The Moneychangers

Juanita stumbled, striking her legs painfully again, and would have fallen, but hands seized her.

One of the voices she had already heard ordered,

"Goddamn' walk"

With the blindfold still in place, moving clumsily, her fears remained centered on Estela.

She was conscious of footsteps her own, others resounding on concrete.

Suddenly the floor fell away and she stumbled, partly held, partly shoved down stairs.

At the bottom, more walking.

Abruptly she was pushed backward off balance, her legs shooting out until the fall was stopped by a hard wooden chair.

The same voice as before told someone,

"Take off the shade and tape."

She felt the movement of hands, and fresh pain as the tape was pulled carelessly away from her mouth. The blindfold loosened, then Juanita blinked as darkness gave way to a bright light directed into her eyes. She gasped only, ''Por Dios! where is my…" when a fist struck her.

"Save the singing," one of the car voices said.

"When we tell ye, y'll spill plenty."

There were certain things which Tony Bear Marino liked.

One was erotic sex by his standards, erotic meant things women did to him which made him feel superior and themselves degraded.

Another was cockfighting the bloodier the better.

He enjoyed detailed, graphic reports of gangland beatings and executions which he ordered, though he was careful to stay away from evidential involvement.

Another, though milder, taste was for one-way glass.

Tony Bear Marina so liked one-way (or mirror pane) glass, which permitted him to observe without being seen, that he had it installed in multiple places his cars, business premises, hangouts including the Double-Seven Health Club, and his secluded, guarded home.

In the house, a bathroom and toilet which women visitors used had an entire wall of one-way glass.

From the bathroom side it was a handsome mirror, but on the other was a small closed room in which Tony Bear would sit, enjoying a cigar and the personal privacies unknowingly revealed to him.

Because of his obsession, some one-way glass had been installed at the counterfeiting center and though, out of normal caution, he seldom went there, it had proved useful occasionally, as was the case now.

The glass was built into a half-wall in effect a screen.

Through it he could see the Nunez woman, facing him and tied to a chair.

Her face was bruised and bleeding, and she was disheveled.

Beside her was her child, secured to another chair, the little girl's face chalk white.

A few minutes ago, when Marino learned the child had been brought in, he exploded angrily, not because he cared about children he didn't but because he smelled trouble.

An adult could be eliminated, if necessary, with virtually no risk, but killing a child was something else.

It would cause squeamishness among his own people, and emotion and danger afterward if rumors leaked.

Tony Bear had already made a decision on the subject; it related to the blindfold precautions taken while coming here.

He was also satisfied to be out of sight himself.

Now he lit a cigar and watched.

Angelo, one of Tony Bear's bodyguards who had been in charge of the pick-up operation, leaned over the woman.

Angelo was an ex-prize fighter who had never made the big time but was built like a rhino. He had thick, protruding lips, was a bully and enjoyed what he was doing.

"Okay, you two-bit hooker, start talkie'."

Juanita, who had been straining to see Estela, turned her head toward him. "De que'? Talk, what about?" "Whassa name o' da guy who phoned ya from the Double-Seven?"

A flicker of understanding crossed Juanita's face. Tony Bear saw it and knew it would be only a matter of time, not long at that, before they had the information.

"You bastard!… Animal" Juanita spat at Angelo. ''Canalla! I know of no Double-Seven."

Angelo hit her hard, so that blood ran from her nose and the corner of her mouth. Juanita's head drooped. He seized her hair, holding her face up while he repeated,

"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.