This particular journey to the land of his birth looked to be a fairly easy one, and profitable. The last time he’d worked with Parker it had been anything but profitable, but that hadn’t been Parker’s fault, and Sternberg didn’t hold it against him. This job looked much more likely to provide another year or two of comfort in SW6.
The problem with the job was that it was taking too long. Sternberg had pretended to be other people before in the course of a heist a telephone repairman, a fire department inspector but never for five hours. From eight P.M. till one A.M., in this confined space on the Spirit of the Hudson,essentially on his own since Parker and Wycza’s job was just to stand around looking tough and competent, Lou Sternberg not only had to be a politician and a Brooklynite, he also had to be a bad-tempered boor. He actually was bad-tempered at times, he had to admit, but he’d never been a politician or a Brooklynite, and he certainly hoped he had never been a boor.
Ah, well. Dinner passed, the turnaround at Poughkeepsie passed, the inspections of the casino and the kitchens and the purser’s office and the promenades and the game room and the laughable library and all the rest of it slowly passed. The engine room was interesting, being more like a windowless control tower than like anything purporting to be a steamship’s engine room Sternberg had ever seen in the movies. And through it all, he maintained this sour and offensive persona.
There were reasons for it. First, the original was like this. Second, bad temper keeps other people off balance, and they never believe the person being difficult is lyingin some way; rudeness is always seen as bona fide. And the third reason was the money room.
There’d been only one real fight so far, the one over the handguns, and Sternberg had won that, as he’d expected to. The money room would be another fight accessto the money room was almost certain to be a fight and by the time they got there Sternberg wanted the entire ship’s complement to be convinced that if they argued with this son of a bitch assemblyman, they lost.
Of course, if Susan Cahill had led them straight to the money room at nine-thirty or ten, it would have been a real waste, because most of the money wouldn’t have arrived yet, but they’d assumed that she wouldn’t want to mention the money room at all, and so far she hadn’t.
Twelve-fifteen, and not a single goddam thing left to look at. The last place they inspected was the nurse’s office, and found she was well equipped in there for first-level treatment of medical emergencies, and also had a direct-line radio to the medevac helicopter at Albany Hospital, probably for when winners had heart attacks. Sternberg stretched the moment by congratulating her on her readiness and enquiring into her previous work history, and unbent so far he could feel the curmudgeon facade start to crack.
So finally they came out of her office, and it was only twelve-fifteen, and Cahill said, “Well, Mister Assemblyman, that’s it. You’ve seen it all. And now, if you wouldn’t consider it a bribe” and she beamed on him, jolly and sexy “the captain would love to buy you a drink.”
Sure he would. Too early, too early. What should he do? This was Sternberg’s call alone, he couldn’t confer with the other two, couldn’t even take time to look at them. Accept a drink? Should he stall another half an hour that way, then all at once remember the money room and demand to see it? Or go with it now, knowing they’d be cutting their take by about forty-five minutes worth of money?
Go now, he decided. Go now because they were in a movement here, a flow, and it would be best to just keep it going, not let it break off and then later try to start it up again. And go now because he was tired of being Mister Assemblyman. “We’re not quite finished,” he said. “When we arefinished, if there’s still time, I’ll be very happy to join you and the captain you will join us, won’t you? in a drink.”
Either she was bewildered, or she did bewilderment well. “Not finished? But you’ve seen everything.”
“I haven’t seen,” he said, “where the money goes. It’s still on the ship, is it not?”
She looked stricken. “Oh, Mister Assemblyman, we can’t do that.”
He gave her his most suspicious glare. “Can’t do what?”
“That room,” she said, “you see, that room is completely closed away, for security reasons, nobodycan get into that room.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “There must be people in there. How do they get out?”
“They have their own door on the side of the ship,” she explained, “with access direct to the dock and the armored car, when we land.”
He said, “You’re telling me there’s no way in or out of that place, whatever the place is”
“The money room,” she said. “It’s called the money room.”
“Because that’s the whole point of the operation, isn’t it?” he demanded. “The money. And what happens to it next.”
“Mister Assemblyman, the company’s books are”
“Very attractive, I have no doubt,” he interrupted. “Ms. Cahill, do you suddenly have something to hide from me? The very cruxof this matter is what happens to gambling money once it has been lost to the casino operator.”
“Mister Kotkind,” she said, voice rising, forgetting to call him by his title, “we hide nothingon this ship! Every penny is accounted for.”
“And yet you tell me there’s no access to the, what did you call it, money room. And if this ship were to sink, the people in that money room would simply die? If it caught fire? Is thatwhat you’re telling me? You have human beings in that room, and their safety is at risk for money?”
“Of course not.” She was scrambling now, not sure how to stay ahead of him. “They can unlock themselves out if it’s absolutely necessary.”
“And unlock others in,” he insisted. “I haven’t even seen the doorto this place. Is there”
“It has its own staircase,” she said reluctantly, “down from the restroom area, with a guard at the top and a verylocked door at the bottom.”
“Oh, does it. And I assume that door has, like any apartment in my district in Brooklyn, an intercom beside the door, and a bell. You can ring that bell and explain the situation and they can open up and let me in to inspect that room and I can see for myselfwhat’s happening with that money.”
“Mister Ambas Assemblyman, I
” She shook her head, and moved her hands around.
“And without,”he told her, as heavily as any prosecutor, “warning them ahead of time that they are going to be observed.”
She’d run out of things to say, but she still didn’t want to give in. She was desperate, confused, blind-sided but not yet defeated. She stood staring at Sternberg, trying to find a way out.
No; no way out. He let the full flood of his exasperation wash over her: “Ms. Cahill, do I have to go to the captain?This absolutely corepart of my inspection you are unreasonably denying me, and you claim there’s nothing to hide? Is thatwhat I must take back to the assembly with me and report to my colleagues? Shall I explain what my report is going to be to the captain?”
Silence. Cahill took a deep breath. Her previously perfect complexion was blotched. She sighed. “Very well, Mister Assemblyman,” she said. “Come along.”
8
As far as George Twill was concerned, no matter who upstairs won or lost, he himself was the luckiest person on this ship. He was fifty-one years of age, and he’d been more than two years out of a job, after the State Street in Albany branch of Merchants Bank downsized him. Twenty-two years of steady employment, and boom. Unemployment insurance gone, severance pay almost used up, savings dwindling, no jobs anywhere. Supermarket assistant manager; movie theater manager; parking garage manager; even motel desk clerk: every job went to somebody else. George was feeling pretty desperate by the time he joined the hundreds of other people who responded to the newspaper ad for jobs on this ship, to fill in for the people who hadn’t traveled with it up from the south. And he got the job. Teller in the money room, so here he was a teller again, though a very different kind of teller from before. But the people in the money room had to not only have some banking background but they also needed solid reputations, because they’d be bonded, so that was why George Twill was at last employed again, at better than his old salary at the bank. And thisjob wouldn’t be taken over by an ATM machine.