Arthur Hailey - The Moneychangers

Margot was seated there alone, waiting until Mr. Vandervoort could leave. "Miss Bracken," Juanita said, speaking softly, "you once told me that if I had a problem I could come and talk to you."

"Of course, Juanita. Do you have one now?" Her small face creased in worry. "Yes, 1 think so."

"What kind of problem?" "If you don't mind, could we talk somewhere else?" Juanita was watching Wainwright, near the vault on the opposite side of the bank.

He seemed about to end a conversation. 'When come to my office," Margot said. ''When would you like to make it?" They agreed on Monday evening.

17

The reel of tape, retrieved from the DoubleSeven Health Club, had been lying there on the shelf above the test bench for six days.

Wizard Wong had looked at the tape several times, reluctant to wipe out what was on it, yet uneasy about passing on the information.

Nowadays, recording any telephone conversation was risky.

Even riskier was to play the recording back for someone else.

Yet Marino, Wizard was certain, would very much like to hear a portion of that tape, and would pay well for the privilege.

Whatever else Tony Bear Marino might be, he was generous about payment for good service, which was the one reason Wizard did work for him periodically.

Marino was a professional crook, he was aware. Wong himself was not. Wizard (his real first name was Wayne, though no one who knew him ever used it) was a young, clever, second-generation Chinese-American.

He was also an electronics audio expert, specializing in the detection of electronic surveillance.

His genius in the subject had earned him his name. For a long list of clients,

Wong provided guarantees that their business premises and homes were not bugged, their phones untapped, their privacy from surreptitious electronics inviolate.

With surprising frequency he did discover planted listening devices and when it happened his clients were impressed and grateful.

Despite official assurances to the contrary including some recent presidential ones bugging and wiretapping in the U.S. continued to be widespread and flourishing.

Heads of industrial companies retained Wong's services.

So did bankers, newspaper publishers, presidential candidates, some big-name lawyers, a foreign embassy or two, a handful of U.S. senators, three state governors, and a Supreme Court justice.

Then there were the other executives the Don of a Mafia family, his consiglieri, and various wheels at a slightly lower level, of whom Tony Marino was one.

To his criminal clients Wizard Wong made one thing plain: He wanted no part of their illicit activities; he was making an excellent living within the law. However, he saw no reason for them to be denied his services, since bugging was almost always illegal, and even criminals were entitled to protect themselves by lawful means.

This ground rule was accepted and worked well. Just the same, his organized crime clients intimated to Wizard from time to time that any usable information he acquired as a result of his work would be appreciated and rewarded. And occasionally he had passed on tidbits of knowledge in return for money, yielding to that oldest and simplest of all temptations greed.

He was being tempted by it now. A week and a half ago, Wizard Wong had made a routine anti-bug survey of Marino's haunts and telephones.

These included the Double-Seven Health Club where Marino had a financial interest. In course of the survey which showed everything to be clean Wizard amused himself by briefly bugging one of the club lines, a practice which he sometimes followed, rationalizing that he owed it to himself and his clients to maintain his own technical expertise. For the purpose he chose a pay phone on the health club's main floor. Through forty-eight hours Wizard left a tape recorder spliced across the pay-phone circuit, the recorder hidden in the basement of the Double-Seven.

It was a type which switched itself on and off each time the phone was used.

Though the action was illegal, Wizard reasoned that it didn't matter since no one but himself would hear the tape played back.

However, when he did play it, one conversation, especially, intrigued him.

Now, on Saturday afternoon, and alone in-his sound lab, he took the tape from the shelf above the test bench, put it on a machine and listened to that portion once again.

A coin was inserted, a number dialed. The sound of dialing was on the tape. A ringing tone. One ring only. A woman's voice (soft, with slight accent):

Hello. A male voice (whispering): You know who this is. But don't use names. The woman's voice: Yes. The first voice (still whispering):

Tell our mutual friend I've discovered something important here. Really important. It's most of what he wanted to know. I can't say more, but I'll come to you tomorrow night. A woman's voice: All right. A click.

The caller, in the Double-Seven Health Club, had hung up. Wizard Wong wasn't sure why he thought Tony Bear Marino would be interested.

He simply had a hunch, and his hunches had paid off before. Making up his mind, he consulted a private notebook, went to a telephone and called a number. Tony Bear, it transpired, could not see him until late Monday afternoon.

Wizard made an arrangement for then and having committed himself set out to extract more information from the tape. He rewound it, then carefully played it several times again.

"Judas Priestl" Tony Bear Marino's husky, thick features contorted in a savage scowl. His incongruous falsetto voice rose even higher than usual.

"You had that goddam tape, and you sat on your goddam ass a week before you came herel" Wizard Wong said defensively,

"I'm a technician, Mr. Marino.

Mostly, the things I hear are none of my bustness.

But after a while I got to thinking this one was different." He was relieved in one sense.

At least there had been no angry reaction because he had bugged a Double-Seven line.

"Next time," Marino snarled, "think faster!"

Today was Monday. They were at the trucking terminal where Marino maintained an office and, on the desk between them, was a portable tape player which Wong had just switched off.

Before Coming here he had re-recorded the significant part of the original tape, transferring it to a cassette, then erased the rest.

Tony Bear Marino, in shirtsleeves in the stuffy, heated office, appeared physically formidable as usual. His shoulders were a prizefighter's; his wrists and biceps thick.

He overflowed the chair he sat in, though not with fat; most of him was solid muscle.

Wizard Wong tried not to be intimidated, either by Marino's bulk or his reputation for ruthlessness. But, whether from the hot room or other reasons, Wong began to sweat.

He protested, "I didn't waste all that time, Mr. Marino. I found out some other things I thought you'd want to know n "Such as?" "I can tell you the number that was called. You see, by using a stop watch to time the length of each dial turn as recorded on the tape, then comparing it…"

"Cut the crap. Just give me the number." "There it is." A slip of paper passed across the desk. "You've traced it? Whose number is it?"

"I have to tell you, tracing a number like that isn't easy. Especially since this particular one is unlisted. Fortunately, I have some contacts in the phone company … Tony Bear exploded. He slammed a palm on the desktop, the impact like a gunshot.

"Don't play games with me, you little bastard! If you got information, give!"

"The point I'm making," Wizard persisted, sweating even more, "is that it costs. I had to pay off my phone company contact."

"You paid a goddam lot less than you'll squeeze out of me.

Get on with it!" Wizard relaxed a little, aware that he had made his point and Tony Bear would meet the price to be asked, each of them knowing there might be another time.