I sat back. “The CIA founded, or bought, a number of private aviation companies fifteen or twenty years ago. They were used for various purposes. Cover fronts for all sorts of operations. They used some of them to supply revolutionary forces, some of them to run bombing missions against unfriendly countries, some of them to train Cuban exiles and that sort of thing. It was broken by the press several years ago, you know the story.”

“Yes.”

“All right. A few of those companies happened to be here in Arizona. I’m interested in one of those. Ostensibly it was a private air service, one of those shoestring jobs that did everything from private executive charters to cropdusting. After the CIA bought it the facilities were expanded to accommodate air-crew training for student pilots and gunners from Cuba, Haiti, South Vietnam, Hungary and a couple of African countries. Then the lid blew off and the Agency got a black eye because we’re not supposed to run covert operations inside the United States. After the publicity we were forced to close down the operation.”

“Go on.” He was interested.

I said, “The facility’s still there. Planes, ammunition, bombs, radar, Link trainers, the whole battery of military training equipment.”

“And?”

“And it’s on the market. Been on the market for seven or eight years. So far, no buyers. Because the only people who have a use for those facilities are governments that we can’t be seen dealing with. Some of those governments would pay through the nose for the equipment — far above its actual value.”

“You figure to be a go-between?”

“I know those countries. I’ve got the contacts. And I’ve recently chartered a little shell corporation in Nassau that I set up for this deal. The way it goes, I buy the company and its assets from the Government. I turn around and sell it to the Nassau shell corporation. The shell corporation sells the stuff wherever it wants — it’s in the Bahamas, it’s outside the jurisdiction of American laws. When we make the sale, the shell corporation crates up the assets in Arizona and ships them out of the country on a Bahamian bill of lading, and then they’re reshipped out of Nassau on a new ticket so that there’s no evidence in this country of the final destination. As I said, the buyers are lined up — they’ll be bidding against one another and I’ll take the high bid.”

He was flicking his upper lip with his fingernail. He looked deceptively sleepy. With quiet brevity he said, “How much?”

“To buy the aviation company and pay the packing and shipping and incidental costs I figure one million nine hundred thousand. I’d rather call it two million in case I run into a snag somewhere — it’s better to have a cushion. It’s a bargain actually — the Government paid upwards of fifteen million for that stuff.”

“Maybe. But what condition is it in now? It could be rusty or obsolete or both.”

“Obsolete for the U.S. Air Force, maybe, but not for a South American country. And it’s all serviceable. It needs a good dusting, that’s all. I’ve had it checked out.”

“How much profit do you expect to realize?”

“That’s classified. Let’s just say I intend to put a floor under the bidding of three million five.”

“Suppose you can’t get that much? Suppose you don’t get any bids at all?”

“I’m not going into this as a speculation. I’ve already made the contacts. The deal’s ready to go down. All I have to do is name the time and place for the auction — but I’ve got to own the facilities before I can deliver them.”

“Suppose we made you a loan, Mr. Ballantyne. And suppose you put the money in your pocket and skipped out to Tahiti.”

“All right. Suppose we draw up contracts. If I don’t pay the interest and principal you forclose the company. The assets will remain right here in Arizona until I’ve sold them and received the cash down payment, which will be enough to repay your loan. If I skip out with the money you’ll have the assets — and with them a list of the interested governments. Fair enough?”

“We’ll see. Two million is a great deal of money.”

“Did I ask you for two million? I’ve got my own sources of private capital who want to buy in for small shares. I’ve raised six hundred thousand on my own. The loan I need is for one million four.” That was elementary psychology: scare him with a big amount, then reduce it attractively.

Then I dropped the clincher on him. I said, “I’ll need the money for no more than six weeks. I’ll pay one percent a day, no holidays, for six weeks. That works out to just short of six hundred thousand dollars interest. You lend me one million four, you get back two million.”

“I’ll have to check this out first. The name of the company?”

I knew I had him.

Margaret looked tired but she covered the strain with her smile. She set out cheese and biscuits in the living room while I mixed the drinks.

She said, “They haven’t found any internal bleeding. He’s going to be all right.” She cut me a wedge of cheddar. “He’s a foolish man sometimes but he didn’t deserve this. Money’s only money. Eddie — he’s like a kid playing games. The money’s just a counter, it’s the way you keep score. If you lose a game you don’t kill your opponent — you just set up the board and start another game.”

“Foran doesn’t play by those rules, Margaret. Eddie knew that.”

She drank; I heard the ice cubes click against her teeth. “Did Foran go for it?”

“I won’t know for a while. He’s checking things out. But I think he’ll buy it. He’s too greedy to pass it up. The easiest mark for a con man is another crook.”

“If he’s checking things out, is there anything for him to find?”

“I doubt it. Most of what I told him was true. My boss set up the Nassau shell corporation for me. It’ll be there when Foran looks for it. The Arizona Charter Company exists, it’s on the Government’s books just as I told him it was, and the assets and facilities are exactly as I described them to him.”

“If you pull if off, Charlie, they’ll come after you.”

“I don’t think they’ll find me. And I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it.” I smiled to reassure her. People had been trying to kill me for more than thirty years and many of them were far more adept at it than the brand of thugs that Foran and his kind employed.

I knew one thing. If Foran didn’t fall for this scam I’d just get at him another way. In any case Foran was all finished. Eddie and Margaret didn’t know it but they had pitted the most formidable antagonist of all against Foran. I’m Charlie Dark. I’m the best there is.

The results of his investigations seemed to satisfy Foran. His lawyers drew up the most ironclad contract I’d ever seen. Not a single item of Arizona Charter Company equipment was to be moved off its present airfield location until every penny of the loan had been paid back. The only thing the contract didn’t include was the vigorish — the actual usurious interest rate: on paper we had an above-board agreement at 16 % annual interest with a foreclosure date six weeks from the date of signatures.

The money was in the form of a bank cashier’s check and I endorsed it over to the Government in exchange for the deed to all outstanding stock in the Arizona Charter Company. I flew back from Washington to Tucson with the deed and stock certificates in an attaché case chained to my wrist. Twelve hours later they were in a safe deposit box to which Foran had the second key, so that if I skipped out without paying, he would have possession of the documents and stock certificates. If I didn’t repay him within forty days he would be the legal owner of the company and all its assets.

We shook hands at the bank and I departed for the airport, whence I flew to Phoenix and rented a car. By midnight I was on the desert airfield that belonged to me. I dismissed the night watchman and took over the premises. As soon as I was alone I began setting the demolition charges.

There was nobody to prevent my destroying my own property. I had canceled all the insurance policies the day before, so that I was perpetrating no fraud. It was my own property: I was free to do whatever I pleased with it.

The explosions would have thrilled any twelve-year-old war movie fan. When the debris settled I drove to the hospital to say goodbye to Eddie and Margaret.

Eddie’s eyes twinkled. “Mainly I regret he’ll never know I had anything to do with it.”

“Keep it that way. If he ever found out he’d finish you.”

“I know. I’m not that much of a twit — not any more.”

Margaret said, “What will happen to Foran?”

“Nothing pleasant,” I said. “It can’t have been his own money, not all of it. He’s not that rich. He must have laid off a good part of the loan on his Mob associates. At least a million dollars, I’d guess. When he doesn’t pay them back they’ll go after him the way he went after Eddie.”

Then I smiled. “And that, you know, is what they call justice.”