Win Some, Lose Some

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When the big highways came through downtown Miami, the old neighborhoods were ripped apart. Whole blocks were abandoned to the squatters and looters. Businesses failed or moved elsewhere.

Eddie Maye’s saloon, in the shadow of the Interstate, no longer pumped enough beer to break even. Eddie kept it open because he needed the location. He had the loan-shark concession between North Miami Avenue and the waterfront, including the docks and warehouses of the Port of Miami. This end of his business, too, had been hurt by the changes. Few of the tenants in the new high-rises needed Eddie; in fact, they thought there was something demeaning and socially wrong about using a Shylock. Eddie was beginning to think there was an unfairness about the old territorial structure. He wanted to be allowed to pursue business, wherever it was.

Eddie was a popular man in a profession where it is easy to make enemies. Of course, there is no use pretending a Shylock is Santa Claus. People came to him only if they were sure they would be turned down everywhere else. The vigorish was higher than at a bank or a loan office, but the nature of the transaction was exactly the same. He loaned money expecting to get it back. Being a pretty fair judge of human nature, he generally managed to recover. Every lender, from the trap-mouthed, tight-assed personal-loan officer in the First National Bank, to Eddie Maye, the affable proprietor of a Northeast Miami saloon, wants to see certain collateral. If the borrower defaults to a shark, however, the borrower himself knows that the boys are going to put him through a wringer. The basic truth about illegal contracts is that they are unenforceable in the courts.

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