Read Online At End of Day by George V. Higgins - Free Book Online Page A

them. So there was that element of danger to it, but basically it was entirely
his
business.
    “After nineteen fifty, say, if you went to Toby’s and you bought a paper, you were still buying it from Toby, the person, but if you bought the number, you understood that you were buying it from Brian. Still the same number; found it in the same place—last three digits of the Treasury balance, back page of the
Record
Seven Races. Mathematically, nine ninety-nine to one against you; the payoff if you hit was six hundred to one.
    “That aspect of the business Toby now ran for Brian. Brian’s runner picked up the play in the afternoon. Brian’s runner brought back any payoffs the same night. Toby had the same interest in the number you bought as he did the bottle Coke yougot for a nickel out of the machine; he let the Coca-Cola people put it in and keep it filled: he got a commission. Didn’t have to keep the numbers bankroll in the shop anymore—someone hit the number, Brian’s runner brought the payoff around. But now no one in his right mind even
thought
about sticking Toby up—that’d be robbing Brian G., which’d amount to signing your death warrant.
    “If you hit a run of bad luck bettin’ on the ponies with Tommy the Book—lost a little more’n you could pay right off and couldn’t borrow it from the credit union—that’d mean you’d have to tell the wife, and she didn’t know you bet? You’d go down Butchie Morgan’s after work on Monday night and borrow it from Jakie Doyle. You probably asked Jake for two hundred—the hundred you’re down with Tom, plus another hundred, planning to get back what you already lost, plus a fat profit from investing on this other horse on Saturday you
know
is a sure thing. This’s called ‘digging your hole a little deeper.’ The second horse turns out to be a dog too, naturally, so on your payday every week after that for forty weeks ’til you got Jakie paid off, you gave him fifteen bucks.
    “That didn’t hurt too much and it seemed reasonable enough. Five bucks came off the deuce you borrowed. That went back into Jake’s bankroll. This was Brian’s capital investment in the business, and a very good one, too, as long as there were pigeons like you dumb or desperate enough to pay six bucks to borrow five for a week.
    “Ten of your fifteen dollars was the interest, five percent per week of the two-hundred-dollar whole amount, no matter how much you’d already paid back. Jakie put two dollars in his own pocket for his trouble and gave eight bucks to Brian, because the two hundred bucks you got from Jake to pay Tom was Brian’s return on his investment with Jake.
    “In the event you didn’t pay Jake, and Jakie couldn’t reason with you, well then, Jakie would tell Brian, and Brian’d send a guy around to see you. He would either make you pay, make you bleed, or make you lame. Sometimes when you couldn’t pay he’d make you choose what you did instead. For some reason this did not make it hurt less. Sometime in the late fifties, early sixties, McKeach became that guy. So, after Brian G. got things organized to his satisfaction, it all still looked the same—you still bought the same things from the same people. But the profits went to Brian.
    “McKeach’s nowhere near as smart as Brian was. He was just cute enough to see that Brian had a weakness. Brian drew the line at certain things, such as shooting a cop or ambushing a prosecutor. Double-crossing your godfather or your rabbi or your friend, unless he did something to you first. Deadly force Brian would use only on someone who gave him no choice. A competitor who wouldn’t back off? A friend who decided to go into business for himself on Brian’s turf? He became a competitor. And even then, Brian didn’t like to do it. He would’ve looked at you funny, if you’d asked him why he didn’t want to scrag anyone but a competitor—and that was how he would’ve put it—that he didn’t want to. Not