Candy had kept her nose to the grindstone, but unfortunately she liked to fortify that nose with a little blow and oxycodone now and again, as well as numb some of life’s disappointments with alcohol. She was still young enough at twenty-three to look unspoiled, but you could already see the hint of things to come: hailing from a proud line of trailer-dwellers on the outskirts of Atlanta, she looked destined to follow in her alcoholic mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps.
For now, she was alone in the big city, hardened from the constant humiliations and letdowns the town delivered with regularity. She’d accepted tonight’s rendezvous as much out of interest in scoring free coke as out of any intention of getting busy with this guy. Besides, she didn’t want to have everyone at work talking about her private life, so any dating within the company she kept discrete.
She was sitting at the bar in a large restaurant on the lower East side, nursing a Cosmopolitan, waiting for him. It was her second, and she was enjoying the buzz. The place was packed even on a Monday night, and she was jostled occasionally by rowdies trying to place drink orders, squeezing in next to her to shout at the bartenders.
She saw her date enter and noted he looked different than on the job. She was pleasantly surprised, and thought if he played his cards right she might be into showing him a good time. She’d see how the evening played—and whether he had any blow.
“Hey, sorry I’m late—I got hung up. What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Oh, no problem. You look good tonight; I like the glasses. It’s a Cosmo.” She figured it never hurt to play nice.
“Oh, thanks. I usually wear contacts. Let’s get you another one.” He gestured to the bartender and pointed to her drink, held up two fingers.
They made small talk: chatted about work, the people on the crew, summer in the city. She’d had the day off, so she hadn’t heard about Loca. He didn’t mention it. Instead, he told a joke, and she laughed.
“Do you want to eat here, or someplace else?” He asked, having to shout over the rising noise.
“Why don’t we hit this Brazilian place I know up by Times Square? It’s great.” She was leaning more towards getting funky with him, and she might as well get fed. Besides, a lot of the show-business people hung out in that area, and this was a way to be seen.
The bartender brought their drinks. She took a sip. Groovy, baby.
“Sounds super. I think I know the place. Twenty kinds of meat?” He figured he’d say yes to whatever she wanted. Why not?
“That’s the one. Hey, now that you’re here, save my seat; I have to hit the restroom and freshen up.” She smiled at him.
“It’s safe with me.” He smiled back. This was going to be too easy.
When she returned from the facilities, they engaged in more small talk and she finished her Cosmo. He was almost halfway done with his and pushed it over to her. She shook her finger at him.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re trying to get a helpless girl drunk,” she said.
“Is it that obvious?” He smiled again. Candy had the reputation of being able to drink half the crew under the table. Not tonight. He had to hurry and get her out of here. “Down the hatch!”
She downed his drink in two swigs.
After what seemed like forever in the packed bar, he was able to snag the bartender and pay. She felt the room spin when she got off the barstool, almost going down on the way out the front door. He laughed with her as they pushed past the crowd trying to get in, him supporting her by the arm.
They made it out the door. She was already fading by the time they walked down the block. He paused at the mouth of a small alley.
“I—I…think I…I mighta drunk a li’l too much…”
“What you need is a line. Sober you right up. I happen to have something right here—but we can’t do it on the street.” He stopped, appearing to think about it. She was probably seeing two of him. “Hey, let’s duck in here and get fixed up.”
He guided her into the alley, past the inevitable dumpsters. She was wobbling, knees going. “Why don’t you just lean against the wall, huh? You’ll feel better, Candy. Trust me.” He smiled and placed her back against the wall. She stayed there for a few seconds, then slowly slid down and collapsed in a heap.
He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and slipped them on. Important to wear them at all times whenever he touched any of the pretties.
He pulled his bag from under the dumpster and extracted a syringe, and squeezing her mouth open, carefully injected one of the veins under her tongue. It was a fine needle, so he had to be careful not to break it off. She stiffened as her blood pressure rocketed, and then her heart stopped. The whole thing took three minutes.
The killer peered down the alley to satisfy himself he was still alone. He was really getting good at this, and wouldn’t need more than a few moments to complete his important work. He pulled the garbage bag out of his kit and placed it under her head; it wouldn’t do to have blood all over the street. Wouldn’t be neat.
* * *
Nick’s show was over, and he stuck around to watch the closing band play. He’d been middle bill, which on a week night was the best slot, as many had to go to work in the morning and didn’t want to stay out till all hours.
The crowd was enthusiastic in a drunken, aloof sort of way. Par for the course. The band mirrored them, uninterested and aloof as they played—which was also par for the course, as bands in the city went. Everyone got what they wanted.
He’d had a few more beers than he normally would on a weeknight, but then again, after what he’d been through, why not? And it wasn’t like he had a job to be at in the morning.
His drummer was trying to convince Nick to go uptown to some party they’d been invited to. Normally he wouldn’t have been very interested, but he had a what-the-fuck attitude after his fifth beer, so he agreed to hit it for an hour or two with the drummer and a few of his friends.
Oblivious to the scene out on the sidewalk, they piled into the drummer’s van and were off to the party, tearing up the street in a drunken roar of testosterone. Nobody noticed the two Asian men fifty yards from the club, one of whom was smoking up a storm.
They frantically tried to hail a cab but there weren’t many around that district after midnight. By the time they got one, the van was long gone. They hurriedly discussed it, and realizing their chances of catching up to the van were nil, decided to call it a day. They’d catch up with Nick in the morning. The smaller man asked the driver in halting English to take them to the hotel; he glanced at them in the rear view mirror and flipped the meter.
He took the long way.
* * *
Saul bolted upright in his bed.
Of course.
It was the watermark. Something about the watermark was funny. Something in Ben’s hair.
He turned on the living room lights and sat at his desk, where he carefully slid a bill under his largest microscope and examined the watermark. He pulled another microscope close, and mounted a genuine hundred into the slide area and looked through the lens. It took him a while to be sure, but there it was. The tips of Ben Franklin’s hair were angled just a tiny bit differently in the Asian bill.
Just a little.
It was a detail, nothing more. Amazing. It was such a small difference that most experts would never notice it. Not in a million years.
Not even at Treasury.
This was dynamite; he had to make a call in the morning. Saul saw it as huge, with profound implications for the integrity of the money supply—the most common denomination internationally was the hundred-dollar bill. Serious questions about the authenticity of the globe’s reserve currency would create a crisis of confidence, and could trigger a minor run on the dollar.
But Saul was sure, and he could prove it.
Somebody was minting almost-perfect hundred-dollar bills.
Almost.
Gotcha.
Chapter 15
The technicians in the clean room carefully stacked the sheets of freshly printed currency, waiting for the cutting. They’d found that allowing some drying time on the specially designed racks produced the best results. Experiments had shown accelerating the cure time by exposing the sheets to heat or blow-drying caused the inks to subtly change color, which was unacceptable.
A shredder sat in the corner and surveillance cameras monitored the workers’ activity. Today was the beginning of mass production, and the target was to run twenty million dollars worth of printing and cutting a day. They planned to work around the clock, and had factored in downtime for repairs on the multiple presses and allowances for drying and cutting time.
Each sheet was twenty bills wide by thirty long, and running sixteen presses they could easily achieve their objective. Ultimately, they’d make many times more from stock manipulation and oil futures than they would ever print. The counterfeiting program was just a means to an end.
A delegation of officials from the Defense Ministry and the Finance Ministry were touring the small factory, and to a man, they were impressed. All had top security clearances, so there was no concern over information leaks. As they watched the paper being loaded onto wheeled carts in preparation for the first stage, the Defense Minister pulled his counterpart in Finance aside.
“My men are attempting to close the loop on the situation in New York. They feel they’ll be able to handle the matter within the next twenty-four hours,” the Defense Minister whispered.
“I’ve spoken with our contact there and warned him we might have to use his resources. He was amenable to assisting.” The Finance Minister’s voice had the same singsong inflection in person as it did on the telephone.
“We may require him to open a safety deposit box account at the bank where the watch seller had his box. Once we have the key and the box number, he can simply go into the vault and remove the currency from the box. The camera operators are unlikely to be watching to check which one he’s opening, as long it’s discrete.” The Defense Minister had talked with his agents and decided that a trusted local entering the vault was infinitely more desirable than one of their agents doing it—especially since they took a handprint for ID at the bank.
“Glad to hear your men are making such good progress.” The Finance Minister was relieved the whole misadventure would soon be over.
“They said twenty-four hours, and they’ve never failed me yet.”
The two men moved back towards the main group. The Finance Minister had his whole career on the line; it had been his idea to counterfeit banknotes and use them to purchase oil. The idea of leveraging their ability to impact stocks in the U.S. markets, and make tens of billions from options, had been Gordon’s; he’d convinced them that printing fifteen billion was nothing compared to making a hundred billion in one year by playing the markets correctly.
One of Gordon’s associates in Switzerland had set up several hedge funds to pump five biotech companies into the stratosphere using printed currency, making a fortune in the options trading on the way up as well as back down. By acting in concert with the hedge funds, Gordon felt they would see a hundred times the money over a year. Every four months, another few companies in vulnerable industries would be targeted and gamed. He’d made it sound easy.
The minister knew full well that Gordon would also make a fortune, but he was fine with that as long as they achieved their own objective. There’d be more than enough money to go around over the next couple of years—they actually needed wheelbarrows to cart the new hundreds from the printing and drying areas to the packaging areas.
This had been a bold initiative; he’d been able to sell it to their leader and commandeer considerable resources in order to create the necessary infrastructure. He knew full well that if there was a mistake, if something happened to disrupt the plan at this point, his career as well as his life would be over.
Gordon had set up a personal account for the minister using a million-dollar advance from Gordon’s trading account, so the minister would wind up with around fifty million earmarked for his personal use as well. It was a nice hedge should he ever tire of the Myanmar countryside.
He returned his attention to the tour. This had better go off without a hitch, or he’d have his skin flayed off of his bones. Literally.
* * *
Tess glanced at the clock as she entered the bathroom, and was surprised it was already nine in the morning. She’d slept for twelve hours, unusual given that she was usually up at six on weekdays. The sleeping pills had been effective, although they had left her groggy and vaguely anxious.
That anxiety increased as she showered and ate, and then made the call to her sister she’d been delaying. They were three hours behind on the West Coast, she remembered, but Tess figured her sister would be up by seven to get the kids ready. A female voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Chrissy? It’s Teresa,” Tess started.
“Tess? Wha…What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Her sister didn’t get social calls from her sibling, so she was immediately suspicious and concerned. Rightly so.
“No, Chrissy, it isn’t. Are you sitting down?”
“What is it? Are you pregnant? Is Dad all right? What’s up?” Chrissy asked. She already sounded agitated.
“Chrissy, something terrible has happened. Yesterday, somebody went into Dad’s shop and robbed it…At least that’s what the police think…” Tess began. Chrissy interrupted her.
“Oh, my God. Is he all right?”
“No, Chris…No, he isn’t. They killed him, Chrissy. Dad’s dead…” She couldn’t go on, started choking up. She registered the phone dropping on the other end of the line. Heard her sister start screaming, crying; heard her husband come rushing in, asking what had happened. The phone got picked up. It was Steve, Chrissy’s spouse, usually courteous but tightly wound. Tess had always thought he was an asshole. Just a bit of one. Then again, there had to be something wrong with him if he could put up with her sister.
“Teresa, this is Steve. What happened?”
“I was trying to tell Chrissy…someone robbed Dad’s store yesterday…he was killed…it just happened…” She was speaking through her sobs.
“What do you mean? He died, and you just found out today? Or have you known about this since yesterday?” Steve the prick, hard at work. No “I’m sorry,” no “How awful,” instead interested in how long Tess had the information before they were brought into the loop.
“Steve, put my sister on the phone, okay? Please?” Tess asked.
“Why don’t you answer my questions first, and then I’ll put her on the line if I can.” There wasn’t a lot of love lost between Steve and Tess, either.
“Steve, it’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Either put my sister on the line, or I’m hanging up. Get it? I’m not going to subject myself to your bullshit. My dad’s dead, and I need to talk to my sister, not you.” Tess was starting to feel stronger, and was pissed at Steve’s arrogance. He was an attorney; it came naturally.
“I’m sorry about your dad, but I’m a member of this family too,” Steve started again. “I think I have a right to—” Tess cut him off.
“No, you don’t. You have no rights. You aren’t a member of this family, you just fuck my sister. Now put her on.” This was going well, she thought.
“How dare you—” As soon as Steve launched in, Tess depressed the off button.
Fuck him. What a dildo. Their father had been murdered, and Mr. Sensitive wanted to prove a point and play power struggle? She wasn’t interested, she had other more pressing things to do with her time. She remembered just how much she genuinely disliked her sister and her husband. Steve wasn’t always so abrasive, but he had an annoying quality of arrogant superiority that had always rubbed her the wrong way. Normally he kept it in check, but what she had just heard on the phone didn’t surprise her one iota. Steve was a dick, and he and her sister were no doubt meant for each other. Thei
r poor kids didn’t stand a chance.
Tess took a few deep breaths, then dialed Stan’s home number. She got his machine but didn’t leave a message. He was probably en route to his shop; she’d give him a half hour and try again.
She padded into her kitchen for another cup of coffee, unnerved by her interaction with her sister, and still upset from the previous day’s horrific events. As she poured the coffee, images of her father laying dead rushed unbidden into her thoughts, causing her to break into tears again. Tess cried for fifteen minutes, until she was emotionally exhausted. She knew her reaction was typical, but also knew she needed to get past the grief so she could deal with the next few days. She wasn’t any use to anyone, including herself, as a basket case. Slowly, she talked herself into a stronger mental space: she was alive, and she would survive; she was independent and smart, tough and fit, and could tackle anything. She’d get through this and come out the other side stronger than ever.
Shifting her mental attitude worked and she gradually felt better. She resolved to focus on prevailing in the midst of this tragedy, taking a cue from her father, who had persevered and thrived even after being run down and paralyzed. If he’d been able to do it, she could; she was her father’s daughter and wouldn’t succumb to self-pity.
As she sat staring at her door, blotting her eyes and ruminating about the last twenty-four hours and how radically her existence had changed, Detective Ron floated surreptitiously towards the forefront of her consciousness.
Fatal Exchange Page 12
