“You want somethin’ to drink?” Rizzo’s voice came through the monitor, clear, distinct. In room 350, there was a deep breath of relief.
“Scotch. I drink Scotch,” Barg said.
“Okay. Any particular kind? Chivas okay?” He picked up the phone, called room service. “Send up a bottle of Chivas Regal Scotch—oh, and some ice and water. This is room three fifty-four.” There was silence, broken by the sound of bodies moving, shifting, weight settling into chairs. “Now—” Rizzo began.
“I have to tell you,” Ense interrupted hurriedly. “But tell me first, what is this Benjamin thing? What has transpired?”
“He had a little problem,” Rizzo said. “So, what happened, Ricky had to go to Philadelphia ’cause his brother was sick. And they let him out. They made him call up Maurice while I was there. And he told Maurice, ‘Release the money to Benjamin.’ The two hundred thousand and the hundred and fifty thousand that he had comin’.”
(Two rooms away, Coffey nodded to himself over the notebook in which he had begun furiously scribbling notes, jotting down the names as they were mentioned. The reference to Benjamin clicked. It had to be William Benjamin, the Philadelphia forger who often worked with Rizzo. And Coffey knew just what Benjamin’s problem was. He had been picked up by federal agents in mid-December while carrying a package of stolen securities.)
“Now,” Ense said, “you belong to the people which—”
Rizzo cut him off. “No, I got the money comin’.”
“I must tell you something,” Ense said. “When Ricky was here, we only had to deal with Ricky. And then when Mr. Jacobs, he was ill, he sent his son. And after then came Benjamin. And then at the moment when he came, and Benjamin was here, I got a call from the people over there and they said, ‘Well, you don’t have anything to discuss with Benjamin.’ And I said, ‘Benjamin, come here. Listen. They say I don’t have anything to discuss with you. You are out of this deal.’ ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘well, I got to get back. Please help me. Give me the money I need here.’”
“And you gave him thirty-five hundred marks, somethin’ like that,” Rizzo said.
“I gave him a little bit more. It doesn’t matter,” Ense said. “And then he said, ‘Okay, but first I come back. I see you soon and you get the news, and you get a letter from me or I come back myself.’”
“He didn’t come because he got arrested,” Rizzo said. “Ricky came in from California and got him out of jail for three or four or five days, or whatever it was. They had a meeting. I was there. That’s when I said we have to resolve this thing. They says, ‘Evelyn called up Maurice and says to Maurice not to release any money.’ So, Ricky said—”
“I don’t know whether you know the whole story from the beginning on,” Ense interrupted. “You can’t know.”
“I know,” Rizzo said with an edge. “I’ll tell you what I know. We were supposed to get the money October fifteenth, then it’s October thirtieth, then in November. He called up Fred twenty, thirty times. Right?”
“Correct,” Ense agreed. “Oh, you are right.”
“Now,” Rizzo said, “I had a friend of mine call up a couple of times. Because he is a partner with me. I tell him, ‘Call up and see what it’s all about. Maybe he doesn’t speak English at all. Maybe the only one that spoke English is Ense.’ He says, ‘Well, I didn’t see Ense.’ And I said, ‘We’ll get together and try to resolve things.’ Well, that’s all. I gotta come over here, first of all, to get some money; second of all, to make an arrangement. The arrangement that you originally were hoping to make with Jerry, Ricky’s son. That was, open an account in Switzerland. Correct?”
“That’s right.”
“And putting the money … I’ll do that now.”
They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Rizzo opened it. It was the waiter. “Yeah?” Rizzo said. “Oh, put the stuff on the table, right there. Here.”
“Danke.” The door closed.
The only sound for a moment was of ice and glasses and the pouring of the Scotch. The sounds would be repeated often over the next ninety minutes. Barg did most of the drinking, Rizzo and Ense only a little.
But Barg was an alcoholic; he said later that he drank so much as a way of finding relief from the migraines he suffered, an affliction that came from the air and the winds that blow down over Munich from the Bavarian Alps.
“Listen,” Ense said once the drinks had been passed around, “I tell you the story from the beginning on. The first time, this is—I met Ricky before—”
“I know,” Rizzo said. “I was involved in that, too.”
“Oh, I see,” Ense said, and he sounded a little uncertain, a little surprised. “Well, the first time when I met Benjamin before, in London … before we started this deal …”
“You mean with Ricky and Tony?”
“Yes. Tony, Ricky, Benjamin, some people else, I don’t know them, Maurice and me. The first man I met there was called Dr. Ledl. And this guy was a friend of Ricky.”
“Right.”
“And he couldn’t speak to Ricky because Ricky doesn’t speak any German and he doesn’t speak any English. And Ricky said to me, ‘Please ask him what does he want. What does he want for his friends in Rome?’ So, I learned they had a deal in Rome, this deal would be made with his people in the Vatican, and Dr. Ledl said, ‘Okay, I need this merchandise.’”
“Yeah. In counterfeit.”
Ense kept talking as though he had not heard, as though it was essential that he explain as much as possible before Rizzo stopped him. “And Ricky asked me not one or two or three times, twenty times, ‘Ask him again. Is he quite sure that the people in Rome, in the Vatican, his friends, that they want counterfeit?’ And Dr. Ledl says, ‘They want all I can get. I can only say, yes, that’s what they want.’ In the meantime, Ricky went away.”
(Those words sounded louder than they really were, clearer, more distinct, as they came over the monitor and struck the ears of the listeners. Coffey and the German detectives stared at the monitor in disbelief, stared at each other in shock. Except for the CIA technician, they were all Catholics. Even those who understood no English caught the word Vatican, so similar in all languages. “Impossible,” somebody whispered. “It can’t be true.” “Be quiet!” The words, a sharp exclamation, were an order. “We must hear it all.” They pressed forward, straining, determined not to miss a syllable. But unlike those detectives, Rizzo seemed to have less than an overwhelming interest in the Vatican and those counterfeits.)
“He lost his appeal,” Rizzo said casually. “He had to go in.”
“Yes,” Ense agreed, “that’s what I mean. So, he sent his son and …”
“And the son grabbed five thousand dollars from you,” Rizzo said. “Am I right?” Something in the way he said that convinced the listening Coffey that he was checking, testing, perhaps both Ense and Ricky’s son.
“Much more,” Ense said. “Much more.”
“I’d like to know how much,” Rizzo said. “I know, but I want to know.”
Ense and Barg held a whispered conversation in German. Ense said to Rizzo, “He told me, seventy thousand marks.”
Rizzo said, “He said the kid got seventy thousand marks?”
(Something registered in Coffey’s memory. Seventy thousand deutsche marks was something more than $25,000. That was the amount Rizzo had told Izzy Marion the guy in California owed him.)
Rizzo obviously wanted to pursue that line for the moment. To the relief of the listeners, however, Ense was more anxious to go on with his story of the Vatican and the counterfeits. “This is not the thing we have to discuss,” he said. “I must tell you the story, that you know everything from the beginning on.”
“I know,” Rizzo said, and again it was apparent that he had little desire to hear something he already knew.
But Ense ignored him, rushed on. “Tony, Jerry and Dr. Ledl and Maurice and me and two … two other German people.… I sent them by car to Rome. I had to pay for everybody, of course. And Dr. Ledl was expecting us in Rome, and from this moment we had only two days. We were waiting in Rome and the only word that Dr. Ledl and his Italian friends … They were negotiating and doing something. We couldn’t check what they did. And after two weeks, I said, ‘Okay, friends, we must go back. I cannot stay any longer here in Rome because the money is finished and we must go back.’ And Dr. Ledl said, ‘Everything is okay, only a few more days and we get the money.’ How? I don’t know because I could not attend the deals. I don’t know what they did. I have everyone waiting there and Jerry was waiting there and so we went back to Munich. And I think three or four weeks later, Jerry called me from the States and he said to me, ‘Ense, we saw in the newspaper, in the New York Herald-Tribune, that something happened in Rome with our merchandise.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Our newspapers, I didn’t read something like that.’ And he said, ‘Well, believe me, it is quite clear that’s our merchandise.’ In the meantime, Maurice was in Rome. So, I said to Jerry, ‘Jerry, Jerry, wait, I’ll call you. I must first speak to Maurice. He must know something about this case and I must ask him.’ Nothing had happened. I am in contact with those people every day. I am here and everything is okay. So, I said to Jerry, ‘Jerry, I can’t find out what happened, but they say everything is okay.’ Nothing was okay. What he read in the newspaper, that was absolutely right. That was accurate. And they didn’t inform us what happened. And then the Italian people, they said, ‘Well, we couldn’t know that the rules applied.’ And then they said, ‘Well, the merchandise is lost.’ So, I said to Jerry, ‘Jerry, I cannot help you. That is a matter of Ricky’s and your matter. He is not my friend, Dr. Ledl. I don’t know him.’ He said, ‘Please check everything as far as possible and then call Dr. Ledl. That’s all. That’s the only thing you can do.’ Okay.”
(In room 350, that outpouring was heard with total concentration, with fascination, and with a considerable lack of comprehension. There was a thirst for more, a prayer that Ense, and maybe Rizzo, too, would follow this path, would spell out the details slowly so that understanding would finally emerge.)
Without warning, Ense was off in another direction. “The other merchandise which he got,” Ense asked, “it was worth nine hundred thousand dollars?” (It took a few moments before anyone realized that the “he” Ense was talking about was not Jerry or Dr. Ledl, but Barg, and that the subject was a totally different deal from the Vatican.)
“Whatever it was,” Rizzo said, and his voice was hard, an undertone of menace coloring it, “I only want to make one point clear. I’m not interested in how much merchandise was involved. I’m only interested in the money that’s coming to these people. There’s two hundred thousand dollars, Ense, coming to these people.”
“To which people?” Ense asked.
“To whoever supplied whatever you got,” Rizzo said with impatience. “They got to get two hundred thousand dollars, and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“Where do you know this from?”
“Where do I know this from?” Rizzo laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “From Ricky. Where do I know this from? From Bill. From him. Bill went and asked him, ‘Do you owe this money?’ And he says, ‘Yes.’”
“Wait,” Ense said quickly. “You are speaking about the merchandise which was lost in Italy, or only this one?”
“Only this one,” Rizzo said. “Yes, only this one. Maurice is a different chapter. You are not responsible for Maurice. Maurice goofed. We’ll take care of Maurice ourselves. Our own way. I’m only here for one reason.”
From the moment they had walked into that room, Ense had been looking desperately for an opening, something that would permit him to take the play away from Rizzo, launch a counterattack and so put Rizzo on the defensive. He knew why Rizzo was in Munich, to collect $350,000 from him and Barg. If he had had any doubts, the American had made that clear to him, and to the listeners two rooms away, within minutes after the conversation began. He had tried to divert Rizzo with talk about the Vatican, but Rizzo would not be diverted. Now, he tried another ploy. Ricky, he said, had assured him that the $900,000 package of merchandise—and he put a name to that merchandise: Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles—“was qualified merchandise.” But Ense pressed on: “Are you quite sure? It’s very important for me to know.”
“That isn’t counterfeit?” Rizzo asked. “I will call up when I get back and verify it there.” Then his voice hardened, “But what has this got to do with this right now?”
Ense went into a long, rambling and confusing explanation—confusing at least to those listening in, if not to Rizzo—about a friend of Dr. Ledl named Dr. Amato from Milan who had taken possession of the merchandise and then had not paid for it because, he said, it was “bad merchandise.” This was causing a lot of trouble for Ense and Maurice, and they couldn’t get their money until they were able to tell Dr. Amato “that this merchandise is absolutely okay.” Ricky had assured him that the merchandise, the Coca-Cola Bottling, was okay, was qualified, but now Ense was very troubled, especially since another friend, whom Rizzo knew, named Jacques Suesans, from Amsterdam, had also told him, and not two weeks before, that the Coca-Cola was “not okay.”
Rizzo dismissed all that, said, “All the stuff I got was good.” The only thing he was interested in was getting what he had come for. “We’ll arrange something between ourselves,” he said, “and put it on paper. Ricky’s involved in it, and Bill. I told Ricky whatever I do with Jacques, he gets something out of it. Whatever I do with anybody here that I represent. What I want is this, Ense. I have to check out this situation with Fred. ’Cause I have to bring these people back the money, and an answer, and a commitment. Because there’s a lotta money layin’ out over there.”
Ense did not want to talk about that. He wanted to talk about “the merchandise,” whether it was qualified or not, whether they might have to get it back from Dr. Amato, which might cost him about fifty thousand marks.
Rizzo vented a deep sigh, decided to turn to something else for the moment. “May I ask you a question?” he said. “When you cashed that bond. Ricky gave you three?”
“Yes,” Ense said. “You mean, the treasury bills?”
“Yes,” Rizzo said; “Why couldn’t you cash the other two?”
“That was Ricky,” Ense explained. “He took the other two back with him.”
“How much did you get?” Rizzo asked.
“Me?” Ense said. “Forty thousand. Me, for my part.”
“For your part,” Rizzo said. “And what did Ricky get? He told me he only got thirty.”
Ense emitted a loud laugh. “Oh, very good.”
Rizzo was not amused. “What happened to the other money? That’s what I wanted to find out. He says that he got beat.”
“Well,” Ense said, “if he would wait eight, ten days longer, I could have given him all that money, because we were in Brussels, and—”
“When he came back from there,” Rizzo said, “I met him in Munich. I met him in the Bayerischer Hof. It was November 1970.”
“He made two mistakes,” Ense said. “When I was in Brussels together with him, he said, ‘Ense, I am in a hurry. I must go.’ And so my friend in Brussels gave him a check, a German check. The check he brought back several days later and he said, ‘I cannot cash this goddamn check because—’”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said, “he wanted to give us the check. I told him to stick it up his ass.”
“The check, it was good,” Ense insisted.
“I wanted cash,” Rizzo said. “I don’t care if it’s in … what’s that Jewish money? It’s called—”
“Pounds.”
“Pounds, yeah. I don’t care if it’s in pounds. I don’t want no check.”
“The check,” Ense said, “was very good.”
“I don’t want no cheek,” Rizzo said sharply.
“Well, all right,” Ense soothed. “We took the next plane. We went to Frankfurt. He was very worried because it was a lot of money and the banker said to me, ‘Please, let us go down into the cellar, there you get the money.’ So, I left the lobby of the bank. And Ricky was observing the main floor. He saw me going in, not going out, and then I came out, then I put all the money in the bag and then he took the next plane and went away.”
“He went to Munich,” Rizzo said, and for some reason, both he and Ense found that amusing, both laughed loudly. Then Rizzo became serious again. “All right, let’s get back to … what kind of arrangements are we gonna make with this money?”
Ense and Barg spoke briefly in German then, and Ense said to Rizzo, “Is it correct when he asked me, ‘What is your position in the deal?’ and I said to him—”
“I get all the money,” Rizzo said. “All the money I get. Ricky’s money. Bill’s money. Evelyn’s money. I get it all. I had to come and get it, you see. All their money.”
“Yes, of course,” Ense agreed quickly. “And is it right when I say that you are the man who’s supplied the merchandise to the people? Is that not right?”
“No, that’s not right,” Rizzo said sharply. “I’m just an errand boy, Ense. Whatever my capacity is, it’s immaterial. I’ll tell you one thing. Anything we talk … in other words, this is one subject. Any subject we talk about, you can talk to me about. I know about it.”
“You do not object to me when I say, ‘That’s the boss’? You are not mad at me when I say ‘I will. I am the boss’?”
Rizzo gave a short laugh. “See,” he said, “them people … the money don’t belong to Ricky. The hundred and fifty thousand belonged to him. Well, now we talk about the two hundred thousand. It don’t belong to Ricky. It don’t belong to Billy, Jerry, Evelyn, Maurice, Jacques, you name ’em. It don’t belong. It belongs to the people where the thing came from. And they want their money. Now, I’m the person who’s supposed to give them their money. Now, I guaranteed Ricky and Bill and the others, and you guaranteed—”
“Yes, I guaranteed them and—”
“Lemme tell you this. This is important. When I had the conversation with Ricky, I says, ‘I’m not interested in your money. I’m interested in this money that you loaned. Because of this particular item.’ And I says, ‘I’m not gonna go. I’m no collection man for you, to collect your money.’ I said, ‘You do what the fuck you want with your money. Let your son collect it, your wife, whoever’s around.’ So, when he called up Maurice, he said, ‘Look, do you wanna collect my money? If they got it, you get money, too.’ I says, ‘All right, but money comes first, the two hundred thousand, I gotta get, to pay off whatever I have to pay off and then after the two hundred thousand, the next hundred and fifty thousand, on the end, that’s your money. Then you get your money.’ So, then he says, ‘All right.’ So, I says, ‘How much does Fred owe?’ And he says, ‘Three hundred and fifty grand.’ I says, ‘Okay.’ Then, this was before Bill was here. That’s why I got very upset. ’Cause Bill says, ‘I met Maurice, Ense and Fred at the Bayerischer Hof and Maurice says he’s got no money comin’.’ So, I says, ‘Bill, why didn’t you pick up a chair and break Maurice’s head when you know your life is on the stake over there for this money? There’s too much involved. How the fuck does this guy get off sayin’ you have no money? Go call immediately. Call up Evelyn and let Evelyn get in touch with Ricky because she goes to see him every week. And you stay. You stay in Germany till you resolve it.’ The next time he came in, into New York, and he almost got a heart attack because I started hollerin’ at him. I says, ‘You went there. You’ve got to resolve this thing.’ Billy says, ‘Right. Ricky’s comin’ out. He’s comin’ out ’cause his brother’s sick and he’ll be in Philadelphia.’ He says, ‘I swear, Evelyn didn’t call up Maurice. Maurice did this on his own.’ I says, ‘All right, Maurice did this on his own.’ He says, ‘Look out for your own welfare. Let’s call up Maurice.’ So we called up Maurice. I says, ‘Leave the money at Benjamin’s. The money they have comin’ and the money I have comin’. Let Benjamin or his associates collect this money, too.’”
Ense heard it all, and, with a slight tremor in his voice, he tried to turn Rizzo back to the question of whether the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles “is okay or not okay.”
“Ense,” Rizzo said, “you’re off the train of thought I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ about the money that Fred owes. Fred owes money. He bought some property in Spain or France or somethin’. And the property was gonna be sold for houses. This is the story they tell me. The money was gonna be placed in a bank, see—”
“Stop! Stop!” Ense shouted. “The story is true.” He elaborated. As Rizzo knew, Barg was a very important man with a big company whose main offices were in Switzerland. In order to make his position stronger, “he put this merchandise in envelopes and the notary makes a stamp on it, and the check, ‘I have checked this. This is okay.’ So, nobody could check this merchandise because nobody was interested because nobody would sell this merchandise. It was only security.” The merchandise was then put in a bank for safekeeping. Then Ricky and Jerry and Benjamin started demanding money.
“I know. I know all that,” Rizzo said. “And Jerry was supposed to go with you or with Fred to Switzerland to open his account.”
“Right,” Ense agreed.
“But he never did.”
“That’s right.”
“I know all this,” Rizzo said. “You tell me, Ense, what has transpired as of now? It’s about a year now. What has transpired? The deal that you was gonna do with Jerry, I want you to do with me now.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Ense agreed with alacrity. “Now, let me tell you—”
“Let me finish this first,” Rizzo said. “I don’t expect him to come up with the three hundred and fifty thousand at one time.”
“I know, I know, I know.”
“It’s very improbable. But I want to set up somethin’, have some of this money before I go back. Set up an account. This way, I go to these people and they say, ‘Vincent, did you do it? Did you set it up? Did you? We’re gonna get our money?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I set it up. Your money’s bein’ returned.’”
Ense explained Rizzo’s demand to Barg in German, telling him, “This is something we must do.” He turned back to Rizzo and started through his explanation to Barg. “What I said to Freddie was, now you are only responsible to the people which supplied the merchandise a year ago, and they want to know—”
“They want their money,” Rizzo said tersely.
“What price?” Ense asked. “How many marks for you each month that you can say when you go back?”
“The same as he was gonna do with Jerry,” Rizzo said. “He says, October fifteenth. He called up. He says somethin’ about, ‘Do you have the money?’ I think it was thirty-five or forty thousand dollars. He says, ‘Yeah, I have the money.’ Then it came to a hundred and twenty-five thousand. He says, ‘Oh, I’ll have that much money.’ This is what they tell me over there. I don’t know, ’cause this is the first time I spoke to him.”
Ense spoke in rapid German to Barg, turned back to Rizzo and told him it would not be difficult to open an account into which money would be deposited every month to clear up the debt. Then he returned to an old refrain, insisting that he must know whether the merchandise was good or bad.
Rizzo was running out of patience about that. “Now,” he said, “it’s immaterial whether it’s good or bad. Lemme tell you why. Suppose it isn’t good. Whatever you need, I can get you, so what’s the difference?”
But Ense was not satisfied with Rizzo’s assurance. He continued to worry that point for several minutes. And then suddenly there was something new (and the listeners two rooms away stared at each other in bewilderment, trying to make sense of it, wondering how much more was going to come out before this meeting ended). “Maurice,” he said, “gave merchandise to his Italian friends in Milano.”
“Sure,” Rizzo said. “But he gave them bills of exchange. Remember them? From the nuns and the saints of the Bush and all that.”
“Yes, I have heard,” Ense said. “This bills of exchange. Wait a minute. Rosario. Rosario. Something like that.”
“Right.”
“I said to Ricky, ‘Ricky, I am a German. I’m not an Italian, but I know the Italians much better than you. You come from the States. Are you so sure that the people in Italy you can trust them? I must tell you something about the Italian people of Europe.’”
“But you can trust Maurice,” Rizzo said.
“Absolutely,” Ense agreed. “But he is a fool, this Maurice. He is very, very stupid. He makes mistakes a lot in a lot of places, but he is absolutely true and a man you can trust. He is French. But I never trust Italian people. I never trust them.”
“What about me?” Rizzo asked softly.
Ense either did not hear that or decided not to pick up on it. “I was there in the wartime,” he said. “I was in Italy two years. I know them so good. I speak their language a little bit. I don’t like their language, only when they are singing. I don’t trust them. I can’t stand those people. When they open their mouths, they lie. And they have stories. They are very, very beautiful and very, very nice, but you can never finish a deal on this thing or that. They always look for a way to get you. And they get you.”
“Why?” Rizzo asked blandly.
“Because we cannot do it. I mean, you and I are different. You are a stranger. You cannot do anything. And this is what I said to Ricky in London. ‘You check and we take our half and bring it to Italy. We don’t know what has happened there.’ Believe me, I know him. I was in the car of Dr. Ledl. You cannot imagine the situation there. And I saw he’s not a doctor, really. He’s in prison now.”
Rizzo barked a laugh.
“Yes,” Ense said, “believe me, in prison. You know that he had only three fingers? He lost two fingers. And in Germany, the people say, ‘Well, when you don’t trust someone, you cannot give him your hand because you lose your fingers.’ You must count your fingers.”
“Ense,” Rizzo interrupted sharply, “now, I’m serious.”
But Ense would not be interrupted. He had started a story and he was intent on finishing it. “You know what he said to me? You cannot give him your hand. You cannot trust him because you’ll lose your fingers. And so, Ense, that’s me, has no fingers. And I said, ‘Well, you must count them before you give your hand.’ And now, I think two months ago, in the newspaper—what is it, he kills animals. His profession is a butcher. He makes meat.”
“Yeah,” Rizzo laughed. “A rabbi.”
“Yes?” Ense asked uncertainly.
“A rabbi,” Rizzo repeated.
“That is his profession,” Ense agreed. “Not a doctor.”
“Well,” Rizzo said, “a doctor in prison is a rabbi.”
“Oh,” Ense said. “And this was the man Ricky sent to me. Maurice was in Rome. I was in Rome.”
“I was there, too,” Rizzo said matter-of-factly.
“Yes?” Ense was startled.
“If you know me,” Rizzo said. “I was sitting in the other half of the Excelsior. I was watching all of you.”
“Yes?”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said, and he laughed. “They told me, ‘Do you want to meet him?’ I says, ‘I don’t want to meet him. I just want my money. What do I want to meet anybody for?’ You know what I mean, Fred? I don’t want to meet anybody. I came over here to get my money and I want to make more money. I mean, we have nothing else in common, just to make money over here.”
Something in the way Rizzo said that obviously upset Ense. He searched for something new, asked, “Do you know Tony?”
“Tony? I hear he’s a nice guy.”
“Very nice. He’s a very nice guy. The only thing I’m very sad is that Jerry told you so many lies.”
“Jerry,” Rizzo said, an edge to his voice, “is a son of a bitch. You know what a son of a bitch is?”
“I know,” Ense said.
“That’s what he is. And when I saw his father, I told his father that.”
“But,” Ense said, “Ricky is responsible for—”
“Yeah, He says, ‘I’m responsible for my son.’ I says, ‘All right, your son’s out of it. Push him out. If you wanna be responsible for your son, you stay responsible, that’s all.’”
“That’s right,” Ense said. There was a long pause before he finally said, “Okay, what can we do that we must—”
“I’ll tell you what we gotta do,” Rizzo said. “We gotta make some kind of agreement.”
“Yes.”
“Between Fred and myself.”
Barg apparently understood that, because he suddenly spoke in his hesitant English, “If we could postpone—”
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Rizzo said.
“I won’t be here,” Barg said.
“He has to go to Frankfurt tomorrow,” Ense explained. “But tomorrow, after five o’clock, I come to the hotel and we prepare something and when Fred comes back from Frankfurt, then we discuss it between us and we reach an agreement. All right?”
“Yeah.”
If they were about to reach an agreement on this old outstanding matter, perhaps, Barg suggested, Rizzo might like to discuss the possibility of doing additional business with them. “It would be very easy to make a deal,” Ense interjected, “when we get treasury notes.”
“I got ’em,” Rizzo said. “Now, I got two kinds. I got the ones that are hot. Then the cold. Take the cold or the ones that are hot. They’re cheap, very cheap.”
“Yes, but you must know something,” Ense said. “When I go to the bank in Germany or in Berlin or in France or in Italy, they do the same thing. They only check whether it is good or not. They look on the list; if it is not there, then it’s okay.”
“How much can you get rid of?” Rizzo asked.
“Half a million dollars,” Ense said. “But not in one piece.”
“What’s the least you could pay at the beginning?” Rizzo asked. “I don’t know what arrangements you had with Ricky, but—”
“We cannot do that to him,” Ense protested. “You come and you stay—well, you don’t have to stay any longer than eight to ten days, then you get the money. You stay a week, and you take the first money. You take the first.”
“What arrangements did you have with Ricky?” Rizzo said. “I mean, those arrangements are one thing. With me, it’s another thing. There’s the cost of the thing. The original cost of it, the expense of bringin’ it over here. And then, how do you want to pay?”
“How much cost to bring it here, or in Brussels?” Ense asked.
“I gave the man twenty-five hundred dollars for bringing it over here,” Rizzo said. “He brings it over in fifties. He brings it in one hundreds. He brings it in tens. And I promised him some money. I’d pay all his expenses. And he had five thousand comin’.”
“Yes,” Ense said.
“Of course, the cost of the thing, the cost will run between twenty-two and twenty-five percent. Right now, we’re gettin’ thirty percent, which is seventy percent left over.”
“I see,” Ense said. “That would be one hundred percent. Of course, we get the money. And we have only one partner more in the operation.”
“Then you take care of my aunt,” Rizzo laughed. “You know what I mean?”
“Certainly, certainly, certainly.”
“All right,” Rizzo said. “The first one I’ll be givin’ you will be one hundred twenty days, then ninety days, eighty days, right down the line.”
“All right,” Ense said. “Then, this merchandise is very fresh?”
“Yeah, oh yeah.”
“You’ll get the money in eight days. You’ll stay with me and take the money.”
“Yeah, good. I’m gonna give you a name now. And that’s the fellow who will be bringing whatever it is. He’ll be working to bring somethin’ over here. And then we’ll give him your number, because—”
“Nein! Nein!” Ense shouted in alarm. “I show you something. That’s why I’m always so in a bad mood when somebody comes from the States and I have an appointment with Ricky and Jerry. This, the second part of this is a five mark. It’s in his hands and I said to him, ‘When you send me somebody, give him the other part of this.’ No, never. Everybody I ask, ‘No, I don’t have it.’ This is so easy. This is so easy. I tell you the truth. Yesterday, when Fred said to me, ‘Well, somebody from the States that call, well, I don’t know who they sent.’ I said to him, ‘Well, I am in so bad position in Germany here after what happened in Brussels, I cannot call the man and say, “Hello, my friend, how are you?” That is impossible for you.’ If you send somebody, I must be sure.”
“That he’s a friend.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“When you send somebody,” Ense said, “give him this when you send him. Then he’s okay.”
“Now, the telephone number I’m gonna tell him to call when he gets here will be Fred’s number.”
“Yes,” Ense said. “Only Fred’s number.”
“Where will you be?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he’s comin’ here, you’ll have to go very fast.”
“Sure,” Ense said, “because it costs a lot of money, of course.”
“No,” Rizzo said. “You see, he comes in here Friday, he stays one week.”
“Sure.”
“Next Friday, Saturday night, the man’s on the plane.”
“Yes.”
“The deal.”
“Yes.”
“You see him Sunday morning.”
“Yes.”
“By Monday, you go to the bank.”
“Six days. Good.”
“You know what I mean?”
“And if it is possible,” Ense said, “call the office of Fred and only say a friend comes. A friend comes on Monday, or Friday, whatever. Then we are informed that somebody comes.”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “Well, what I’ll do is even better than that. When the man is gonna come, he’ll call you up when he gets here. But if I call you, call the office and say, ‘Callin’ for Vincent’—you know, when you’re callin’ collect for Vincent—you’ll say he isn’t here. That means that somebody’s comin’. You know what I mean?”
“That’s all right,” Ense agreed.
“Oh,” Rizzo said, “another thing.”
“Yes?”
“The amount. The first amount I’m gonna send down here is fifty thousand.”
“Okay.”
“This way, everybody’s satisfied,” Ense said.
“That’s right. That’s it, all right.”
“Okay,” Ense said.
“No bullshit,” Rizzo said. “Then the next is a hundred, then a hundred five times.”
“Okay, okay,” Ense said. “But make it clear to the people over there, I don’t think we have more possibilities to do this here more than four times.”
“Okay.”
“Four times. I think then you are finished.”
“You can do it as long as you want,” Rizzo said. “What’s the most you want at one time?”
“Fifty to a hundred,” Ense said.
“Now,” Rizzo said, “when the man comes, you take care of him.”
“Sure,” Ense agreed.
“I’m just gonna send him over here with that and I’ll give him the hotel. As a matter of fact, he’ll stay at the Bayerischer Hof, and that’s it. As far as anything else, you take care of it.”
“You know,” Ense said, “when I did the deal with Ricky, the first deal, he didn’t know me and he gave me the treasury bills in my hand and I said to him, ‘Okay, Ricky, I go to Brussels and I call you from Brussels.’ I went to Brussels and then I called him. He was in the Bayerischer Hof, and I said, ‘Ricky, it takes seven or eight days.’ And then he made the biggest mistake. He came to Brussels and he said, ‘I come to the same hotel you are.’ And then he came to the same hotel and one of the Belgian people saw Ricky the whole time in the lobby of this hotel. He saw Ricky with me and he said to the bank, ‘I saw this American guy. He was in the same hotel and he was always in the same suit.’ He only had one suit with him.”
“He must have come from England,” Rizzo said.
“It was not necessary,” Ense complained. “A big mistake.”
“Forget it,” Rizzo said. “See, whatever you want, like you mentioned, you want the thing, you have to tell me exactly what you want.”
“I can always do something with note paper,” Ense said.
“Well,” Rizzo said, “if you want a loan, I can get a loan for you. But you have to tell me exactly what you want.”
Ense repeated that to Barg, who said in his slow, effortful English, “I think we must discuss this very good. You see, I am make very much mistake. I don’t know the business. I must speak to a German friend of mine. He was in the States, Christmas, because his daughter, she works there, she has a job in New York. He told me … what is the famous hotel in New York?”
“I dunno,” Rizzo said. “The Plaza?”
“No,” Barg said.
“The Waldorf-Astoria?”
“No, no, no. It was, uh …”
“The Pierre?”
“No.”
“In New York City?”
“In New York City, yes,” Barg said.
“The Hilton?”
“No.”
“The Barclay?”
“No. It was a very good hotel.” And then Barg went into a long story about how his friend had made an appointment to meet his daughter for lunch at a hotel restaurant, had waited in the restaurant nearly an hour for her to appear. He was still waiting when a waiter came to him and said that a young lady was sitting outside in the lobby. Barg’s friend asked the waiter to show her to the table. “I’m sorry,” the waiter said, “it’s only for men, a special restaurant only for men.”
“The interesting thing is,” Ense said when Barg finished his narrative, “she could give you a New York information. You need something, she is of the consideration. I know her name. I have her telephone number. It is easy to make an appointment with somebody of your people and her in New York.”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said, “as long as it’s small, very, very small.”
“Okay,” Ense said. “Then I may phone you?”
“You want me to get together with you and then we’ll find a place for settin’ up some kind of schedule for payin’ back this money,” Rizzo said. “I wanna know how much money I’m gettin’ now. I wanna go back Friday, Saturday.”
“Okay,” Ense said. “You get the hundred tomorrow.”
“All right,” Rizzo said.
There was the sound of paper rustling. “Now,” Ense said, “that we have the papers, we must have a name.”
“It’s Vincent,” Rizzo said.
“Wincent,” Ense said.
“Vincent,” Rizzo said a little more distinctly.
“Wincent,” Ense repeated.
“Vince.”
“Wince,” Ense agreed.
“Vince.”
“Wince.”
“V …”
“Wee-i-n-c—” Ense said.
“V …” Rizzo said sharply.
“Wee … Wee …” Ense said.
“V as in Victor.”
“Yes,” Ense said, “Wee as in Wictor, i-n-c … Wincent.”
“Shit,” Rizzo said.
“Okay,” Ense said. “And now, I must go now.” But, suddenly he remembered something else, something he wanted to clear up, a final thing that might, at last, put Rizzo on the defensive. He had cashed a check for Heshy Lebensfeld, but when he had deposited it in his bank, the check had been returned; it had bounced.
“Okay,” Rizzo said without much interest, “give it to me so I can put it in his mouth when I see him. You know what I did to the fink? How much money was it for? Four hundred fifty?”
“Everything is clear,” Ense said. “And now I must go. I meet you tomorrow after five o’clock.”
“Five o’clock sharp, or five-thirty?” Rizzo asked.
“No, no, a little after,” Ense said.
“You know one thing, Ense?”
“What?”
“You don’t talk like a German. When you say five o’clock, do you mean five o’clock, or six?”
“It is impossible to make it quite sure for five,” Ense said apologetically, “because it’s rush hour.”
“All right,” Rizzo said, “so make it for six.”
“Okay,” Ense agreed, “six o’clock sharp.”
“That’s why my friend …” Rizzo began.
“What?”
“When he calls up your office, he says, ‘I can speak to a German,’ ’cause he’s a German. He said, ‘He was tellin’ me about ten, eleven.’ He says, ‘You gotta be precise. It’s either ten o’clock or eleven.’”
“If you are at a hotel downtown, it is easy,” Ense explained.
“Yeah,” Rizzo said, “I figured this was good. This is away from everybody. I don’t want to go down there.”
“You must stay in the Palace?”
“Why not? Take a chance for a change.”
“Oh, it’s very good here, very, very good.”
“All right,” Rizzo said “look.…”
“Wincent,” Ense said, and there was the sound of chairs moving, bodies rising, “I must go now. Wincent, I am glad to meet you.”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “Get you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“So long, Wince.”