King Of The Hustlers – Eugene Izzi

Their managers or owners took care of things them- selves and went back and forth to area banks several times a day. The rest of the stores — 127 of them, counting the two multilevel department stores, Lord & Taylor and Marshall Field’s — were stuck. At first, they had wanted to use the banks. But the banks charged them points for handling vast sums of money which were transferred out to other banks anyway. What the stores decided to do was, in effect, build their own private bank.

The money-counting room was built next to the First Secu- rity Bank of Chicago. It had a concrete-and-steel walk-in vault, small by bank standards, but large enough to handle up to five million dollars in small bills if they crowded it in there. A man named Flynn, who was VP of security, spent his day working as a glorified bodyguard.

He would get beeped when- ever one of the stores had over twenty-five thousand dollars in cash reserves. He would go to the store, and escort a junior-level executive into the counting room. They would enter the room, the money would be counted in the room in the executive’s presence, and as soon as the figure jibed with his own, a receipt would be issued. The executive would then go back to his store and collect more cash.

This saved the stores a lot of money in the long run. At the beginning of each year a security budget would be presented to them and they would split the cost equitably. It was done by percentages, so some boutique which used the facility once a day did not pay the same amount as say, Marshall Field’s, which used it almost every half hour. At the end of the day, after the mall was shut down for the night, the place would become an armed camp.

Security guards from private services would form a line — armed with automatic rifles— from the money-counting room to the underground garage. The armored cars were hired and paid for by each store individually, and the counters and security people knew which accounts went where. They would issue the money, after it had been recounted by the guards, and it would be transferred by armored car to which- ever bank the account used.

This surprised Tone somewhat. He had seen this sort of King of the Hustlers* 121 security late at night at the racetrack, but did not know that swanky North Side Gold Coast malls did the same. After hours at the track, the guards would form a line at the windows and at the comptroller’s office, and the guards stood at attention with automatic weapons at the ready as the cash was transferred to the armored cars.

Tone got up and popped a beer, sat down on the couch, and stared vacantly at the wall. Armed robbery and murder were out of his area of expertise. He hated handguns because he knew from firsthand experience what they could do. Murder, he con- sidered to be beneath him. And here he was planning an armed robbery and a murder, maybe even two. So if he killed Edgew, and if George Allesi, Jr., killed Pan- ther, and Bebbo kept quiet, he just might make it.

Which left Sherry. Man, things got complicated. He didn’t think he could bring himself to kill Sherry, no matter what happened. Tone sighed, downed the beer in one long pull, and was putting the bottle on the coffee table when his door was kicked off its hinges. FT) Bantam Crime Line Books offers the finest in WJ classic and modern American murder mysteries Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed REX STOUT Broken Vase Death of a Dude Death Times Three Fer-de-Lance The Final Deduction Gambit The Rubber Band Too Many Cooks The Black Mountain Plot It Yourself Three for the Chair MAX ALLAN COLLINS The Dark City Bullet Proof A.

E. MAXWELL Just Another Day in Paradise Gatsby’s Vineyard The Frog and the Scorpion Just Enough Light to Kill JOSEPH LOUIS Madelaine The Touble with Stephanie MARY JO ADAMSON Not Till a Hot January A February Face Remember March April When They Woo May’s Newfangled Mirth R M. CARLSON Murder Unrenovated Rehearsal for Murder DICK LUPOFF The Comic Book Killer MARGARET MARON The Right Jack Baby Doll Games One Coffee With coming soon.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 96f271a7528163b8
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 30,076,263 bytes (28.683 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0553282077
• Pages: 295
• Language: English (en)

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