money than in his son, perhaps you do.'
For the first time the banker seemed to see beyond Tucker's facade and to catch a glimpse of the man behind it. He looked quickly down at the bare top of his massive desk, as if that single glimpse had frightened him, and he said, 'What size loan were you considering?'
'Only ten thousand,' Tucker said. 'I've suddenly found myself short of operating cash.'
'Collateral?' Mellio asked, looking up as his courage flooded back in the course of a conversation he must have gone through a thousand times before with a thousand different customers. Familiarity always breeds confidence, especially in men of finance.
'My trust,' Tucker said.
'But you do not, strictly speaking, have the right to put up the trust-fund monies as collateral. Only the trust administrator can do that.'
'My father.'
'Yes.'
'Then I can put up that account full of uncollected allowances.'
'The same holds true there,' Mellio said. 'Until you sign for the checks, they aren't legally yours.'
Tucker sat up straight in his chair, sensing a battle of wills that he had to win. 'What would you suggest I use as collateral, then?'
'Well, you seem to be running a very profitable business,' Mr. Mellio said. 'You live in the style you like, without touching your inheritance, so you must have other assets.'
'Forget that,' Tucker said.
Mellio leaned back in his chair, testing the hinged backrest to its limits, looking at Michael across the curious perspective of his raised knee. It was evident that he felt in command of the situation once more. 'Now, Michael, there isn't any sense in your attitude. If you'd give me a full picture of this art business of yours, initial capital and estimated income, sources and projections, we could get you a loan. We could make it a sweat loan on the power of your success thus far. And, I might add, if you'd tell your father exactly what you've been doing, he might very well be so impressed with your business acumen that he'd free your inheritance.'
'No chance,' Tucker said. 'My business isn't in the empire-building mold, but erratic and highly chancy. I don't attend board meetings, float stock options or employ thousands of people. My father wouldn't be impressed the way he'd have to be to give me a free hand with my inheritance.'
Mellio's voice softened into a patently false sentimentality. 'You might at least let him know the nature of your art dealings, inform him of some of your more notable triumphs, as a son extending the minimal courtesy to a father. He's proud of your evident success, believe me. But he's much too proud to come and ask you how you've achieved it.'
Tucker grinned and shook his head. 'You're still full of it, Mr. Mellio. I'm sure you know how many times my father's had me followed by private detectives, trying to learn what dealers I work with, what prices have been paid for certain objects and what profits other sales have brought me. Unfortunately for him, I've been cleverer than any of them; I've spotted each new tail from the start.'
Mellio sighed, still looking across his knees. He said, 'Your father wouldn't have you followed, Michael. But, very well, forget about your work. Is there any other collateral that you can offer the bank against this ten thousand you need?'
'My furniture, automobile, some art objects.'
'Inadequate, I'm afraid.'
'I have some very good artwork.'
'Art may be worth a fortune today, nothing tomorrow.
The critics and the connoisseurs are fickle in their approval of any talent.'
'And the bank is involved in such unsound investments?' Tucker asked, feigning innocence, pointing at the Klee.
Mellio said nothing.
Tucker said, 'These aren't paintings but primitive artifacts, valuable as antiquities and as art.'
'I'd have to have them appraised,' Mellio said. 'That would take a week, maybe longer.'
'I can send you to a reputable appraiser who would verify their value in half an hour.'
'We'd prefer to use our own man, and we'd need a week.'
'God,' Tucker said, 'I can't wait for the next stockholders' meeting so I can point out how you people are throwing money away on Klee paintings and other such claptrap. By your own admission-'
'You're being childish,' Mellio said.
'And you are being dishonest, Mr. Mellio. I'm sure my father directed you to take every step to deny me this loan and to force me into signing the waiver. But you must see that if I don't get the ten thousand now, right now, I've got excellent grounds to level yet another suit against you, the bank and the administrator of the trust. No judge is going to believe that you seriously fear losing what you loan to me. It will be quite evident that your refusal is a spiteful tactic and nothing more.'
Mellio sat up and reached for his intercom controls. To Tucker he said, 'I'll want a signed note from you, at least.'
Tucker said, 'If I approve of the note's wording.'
'Of course.'
Mellio called for his secretary to bring the proper loan papers, though he was clearly unhappy about being forced into this.'
'I'll want it in cash,' Tucker said. 'I'll tell you the denominations of the bills.'
'Cash?' Mellio asked, raising his eyebrows.
'Yes,' Tucker said. 'I'm afraid your check might bounce.'
At nine-thirty, four blocks from the bank, with his ten thousand dollars packed into a slim briefcase, Michael Tucker made three short telephone calls from a public phone booth in a department store-one to a number in Queens, one to a number rather far out on Long Island and the third to Jimmy Shirillo in Pittsburgh. Satisfied that everything was moving along smoothly, he hailed a cab and rode to a point two blocks from the Queens address, got out, paid the driver, watched the taxi pull away and disappear in heavy traffic, then walked the rest of the way. That might have been an unnecessary precaution, even though the driver kept fare records that could be checked, but he had grown accustomed to his father's occasional private detectives padding in his wake, and he did not mind the slight inconvenience. No one followed him the rest of the way to Imrie's place.
Imrie's place was a ground-floor showroom of a three-story brick structure on a quiet side street in Queens. A sign outside, reproduced in gilt lettering on the cracked glass door, said: antiques and used furniture. When Tucker went inside, the opening door caused a buzzer to shrill loudly far back in the stacks of chairs, tables, scarred bookcases, lamps, hutches, beds and a considerable variety of bric-a-brac. A moment later, as if unwillingly propelled forward by that noise, Imrie waddled out of a shadowed aisle between stacks of chairs and picture frames both used and antique.
He said, 'Just let me attend to the door, and I'll be with you.' And he went to attend to it.
Imrie was in his early fifties, bald except for a fringe of curly gray hair that accentuated the smoothness of the top of his skull, almost like a medieval friar. He stood no taller than five feet six, but he weighed an even two hundred pounds. Though his store looked like the streets of a Florida town after a hurricane disaster, and though his own style of dress was no style at all except comfort, he was a tidy man when it came to his specialty. His specialty was guns.
'Upstairs,' he said, passing Tucker on his way back into the maze of tarnished, tottering furnishings.
At the back of the store, through a yellow cloth curtain, they went up a set of narrow wooden stairs, passed the second floor where Imrie lived, climbed to the third and last level where he kept his gun collection. Here, as on the first floor, the partitions had been knocked out-to make one large room. Racked on the walls, shelved against wooden display lifts, nestled in velvet-lined cases and-in the case of new acquisitions not yet touched by Imrie- dumped unceremoniously in cardboard boxes, were more than two thousand rifles, shotguns and handguns, with the overwhelming emphasis on the last category. Also in the room, against the far wall, were a number of metal- working machines, including a complete miniature gas-fired forge and cooling pot where metals could be melted and shaped.
