The Moneychangers (64 page)

A minute and a half later, with the intersection only fifty yards away, a Cadilla~the same car nosed around the corner. He knew that luck had run out.

Whoever was in the car most likely Angelo, for one could not fail to see him, probably had already. So was anything to be gained by more resistance? Wouldn't it be simpler to give up, to allow himself to be taken, to let what was going to happen, happen?

No! Because he had seen enough of Tony Bear Marino and his kind, in prison and since, to know what happened to people who incurred their vengeance.

The black car was slowing. They had seen him. Desperation. One of the stores Miles had noticed moments earlier was immediately alongside.

Breaking his stride, he turned left, pushed open a glass door and went in. Inside, he saw it was a sporting goods store.

A pale, spindly clerk, about Miles's own age, stepped forward.

"Good day, sir. Is there something I can show you?" "Er… yes." He said the first thing that came into his head. "I'd like to see bowling balls."

"Certainly. What kind of price and weight?" "The best. About sixteen pounds." "Color?" "Doesn't matter." Miles was watching the few yards of sidewalk outside the street door.

Several pedestrians had gone by. None had paused or looked in. "If you come this way, I'll show you what we have."

He followed the clerk past racks of skis, glass cases, a display of handguns.

Then, glancing back, Miles saw the silhouette of a single figure, stopped outside and peering in the window.

Now a second figure joined the first. They stood together, not moving from the storefront. Miles wondered: Could he get out through the back?

Even as the thought occurred to him, he discarded it. The men who were after him would not make the same error twice. Any rear exit would already have been located and guarded. "This is an excellent ball. It sells for forty-two dollars." ;

"I'll take it." "We'll need your hand measurement for the…"

"Never mind." Should he try to phone Wainwright from here?

But Miles was sure if he went near a phone the men outside would come in instantly.

The clerk looked puzzled. "You don't warn' us to drill…" "I said never mind." "As you wish, sir. How about a bag for the ball? Perhaps some bowling shoes?" "Yes," Miles said. "Yes, okay." It would help postpone the moment of returning to the street.

Scarcely aware of what he was doing, he inspected bags put in front of him, chose one at random, then sat down to try on shoes. It was while slipping on a pair that the idea occurred to him.

The Keycharge card which Wainwright had sent through Juanita… the card in the name of H. E. Lyncolp… H-E-L-P.

He motioned to the bowling ball, bag, and the shoes he had chosen. "How much?" The clerk looked up from an invoice. "Eighty-six dollars and ninety-five cents, plus tax." "Listen," Miles said, "I want to put it on my Keycharge."

He took out his wallet and offered the LYNCOLP card, trying to stop his hands from trembling. "That's okay, but…" "I know, you need authorization.

Go ahead. Phone for it." The clerk took the card and invoice to a glassed-in office area. He was gone several minutes, then returned. Miles asked anxiously,

"Get through?" "Sure. Everything's okay, Mr. Lyncolp." Miles wondered what was happening now at the Keycharge Center in FMA Headquarters Tower.

Would it help him? Could anything help?… Then he remembered the second instruction relayed by Juanita After using the card, dawdle as much as possible. Give Wainwright time to move.

"Sign here, please, Mr. Lyncolp."

A Keycharge account slip was filled in for the amount he had spent. Miles leaned over the counter to add a signature.

Straightening up, he felt a hand touch his shoulder lightly. A voice said quietly, "Milesy." As he turned, Jules LaRocca said, "Don't make no fuss. It won't do no good and you'll get hurt the worse."

Behind LaRocca, their faces impassive, were Angelo and Lou, and a fourth man another bruiser type whom Miles hadn't seen before.

The four moved around him, seizing him, pinioning his arms. "Move, shitass." The order was from Angelo, low
-
voiced. Miles considered crying out, but who was there to help him?

The milquetoast clerk, watching open-mouthed, could not.

The hunt was ended. The pressure on his arms tightened.

He felt himself propelled helplessly toward the outer door. The bewildered salesclerk ran after them. "Mr. Lyncolpl Yo
u've forgotten your bowling ball
"

It was LaRocca who told him, "You keep it, buster.

This guy don't even need the balls he's got."

The black Cadillac was parked a few yards down the street

They pushed Miles roughly into it and drove off.

Business in the Keycharge authorization center was near its daily peak.

A normal shift of fifty operators was on duty in the semidarkened auditorium-style center, each seated at a keyboard with a TV-like cathode ray tube above it. To the young operator who received the call, the H. E. LYNCOLP credit query was simply one of thousands dealt with routinely during a working day.

All were totally impersonal.

Neither she nor others like her ever knew where the calls they handled came from not even which city or state. The credit sought might be to pay a New York housewife's grocery bill, provide clothing for a Kansas farmer, allow a rich Chicago dowager to load herself with unneeded jewelry, advance a Princeton undergrad's
tuition fees, or help a Cleveland alcoholic buy the case of liquor which finally would kill him. But the operator was never told details.

If really needed later, the specifics of a purchase could be traced back, though it seldom happened. The reason: No one cared.

The money mattered, the money changing hands, the ability to repay the credit granted; that was all. The call began with a flashing light on the operator's console. She touched a switch and spoke into her headset mike. "What is your merchant number, please?" The caller a sporting goods clerk attending to Miles Eastin gave it.

As he did, the operator typed the number. Simultaneously it appeared on her cathode ray screen. She asked, "Card number and date of expiry?" Another answer. Again, details on the screen. "Amount of purchase?" "Ninety dollars, forty-three." Typed. On screen.

The operator pressed a key, alerting a computer several floors below. Within a millisecond the computer digested the information, searched its records and flashed an answer.

APPROVED.

AUTH.No.7416984 ~

URGENT…EMERGENCY…DO..NOT..REPE
AT
DO

NOTALERT MERCHANT…ADVI
SE YOUR

SUPERVI
SOR…EXECUTE
…
IM MEDIATELY

E
MERGENCY
….
INSTRUCTION 17…

"The purchase is approved," the operator told the caller. "Authorization number…" She was speaking more slowly than usual. Even before she began, she had flashed a signal to an elevated supervisors' booth. Now in the booth another young woman, one of six supervisors on duty, was already reading her own duplication o
f the cathode ray tube display.

She reached for a card index, seeking emergency instruction 17. The original operator deliberately stumbled over the authorization number and began again.

Emergency signals were not flashed often, but when it happened there were standard procedures which operators knew. Slowing down was one. In the past, murderers had been caught, a kidnap victim saved, disappearances solved, stolen art treasures recovered, a son brought to his dying mother's bedside all because a computer had been alerted to the possibility that a particular credit card might be used, and if and when it was, prompt action was essential.

At such moments, while others took the needed action, a few seconds' foot-dragging by an operator could help significantly. The supervisor was already implementing instruction 17 which informed her that N. Wainwright, v/p Security, was to be advised immediately by telephone that the special Keycharge card issued in the name H. E. LYNCOLP had been presented, and where.

By depressing keys on her own keyboard, the supervisor summoned from the computer the additional information:

PETE'S SPORTING GOODS

and a street address. Meanwhile she had dialed the office number of Mr. Wainwright who answered personally.

His interest was instant.

He responded crisply to the supervisor's information and she sensed his tension while he copied details down. Seconds later, for the Keycharge supervisor, operator, and computer, the brief emergency was over.

Not so for Nolan Wainwright. Since the explosive session an hour and a half ago with Alex Vandervoort, when he learned of the disappearance of Juanita Nunez and her child,

Wainwright had been tensely and continuously on telephones, sometimes two at once.

He had tried four times to reach Miles Eastin at the Double-Seven Health Club to warn him of his danger. He had had consultations with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service.

As a result the FBI was now actively investigating the apparent Nunez kidnapping, and had alerted city and state police with descriptions of the missing pair. It had been arranged that an FBI surveillance team would watch
comings and goings at the Double-Seven as soon as the manpower could be spared, probably by this afternoon.

That was all that would be done concerning the Double-Seven for the time being. As FBI Special Agent Innes expressed it, "If we go in there with questions, we tip our hand about knowing the connection, and as for a search, we've no grounds to seek a warrant.

Besides, according to your man Eastin, it's mostly a meeting place with nothing illegal except some gambling going on."

Innes agreed with Wainwri
ght's conclusion that Juanita Nu
nez and her daughter would not have been taken to the Double-Seven.

The Secret Service, with fewer facilities than the FBI, was working the hideout angle, contacting informers, probing for any scintilla of fact or rumor which might prove to be a lead the combined law enforcement agencies could use.

For the moment, unusually, inter-force rivalry and jealousies were put aside.

When Wainwright received the Keycharge H. E. LYNCOLP alert, he promptly dialed the FBI. Special Agents Innes and Dalrymple were out, he was informed, but could be contacted by radio.

He dictated an urgent message and waited.

The reply came back: The agents were downtown, not far from the address given, and were on their way there. Would Wainwright meet them? Action was a relief. He hurried through the building to his car. Outside Pete's Sporting Goods, Innes was questioning bystanders when Wainwright arrived. Dalrymple was still inside, completing a statement by the clerk. Innes broke off and joined the bank security chief. "A dry hole," he reported glumly.

"It was all over when we got here." He related the little they had learned. Wainwright asked, "Descriptions?" The FBI man shook his head.

"The store guy who served Eastin was so shit scared, he's not sure if there were four men came in or three. Says it all happened so fast, he can't describe or identify anyone. And no one, inside the store or out, remembers seeing a car."

Wainwright's face was drawn, the strain of anxiety and conscience showing. "So what comes next?" "You were a cop," Innes said. "You know how it is in real life. We wait, hoping something else will turn up."

22

She heard scuffling and voices. Now she knew they had Miles and were bringing him in. For Juanita, time had drifted.

She had no idea how long it was since she had gasped out Miles Eastin's name, betraying him, to end the horror of Estela's torture.

Soon after that she had been gagged again and the bonds holding her to the chair were checked and tightened. Then the men left. For a while, she knew, she had dozed or, more accurately, her body had released her from awareness since any real rest was impossible, bound as she was.

Alerted by the new noise, her constricted limbs protested agonizingly, so that she wanted to cry out, though the gag prevented it.

Juanita willed herself not to panic, not to struggle against her bonds, knowing both would be futile and make her situation worse.

She could still see Estela. The chairs they were bound to had been left facing each other. The little girl's eyes were closed in sleep, her small head drooping; the noises which awakened Juanita had not disturbed her. Estela, too, was gagged. Juanita hoped that sheer exhaustion would spare her from reality for as long as possible. Estela's right hand showed the ugly red burn from the cigar. Shortly after the men had left, one of them Juanita
had heard him addressed as Lou come back briefly.

He had a tube of ointment of some kind. Squeezing the tube, he covered Estela's burn, glancing quickly at Juanita as if to tell her it was the best he could do.

Then he, too, had gone. Estela had jumped while the ointment was being applied, then whimpered for a while behind her gag, but soon after sleep had mercifully come.