Libra - Don Delillo [116]
“You have to resolve in your own mind who you want to owe this money to. It is not found money. I have structured a deal here that I am not looking to pull in five points a week like the neighborhood loanshark. We are talking about a forty-thousand-dollar loan. We are speaking in a range of one thousand dollars a week vigorish.”
“Which is ninety-two thousand total after one year.”
“Or you keep paying the vig.”
“Till my balls drop off.”
“This is correct, Jack.”
“Just to say. What if I can’t pay one week?”
“One week, they will let it ride. They don’t want to pop you on the head, Jack. They let it ride.”
“Two, three weeks.”
“The procedure you would do here is take out a second loan. This is not a good idea because you would pay the vig on one amount while they are actually giving you a lesser amount. Frankly, do you want my advice?”
“What?”
“Frankly, don’t take the loan. You can’t make a vig like that with your kind of operation that you’re running here. You will fall deep into the pit.”
“It’s my pit, Jack.”
“It’s your pit but it’s not your money.”
“What happens, just saying, if I miss five weeks, six weeks?”
“If you are bled totally dry and white, they will simply stop the clock. Which is, pay the principal, forget the interest. In other words this fellow is known to us and we will settle for a piece of his business plus the original sum. They don’t want to blow up the building.”
“But they will grab my business.”
“This is the ballfield you’re playing on.”
“What if I can’t pay the principal?”
“Jack, this is what I’m telling you. I’m saying explore other avenues.”
“A bank would make a credit check. They won’t give me ten cents.”
“Think of friends, relatives. Take a partner into the business.”
“I can’t work with other people. I already have backers. My sister manages the Vegas for me. We fight all the time.”
“You strike me a little unreasonable. You have to grasp a major point. You are not outfit, Jack. Understand connected.”
The drums were going out front.
“All right. Say this. I am willing to go for five hundred a week interest over one year when the convention business will pick up by then.”
“I structured a serious deal here.”
“Jack, take it to them and tell them. Mention I talk to Tony Push all the time. He has the reputation he’s very close to Carmine Latta. ”
“Carmine is not in loanshark in a big way.”
“I am only saying make a statement that I am known to Tony Astorina. ”
Karlinsky looked at him. A silent countdown. Then he said he would do whatever Jack asked. He had a deep, smooth and reasonable voice, gone hollow now, and a house with a giant searchlight, and a perfect turquoise pool, and four daughters and a son, and Jack Ruby wondered if this is what it takes to look invincible.
They shook hands in the doorway and then the older man stepped back into the office, briefly, as if he had a happy secret to reveal.
“The jacket is mohair. Look.”
Then they walked to the head of the narrow stairway that led down to the street. They shook hands again. The saxophone was blatting. Jack took a Preludin with a glass of water at the bar for a favorable future outlook. Then he walked among the tables to mingle with the crowd. What is the point of running a club if you can’t do that?
Dinner at home was a quiet affair with harpsichord concertos on the stereo and conversation coming in small runs. Beryl watched her husband raise the wineglass to his lips. Larry didn’t drink his wine. He chewed it. To savor the tonality—the dryness, or the wetness. This is how we build a civilization, he liked to say. We chew our wine.
“You don’t look happy,” she said. “You haven’t looked happy in a while. I want you to feel good again. Say something funny.”
“You’re the funny one.”
“I am always the funny one, the strange one, the tiny one. I want you to assume one of these thankless roles.”
They ate in silence for some moments.
“Remember the missile flap?” he said. “It’s about ten months now since U-2 planes photographed offensive missiles in Cuba. Guess what? They’ve come up with