Shaking his head, seeming to be talking more to himself than to me, Vigano said, “I can’t believe any DA in the world would be this dumb. This is a stunt you worked out for yourself.”
“Sure it is,” I said. “And how can it hurt you? Your boys frisked me on the way in, I don’t have a recorder on me, and if I did it’s entrapment. I’m not crazy enough to just hand stuff over to you and expect two million dollars in cash right back, so we’ll have to work out intermediaries, safe methods, and that means you can’t possibly get picked up for fencing stolen goods.”
He was studying me hard now, trying to work me out. He said, “You mean you’re actually offering to go steal something, anything I want.”
“That you’ll pay two million for,” I said. “And that we can handle; I’m not going to get you an airplane.”
“I’ve got an airplane,” he said, and turned away from me to look toward the pins set up at the far end of the lane.
I could see him thinking it over. I felt I hadn’t said enough, hadn’t explained it right, but at the same time I knew the best thing to do right now was keep my mouth shut and let him work it out for himself.
The fact was, he had nothing to lose, and he should be smart enough to see it. If I was crazy or stupid or just a horse’s ass kidding around, it still wouldn’t cost Vigano anything to tell me what he’d be willing to buy from me. So long as I didn’t ask for an advance payment, it was strictly to Vigano’s advantage to play along with me.
I saw that understanding come into his face before he said anything. I watched him work it out, slowly and cautiously, looking for traps and mines the way somebody in his position would have to do, and I saw him come around finally to the understanding that there was nothing hidden underneath at all. I had come here asking a question, which it wouldn’t hurt him to answer. And if I was telling him a straight story, it might eventually profit him to answer. So why not?
He gave a sudden decisive nod, and looked at me with his heavy-lidded eyes, and said, “Securities.”
The word didn’t immediately make sense to me. All I could think of was security guards in stores and banks. I said, “Securities?”
“Treasury bonds,” he said. “Bearer bonds. No common stocks. Can you do it with an inside man?”
I said, “You mean Wall Street?”
“Sure Wall Street. You know anybody in a brokerage?”
I had been thinking all along it would be something in our own precinct, where we knew the territory. “No, I don’t,” I said. “Do I have to?”
Vigano shrugged and waved it away. His hands were surprisingly big and flat. “We’ll change the numbers,” he said. “Just make sure you don’t get me anything with a name on it.”
I said, “I don’t follow you.”
He breathed heavily, to show me how patient he was being. “If a certificate has the owner’s name on it,” he said, “I don’t want it. Only papers that say, ‘Pay to the bearer.’ ”
“Did you say Treasury bonds?”
“Right,” he said. “Them, or any other kind of bearer bond.”
I found myself interested in this in a separate way from the question of stealing things. I’d never heard of bearer bonds. I said, “You mean they’re like a different kind of money.”
Vigano grunted, with a little smile. “They are money,” he said.
I felt happy at the thought, the way I’d been happy in that rich woman’s apartment on Central Park West. “Rich people’s money,” I said.
Vigano grinned at me. I think we were both surprised at how well we were getting along with one another. “That’s right,” he said. “Rich people’s money.”
I said, “And you’ll buy them from us.”
“Twenty cents on the dollar,” he said.
That startled me. “A fifth?”
He shrugged. “I’m giving you a good price because you’re gonna deal in volume. Usually it’s ten cents on the dollar.”
I’d meant the percentage was low, not high. I said, “If it’s pay to bearer, why don’t I sell it myself?”
“You don’t know how to change the numbers,” he said. “And you don’t have the contacts to get the paper back into legitimate trade.”
He was right, on both counts. “All right,” I said. “So we’ll have to take ten-million-dollars’ worth to get two million from you.”
“Nothing too big,” he said. “No certificate over a hundred thousand.”
“How big do they get?” I asked him. This whole thing was heady stuff.
“U.S. Treasury bonds go up to a million,” he said. “But they’re impossible to peddle.”
I couldn’t help it; I was awed and I had to show it. “A million dollars,” I said.
“Stick to the small stuff,” Vigano told me. “Hundred grand and down.”
A hundred thousand dollars was small stuff. I felt my mind shifting around to that point of view, and doing it with the greatest pleasure. Years ago there was a show on Broadway called Beyond the Fringe and they did a bit from it on television one time that I saw. (I’ve never seen a Broadway show.) The bit was a monologue by an English miner, and at one point he said something like, “In my childhood I wasn’t surrounded by the trappings of luxury, I was surrounded by the trappings of poverty. My problem is I had the wrong trappings.” That line stayed with me over the years because it was exactly the way I felt; I was surrounded by the wrong trappings. And any time I found myself in the midst of the right trappings, it made me very happy.
Vigano was watching me. “You got the idea now?” he said.
Business; back to business. “Yes,” I said. “Bearer bonds, no larger than a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Right.”
“Now,” I said, “about payment.”
“Get the stuff first,” he said.
“Give me a number to call. One that isn’t tapped.”
Vigano said, “Give me your number.”
“Not a chance,” I said. “I already said I don’t want you to know who I am. Besides, my wife isn’t in on it.”
He looked at me with a surprised grin. “Your wife isn’t in on it,” he said. The grin got wider, and then he laughed out loud, and then he said, “Your wife isn’t in on it. All of a sudden, I believe you’re on the level.”
Everything had shifted. He’d made me feel like a fool, and I wasn’t even sure why. Angry, but trying not to show it, I said, “I am on the level.”
His grin faded away and he got serious again. Reaching over to the score table, he picked up a ballpoint pen and a small blank memo pad. He extended them to me, saying, “Here. I’ll give you a number to write down.”
He wouldn’t put his own handwriting on even a telephone number. I took the pad and pen and waited.
He said, “It’s in Manhattan. Six nine one, nine nine seven oh.”
I wrote it down.
He said, “You call that number from inside Manhattan; no interborough, no long distance. You ask is Arthur there, they’ll say no. You call from a phone booth, or some phone you’re sure of. You leave your number, Arthur should call you back. You’ll hear from me within fifteen minutes. If you don’t, I’m not around, try again later.”
I nodded. “All right.”
“When you call,” he said, “you say your name is Mister Kopp. K-O-P-P.”
I grinned a little. “That’s easy to remember.”
“But don’t call me with questions,” he said. “You do it or you don’t. If you take ten million in securities from Wall Street, I’ll read about it in the paper. Otherwise, if I get a message from you I don’t answer.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s okay.”
“Nice talking to you,” he said, and picked up his beer glass again. He hadn’t offered me one.
He wanted the conversation to be finished, so I got to my feet. “You’ll be hearing from me,” I said. I knew it was bravado to say it, and that it didn’t make me look any better, but I went ahead and said it anyway.