'Who's the guy who phoned you from the Double-Seven?' She answered thickly through swollen lips. 'Maricon, I will tell you nothing until you let my little girl go.'
The broad had spirit, Tony Bear conceded.
If she had been built differently he might have amused himself breaking her in other ways. But she was too scrawny for his taste no hips worth a damn, half a handful of ass, and little peanut tits.
Angelo drew back his arm and punched her in the stomach. Juanita gasped and doubled forward as far as her bonds allowed.
Beside her, Estela, who could see and hear, was sobbing hysterically.
The sound annoyed Tony Bear.
This was taking too long. There was a quicker way.
He beckoned a second bodyguard, Lou, and whispered.
Lou looked as if he didn't like what he was being told, but nodded. Tony Bear handed over the cigar he was smoking.
While Lou stepped out past the partition and spoke in an undertone to Angelo,
Tony Bear Marino glanced around him.
They were in a basement with all doors dosed, eliminating the chance of sounds escaping, though even if they did it wouldn't matter.
The fifty-year-old house, of which this was part, stood in its own grounds in a high-class residential district and was protected like a fortress.
A syndicate which Tony Bear Marino headed had bought the house eight months ago and moved the counterfeiting operation in.
Soon, as a precaution, they would sell the house and move on elsewhere; in fact, a new location was already chosen. It would have the same kind of innocuous, innocent-appearing background as this one. That, Tony Bear sometimes thought with satisfaction, had been the secret of the long, successful run: frequent moves to quiet, respectable neighborhoods, with traffic to and from the center kept to a minimum.
The ultra-caution had two advantages only a handful of people knew exactly where the center was; also, with everything buttoned down, neighbors weren't suspicious.
They had even worked out elaborate precautions for moving from one place to the next. One of them: wooden covers, designed to look like household furniture, which fitted over every piece of machinery, so to a casual watcher all that was happening was a domestic move.
And a regular house moving van, from one of the organization's outwardly legit trucking companies, was brought in for the job. There were even stand-by arrangements for an emergency, extra-fast trucking move if ever needed.
The fake furniture gimmick had been one of Danny Kerrigan's notions.
The old man had had some other good ones, as well as proving a champion counterfeiter since Tony Bear Marino brought him into the organization a dozen years ago.
Shortly before that time, Tony Bear heard about Kerrigan's reputation as a craftsman, and that he had become an alcoholic, skid row bum.
On Tony Bear's orders the old man had been rescued, dried out, and later put to work with spectacular results.
There seemed to be nothing, Tony Bear had come to believe, that Danny couldn't print successfully money, postage stamps, share certificates, checks, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards, you name it.
It had been Danny's idea to manufacture thousands of fake bank credit cards.
Through bribery and a carefully planned raid, they had been able to obtain blank plastic sheets from which Keycharge cards were made, and the quantity was enough to last for years.
Profit so far had been immense.
The only beef about the old man was that once in a while he went back to hitting the sauce and could be out of business for a week or more.
When it happened there was danger of him talking, so he was kept confined.
But he could be crafty and sometimes managed to slip away, as happened last time. Lately, though, the lapses had been fewer, mostly because Danny was happily stashing away his share of the dough in a Swiss bank account and dreamed of going there in a year or two to pick up his loot, then retire.
Except that Tony Bear knew that was one move of the old drunk's which wouldn't happen.
He intended to use the old man as long as he could function.
Also Danny knew too much ever to be let go. But while Danny Kerrigan was important, it had been the organization which protected him and made the most of what he produced.
Without an efficient distribution system the old man would have been like most others of his breed small time or a nothing.
Therefore it was the threat to the organization which concerned Tony Bear most.
Had it been infiltrated by a spy, a stool pigeon?
If 'yes,' from where? And how much had he or she learned? His attention swung back to what was happening on the other side of the one-way glass. Angelo had the lighted cigar.
His thick lips were twisted in a grin.
With the side of his foot he shoved the two chairs so the Nuliez woman and her brat now faced each other.
Angelo puffed on the cigar until its tip was glowing.
Casually he moved to the chair where the child was seated and bound. Estela looked up, visibly trembling, eyes wild with fright.
Without hurrying, Angelo took her small right hand, lifted it, inspected the palm, then turned it over.
Still slowly he removed the glowing cigar from his mouth and ground it, as if into an ashtray, on the back of her hand. Estela cried out a piercing shriek of agony.
Opposite her, Juanita, frantic, weeping, shouting incoherently, struggled desperately against her bonds. The cigar was not out.
Angelo puffed it into fresh redness then, with the same leisureliness as before, lifted Estela's other hand. Juanita screamed,
'No, no, dejela . I win tell you.' Angelo waited, the cigar poised as Juanita gasped,
'The man you want. .. is Miles Eastin.' 'Who's he work for?' Her voice a despairing whisper, she answered, 'First Mercantile American Bank.'
Angelo dropped the cigar and ground it out with his heel. He looked interrogatively at where he knew Tony Bear Marino to be, then came around the screen. Tony Bear's face was tight. He said softly,
'Get him. Go get that fink. Bring him here.' l
21
'Milesy,'Nate Nathanson said with unusual grouchiness, 'whoever your friend is keeps phoning, tell him this place ain't run for the staff, it's run for members.'
'What friend?' Miles Eastin, who had been away from the Double-Seven for part of the morning talking care of club errands, looked uncertainly at the manager.
'How in hell would I know? Same guy's phoned four times, asking for you. Wouldn't leave a name; no message.' Nathanson said impatiently,
'Where's the deposit book?' Miles handed it over.
Among his calls had been one to a bank to deposit checks. 'Shipment of canned goods came in just now,' Nathanson said. 'Cases in the storeroom.
Check 'em against the invoices.' He handed Miles some papers and a key.
'Sure, Nate. And I'm sorry about the calls.'
But the manager had already turned awayj heading for his office on the third floor.
Miles felt some sympathy for him. He knew that Tony Bear Marino and Russian Ominsky, who owned the Double-Seven jointly, had been leaning hard on Nathanson lately with complaints about running of the club.
On his way to the storeroom, which was on the main floor at the rear of the building,
Miles wondered about those phone calls.
Who would be calling him? And insistently. As far as he knew, only three people connected with his former
