Standing at the Scratch Line (27 page)

The coffee was hot and strong. Ira took several swallows as he allowed his mind to mull over Morris and Europe’s deaths. It was strange that two men who had survived in excess of six months straight in the frontline trenches in wartime could be killed within weeks of each other during peacetime in the United States. And the strangest piece in the puzzle was King Tremain. Ira’s wife had relayed to him how King had pulled a pistol out of nowhere after Ira had been shot and hit their assailant twice as he ran into the shadows. She described the marksmanship as a miracle but it sounded to Ira more like King was prepared for an attack rather than it being an example of spectacular marksmanship.

There was a tap on the door and Mary stuck her head in the room and said that his eleven o’clock delivery had arrived downstairs, but the doorman was reluctant to let the deliverymen come up because they had a steamer trunk on a dolly. Ira knew immediately that it was King. He told Mary to have them sent to his office. As he waited, he remembered Darwin coming to work one afternoon several weeks before and how distracted he seemed, unable to complete the simplest assignment without falling into a daydream. When Ira had questioned him about his state of mind, Darwin would only say that his concept of justice and law were off balance. No matter how Ira pressed him, Darwin would say no more. Finally, Ira let him go home early. Ira remembered the incident because Darwin had smelled of roofing pitch. The very next morning Ira had read that Vitorio Minetti had been shot and killed on the preceding day as he ate lunch at a roof-garden restaurant.

There was a tap at the door and King Tremain and Big Ed Harrison came into the office wearing custodian coveralls. Harrison was lugging a large, battered steamer trunk on a dolly. Harrison slid the trunk off the dolly in front of Ira’s desk and then sat in one of the leather chairs. Ira saw Mary standing in the doorway waiting. “Thank you, Mary.” She looked questioningly at him for a moment and then closed the door. Ira turned and saw King staring at him. King was a tall light-skinned man with a muscular build and a menacing look. His hard brown eyes glinted like dark pieces of obsidian. Ira had noticed there was rarely warmth in his expression.

“Have you seen the paper?” Ira asked, indicating the
Amsterdam Sentinel.
His shoulder throbbed painfully. He sat down and rested the weight of the sling on the arm of the chair.

“We heard about Jim last night,” King answered tonelessly.

“Do you think the Minettis were responsible for his death?”

“Don’t matter what we think. Jim’s dead. Ain’t nothin’ gon’ change that. Don’t matter who we kill, Jim is gone.”

Ira was noticeably taken aback by King’s last sentence but he recovered quickly. “It’s a terrible loss,” Ira offered. “He was a good man and a great musician. His music certainly changed my life.”

“The world done lost a genius yesterday and ain’t but a few people know. It’s a shame,” Big Ed added with an air of sadness. It appeared that no one in the room had anything else to say on the subject.

To get the conversation going again, Ira said, “I wanted to thank you both for sending flowers and coming to visit me while I was in the hospital. I really appreciated it.”

“Weren’t nothin’,” King answered politely. “After all, you took a bullet that could’ve hit anybody. We just wanted to show our thanks. You don’t find white people like you too many places. Professor always spoke high of you.”

“There’s a death that hit close to home.” Ira sighed. “I’d like to know who caused his death!”

A tight-lipped smile crossed King’s face. “The people who had a hand in killin’ Professor paid with their lives and some of them died in pain.”

Once again there was silence in the room. Ira had no doubt that King spoke the truth and that King knew it was the truth from firsthand knowledge. The implications of that line of thought were abundantly clear. Ira decided to veer the conversation in a safer direction.

“At Darwin’s funeral you said that you wanted to see me on a business matter,” Ira said in his most professional voice, shuffling through items in his desk drawer, looking for a pen. “I assume this trunk has something to do with the subject of your business?”

“All in good time, Lieutenant,” King said. “I want to ask you some questions first. You said once that you hide money legally, you know, create corporations and such?”

“Yes?”

“We want you to set up a couple of them corporations for us. We want to do everythin’ real legal. We got some money and we want to invest it in land.”

The law was firmer ground for Ira and he felt comfortable answering. “Well, you need an awful lot of money to make it worth your while to incorporate—”

“How much?” interrupted King.

“That depends upon your tax liabilities and what steps you want to take to reduce them.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no tax liabilities,” King stated. “What’s that all about?”

“It’s not that simple to explain, but basically you pay Uncle Sam a percentage of the money you earn annually and that percentage depends upon the amount of money you earn and the type of tax shelters you employ. This is a pretty complex subject and can take years to understand, so your best bet is to hire an expert to take a look at your income and your expenses to determine your tax liability. I don’t think you men really need a lawyer to set up a corporation. You need an accountant. I can have my office refer one.”

“How’d you make the decision we don’t need no lawyer?” King asked, lighting a cheroot.

“I assumed that you’re talking about the money you’re making from Rockland Palace?”

“No, we’re talkin’ about some other money,” King answered, blowing smoke rings.

“How much are you talking about?”

“Tell him, Big Ed.”

Big Ed pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and read, “One hundred thirty-five thousand four hundred eighty-six dollars.”

There was a long silence in the office. Then Ira said, “I guess that I don’t have to ask where this money came from, do I? Is that it in the trunk?”

“The answer to the second question is yes, but the answer to the first depends on whether you asks all yo’ clients where they money comes from,” King said warily.

“Most of my clients have an audit trail for their money, meaning that they earned it legally. So I don’t have to create layers of false businesses.”

“I don’t know what all that means, but can you make the money legal?” King asked. “Can you do it and account for the money to us? We’ll pay you the going rate. We don’t expect nothin’ free, but we ain’t givin’ nothin’ away neither. What’s yo’ answer?”

“You have one hundred thirty-five thousand dollars in cash?”

“That’s right! Open up the trunk and show him the money, Big Ed.”

Big Ed rose and went to the trunk. He pulled out a set of keys and unlocked three different locks before he swung the top open. There lying in piles lay packets of bills. Ira pulled himself to his feet and walked around to look at the money. Closer inspection revealed that there were packets of one-dollar bills, fives, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.

“How hot is it?” Ira asked. “Will I have to move my wife and family?” He attempted to inject humor into the conversation, but there was too much truth in his question for it to be funny.

“They still fightin’ each other. That ain’t gon’ get cleared up for a piece. Plus, we left them some things to keep things stirred up so that they ain’t gon’ quit for a while. We expect once they sit down at a table together they gon’ figure out some of what has happened, but we plans to be long gone by then. We got a place to store the money, but we thought maybe we could make some money while we’re storin’ it.”

“This is the most cash money I’ve ever seen,” Ira said, slightly awed.

“Can you do it or not? That’s what we want to know.” King demanded.

“I can do it, but it’s very time-consuming. But before I spend any time on this, I need to be absolutely certain that this money can’t possibly be traced to me or my firm.”

“How come you think we come in these overalls?” questioned King. “Ain’t nobody followed us and in this building we’s just deliverymen. Ain’t nobody know nothin’ about what we doin’ here. I made extra sure we wasn’t followed. There ain’t no hook to you exceptin’ through us two. Ain’t nobody in on this but us. This here is our money! We splittin’ it three ways, countin’ Professor’s share. Now, you want to do business or, what?”

“I’ll assist you in any legal way that I can, as long as my family and business are secure. Other than that, I’m always interested in anything lucrative, but I’ll take particular interest in this because the Minettis were involved in Darwin’s death. So as long as there’s no possibility it can get traced to me or my firm, I’m in.”

“Let’s be for real. If it get traced to you, you ain’t gon’ have no choice about whether you’s in or not. You gon’ have to figure out what you gon’ do when that time comes. But I don’t think you got nothin’ to worry about. We ain’t told nobody about our connection with you and we played close to the chest about where our money come from. I just think everything depends on how you fence the cash.” King walked around to the front of the desk and dropped into an overstuffed chair adjacent to the steamer trunk. He gave Ira a long, measured look. “I don’t care how you do it as long as you can account for the money. I don’t expect none of that money to disappear on its own neither. Other than a few of the men in the Three hundred Sixty-ninth, I ain’t found many I could trust and I ain’t never trusted but one white man before. So I want you to know I made arrangements that if anythin’ happens to me or Big Ed, like we get arrested, or for some strange reason our money disappears, you got real problems.”

Ira was indignant. “I’ve based my career on my word and I’ve lived up to it. I don’t do business founded on threats and misunderstandings. I don’t need your business if you don’t trust me.”

“It ain’t that,” Big Ed answered. “You got to understand we been at war. King just want to get to the details quick. We got plenty reason to trust you, but we also know there’s plenty temptations that can make it fail too. This ain’t no time for us to drop our guard.”

“We also got some other business too,” King added. “We want to set up a corporation for the Rockland Palace and we got a manager already picked. I want it set up so that if she can run it for five years without losin’ money, she can have my share in the place. Then we needs another corporation set up so we can buy a couple of warehouses with security in a good area somewheres out of town and store some crates in them.”

“What’s in the crates?” Ira asked.

“If you need to know, I’ll tell you. If it’s just curiosity, that’s another thing.”

“I need to know because it will determine the type of precautions that I need to take in setting up the corporation.”

“It’s army munitions, equipment, and weapons that we bought on the black market.”

“Two warehouses full?” Ira asked with surprise.

“Not yet, but we expectin’ some more deliveries. One warehouse is for storage, the other’s for deliveries. We figures you got to set up a phoney storefront business to pay for the deliveries, so it don’t get traced through to your business. You can use that same storefront to pay for our two security squads too. We already got our men picked out. They’ll check out the deliveries to make sure everythin’s on the up and up.”

“What if the deliveries are not on the up and up?”

King smiled. “The people we’re dealin’ with know that if I’m cheated, they’ll pay with their lives.”

“And if they make themselves hard to find?” Ira mused.

“I’ll find them. I know their relatives and their friends.”

“Are you taking lessons from the mob?” Ira asked, shaking his head.

“They taught me some hard lessons. They was real good teachers.”

“I don’t want to know anymore about your business relationships or your activities. I’ll represent you better if all I’m doing is investing your money and setting up businesses. What’s your time schedule for wanting all this accomplished? There’s a lot of work to be done before all these corporations get set up.”

“Let’s talk about yo’ fee first. We gon’ need to know what you think is fair from fencin’ the money to settin’ up the businesses. We don’t want no surprises down the line.”

“I don’t know because I can’t be sure of all that I will have to do to get everything done as you’ve requested. Why don’t I bill you as we go along and you can see what I’m charging you for?”

Big Ed spoke. “We ain’t gon’ be here. We gon’ give New York City a little rest. We figure long as we here, there’s gon’ be gunplay.”

“How will I get in touch with you?” Ira asked, looking back and forth at King and Big Ed.

“You won’t. We’ll get in touch,” King answered.

“If that’s the way you want it to be, but you’re not getting any of the benefit of having money. I don’t know how much money you’re traveling with, but it’s my guess if you get stopped by the authorities, you’ll have a hard time explaining where your money came from.”

“What you proposin’ that’s different?” King asked.

“If you contact me, I can have a certificate of credit issued by a bank in your name in any major city of your choosing. You don’t have to carry a lot of money and you can account for it if you run into problems with the law. Of course, you’ll have to trust me with the knowledge of your whereabouts.”

King stood up and walked over to the window and stared down at the street below. It always came down to the same thing: you had to trust somebody. King, despite his suspicions, had a good feeling from Ira. “Alright!” King agreed and pulled a money belt from beneath his overalls and placed it on top of the trunk. “There’s ten thousand dollars in there. I’ll call you and tell you where to send it.” Big Ed followed suit and placed his money belt on top of King’s. “Let’s shake on it,” King suggested. Ira got up, stepped around his desk, and stretched out his good hand.