It was nothing like the movies. The grand jury seemed to be a mass of people sitting in rows of folding chairs. Not in a jury box or anything. The district attorney stood by a desk with sheets of paper he read from. There was a stenotype reporter sitting at a tiny desk with his machine on it. I was directed to sit on a chair that was on a little raised platform so that the jury could see me clearly. It was almost as if I were the ladderman in a baccarat pit.
The district attorney was a young guy dressed in a very conservative black suit with a white shirt and neatly knotted sky blue tie. He had thick black hair and very pale skin. I didn’t know his name, and never knew it. His voice was very calm and very detached as he asked me questions. He was just putting information into the record, not trying to impress the jury.
He didn’t even come near me when he asked his questions, just stood by his desk. He established my identity and my job.
“Mr. Merlyn,” he said, “did you ever solicit money from anyone for any reason whatsoever?”
“No,” I said. I looked at him and the jury members right in the eye as I gave my answers. I kept my face serious, though for some reason I wanted to smile. I was still high.
The district attorney said, “Did you receive any money from anyone in order for him to be enlisted in the six months’ Army Reserve program?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you have any knowledge of any other person’s receiving money contrary to law in order to receive preferred treatment in any way?”
“No,” I said, still looking at him and the mass of people sitting so uncomfortably on their small folding chairs. The room was an interior room and dark with bad lighting. I couldn’t really make out their faces.
“Do you have any knowledge of any superior officer or anyone else at all using special influence to get someone into the six months’ program when his name was not on the waiting lists kept by your office?”
I knew he would ask a question like that. And I had thought about whether I should mention the congressman who had come down with the heir of the steel fortune and made the major toe the line. Or tell how the Reserve colonel and some of the other Reserve officers had put their own friends’ sons on the list out of turn. Maybe that would scare off the investigators or divert attention to those higher-ups. But then I realized that the reason the FBI was taking all this trouble was to uncover higher-ups, and if that happened, the investigation would be intensified. Also, the whole affair would acquire more importance to the newspapers if a congressman were involved. So I had decided to keep my mouth shut. If I were indicted and tried, my lawyer could always use that information. So now I shook my head and said, “No.”
The district attorney shuffled his papers and then said, without looking at me, “That will be all. You’re excused.” I got out of my chair and stepped down and left the jury room. And then I realized why I was so cheerful, so high, almost delighted.
I had been a magician, really. All those years when everybody was sailing along, taking bribes without a worry in the world, I had peered into the future and foreseen this day. These questions, this courthouse, the FBI, the specter of prison. And I had cast spells against them. I had hidden my money with Cully. I had taken great pains not to make enemies among all the people I had done illegal business with. I had never explicitly asked for any definite sum of money. And when some of my customers had stuffed me, I had never chased them. Even Mr. Hemsi after promising to make me happy for the rest of my life. Well, he had made me happy just by getting his son not to testify. Maybe that’s what had turned the trick, not Cully. Except that I knew better. It was Cully who had got me off the hook. But OK, even if I had needed a little help, I was still a magician. Everything had happened exactly as I knew it would. I was really proud of myself. I didn’t care that maybe I was just a slick hustler who took intelligent precautions.
Chapter 21
When Cully got off the plane, he took a taxi to a famous bank in Manhattan. He looked at his watch. It was after 10 A.M. Gronevelt would be making his call right now to the vice-president of the bank that Cully was delivering the money to.
Everything was as planned. Cully was ushered into the vice-president’s office, and behind closed, locked doors, he delivered the briefcase.
The vice-president opened it with his key and counted out the million dollars in front of Cully. Then he filled out a bank deposit slip, scribbled his signature on it and gave the slip of paper to Cully. They shook hands and Cully left. A block away from the bank he took a prepared, stamped envelope out of his jacket pocket and put the slip into it and sealed the envelope. Then he dropped it into a mailbox on the corner. He wondered how the whole thing worked, how the vice-president covered the drop and who picked up the money. Someday he would have to know.
– -
Cully and Merlyn met in the Oak Room of the Plaza. They didn’t talk about the problem until they had finished lunch and then walked through Central Park. Merlyn told Cully the whole story, and Cully nodded his head and made some sympathetic remarks. From what he could gather it was strictly a small-time grifter’s operation that the FBI had stumbled onto. Even if Merlyn were convicted, he would get only a suspended sentence. There wasn’t that much to worry about. Except that Merlyn was such a square guy he’d be ashamed of having a conviction on his record. That should be the worst of his worries, Cully thought.
When Merlyn mentioned Paul Hemsi, the name rang a bell in Cully’s head. But now, as they walked through Central Park and Merlyn told him about the meeting with Hemsi Senior in the garment center, everything clicked. One of the many garment center tycoons who came to Vegas for long weekends and the Christmas and New Year holidays, Charles Hemsi was a big gambler and a devoted cunt man. Even when he came to Vegas with his wife, Cully had to arrange for Charlie Hemsi to get a piece. Right on the floor of the casino with Mrs. Hemsi playing roulette, Cully would slip the key, its room-numbered wooden plaque attached, into Charlie Hemsi’s hand. Cully would whisper what time the girl would be in the room.
Charlie Hemsi would wander out to the coffee shop to escape his wife’s suspicious eye. From the coffee shop he would saunter down the long labyrinth of hotel corridors to the room numbered on the key plaque. Inside the room he would find a luscious girl waiting for him. It would take less than a half hour. Charlie would give the girl a black hundred-dollar chip, then, thoroughly relaxed, saunter down the blue-carpeted corridors into the casino. He would pass by the roulette table and watch his wife gamble, give her a few encouraging words, some chips, never the blacks, then plunge joyfully back into the wild melee of the crap tables. A big, bluff, good-natured guy, a lousy gambler who nearly always lost, a degenerate gambler who never quit when he was ahead. Cully had not remembered him immediately because Charlie Hemsi had been trying to take the cure.