"Million two?" Vito asked. "I thought you said he won six hundred big ones."

Mr. Rosselli looked as if he were surprised for a moment, and then said, "No. It's a million two."

"You said the general manager cut him off," Vito said.

"Mr. Clark. What I said, I guess I stopped before I was finished, was that Mr. Clarkwas going to cut him off, but when he started collecting his chips, he figured he didn't have to. And then the guy changed his mind…"

"He bet six hundred big ones?"

"No. Just the bet. Just the thirty-two thousand whatever it was. He took the nearly six hundred thousand off the table, and then said, 'One more time, just to see what happens' and bet the thirty-two thousand."

"Don't tell me he won?"

"He won. Which meant another nearly six hundred thousand we owed him. Altogether, it comes to a million two."

"And then the manager shut him off?"

"Then the guy said he was going to quit when he was ahead."

"And walked out with a million two?"

"No. He's a good customer. He knows how it works, and he sure didn't want to take a check. You pass a check for that kind of money through a bank, and the IRS is all over you."

"Yeah," Vito said. "So what did Mr. Clark do?"

"He took the croupier out in the woods and shot him in the ear," Mr. Rosselli said, smiling broadly.

Mr. Cassandro laughed appreciatively.

"Kidding, of course," Mr. Rosselli went on. "No, what Mr. Clark did was make a couple of phone calls to get the money."

"I thought you said there was only a couple of hundred big ones in the other place," Vito asked.

'There was," Mr. Rosselli replied, and then asked, "Vito, what do you know about offshore banks?"

"Not a hell of a lot," Vito confessed.

"The thing they got going for them is their banking laws," Mr. Rosselli explained. "They don't have to tell the fucking IRS anything. How about that?"

"I heard something about that," Vito said. "Fuck the IRS."

"You said it. So what happens is that if you have to have, say, a couple of million dollars where you can get your hands on it right away, instead of a safe, where it don't earn no interest, you put it in an offshore bank, where it does. Understand?"

"Yeah," Vito said appreciatively.

"So Mr. Clark makes the telephone calls, and says he needs a million two right away to pay a winner, and it's set up. It's really no big deal, it happens all the time, not a million two, but five, six hundred big ones. Once a month, sometimes once a week. It goes the other way too, of course. Some high roller drops a bundle, and we put moneyin the offshore banks."

"Yeah, sure," Vito replied.

"But this time, we run into a little trouble," Mr. Rosselli said.

"No million two in the bank?" Vito asked with a smile.

"That's not the problem. The problem is moving the money. A million two is twelve thousand hundred-dollar bills. That's alot of green paper. You can't get that much money in an envelope, and drop it in a mailbox."

Vito tried to form a mental image of twelve thousand one-hundreddollar bills. He couldn't remember whether there were fifty or one hundred bills in one of those packages of money with the paper band around them. But either way, it was a hell of a lot of paper stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills.

"So what we have is people who carry the money for us," Mr. Rosselli said. "I guess, you're a cop, you know all about this?"

"No," Vito said honestly. "I figured it had to be something like that, but this is the first time I really heard how it works."

"It's a problem, finding the right people for that job," Mr. Rosselli said. "First of all, you don't hand a million dollars to just anybody. And then, with IRS and Customs watching-they're not stupid, they know how this is done-you can't use the same guy all the time, you understand?"

"I can see how that would work," Vito said.

"Anyway, the way it usually works, we take the money out of the bank, offshore, and give it to one of our guys, and he goes to Puerto Rico, and gets on the plane to Philly, and somebody meets him and takes the bag."

"Yeah," Vito said.

"The problem we have is that we think that IRS is watching the only guy we have available," Mr. Rosselli said.

"Oh," Vito said.

"So the way those IRS bastards work it is they make an anonymous telephone call, anonymous my ass, to either Customs or the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and tell them somebody, they give a description of our guy, is smuggling drugs. So when he's picking up his bag at the carousel, they search his bag. The Narcotics guys don't have to have the same, what do you call it, probable cause, that other cops do. You know what I mean."

"Probable cause," Vito said. "You need it to get a search warrant."

"Well, they don't need that. They can just search your bags, ' looking for drugs.' They don't find no drugs, of course, but they do find all that money."

"And then what happens? You lose the money?"

"No. Nothing like that. It's just a big pain in the ass, is all. They take it, of course. And then you have to go to court and swear you won it gambling in Barbados or someplace. And you have to pay a fine for not declaring you have more than ten thousand in cash on you, and then you have to pay income tax on the money. Gambling income is income, as I guess you know."

"Yeah, right. The bastards."

"But there's no big deal, like if they caught somebody smuggling drugs or something illegal. The worst that can happen is that they keep the money as long as they can, and you have to pay the fine."

Mr. Rosselli took a sip of his drink.

"Vito, you got anything against making a quick ten big ones?" Mr. Rosselli asked.

Vito looked at him, but did not reply.

"The four you owe us on the markers, and six in cash. It'd pay for your plumbing problem."

"I don't understand," Vito said softly, after a moment.

"Now, we don't know for a fact that this is going to happen," Mr. Rosselli said. "But let's just say that the IRS does know our guy who will have the million two in his suitcase. And let's just say they do make their anonymous fucking telephone call to Customs or the Narcotics cops, giving them his description and flight number. Now, we don'tknow that's going to happen, but we're businessmen, and we have to plan for things like that."

"Yeah," Vito said softly.

"So what would happen? They would wait for him at the baggage carousel and search his bags, right?"

"Right. I've seen them do that. Sometimes they call it a random search."

"Right."

"So they search his bags and find the money, and we have to go through the bullshit of paying the fine and the income tax on a million two. And also have to get another million two out of the bank to pay the guy in the Poconos. Right?"

"Yeah, I understand."

"So, I figured we could help each other. We don't want to take the chance of having to go through the bullshit thatmight happen. Including paying the IRS tax on a million two of gambling earnings. And you need money for your fucking plumbing, and to make good the four big ones you owe us."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just make sure when our guy's airplane lands at Philadelphia, one of his bags don't make it to the carousel. There will be nothing in his other bag but underwear,if and I keep saying,if they search it."

Mr. Rosselli paused.

"Look, Vito, we know you're a cop and an honest cop. We wouldn't ask you to do nothingreally against the law, something that would get you in trouble with the Department. But you got a problem, we got a problem, and I thought maybe we could help each other out. If you think this is something you wouldn't want to do, just say so, and that'll be it. No hard feelings."

Vito Lanza looked first at Mr. Rosselli and then at his hands, and then back at Mr. Rosselli.