"Elrod, P N - Vampire Files 09 - Lady Crymsyn E-Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

playing smart. The government doesn't seem to care how you make your money, so
long as it gets its cut. Not much different from the mob, only there's usually
less gunplay and more paperwork.
Presently, I was Charles Escott's nominal employee in his private detective
business. (He preferred the more genteel title of "private agent.") Whenever we
shared a case we split the payment fifty-fifty, but the huge amount I'd
collected could not be declared as income from the Escott Agency without putting
him in a bad spot. Uncle Sam would want to know what sort of work Escott did to
justify such a generous payout to his staff, and, oh, by the way, we'd like to
check your earnings as wellЕ
Sure, I could sit on the dough and declare it a little at a time as cash
earnings over the years. Escott was doing just that with his half of a ten-grand
windfall we'd once gotten hold of by accident, but I was in too much of a hurry
to wait. So with the help of a mobster who owed me a few favors I took advantage
of a means to make my good fortune safely innocent. All I needed was a racing
form and directions to the nearest line of bookies. Hell, all I needed to do was
stand still, and they'd come to me. This town had them thicker than grass.
For a month I hung out in such company, going to various joints as soon as the
sun was down in Chicago to put bets on horses about to run in California, where
it still shone. Not big bets, but lots of them, to show or place, never to win,
since that was more of a risk and could drive down the odds.
My mob advisor told me which horses I should play and which bookies to bet with.
Not every race was rigged, but there were enough to slowly turn about half my
fortune into legitimate-seeming wins. Only I wasn't really winning money so much
as breaking even. For every ten dollars I bet, I'd get back twentyЧbut the
bookie would get a twenty from me, not a ten. It was all numbers in a book.
Count the actual cash and you'd tumble to the game, but no cop or treasury agent
ever interfered.
The bookies were all in on the scam and took their cut for cleaning services
when I purposely lost every fourth or fifth bet to make things look legit. In
this way they took between five and ten percent. I could spare it, figuring it
to be a fair commission and much better than me trying to explain the real
source of the cash to a nosy government accountant.
Duly entering every last dollar in a ledger, I kept careful records of my wins
and losses. Declared cash all squeaky clean and financial records square enough
for Euclid, I was free to get down to the real business of making my dream of a
swank nightclub into a reality.
Location is everything. I soon found a former speakeasy on the North Side once
run by a mug named Welsh Lennet. It closed years ago when thugs tossed a couple
of grenades through the front doors as part of an ongoing territorial dispute.
Lennet and a few others in his group were killed, with no one to take over for
him. When Repeal went into effect, there didn't seem much point in trying to
rebuild, so the gutted remains of his speak were left to gently rot.
The present owner was mob, of course, and unwilling to sell, but he could be
persuaded into making a two-year lease. I knew the catch on that one: I get the
club up and running, then discover I can't renew the contract or that the
leasing price has suddenly tripled. Just in case I was unaware of the ploy, my
mob mentor, Gordy Weems, mentioned it to me, which was damned decent of him. I
decided to sign, though. If, at the end of two years the place was a bust, then
I could slip out of it easily enough, and if it was a wild success, I had my own