19 Purchase Street (12 page)

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:

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?

T
HE
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.

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.

The door to suite 3907 opened from the inside before Winship could press the buzzer. The apartment suite was six rooms. Charles Ross, also known as Charles Luciano, occupied them. He was there along with Costello and four others: Joseph Adonis, John Torrio, Albert Anastasia and Frank Scalice. All the men were wearing suits and ties. They had been meeting there for the past ten hours but the ashtrays were clean and no one had a glass in hand.

Costello introduced Winship, who introduced Cabot. Winship noted that their handshakes were pro forma, no wasted energy.

Drinks were poured as though they were everyone's first for the night. All sat except Luciano. He did the talking, got right to the point, said he and his associates had in mind to establish an investment fund of some sort and wanted to make sure they went about it correctly. Luciano asked several questions that Winship felt the man already knew the answers to.

Winship and Cabot gave polite, proper advice, as though they were dealing with straight, genteel clients.

Luciano was pleased. When he smiled his mouth seemed much larger. His eyes were narrow, the right one more so. As a matter of fact, the entire right half of his face seemed affected. The knife scar that ran from beneath his chin to halfway up his cheek didn't quite pass for a face line. He flattered Winship and Cabot before asking if they would personally take on the responsibility of setting up the investment fund.

Winship looked to Cabot, who deferred by taking his gaze to his left shoe. Winship's inclination was to say they'd give it some thought. But he knew that wasn't what these men wanted to hear. His better judgment told him not to displease them. He was also listening to his crotch.

Winship said he didn't see why not.

Luciano wasn't interested in what Winship didn't see. Yes or no?

Sure.

Costello had to leave. Adonis and Torrio left with him. Then Anastasia and Scalice put on their hats and overcoats and were gone. Luciano asked was there anything he could get Winship and Cabot.

No, they'd have this last drink and be off.

What neither Winship nor Cabot knew was they had just come in on the tail end of the most important conference ever attended by top-level mobsters. Delegates from Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Chicago and other cities had gathered at the Waldorf Astoria to close once and for all the accounts, grudges and other such due bills left over from the prohibition era.

That very day, crime had become syndicated on a national basis. Territories were redefined to everyone's satisfaction and new codes of conduct were agreed upon. For one thing, within the Syndicate there would be no more indiscriminate killing. The reason for one of them to kill one of them would have to be heard by a commission made up of twelve of their kind. They could walk their streets without fear, shuck their bodyguards. When a killing was allowed it would be carried out in a new, cleaner way. Each region would volunteer the services of six of its hit men, who could be imported from one region by another. They would go in, kill, get out the same day. The police would be perplexed. Murder, Incorporated.