A block and a half from Forum East, Wainwright stopped the car, leaving the motor running. He removed two envelopes from an inside jacket pocket one fat, the other smaller and handed the first to Juanita. 'That's money for Eastin. Keep it until he gets in touch with you.' The envelope, Wainwright explained, contained four hundred and fifty dollars in cash the agreed monthly payment, less a fifty-dollar advance which Wainwright had given Miles last week.
'Later this week,' he added, 'Eastin win phone me and I'll announce a code word we've already arranged. Your name win not be mentioned. But he'll know that he's to contact you, which he'll do soon after.'
Juanita nodded, concentrating, storing the information away.
'After that phone call, Eastin and I won't contact each other directly again. Our messages, both ways, will go through you. It would be best if you didn't write them down, but carry them in your head. I happen to know your memory is good.'
Wainwright smiled as he said it, and abruptly Juanita laughed. How ironic that her remarkable memory, which was once a cause of her troubles with the bank and Nolan Wainwright, should be relied on by him nowl
'By the way,' he said, 'I'D need to know your home phone number. I couldn't find it listed.'
'That is because I do not have a telephone. It costs too much.'
'Just the same, you'll need one. Eastin may want to call you; so might I. If you'll have a phone installed immediately, I'll see that the bank reimburses you.'
'I will try. But I have heard from others that phones are slow to be put in at Forum East.'
'When let me arrange it. I’ll call the phone company tomorrow. I guarantee fast action.' 'Very well.'
Now Wainwright opened the second, smaller envelope. 'When you give Eastin the money, also give him this.'
'This' was a Keycharge bank credit card, made out in the name of H. E. LINCOLP. On the rear of the card a space for signature was blank.
'Have Eastin sign the card, in that name, in his normal handwriting. Tell him the name is a fake, though if he looks at the initials and the last letter, he'll see they spell H-E-L-P. That's what the card is for.'
The bank security chief said that the Keycharge computer had been programmed so that if this card was presented anywhere, a purchase of up to a hundred dollars would be approved, but simultaneously an automatic alert would be raised within the bank. This would notify Wainwright that Eastin needed help, and where he was.
'He can use the card if he's on to something hot and wants support, or if he knows he's in danger. Depending on what's happened up to then, I'll decide what to do. Tell him to buy something worth more than fifty dollars; that way the store will be certain to phone in for confirmation. After that phone call, he should dawdle as much as he can, to give me time to move.'
Wainwright added, 'He may never need the card. But if he does, it's a signal no one else will know about.'
At Wainwright's request, Juanita repeated his instructions almost word for word. He looked at her admiringly. 'You're pretty bright.' '`De que me vale, muerta?' 'What does that mean?'
She hesitated, then translated, 'What good will it do me if I'm dead?'
'Stop worrying!' Reaching across the car he gently touched her folded hands. 'I promise it'll all work out.'
At that moment his confidence was infectious. But later, back in her apartment with Estela sleeping, Juanita's instinct about impending trouble persistently returned. .
The Double-Seven Health Club smelled of boiler steam, stale urine, body odor, and booze. After a while, though, to anyone inside, the various effluvia merged into a single pungency, curiously acceptable, so that fresh air which occasionally blew in seemed alien.
The club was a boxlike, four-story brown brick building in a decaying, dead-end street on the fringes of downtown. Its facade was scarred by a half century of wear, neglect, and more recently graffiti. At the building's peak was an unadorned stub of flagpole which no one remembered seeing whole. The main entrance consisted of a single, solid, unmarked door abutting directly on a sidewalk notable for cracks, overturned garbage cans, and innumerable dog turds. A paint-flaking lobby just inside was supposed to be guarded by a punch-drunk bruiser who let members in and churlishly kept strangers out, but he was sometimes missing, which was why Miles Eastin wandered in unchallenged.
It was shortly before noon, midweek, and a dissonance of raised voices drifted back from somewhere in the rear. Miles walked toward the sound, down a main-floor corridor, none too clean and hung with yellowed prizefight pictures. At the end was an open door to a semi-darkened bar from where the voices came. Miles went in.
At first he could scarcely see in the dimriess and moved uncertainly so that a hurrying waiter with a tray of drinks caromed into him. The waiter swore, somehow managed to keep the glasses upright, and moved on. Two men perched on barstools turned their heads. One said, 'This is a private club, buster. If you aina member out!'
The other complained, ' 'S 'at lazy bum Pedro goofin' off. Some doorman! Hey, who are ye? Wadda ya want?' Miles told him, 'I was looking for Jules LaRocca.'
'Look someplace else,' the first man ordered. 'No wunna that name here.'
'Hey, Milesy baby' A squat pot-bellied figure bustled forward through the gloom. The familiar weasel face came into focus. It was LaRocca who in Drummonburg Penitentiary had been an emissary from Mafia Row, and later attached himself to Miles and his protector Karl. Karl was still inside, and likely to remain there. Jules LaRocca had been released on parole shortly before Miles Eastin. 'Hi, Jules,' Miles acknowledged.
'Come over. Meet some guys.' LaRocca seized Miles's arm in pudgy fingers. 'Frenna mine,' he told the two men on barstools who turned their backs indifferently.
'Listen,' Miles said, 'I won't come over. I'm out of bread. I can't buy.' He slipped easily into the argot he had learned in prison.
'forget it. Hava couple beers on me.' As they passed between tables, LaRocca asked, 'Whereya bin?'
'Looking for work. I'm all beat, Jules. I need some help. Before I got out you said you'd give it to me.'
'Sure, sure.' They stopped at a table where two other men were seated. One was skinny with a mournful, pockmarked face; the other had long blond hair, cowboy boots, and wore dark glasses. LaRocca pulled up an extra chair. 'Thissa my buddy, Milesy.'
The man with dark glasses grunted. The other said, '.The guy knows about dough?'
'That's him.' LaRocca shouted across the room for beer, then urged the man who had spoken first to,-'Ask him sumpum.' 'Like what?'
'Like about money, asshole,' dark glasses said. He considered. 'Where'da first dollar get started'
'That's easy,' Miles told him. 'Lots of people think America invented the dollar. Well, we didn't. It came from Bohemia in Germany, only first it was called a thaler, which other Europeans couldn't pronounce, so they corrupted it to dollar and it stayed that way. One of the first references to it is in Macbeth 'ten thousand dollars to our general use.'' 'Mac who?'
'Macshit,' LaRocca said. 'You wanna printed program?' He told the other two proudly, 'See what I mean? This kid knows it all.'
'Not quite,' Miles said, 'or I'd know how to make some money at this moment.'
Two beers were slapped in front of him. LaRocca fished out cash which he gave the waiter.
'Before ya make dough,' LaRocca said to Miles, 'ye gotta pay Ominsky.' He leaned across confidingly, ignoring the other two. 'The Russian knows ya outta the can. Bin askin' for ye.'
The mention of the loan shark, to whom he still owed at least three thousand dollars, left Miles sweating. There was another debt, too roughly the same amount to the bookie he had dealt with, but the chance of paying either seemed remote at this moment. Yet he had known that coming here, making himself visible, would reopen the old accounts and that savage reprisals would follow if he failed to pay.
He asked LaRocca, 'How can I pay any of what I owe if I can't get work?'
The pot-bellied man shook his head. 'First off, ya got ta see the Russian.'
'Where?' Miles knew that Ominsky had no office but operated wherever business took him.
LaRocca motioned to the beer. 'Drink up, then you in me go look.'
'Look at it from my point of view,' the elegantly dressed man said, continuing his lunch. His diamond ringed hands moved deftly above his plate. 'We had a business arrangement, you and me, which both of us agreed to. I
