Destroyer 007 - Union Bust

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Author: Warren Murphy
Series: The Destroyer - 007
Title: Union Bust
Original copyright: 1973
Genre: Pulp Action
Version: UC
Original date of e-text: 06/24/01
e-text last updated :
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ONE
What were they going to do, kill him?
Jimmy McQuade had worked his installer crew to the limit, and he wasn't going to work
them one more hour, not if the district supervisor got on his knees and begged, not if
the president of the International Communication Workers threatened to kick him out of
the union, not if they raised the double overtime to triple overtime like last week,
during Easter.
His crew was falling asleep at the job. A half hour be fore, one of his senior linemen
working outside made a mistake a rookie wouldn't think of, and now the old man
assembling one of the gaggle of WATS lines connections had passed out.
'Okay. Everybody off the job,' said Jimmy McQuade, shop steward of Local 283
International Communications Workers, Chicago, Illinois.
'Go home and sleep. I don't want to see any of you for two days. This overtime pay isn't
going to do dead men any good.'
Heads lifted. One young man kept working on his knees.
'We're going home. We're going to rest. Somebody shake the kid,' said Jimmy McQuade.
A gray-haired worker, telephone cords strung around his neck like leis, patted the
youngster on the back.
'We're going to rest."
The young man looked up, dazed.
'Yeah. Rest, Beautiful, baby. I forgot what it was like.'
He curled over his installer's box on his tool holster side
and snored away in bliss. t
'Leave him. Nobody's going to wake him/ said Jimmy McQuade.
'It's about time,' said an installer dropping his tools at his feet and making his way
across the stacked beams and sacks of concrete to a bucket the men used to relieve
themselves.
The plumbing had been installed, but so rapidly and by so few men that the toilets did
not work. Some of the plaster was falling and it was only a day old.
The management had brought in carpenters to repair that by putting up plaster board. The
plasterers did not object. Some of the men, Jimmy McQuade knew, had objected to the
local president of the Plasterers' Union. What they got were little envelopes that paid
them for the time they would not be working. Like typesetters in newspapers when
advertisers brought in pre-set ads.
The difference was that the plasterers had nothing in their contracts stipulating such
payment. But that was the plasterers. Jimmy McQuade was communications and he had worked
at his job for twenty-four years and had been a good installer, a good supervisor, and a
good union man. Supervisors were rarely made stewards. But the men trusted Jimmy McQuade
so much that they insisted a rule of Local 283 be altered to allow him to hold both
posts.
The amendment passed unanimously. He had to leave the union hall quickly because he
didn't want anyone to see him cry. It was a good job until this building.
All the trade unions involved were secretly griping about it, he knew. Which was strange
because there was more money coming in on this job than anyone could remember. Some of
the electricians bought second homes on this job alone. It was the overtime. Some rich
lunatic had decided a ten-story building would go up in two months. From scratch.
And if that wasn't weird enough, the telephone system
they wanted would have been ample for the Strategic Air Command headquarters. Jimmy knew
a couple of men who had worked on that one. They had been screened as if they were going
to personally get the plans to the hydrogen bomb.
Jimmy McQuade had been screened for this job. That should have warned him. He should
have known there would be something screwy, that just maybe he would find himself not a
shop steward or a crew supervisor but a slave driver working men sixteen-hour days
nonstop for two weeks to meet the district supervisor's order:
'We don't care what else isn't ready. They want the phones. And they're going to get
them. The phones have to be in and operating by April 17. I don't care what expenses,
what delays you have. April 17.'
That was management. You could expect that sort of excitability from management. What
was surprising was that the union was worse. It had started at the screening.
Jimmy McQuade had not known it was a screening. He had been invited by the international
vice-president himself to union headquarters in Washington. The union would pick up his
lost time. He had thought at first he was going to be appointed to some national labor
post.
'I guess you want to know why I asked you here,' said the international vice-president.
He sat behind a desk remarkably like the one used by the vice-president of the phone
company. Although here the window opened to the Washington Monument instead of Lake
Michigan.
'No,' said Jimmy smiling. 'I thought we'd play pinochle until the summer, then maybe go
golfing until the fall.'
'Heh, heh, heh," laughed the vice-president. He didn't sound as if his mirth were real.
'McQuade. How good a union man are you?'
"I'm a shop steward.' -
'I mean how good?'
'Good.'
'Do you love your union?'
'Yeah. I guess so.'
'You guess so. If it were a choice between the union or going to jail, would you go to
jail? Think about it.'
'You mean if someone were trying to break the union?' 'Right.'
Jimmy McQuade thought a moment. 'Yes/ he said. 'I'd go to jail.'
'Do you think union business is anybody else's business?'
'Well, not if we're not doing anything illegal.' 'I'm talking about giving information
about union business to people outside the union.' 'Hell, no!'
'Even if they're some kind of cops?' 'Yeah. Even if they're some kind of cops.' 'You're
a good union man. You've got a good union record and a good work record. There's a job
starting that's important to all good union men. I can't tell you why, but it's
important. And we don't want to go advertising it around.'
Jimmy McQuade nodded.
'I want you to select a fifteen-man crew of good union men, good workers who can keep
their mouths shut. It's a job that would call for more than fifteen men, but that's the
minimum, absolute minimum for completing this job in time. We don't want to be using any
more people than we have to. If we had time, I'd do the damned thing myself. But we
don't have time. Remember. Men who can work and keep quiet. There will be plenty of
overtime.' The vice-president reached into his large desk and brought out two envelopes.
He held forth the fatter one. 'This is for you. I find it good policy never to let
anyone else know what I'm making. It will serve you well to follow it. There may be a
lot of pressure in this job, and what may be a small friction at the beginning, becomes
a bigger one later on. This smaller one is for the men. Don't take it out of the
envelope in front of them. Individually, personally on the side.'
10
The vice-president handed Jimmy McQuade the smaller envelope.
'It'll take me about two weeks to get the right crew/ said Jimmy McQuade.
The vice-president looked at his watch. 'We got you for departure from Dulles in forty
minutes. Maybe you can make some phone calls from the airport. You can also make a few
from the plane.'
'You can't phone from an airplane, a commercial liner.'
'That should be your biggest worry. Believe me, on that flight the pilot will give you
anything you want. Take a stewardess, too, if it won't tire you out. You begin tonight.
It's a small suburb outside of Chicago. Nuihc Street. That's it. Funny name. It's a new
street, named by the builders. Actually it's just an access road now. For the bulldozers
and things.'
The vice-president rose to shake Jimmy McQuade's hand.
'Good luck. We're counting on you. And when you're through, there's more than just that
envelope. What the hell are you doing with those envelopes?'
Jimmy looked at the envelopes, puzzled.
'Don't walk out of here holding them in your hand. Put them in your pocket.'
'Oh, yeah,' said Jimmy McQuade. 'Look, I'm working at another building and the
company....'
'That's been squared. That's been squared. Get out of here. You're going to miss your
plane.'
Jimmy McQuade had opened the envelopes in the cab taking him to the airport. There was
$3,500 for him, and $1,500 for the men. He decided to switch envelopes and give the men
the $3,500, keeping the $1,500 for himself. This resolution kept wavering all the way to
the airport, descending on the men's side, ascending on his until he was back to the
original split.
He sat in first class and ordered a drink. He wasn't going to ask the stewardess to let
him make a phone call from the plane. He would sound like an idiot asking that.
11
Halfway through his rye and ginger, the pilot came down
the aisle. ª
'McQuade?'
'Yes.'
'Why the hell are you sitting here? We got the linkup to ground telephone.'
'Oh. Yeah/ said Jimmy McQuade. 'I just wanted to finish my drink.'
'You're wasting a fortune in time. Take the drink with
you. ,
'Into the cockpit?'
'Yes. C'mon. Wait. You're right.'
'I thought so. Federal Aeronautics Authority rules.'
'The stewardess will bring it. No point unsettling the passengers.'
When the surprised telephone crew reached Nuihc
Street at two in the morning, they found only steel beams
and men working under floodlights.
Jimmy McQuade looked for the builder. He found him
guzzling coffee, yelling at a crane operator.
'I can't see the fuckin' roof. How the hell am I going to
set it right?' yelled the operator.
'We'll get a flood up there. We'll get a flood/ the
builder yelled back. He turned to Jimmy McQuade.
'Yeah. What do you want?' 'We're the phone installers. It looks like we're four
months early.' 'No. You're late.'
'Where do you want the interoffice lines, in the cement?'
'Well, do what you can now. You have the plans. You
could be stringing outside wire.' 'Most of my men are inside/ 'So work 'em outside.
What's the big deal?' 'You don't know too much about phones, do you?' 'I know they're
going to be working by April 17, is
what I know/
12
That was the first complaint. The president of the local said it wasn't up to him. Call
the vice-president. The vice-president told Jimmy McQuade he didn't receive the money
because it was an easy job.
Two weeks later, one of the inside men threatened to quit. More money came for Jimmy
McQuade from Washington. When the other installers found out about this episode, they
all threatened to quit. They all got more money.
Then one of the men did quit. Jimmy McQuade ran after him down Nuihc Street, now paved
to a three-lane-wide thoroughfare. The man wouldn't listen. Jimmy McQuade phoned the
vice-president of the union and asked if he could recruit another man to fill the crew.
'What was his name?' asked the vice-president.
'Johnny Delano,' said Jimmy McQuade. But he did not get another man. Nor did the quitter
return.
And when the lineman committed the mistake of a rookie and the installer passed out,
Jimmy McQuade had had it. Enough.
The kid slept over his tool box, and all the others filed into the new elevators, which
they hoped would work this time. Jimmy McQuade went with his men.
He went home to his wife who had not known his body since he started the job. She
embraced him passionately, shooed the kids off to bed, and undressed him. She took great
care in the shower, and put on the special perfume he loved.
When she entered the bedroom, her husband was dead asleep. No matter. She knew what
would wake him. She nibbled at his ear and ran a hand down his stomach to his navel.
All she got was a snore.
So Mrs. McQuade accidentally spilled a glass of water on her husband's face. He slept
with a wet face. At 3 A.M. there was a buzz at the door. Mrs. McQuade nudged her husband
to answer it. He slept on.
She donned a bathrobe, and mumbling curses about
her husband's job, answered the door.
'FBI,' said one of two men, holding forth indentifica-tion. 'May we speak to your
husband? We're awfully sorry to disturb you at this hour. But it's urgent.'
'I can't wake him,' said Mrs. McQuade.
'It's urgent,' said the spokesman of the pair.
'Yeah, well lots of things are urgent. I didn't say I wouldn't wake him, I said I
couldn't.'
'Something wrong?' . -
'He's dead tired. He's been working without any really good sleep for almost two
months.'
'We'd like to talk to him about that.'
Mrs. McQuade looked up and down the street to make sure no neighbors were watching, and
reassured that at 3 A.M. this was highly unlikely, she invited the two agents into the
house.
'He won't wake up/ said Mrs. McQuade, leading them to the bedroom. They waited at the
bedroom door.
'He won't wake up,' she said again, and shook her husband's shoulder.
'Wha?' said Jimmy McQuade, opening his eyes.
'For this he wakes up,' said Mrs. McQuade.
'It's the FBI. They want to talk to you about overtime.'
'Tell them to do all the work they can outside if inside isn't ready yet.'
'The FBI.'
'Well, ask one of the older men. Do what you can. We can order any special parts we
need.'
'The FBI has come to put you in jail for the rest of your life.'
'Yeah. Good. Do it.' said Jimmy McQuade and went oil into his comfortable dark world.
'See,' said Mrs. McQuade with a strange sense of relief.
'Could you shake him again?' asked the spokesman for the pair.
Mrs. McQuade grabbed the closest piece of her husband and squeezed.
'Yeah. OK. Back to work,' said Jimmy McQuade bounding from bed. He looked around, saw
two men without tools in their hands, and finding nothing in the room that needed
connecting, suddenly realized he was not at the building site.
'Home. Yeah. Hello, honey. What are these men doing here?'
'We're from the FBI, Mr. McQuade, we'd like to talk to you.'
'Oh,' said Jimmy McQuade. 'Well. Okay.'
His wife made a big pot of coffee. They talked in the kitchen.
'Some pretty interesting things are going on at your new job aren't they?'
'It's a job,' said Jimmy McQuade.
'We believe it's more than a job. And we'd like your help.'
'Look. I'm a good citizen but I'm a union man, too.'
'Was Johnny Delano a union man also?'
'Yeah.'
"Was he a good union man.'
'Yeah.'
'Was he a good union man when he quit?'
'Yeah. He couldn't take it and walked off the job. But he's a good union man.'
The spokesman of the pair nodded and put a candid-size glossy photograph on the white
formica of the kitchen table.
Jimmy McQuade looked at it.
'So. You got a picture of a pile of mud.'
'The pile's name is Johnny Delano,' said the FBI man.
Jimmy McQuade looked closer. 'Oh, no,' groaned Jimmy McQuade.
'They were able to identify him because there was a finger left. All the teeth had been
crushed. Often we can identify someone through bridgework. But Johnny Del-ano's teeth
were crushed. The body was dissolved and crushed at the same time. Police lab still
can't figure it
out. Neither can we. We don't know what did this to him. One finger was left intact. You
see that thing protruding from the pile. It looks like a bump.'
'Okay. Okay. Okay. Stop. I got the general drift. What do you want? And put that picture
back in your pocket.' 'I'd like to stress that we're not in union busting. It's just
that your union is providing something that is going to hurt your members. We're also
not in the union business. But we have evidence, and we suspect that your union and
other unions, specifically the International Brotherhood of Drivers, the Airline Pilots
Association, the Brotherhood of Railroad Workmen and the International Stevedores
Association, are planning to harm this nation in such a way that neither the nation nor
the union movement would survive.'
'I never wanted to hurt the country,' said Jimmy McQuade honestly.
And the two agents questioned him until dawn. They got his agreement to put two more men
on the job. Themselves.
'That'll be dangerous,' said Jimmy McQuade. 'Yes. We think it may well be.'
'Okay. I never wanted to hurt anybody, I always thought unionism was protecting the
working man.' 'That's what we think, too. This is something else.' 'We're going back
tomorrow.' 'You're going back today.' 'My men are beat.'
'It's not us who are going to do the forcing. You can reach us at this number and we'll
be ready when you get your crew together. Don't forget to leave out two of your regular
men.'
The agents were right. Shortly after ten that morning, the vice-president of the
International Communications Workers came to his door.
'What the hell are you doing, wildcatting, you sonuva-bitch!'
16
'Wildcatting? My men were dying on their feet.'
'So they're soft. They'll get in shape.'
'They got out of shape on this job.'
'Well, you get them the hell back there if you know what's good for you.'
And Jimmy McQuade got his men the hell back there, knowing all along what the vice-
president meant. Only this crew had two men who seemed to be doing a lot of strolling
through the building together.
And their tool box contained a 35-millimeter camera with a telephoto lens. The day's
work went well enough, considering that Jimmy McQuade was two men shy. At twelve hours
Jimmy McQuade split the group into two shifts, asking one to be back in eight hours and
the other to continue to work. The two men who did a lot of strolling and talking to
other workers, were with the first group.
The last he saw of them, they were getting on the elevator.
Just before he was about to knock off for his eight hours in the early morning, the
builder dropped by his floor.
'Come with me/ he said.
They took the closed elevator, the one the workers were not allowed to use. The builder
pushed a combination of floors and Jimmy McQuade wondered who else would be getting on
the elevator at the floors for which the buttons called. But the elevator did not stop.
It continued down past the basement a good three floors. And Jimmy McQuade was afraid.
'Hey. Look. I'll get the job done. You don't have to worry about the job getting done.'
'Good, McQuade. I know you will.'
'Cause I'm a good worker. The best crew chief in the whole telephone system.'
'I know that, McQuade. That's why you were chosen.'
Jimmy McQuade smiled, relieved. The elevator door
opened to a large room two stories high with maps of America stretched end to end across
the wall, a football-field-size America with the Rockies jutting perpendicularly from
the wall like a hunchbacked alligator.
'Wow/ said Jimmy.
'Pretty nice,' said the builder.
'Yeah,' said Jimmy. 'But something puzzles me.'
'Ask away,' said the builder.
Jimmy pointed to the bottom of the map, and the auto-length sign with brass letters as
high as desks.
'I never heard of the International Transportation Association.'
'It's a union.'
'I never heard of that union.'
"It's not going to exist until April 17. It's going to be the biggest union in the
world.'
'I'd like to see that.'
'Well, that will be a little problem. You see, McQuade, in about ten minutes, you're
going to be a puddle.'
The secretary of labor and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation finished
their reports to the President. The three were alone in the Oval room.
The secretary of labor, a pudgy, balding man with professional bearing, spoke first.
'I think a union combining the major transportation unions, a supertransportation union,
is impossible in the United States,' said the secretary of labor.
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shuffled his papers and leaned a bit
closer to the edge of his seat.
The secretary of labor talked on. 'The reason I think so is very simple. The drivers,
the pilots, the stevedores, and the trainmen don't have that much central self-interest.
In other words, they work for different employers. Moreover, the union leadership of
each of these unions has vital concerns with its own sphere of influence. I cannot
18
see four major union presidents willing to give up their own freedom of action. Just
impossible. The wage scales of the workers are so different. A pilot makes just about
three times what the others make. The membership will never go along. I know the drivers
for instance. They're independent. They even dropped out of the AFL-CIO.'
'They were kicked out, weren't they?' said the director of the FBI.
The President raised a hand.
'Let the secretary finish.'
'Legally they were kicked out. Actually they dropped out. They were told to do certain
things or face expulsion. They refused, and the rest was formality. They're an
independent breed. Nobody is going to get the International Brotherhood of Drivers into
another union. Nobody.'
The President looked down at his desk, then back at his secretary of labor. The room was
cool, its temperature controlled by an elaborate thermostat that maintained the exact
temperature the President wanted. The thermostat was reset every four years. Sometimes
every eight years.
'What if the drivers are the union behind this?' asked the President.
'Impossible. I know the current president of that union personally, and no one is
getting him, not even us, into an agreement whereby he loses freedom of action.'
'What if he's not reelected at this convention coming up?'
'Oh, he's going to win. He's got, excuse the pun, all the horses.'
'If he has all the horses, why was the convention suddenly shifted to Chicago? April is
to April 17 is not exactly Chicago weather. Permit me a little pun, April in Chicago.
I've never heard a song about it.'
'These things happen,' said the secretary of labor.
'Well, we all know for a fact, that the current president
of the drivers wanted Miami. He didn't get Miami. Las Vegas was mentioned, and then in a
joint council meeting of their state and area leaders, trie convention was moved to
Chicago. Now, what if a supertransportation union just happens? Tell me the effects.'
'Oh, my Lord,' said the secretary of labor. 'Off the top of my head I would say it would
be horrible. A disaster. Given some time to study it, I would probably say that it would
be worse than a disaster. The country would just about close down. There would be a food
crisis. There would be an energy crisis. There would be a run on the banking reserves to
offset stagnated business like there has never been before. We would have a depression
because of layoffs from inoperative factories combined with an inflation because of the
scarcities of goods. I would say it would be like closing the arteries on a human being.
Killing the flow of blood, if all the transportation unions struck jointly as one, this
country would be a disaster area.'
'Do you think if you controlled such a union you could get all its members what they
wanted?'
'Of course. It's like holding a gun to the head of everyone in the nation. But if this
ever happened, there would be legislation from Congress.'
'The kind of legislation that would kill unionism and collective bargaining, correct,
Mr. Secretary?'
'Yes, sir.'
'So either way this situation is highly undesirable.'
'It is as undesirable as it is improbable,' said the secretary of labor.
The President nodded to his director of the FBI.
'It's not all that improbable, Mr. Secretary. There have been strong financial links
between the leaders of the pilots, stevedores, and trainmen with a dissident element of
the drivers' union. These links began emerging roughly two months ago. It is this
dissident element of the drivers which pushed for, and got, the convention to move to
Chicago. Moreover, it is this dissident element
20
that has constructed a large ten-story building just outside Chicago at incredible
expense because of the rush aspects of contraction. Incredible expense. We don't know
for sure where they got the money. We don't know for sure how they get things done so
smoothly, but get things done they do. We have investigated the building and are
continuing to attempt to do so. We cannot prove it yet, but we believe two of our agents
who are missing were murdered in that building. We have not found their bodies. We have
suspicions as to how the bodies are disposed of, but no confirming evidence, as yet.'
'Well, that settles it,' said the secretary of labor. 'No superunion about to be born
can survive the murder of two FBI agents. You put all the leaders on trial. There's your
superunion right there, doing life in Leavenworth.'
'We need evidence, which we hope to get. There is the jury system, Mr. Secretary.'
'There is that,' said the secretary of labor. 'There is that. As you gentlemen know, I
am scheduled to address Friday's closing meeting of the convention. I don't know if I
should go ahead with it. I did know there would be representatives there from other
unions, but I never imagined it was anything like this.'
'Go ahead with your speech/ said the President. 'Go ahead as if nothing has happened, as
if you know nothing of what we talked about. Mention this meeting to no one.' And to the
director, 'I want you to withdraw all your men from this investigation.'
'What?' exclaimed the director, shocked.
'That's what I said. Withdraw your men and forget about this case and discuss it with no
one.'
'But we've lost two agents.'
'I know. But you must do what I ask now. You must trust me, that it will work out well.'
'In my report to the attorney-general, how will I explain that we are not investigating
our agents' disappearance?'
'There will be no report. I would like to tell you what I
21
am going to do, but I cannot. AH I can say is that 1 have said too much. Trust me.'
'I have my men to worry about, too, Mr. President. Abandoning an investigation after we
have lost two agents will not go down too well.'
'Trust me. For a while, trust me.'
'Yes, sir,' said the director of the FBI.
When the two men were gone, the President left the Oval room and went to his bedroom. He
waited a few seconds to make sure no maid or butler was around, then unlocked the top
bureau drawer. He reached his hand into the drawer and closed it around a small red
phone. The phone had no dial, just a button. He glanced at his watch. This was one of
the hours he could reach the contact.
The phone buzzed at the other end and a voice came on.
'Just a minute. That will be all, gentlemen. You're dismissed.'
The President heard other men, further from the receiver, objecting - something about
in-patient treatment. But the man with the receiver was firm. He wished to be alone.
'You can be incredibly rude, Dr. Smith,' said one of the men in the distance.
'Yes,' said Dr. Smith.
The President heard mumbling, then a door shutting.
'All right,' said Dr. Smith.
'You are probably more aware of this than I am, but I fear that we face some trouble on
the labor front that will cripple the entire nation to an incredible extent.'
'Yes. The International Transportation Association.'
'I've never heard of it.'
'You never will if, as we hope, everything works right:'
'This is a joining of unions into one superunion?'
'That's right.'
'So, you are on it?'
'Yes.' . . ' - . '.' V ï-.-ï .
'Are you going to use that special person? Him?' 'We have him on alert.'
'This is certainly drastic enough to use him.' 'Sir, there's no point in keeping this
conversation going, even over a line as secure as this. Good-bye.'
TWO
His name was Remo, and he felt mildly sorry for the man who had erected the poorly
hidden detection devices outside this elegant Tucson estate. It was such a good try,
such a sincere effort to construct a deadly trap, yet it had one obvious flaw. And
because the builder did not appreciate this flaw, he would die that day, hopefully
before 12.05 P.M.-because Remo had to get back to Tucson early for important business.
The electric beams, functioning very similarly to radar, were rather well concealed and
appeared to cover thev required gGo-degree ring which is supposed to be perfect for a
single plane. The land was cleaned of just the kind of clump shrubbery that afforded
concealment to attackers. The X layout of the ranchhouse, seemingly an architectural
eccentricity, was actually a very good design for cross fire. The estate, though small
and pretty, was a disguised fortress that could most certainly stop a mob executioner or
could, if it came to it, delay a deputy sheriff- or two or ten.
If it ever came to it-because there was no chance that a. sheriff or a state trooper
would ever besiege this estate outside of Tucson. The man called Remo was now very
simply penetrating the one flaw in the entire defense: The builder had not prepared for
the eventuality of one man walking up to the front door by himself in broad daylight,
ringing the doorbell, then executing the builder along with anyone else who got in the
way. The estate was designed to prevent a concealed attack. Remo would
not even *e stopped as he walked past the beams in the open Arizona sun, whistling
softly to himself. After all, what danger could one man be?
If Mr. James Thurgood had not been so successful in his business, he would probably live
to see i.oo P.M. Of course, if he were not so successful, he would be seeing i .00 P.M.
every day from the inside of a federal prison.
James Thurgood was president of the Tucson Rotary, the Tucson Civic League, a member of
the President's Panel on Physical Fitness and executive vice-president of the Tucson
Civil Rights Commission. Thurgood was also one of the leading investment bankers in the
state. His profits were too big. After several layers of insulation, his money fueled
the heroin traffic at a rate of $300 million a year. It returned a greater yield than
land development or petrochemicals, and for James Thurgood-runtil this bright, hot day-
had been just about as safe.
Between Thurgood and the neighborhood fix was the First Dallas Savings arid Development
Corporation, which lent large sums to the Denver Consolidated Affiliates, which made
personal loans to people who needed them very quickly and in large amounts, one of them
being recently Rocco Scallaf azo.
Scallafazo offered no collateral, and as for his credit rating, it wasn't good enough to
be bad. It was non-existent, since no one had ever given him a loan before. Denver
Consolidated transcended the narrow regulations of banking and dared risk capital where
other institutions would not. It gave Scallafazo $850,000 on his personal signature.
Denver Consolidated never got back the money. Scallafazo was picked up later with a
suitcase full of Denver Consolidated's funds as he attempted to purchase raw heroin in
Mexico. Undaunted, Denver Consolidated made another unsecured loan of an equal amount to
Jeremy Wills, who was arrested without the money but with a trunkful of heroin. The
Scallafazos and Willses were always being picked up, but no one could tie the
evidence legally to the First Dallas Savings and Development Corporation, James
Thurgood, President. There was no way to get Tucson's leading citizen into court.
摘要:

*******************************************************Author:WarrenMurphySeries:TheDestroyer-007Title:UnionBustOriginalcopyright:1973Genre:PulpActionVersion:UCOriginaldateofe-text:06/24/01e-textlastupdated:Source:Preparedby:Comments:Downloadbothlitandtxtversion.Pleasecorrectanyerrorsyoufindinthise-...

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