Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  “Bullshit,” Ollie said.

  “I agree. In any case, they return the bills and send him on his way.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question. Now here’s what’s troubling me …”

  Ollie bit into the fourth slice of pizza. Chewing, he looked across the table at Carella. Meyer was looking at him, too.

  “Struthers tried to cash another bill earlier today. Which makes me think he originally swiped more than the eight G’s. But never mind. We take the bill to the bank, lady there thinks it’s a phony— something called a super-bill the Iranians are running off on presses they …”

  “Bullshit,” Ollie said again.

  “I’m not so sure. But forget the Iranians for a minute, okay? Maybe thatis bullshit, who knows? Let’s just say, for now, that the billisphony. Let’s say everyone of those hundred-dollar bills Cass Ridley got as a tip were phony. Ten thousand bucks in fake hundreds. Can we say that for a moment?”

  Meyer was frowning.

  “What?” Carella asked.

  “If that ten grand was fake …”

  “Right.”

  “And Struthers stole it …”

  “Or what was left of it.”

  “And the Secret Service checked it out …”

  “Yes.”

  “How come they didn’t recognize it as fake?”

  “That’s just what’s troubling me,” Carella said, and nodded, and bit into his cold slice of pizza.

  “I must be missing something,” Ollie said.

  “If the Secret Service had its hands on eight thousand bucks in bad money,” Carella said, “why didn’t they just confiscate it? Why’d they return it to Struthers?”

  “I’ll bite,” Ollie said, and bit into another slice of pizza. The waitress was arriving with the fresh one. He ordered another round of beers from her. Now, two-fisted and ham-handed, he began lifting slices of pizza from both trays, some hot, some cold, all disappearing with remarkable rapidity into his briskly energetic mouth. “Whydidthey return the money to him?”

  “All I can figure is they didn’t,” Carella said.

  “You just said …”

  “They returned eight thousand dollars to him, yes, but it wasn’t the eight thousand they’d taken from him earlier. They returnedgood money to him. Even the lady at the bank said it was good.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they didn’t want anybody making waves down the line. Take his money from him, he might start trouble later on, who knows? Might even come squawking tous, who knows?”

  “An ex-con?” Ollie said.

  “Who knows? But give him back eight grand inreal bills …”

  “They probably got a slush fund,” Meyer said. “Same as us.”

  “I’ll bet. They pull eight large from it, send Struthers on his way, nice to know you, kid, don’t bother us anymore.”

  Ollie looked at him.

  “Too fucking deep for me,” he said.

  “Don’t you see?” Carella said. “Why would two blond hitters carrying a bottle of champagne go up to a lone woman’s apartment on a bullshit birthday story, stick an ice pick in her head, waltz her over to the park, strip her naked, and toss her into the lion’s den where she gets eaten beyond all recognition? Why did they want her to disappear?”

  “Why?” Ollie asked.

  “Because she stumbled into something down there in Eagle Branch, Texas.”

  “Eagle Branch?” Ollie said, and stopped chewing.

  “What is it?” Carella said at once.

  “My publisher has a sales rep lives down there.”

  “Your publisher?”

  “Yeah, I’m writing a book, didn’t I tell you?”

  Carella glanced at Meyer.

  “I happened by chance on a publisher looking for a good thriller,” Ollie said. “So when I’m not practicing piano, I work on the book. The countdown hasbegun!” he announced dramatically, and popped another slice of pizza into his mouth.

  “You happened upon a publisher by chance,” Carella said. “With a sales rep who lives …”

  “I caught a guy stuffed in a garbage can on Christmas Eve,” Ollie explained. “Bullet at the back of his head. Looked like a drug hit to me, but turned out he’s an honest-to-God sales rep. Wadsworth and Dodds. That’s the name of the publishing house he worked for.”

  “Ollie,” Carella said. “Eagle Branch is where Cass Ridley hooked up with the two guys who sent her to Mexico.”

  “Well, Iknow that, Steve-a-rino.”

  “Eagle Branch is where this allstarted.”

  “Well, why do you think I mentioned it?”

  “Are you saying you’ve got a linked homicide?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I caught a stiff who worked for a publishing house that has a sales rep who lives in Eagle Branch, Texas. Is what I’m saying.”

  “What’s his name, this guy in Texas?”

  “Randolph Biggs.”

  “The Texas Ranger,” Carella said to Meyer.

  “No, he’s a sales rep,” Ollie said.

  “Your stiff didn’t happen to be carrying any phony hundred-dollar bills, did he?” Meyer asked.

  “Well, I don’t know if they’re phony or not,” Ollie said, “but you’re welcome to look at them. I already turned them over to the Property Clerk’s Office.”

  THEY SIGNED FOR and checked out the seven $100 bills Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks had recovered from Jerome Hoskins’ wallet and deposited for security with the Property Clerk’s Office. At ten minutes to ten that night, when the last FBI pouch left for Washington, D.C., the money was on the plane, together with an urgent note to the Federal Reserve, asking for an immediate authenticity pop.

  The bills and the response from the Fed were waiting on Carella’s desk when he got to work early the next morning, the twenty-eighth day of December.

  The money was real.

  9 .

  IT REALLY UPSET Nikmaddu Zarzour to be treated like a terrorist. Even if he looked like one. Even if hewas one. Which, in fact, he happened to be.

  The problems started the moment he transferred from Air France’s flight 613 from Damascus to Paris, onto their connecting flight 006 to the United States. He was wearing a black linen suit, a white shirt without a tie, and a little red fez of the sort favored by Turkish gentlemen though he was neither Turkish nor a gentleman. On the Syrian leg of the flight, he was merely another Arab, his complexion the color of desert sand, his black mustache neatly trimmed, a single gold tooth occasionally glinting in the upper left hand corner of his mouth. But the moment he transferred planes in Paris he became someone whose shabby-looking suitcase and clothes called him to the attention of the security guard who was boarding the 3:15P.M. flight to the States. It never occurred to the guard that if Nikmaddu were truly a terrorist—which, in fact, he was—he would have been carrying a Louis Vuitton suitcase or something less likely to call attention to his appearance. The guard riffled through his meager belongings, and then questioned—and confiscated—the little box of fresh figs Nikmaddu said he was taking to the U.S. for his maiden aunt. The guard did not suspect that the battered and scarred brown leather suitcase contained a false bottom. He could not have imagined that close to two million dollars in U.S. currency was neatly layered along the bottom of the suitcase; X-ray machines do not pick up paper.

  And, of course, there was the same hassle coming through Customs and Immigration here on the eastern shores of the munificent United States of America, even though his passport was in order, even though he showed them a visa, little did it matter to them. He looked like a terrorist, ergo hewas a terrorist. Which, in fact, he was. But it rankled.

  Now …

  At last.

  “Uhlan wa-Sahian.”Welcome.

  “Ahlan Bikum,”Nikmaddu said.

  The proper reply, in plural because he was talking to three of them. He had never met any of them before. The men introduced themselves now. One of them, t
he obvious leader, sported a tiny uptilted mustache that made him look as if he were smiling. He had been trained in Afghanistan, was said to have links with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

  “Ismi Mahmoud Gharib,”he said. My name is Mahmoud Gharib.

  The second man had the harsh, leathery look of a desert camel driver, deep creases on his brown face, thick veins standing out on the backs of his strong hands. He told Nikmaddu his name was Akbar. He had the unsettling grin of a shark, all teeth and no sincerity. He was their demolitions expert.

  The man who introduced himself as Jassim had the look of a pit viper, small and dark and pock-marked. His handshake was remarkably strong, his fingernails encrusted with a deep dark residue, perhaps the traces of explosive powders or oils. He was the one who would go in with the bomb.

  One who smiles only with his mustache, Nikmaddu thought, another who smiles with false teeth, and a third—with dirty fingernails—who does not smile at all.

  “So you’re here at last,” the third one said. Jassim.

  “Il-Hamdu-Allah,”Nikmaddu answered. Thanks be to God.

  “Was it a pleasant flight?” Akbar asked. All false glittering smile and bright dark eyes.

  Nikmaddu shrugged.

  “Did you bring the money?” Mahmoud asked. Mustache smiling. A direct question. Without the money, there would be no explosives. Without the money, there would be no preparations. Without the money, there would be no escape routes afterward, no safe passages home. Without the money, there would be nothing.

  “I brought the money,” Nikmaddu said.

  And now they could discuss the business at hand.

  THE APARTMENT they were meeting in was rented by Mahmoud himself. He was already three months in arrears, another reason for him having asked so soon about the money, his bloodsucking Jew landlord threatening eviction on an almost daily basis. The apartment was in a four-story walkup in a section of the city called Majesta after Her Majesty, the late lamented virgin queen of England, when these United States were still colonies. Once upon a time, Majesta was inhabited by Irish immigrants. Then it became Italian. Then it became Puerto Rican. Now it was populated largely by immigrants—many of them illegal—from third-world nations in the Middle East. The men sat sipping strong Turkish coffee as they looked out past the swirling snow to the towers of the Majesta Bridge in the misty distance. Jassim would have loved to wire that bridge with explosives, but Mahmoud was of a more conservative bent.

  It was Mahmoud’s opinion that all successful terrorist acts were premised on what had happened in Algiers almost half a century ago. It was there that the Arab struggle for independence from France began in 1954, culminating in July of 1962, when the Democratic and Popular Government of Algeria was formed. It was during those eight years that terrorism discovered its claws and its fangs. It was then that women wearing long dresses as prescribed in the Koran—O prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and the wives of the believers that they shall lengthen their garments. Thus, they will be recognized and avoid being insulted—wearing as well thehijab that covered all of the face except the eyes, and thekhimar that covered their bosoms, strolled unrecognized into grocery stores or onto buses, carrying shopping bags full of high explosives which they conveniently left behind while they went home to their families.

  The world of terrorism—Mahmoud now told Nikmaddu—had expanded too greatly. The leaders were thinking too big. Their plans were too grandiose. Why bomb a World Trade Center in New York or a Federal Building in Oklahoma City or a U.S. Embassy in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam? Why bring down an airplane over Lockerbie or LaGuardia? Events such as these only created intense scrutiny and enormous animosity. Why not settle instead for leaving a small bomb in a cinema? Or a railroad station? Why not compromise instead for leaving a satchel with explosives under a sixth row orchestra seat at Clarendon Hall on the night Svi Cohen would be playing Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata in F Major, or his “Kreutzer” in A Minor, or whichever other tune the Big Jew chose to perform on his accursed Zionist fiddle?

  “Why not committiny acts of terrorism that will allow them to realize we can strike anywhere, anytime we choose?” Mahmoud asked.

  “Clarendon Hall is not so tiny,” Akbar said, grinning.

  “You understand my point,” Mahmoud said reasonably to Nikmaddu.

  “I understand your point,” Nikmaddu answered reasonably.

  He was enjoying the coffee. He was not so sure he was enjoying the terrorist beliefs of a half-lira philosopher like the man with the comic mustache here. Nikmaddu himself had worked with Osama bin Laden on the Dhahran bombing attack in which nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed. It was his own belief that onlymajor attacks of terrorism would leave any impression at all on the forces of evil polluting the Arab world. Only desperation measures would provoke wholesale departures. The withdrawal of all U.S. and western forces from Moslem countries in general and from the Arabian Peninsula in particular was the stated goal ofal Quaida. Killing all Americans, including civilians, everywhere in the world was merely a means toward this end. But Nikmaddu was nothing if not a faithful servant of God. Someone higher up had ordered the Clarendon Hall bombing. He was here merely to serve.

  They sat sipping coffee.

  “Tell me the plan,” Nikmaddu said.

  THE OWNER OF Diamondback Books was named Jotham Davis. He was in his early forties, Ollie guessed, a black man with an entirely bald and very shiny head. He was wearing black jeans, black loafers, and a black turtleneck sweater. A gold chain hung around his neck, dangling to somewhere in the middle of his narrow chest. He told them that in the Bible, Jotham was the youngest of Gideon’s seventy sons. He told them things were quiet after Christmas. He told them fifty percent of a bookstore’s sales were in the three months before Christmas. He told them if a bookstore didn’t make it at Christ-mastime, it might as well fold. Ollie thought he was full of shit. That was because Ollie figured a Negro couldn’t possibly know anything about selling books.

  It was now almost twelve noon on the twenty-eighth day of December, three days before New Year’s Eve, six minutes or so before lunch time. Ollie was always aware of the clock, but only because it announced mealtimes. He and Carella had been in the shop for almost ten minutes now, listening to this bald jackass telling them about the book business when all they wanted was information about Jerome Hoskins who’d been shot at the back of the head and stuffed in a garbage can four days ago.

  “You sell many books from Wadsworth and Dodds?” Ollie asked. “In the three months before Christmas?” He was thinking these people would probably be his publishers once he finished his book, so he wanted to know how well their books sold.

  “Not too many,” Jotham said. “They publish mostly technical stuff, you know.”

  “What do you mean, technical?” Carella asked.

  “Engineering stuff, architectural. Like that.”

  “How about thrillers?” Ollie asked.

  “Haven’t seen any thrillers from them,” Jotham said.

  “They told me they do some thrillers.”

  “Maybe so. I just haven’t seen any.”

  “Did their salesman mention any thrillers to you?”

  “No, I don’t recall him mentioning any thrillers.”

  “Man named Jerome Hoskins? He never mentioned any thrillers to you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “When’s the last time he came by?” Carella asked.

  “Must’ve been in September? Maybe October. Sometime around then. That’s when most of the reps come around. Right after they have their sales conferences.”

  “Was he in here last week?” Ollie asked.

  “Nossir.”

  “Two days before Christmas, to be exact.”

  “Nossir, he definitely was not in here two days before Christmas.”

  “You read newspapers?” Ollie asked.

  “I do.”

  “You watch television?”

  “I do.”

&nbs
p; “Read or see anything about Hoskins in the past few days?”

  “No, I didn’t. What happened to him?”

  “How do you know anything happened to him?” Carella asked.