“Now those guys, Billy,” Leo said, “those guys’re all in favour of helping everybody inna whole wide world as long as it don’t involve none of their money. Which is another thing about bankers – they may be all vice-presidents or something, and they’re making nine grand a year and they all eat lunch at Slagle’s and have the vegetable special and the iced tea that goes with it and it costs a buck twenny-five and they leave a fifteen-cent tip, but there’s millions in those vaults and it all belongs to them. Other people maybe put it there, and someday they’re gonna come and take it out again, but in the meantime it all belongs to the bankers.
“What they are all for,” Leo said, “they are all for helping the fuckin’ niggers. They think helpin’ niggers is the greatest thing since people started coming in and depositing their money, and the reason they think this is because if they don’t ship that money out to help the niggers, on the understanding that they’re gonna get it all back on time with plenty of interest, of course, pretty soon some hairy Jew kid with about ten degrees from Harvard’s gonna get a poverty law grant and start dragging them out of the bank and into court, they’re not doin’ enough for civil rights and they should lose their charters. They are all for loanin’ money to guys like me that’re gonna rehab old joints and rent ‘em out to low-income people, until we do it and they find out them low-income people is fuckin’ niggers, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they don’t pay their fuckin’ rent, neither. Which means you’re not makin” payments on your fuckin’ loans, and I bet you could dump a fuckin’ rattler down a banker’s back without makin’ him as nervous as he gets when you’re not payin’ off those goddamned loans.