Line of Succession

“She was a plant,” Sturka said, as if that dismissed it.

Cesar was studying Alvin’s face; Cesar gave way in the end. “She had this little toy camera in her bag and I caught her with a tin of talcum powder trying to lift Mario’s prints off the bathroom glass. We left her dead for the cops to play with — we messed her up some. Maybe teach the pigs to use plants — maybe make the next one a little scared of what might happen.”

All right, Alvin thought dismally. If she betrayed them then she had it coming. He had to keep his head.

Cesar was back on Sturka. “The point is somebody finked. They got our people.”

“Barbara told them about the place on Amsterdam,” Sturka said mildly. “Nobody told them about the bombs. Line is straight.”

Alvin felt gratitude; he almost smiled at Sturka but Sturka wasn’t looking at him, Sturka was explaining to Cesar what all of them should have been able to figure out for themselves: “If Line had given the pigs a tip in advance do you suppose the pigs would have stood around outside and waited for the bombs to explode? Don’t you suppose they’d have evacuated the building and brought in the bomb squad? Our people must have tripped on their way out — someone made a revealing mistake at the wrong moment.”

Cesar was frowning but he curbed his tongue; presently he nodded, recognizing that was the way it had to be. “But we have to figure Barbara made us for them. They know who we are.”

“And that is why we’re leaving the country tonight.”

Peggy stubbed out her cigarette. She kept grinding it into the glass ashtray long after it was extinguished. “We’re going to be on every post-office wall in the country by tomorrow, we’re leaving the country on a slow boat to Lisbon, and you’re talking about getting Line and the rest of them out of hock. Sorry but I don’t follow that.”

“Discipline doesn’t require that you follow it.” Sturka opened Mario’s canvas case and upended it over the bed and Mario’s stock certificates cascaded into a disordered heap like bonfire kindling. “We’ll trash them with these. It’s fitting. Have you counted these?”

“Why?” Mario went toward the bed, suspicious.

“I have.” Sturka touched one of the certificates. It was very large and imposing, the size of Life magazine, the color and style of a dollar bill, and it represented one thousand shares of common stock in Mezetti Industries. Mezetti common was selling in the neighborhood of thirty-eight dollars a share.

Mario’s two hundred shares of NCI were worth about eight thousand dollars. His twelve hundred shares of Coast National Oil were worth just under sixty thousand. His four thousand shares of White-side Aviation were worth about eighteen thousand. And he had altogether thirty-five thousand shares of Mezetti Industries common. All inherited from the patriarchal grandfather who had used proletarian bodies for railroad ties. The canvas bag contained something over $1,200,000 in securities and they had been carrying it around on the streets for a month because Sturka had said they might need it fast when they needed it at all.

“It’s time, then,” Mario said.

Sturka began to stack the certificates neatly and slide them back into the case. “It’s time.”

Mario was dubious. “You can’t just take this much stock into a bank or a broker and tell him to sell it. It would knock hell out of the market. They wouldn’t do it.”

“Don’t sell them,” Sturka said. “Hock them.”

“For what?”

“What can you get? Half a million?”

“Probably.”

“A cashier’s check. Then you take the cashier’s check to another bank and break it down into a number of smaller cashier’s checks. Then you go to still other banks and cash some of them.”

“How much cash?”

“At least half of it. The rest in internationally negotiable certified checks or cashier’s checks.”

Mario could become shrewd in the blink of an eye when it came to finance. He had been raised in a family of financiers and the wizardry had rubbed off on him.

He latched the case. “Large bills, I guess.”

“Anything else would be too bulky. You’ll have to buy money belts for us. The cheap canvas ones will do.”

“It’s pig money, isn’t it?” Mario grinned. “We’ll use it to smash the pigs.”

“Spend an hour in a barbershop first,” Sturka adjured. “Buy a good suit of clothes. You’ll need to be presentable.”

“Naturally.”

“Peggy will go with you. You may take the car. Drive it into New York and leave it in a parking garage — tear up the ticket, leave it there. The police may have a description of it from Barbara.” But the police wouldn’t have the plate number; they had changed license plates on the car last night.

“Your chances of being arrested on the crowded streets are too negligible to worry about. You’ll blend. But in the bank you’ll have to give them a plausible reason for borrowing against the securities.”