361 - Donald E. Westlake [37]
“You said something about this being where I came in.”
“Damn right.” He stopped and laughed. “You know, I’m not used to all this talking, all at once like this. It makes me thirsty. And I’m not used to this Kings & Lords, whatever it is.”
“House of Lords.”
“Yeah. I can feel it in my head already, and what is this, my third?”
“Third, yes.”
“Let’s make it fourth.”
We did, and he said, “The twenties, those were the years. We organized faster than the law, that was the main thing. We were one jump ahead all the time. Until this income tax thing, and I tell you that was unfair. That was a cheat. I’ve got no respect for the Federal Government; if you can’t get a man fair, you just can’t get him, you see what I mean? Now, who in the whole damn country ever filled out a tax form honest? Up till then, I mean.” He shook his head. “No respect for them at all, they don’t go by the rules. Anyway, the point was, we all got organized and we had thirteen good years, and then along came Repeal and we had a tough time getting readjusted, you know? Like the March of Dimes, when this Salk vaccine came along. Shot their disease right out from under them, huh? They had to go quick find some other disease. Same as us. Liquor’s legal again, so there isn’t the profit in it any more. So we’re diversifying, there’s dope and there’s gambling and there’s whores. Gambling’s best, it’s safest. The other two, dope and whores, the people you have to deal with, by the very nature of the business they’re unreliable. You see what I mean?”
I nodded, while he paused and drank.
“Of course,” he said, “there’s also the unions. Lepke led the way in that field, around from strikebreakers to trade associations to pocket unions. But Dewey got him, in ’44. Four years after the Federals got me. Frankly, I was one of the people always thought Lepke overdid it. He gave Anastasia more work than you can imagine. Lists of fifteen, twenty people at a time. After a while, it got so that was all he was doing, making up lists of people for Anastasia’s group to kill. So the unions are something else again. It’s a funny thing, that’s the only area with the legitimate base—you know, there’s nothing illegal about unions to begin with, like there is with gambling and narcotics and whores—but it’s the worst for killing and breaking things up. You know what I mean? The only area where just an innocent citizen who doesn’t have anything to do with anything can get beat up or shot, because of where he works or something like that.”
“What’s all this got to do with me?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m goddamned, boy, this House of Lords is going right up into my head. I can feel the fumes going right up into my head. The point was, I was trying to give you some of the background, you know what I mean? ’33, Repeal, it all started to fall apart. Everybody’s looking for a new way to make a living, fighting it out for territory and what’s whose and all. And Dewey came along to make life tough. And then the Federal Government, with this cheating income tax thing. A lot of us got moved out, one way or the other. Died or retired or went to jail or one thing and another. And these new people came in. Businessmen, you know what I mean? Respectable. No more of this blood bath stuff, that’s what they wanted. Just a quiet business. Buy your protection and run your business, and let it go at that. I could see it in the papers, all through the forties, everything quieting down. Like a few years ago, the meeting at Appalachin. I could see in the papers and the magazines, everybody was surprised. Like nobody knew there was a mob any more. It called itself the Syndicate now, and people figured it wasn’t real, you know what I mean? Here’s a guy, he runs a bottling plant for soft drinks, and he’s got sixty-five guys out to his house