The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [74]
With respectability.
With invisibility.
There were twenty-seven members now. All of them were up on the eighty-sixth floor of the Trade Center…
The Old Guard of organized crime was no longer operating. All that had changed in Atlantic City. There was too much money, too much political influence involved to trust it to crime chiefs. Sixty-five billion dollars was put on the table every year; that was the profit from organized crime around the world—enough to pay off the banking debts of entire countries.
Sixty-five billion dollars. In profits.
The evolution of leadership had actually been taking place for a decade. First it had happened in Western Europe; then in the Far East; finally in the United States, where the mob had been strongest, and also had government ties going as far back as the OSS.
The original Club had included nothing but the Old Guard of crime—the powerful and erratic dons and bosses. Then, Alexandre St.-Germain had begun to shape a new direction. The Club had taken on “advisers” from Wall Street and all over Europe. Only St.-Germain operated in both the old world and the new.
Now the advisers, plus Alexandre St.-Germain, were the Club.
The words of a speech flowed through St.-Germain’s head as the elevator rose through the Trade Center. This will be my second formal speech in two days, he considered. The price of respectability.
Look around you, he planned to say to the august group gathered in a suite overlooking New York Harbor. Think about the differences between the old order and the new. We make billions of dollars by giving speeches, by holding business meetings, by attending political caucuses and dinners. How different that is from the syndicates of the past. How important to the recharging of the world’s money supply, the world’s cash flow.
For twenty days I was dead. Just as the old ways are dead. From today on, there will be a more organized way for us to do business. The world’s governments are limited by their own internal politics; by absurd, almost Neanderthal policies for dealing with one another. We have no such restraints. We are the most efficient, the wealthiest, and most powerful governing body in the world.
Our policy will be to maintain tight control of the world’s economic markets. New York. London. Los Angeles. Paris. São Paulo. Frankfurt, Rome, Amsterdam, Tokyo. Hong Kong. The cities from which you come. We will move on to control the Third World at some time in the future.
Look around you and think about this. There is no one who can stop us from taking whatever we want.
At eight o’clock, Alexandre St.-Germain swung open the glass doors leading into a sun-drenched conference room. Inside the well-appointed room, they were quietly waiting for him.
The club members had taken their places on either side of an oval, polished glass conference table. Most of the men were outfitted in dark expensive suits, the women in conservative dresses. The group had the look and feel of money; of real money; of power without any limits.
To the surprise of Alexandre St.-Germain, the twenty-seven members rose as he entered the room. They stood, and they applauded. The newly constituted Midnight Club had finally been called to order.
That night, a dark blue Cadillac eased to a stop in front of 10 East Seventy-fourth Street, two doors from the wilds of Central Park. A stretch limo parked in front of the federal-style town house wasn’t an unusual sight. Number 10 seemed to get more than its share of expensive cars, even in a neighborhood of prestigious foundations, embassies, and consulates.
The wrought-iron front door of the town house finally swung open. Four strikingly beautiful, very young girls came outside. The girls were talking and laughing as they hurried to the waiting car.
The Cadillac limousine quietly slid north on Park Avenue, then picked up speed onto the FDR. The girls were asked to put on black satin sleeping masks during the ride up into Westchester.
72
Alexandre St.-Germain; Bedford Hills
INSIDE THE DARK paneled library of an estate house in Westchester,