The Specialists

Seven

The colonel waited patiently while Helen Tremont wheeled the tea cart around the oval oak table, serving mugs of coffee and wedges of Danish pastry to each of the five men. When she left the room, he leaned forward, his arms on the table before him.

He said, “Albert Platt. Born September four, nineteen twenty-one, in Brooklyn. Raised in the Brownsville and East New York sections of that borough. Arrested nineteen thirty-six for auto theft, served six months in Chatworth Reformatory. Nineteen thirty-eight to forty-one, arrested five times on charges ranging from simple assault to rape. Charges dropped for lack of evidence. Inducted into the armed forces in nineteen forty-two, dishonorably discharged later that same year. Arrested nineteen forty-four, assault with a deadly weapon. Charges dropped. Arrested nineteen forty-six, homicide. Witnesses refused to testify. Arrested nineteen forty-eight, homicide. Witness mysteriously disappeared, charges dropped.”

The colonel sipped at his coffee. “No arrests since nineteen forty-eight,” he said. “Until that date Platt operated primarily in Brooklyn and Long Island. In nineteen forty-eight he moved across the river to New Jersey. He established a connection with a group of New Jersey racketeers, including Philip Longostini, known to intimates as Phil the Lobster. Longostini’s interests included several restaurants and nightclubs in Bergen County, two suburban garbage collection services, a vending machine corporation, two bowling alleys, and a chain of laundry and dry-cleaning establishments. He was also reputed to control bookmaking and loan shark operations in northern New Jersey, and wielded unofficial power in at least three labor unions.

“By nineteen fifty-two Platt had established himself as Longostini’s chief enforcer — I believe that’s the term?” He looked for confirmation to Manso, who nodded. “Platt’s activities in this capacity were not such as to lead to his arrest, but it would seem that at least a dozen acts of murder were carried out either by him or under his orders.” The colonel placed the tips of his fingers together and looked thoughtfully at them. “I have read that one should be pleased when criminals turn to legitimate enterprise, that this will in some mysterious way effect their reform. This is a witless notion. The only result is that the enterprise itself becomes illegitimate. For that matter, I have read that crime does not pay and that criminals come to a bad end. Philip Longostini’s bad end came in July of nineteen sixty-four at his four-acre estate in Englewood Cliffs. He died peacefully in his sleep at the age of seventy-three and left an estate estimated at... well, this is immaterial, isn’t it?”

The colonel’s eyes worked their way around the table, focusing in turn upon Murdock and Dehn and Simmons and Giordano and Manso. He said, “Edward?”

“Sir?”

“The photographs.”

Manso passed him a large Manila envelope. The colonel opened the clasp and withdrew half a dozen 8-by-11 photos. “Edward was able to take these in Las Vegas,” he said. “Albert Platt appears in each. In this photograph you will note the man immediately on Platt’s right. Edward?”

“Buddy Rice. He drives Platt’s car and bodyguards him.”

“I believe you said he carries a gun.”

Manso nodded. “A forty-five in a shoulder rig. He’s also supposed to be very good with a knife.”

Dehn said, “You got all this in Vegas?”

“I spent a day asking a few questions.”

“He get any kind of a make on you?”

“I don’t think so. We were at the same crap table once, but between the broad on his arm and the trouble the dice were giving him I don’t think he paid any attention to me.”

The colonel waited until the photos made their way around the table and returned to him. He gathered them up and put them back in the envelope. He drank more coffee, set the cup down empty. “So much for the background,” he said “You’ll want to take detailed notes from here on in.” He waited while the five uncapped pens and opened pocket notebooks. “Platt did not take over all of Longostini’s operations,” he began. “You’ll understand that the newspapers were vague on this, but my sister has become rather adept at research. She went beyond the usual coverage and pieced out details from the accounts of several senatorial investigations. Platt seems to be in direct control of approximately a third of organized criminal activity in Bergen County and the surrounding area. His income from legitimate sources alone is quite high. He lives in a pre-Revolutionary estate on four acres of land just south of Tenafly. The grounds are walled off and patrolled by armed guards. Rumors circulate that associates of his who have disappeared over the years are buried in wooded areas of the estate.

“But that, too, is largely immaterial. More to the point, Platt has broadened and extended the scope of his operations. As I said, he did not take over completely upon Longostini’s death. He gave up gambling interests in return for full control of loan shark activities. And, early in nineteen sixty-six, he widened his interests to include the banking business. It was at that time that he acquired control of the Passaic Bank of Commerce and Industry.”

Simmons said, “With a criminal record?”

“His control is unofficial. The president of the bank is Jerome Gegner, who has no criminal record. Gegner’s former employment includes a stint as manager of the Thirty-Thirty Club in Paterson. He also served as vice-president and treasurer of Harco Automatic Vending, Inc. Both of these firms were originally owned by Philip Longostini. Members of the board of directors of the Passaic Bank of Commerce and Industry include several other known associates of Platt’s. One of them is surprisingly young to be a bank director. His name is Silvertree. Oddly enough, he happens to be married to Albert Platt’s niece.”

The colonel paused to give the note-takers a chance to catch up. Some of them, he knew, would be able to read back his words almost verbatim. Dehn and Simmons were like this. Murdock, on the other hand, would write down almost nothing, preferring to rely on his memory.

“Banking and finance seems an odd choice for Platt,” he said at length. “When Eddie brought this whole matter up, my first reaction was that Platt must be the organizer or financier of a gang of robbers. The idea of criminal interests actually owning a bank did not even occur to me. Since then I’ve learned more about criminal resourcefulness. It seems Platt was only following a current trend in gangster circles. As long ago as nineteen sixty, men like Platt have sought out banks with a rather poor profit picture, banks that may be acquired with little difficulty. There are several banks in the Chicago area that are known to be under mob control, along with one on Long Island and several others in various parts of the country.

“They serve a very valuable function. For one thing, they provide an ideal cover for the extraordinary cash flow involved in criminal enterprises. They also permit loan sharks to cloak themselves in an aura of legitimacy. Suppose, for example, that a businessman wants to borrow a truly substantial sum of money. A hundred thousand dollars, let us say. His credit situation is such that he cannot obtain the loan from a legitimate source. He goes to Platt, who loans him the money at standard terms, except that the borrower signs a note, not for the hundred thousand he receives, but for twice that amount. Thus Platt has a bona fide note for two hundred thousand dollars, along with a staff of thugs to make sure that the debt is eventually collected. And his books show no profit beyond the legal interest on the principal of the note; the extra hundred thousand dollars is invisible profit.

“That’s just one example. There could be any number of others. A man in Platt’s position inevitably handles large sums of hot money that have to be rechanneled into circulation. A bank serves admirably in this respect. No doubt he functions as a broker for other criminals as well. You remember the Ackermann kidnapping, of course. The details slip my mind, but as I recall there was a quarter of a million dollars worth of marked bills involved, and none of that money has yet turned up in circulation. A crook with a bank at his disposal could purchase that ransom money from the kidnappers for thirty or forty cents on the dollar and simply hold it as cash reserves until the heat died down.”

Giordano asked if there was any connection between Platt and the Ackermann kidnapping. The colonel said there was not. “Just what use Platt has made of his banks is immaterial,” he said.

Dehn said, “Banks?”

“Yes. He acquired a second just a little over a year ago. The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall, also in Bergen County. You’ll want to write that down. No, we don’t know just what use Platt has made of these banks, except that he seems to have been an innovator in one respect. He’s found an original way to increase his banks’ profit.”

“How?”

“By robbing them.”

Giordano had to admit it was brilliant. He listened carefully as the colonel went through the whole thing, and his own mind began racing on ahead, playing with the possibilities of the whole thing. He had thought he knew of most of the standard gambits. Fire insurance, for example. There were an incredible number of ways to burn down one’s property for the insurance, and he knew of so many cases that he often wondered if a fire had ever started by accident. From what he knew, you could make out fairly nicely that way. If you had a business that was losing money, you just made sure you were carrying the right type and amount of insurance, and then you crossed two wires and went home. That way you wound up with a little more than the business was conceivably worth, and you avoided the headache of finding somebody who was fool enough to buy it

It was a great way out of a bad situation, he thought, but not much more than that; there was no way to have both the business and the money. This bank dodge, though — that was something else entirely.

You started out by setting it up right, finding some excuse to have the maximum amount of cash in the vault. Then you sent your own men in, and they had less trouble knocking the place over than you’d have opening a can of peas. They made it look good, maybe even tossed a few bullets around for added realism. You, in turn, made sure somebody went through the motions of turning in the alarm — but not so quick as to create any hassles. The federal investigators came in and they investigated, and all they found out was that the bank had been robbed. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation made most of the loss good, and whatever they didn’t cover would show on the bank’s books as a loss and would just save you that much more in taxes. So you wound up with the cash you had robbed, plus the cash from the FDIC, plus the loss on the books. And if any of the money from the bank happened to be hot, you just put it back in the vault and let it sit on ice until it cooled off again.

When the colonel finished, Giordano lifted his hand. “It’s very neat, sir,” he said. “But one thing. It’s sort of one-time-only, isn’t it? Platt can do this once and score for whatever it was, three hundred fifty thou, but he can’t do it again, can he?”

“No.”

“Because the feds would have a tip to it. Even now they might have a good idea of what happened, but unless they find the robbers and tie them to Platt, they can’t do a thing about it. But if he tried it again, they could put him in a box.”

“That’s correct.”

Simmons said, “Of course he has two banks. He might try the same trick with the other bank.”

“Maybe in ten years,” Giordano said. “Not before then.”

“Because they would make a connection, Louis?”

“They’d have to, sir. This Platt, I would guess he’s hoping nobody else just happens to knock off one of his banks. Because if either one of them gets hit, a lot of people are going to take a long look at Mr. Platt.”

He studied the colonel. There was the ghost of a smile on the colonel’s lips, and Giordano got it. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.”

The colonel said, “Operation Bankroll.”

Giordano was nodding to himself. He looked around the table, one face after another, and now they all got it.

“Operation Bankroll,” the colonel repeated. “The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall. That’s Mr. Platt’s bank, gentlemen, and we are going to roll right over it.”