“Orange,” I said. “If we see orange...”
“It’s fake?”
“It’s fake.”
I held the note steady with one hand, and drew the pen right down the middle of it.
“It’s fake,” I said. There was a thick orange streak, cutting right across the picture of the queen.
“My God,” Rogers said. “Is that — is it certain? It looks so real.”
“It should look real, Mr. Rogers, this is the product of about as sophisticated a counterfeiting operation as you can get. But even they can’t get the chemical composition of the surface of the note quite right, the Bank of England keeps that one as secret as anything gets in this country, and so these little pens are our greatest friends.” I put the pen down on the table. “Would you mind if I tried...?”
“No, no, not at all, I’ll go straightaway.”
He brought another five notes, and laid out each one on the desk for me to swipe with the pen, and with each one it was the same result.
“Cunning bastards,” he said. “All this time, this money passing through my office. God, people might have thought I was behind it.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Rogers,” I said. “I don’t know what else you might be up to—” I laughed as if I was joking. Maybe. He swallowed again and kept his face very still. “But I’m sure that you’re just an innocent bystander in all of this, just being used. Still, with this batch as evidence, this whole thing is going to stop. A few people at your head office will be getting a surprise visit in the next twenty-four hours. I’ll need to take the whole batch off, of course, there’s forensics to give it a going over first, pick up the characteristics of the printing plates, any fingerprints — someone will be out later on to take yours, just so we can eliminate them from the set, you and anyone else in this office who’ve handled the money, probably be some pretty WPC if you’re lucky — then it’s going to be part of the chain of evidence when we go to the Crown Prosecution Service to demonstrate a case — our accountancy team will be in touch with your head office, you won’t lose out. Not a word though for twenty-four hours, not a word. If there are any leaks, the whole thing will be blown. Even if you think you can trust someone at head office, not a word. If you did — well, colleagues of mine would take some convincing that you weren’t involved. They’d be in here going over all of your affairs with a fine-toothed comb. Of course, you’d have nothing to hide, but...”
Rogers was just about out the door. I let him go and waited. In about a minute, he came back in with the money, in marked courier bags from his company. I opened my briefcase and let him put it all inside. Then I closed the case, but did not spin the combinations.
“Are you completely mad, Mr. Rogers?”
The question caught him by surprise; he thought that it was all done, that it was over, that I was leaving.
“Sorry, I... I don’t know—”
I held up the case. “You’re letting me walk out of here with all this, and I haven’t even given you a receipt. I’m not one of the policemen one year off retirement that they give crime prevention to, going round giving pensioners talks about window locks, but really Mr. Rogers, have some more sense.” I pulled the form from my pocket, set it on top of the case, began to fill it in. “BS47/1. Always ask for one of these in a case like this. Always, always. And make sure the officer signs it and puts their number on. See — like this. If you can’t read the name — it should be printed, not a signature — or the number, then tell them you won’t accept it and ask them for another one. There, you sign, here, and here, where I’ve put the crosses. No, you can just sign it, no need to print, you know who you are. There, done. Now this is your copy, and I suggest that you put it straight back into that safe. And this is my copy, which goes on the case file — if we go as far as proceeding with the case, and with what you’re telling me hopefully we won’t get that far. And this one—” I opened the briefcase and dropped it in, snapped the locks shut, spun the combinations this time. “—this one stays with the exhibit at all times. Chain of evidence, Mr. Rogers, sure you’ve heard of it.”
He nodded, although I expect if I asked him to repeat any of what I had just said he would just have given me a blank and confused look. I confused him again, by sticking my hand out at him. He stared at it for a moment, and then realized what I was doing. His hand felt so sweaty that it was all that I could do to resist wiping it on my trousers the moment that he let go.
“Well, thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Rogers. If what you say is true, then all this will be over in a day or so and we’ll owe you an apology. Hope you understand why we have to be vigilant — daresay you wouldn’t be too happy if one of your customers paid you in counterfeit currency.”
“No,” he said, “no, I... I understand.”
Oh no you don’t, I thought. I nodded at him, picked up my orange marker pen, and left, walking briskly out of his office, leaving him standing alone and confused, a man whose world had been turned upside down in the space of a morning. I smiled at Marian as I walked out through the main office toward the lifts. It had been good coffee, and she had given us biscuits, too. Rogers would feel confused for a few minutes, then relieved that whatever it was that he was up to, whatever it was that he was hiding, had nothing to do with the reason why I was there. That relief might last a few hours before he started thinking straight, depending on how guilty he really was. Then he might start getting suspicious, dismiss it as paranoia, then really think about it, maybe make a few phone calls, and then he would be ringing the real police. But I would be long gone by then, me and this briefcase.
Absolutely Live in Person
by Robert S. Levinson
“Look,” Mickey Barnum was saying, “I didn’t drag myself to LAX and red-eye three thousand miles to take no for an answer.” He slapped his palms on Coopersmith’s desk for emphasis and gave him one of his patented hard-stare smiles.
The lawyer let Mickey see he was unimpressed.
Mickey knew the look.
He’d seen it a million times, give or take, on every Forbes Coopersmith of the business, straight-arrow suits who liked to call a strike even before the pitch, as if that would be enough to intimidate Mickey and make him ratchet up his offer a notch or three.
Coopersmith leaned forward, settled his elbows on the sleek surface of a walnut desk that held no evidence of work, and made a finger pyramid.
“A hundred grand more up front and I might be interested,” he said, like he was shutting the door on any options, except—
He had a lazy left eye.
It was twitching now.
The twitch, all Mickey needed to see to figure the lawyer was running a Park Avenue bluff.
Mickey moved his hands out of sight and pushed hard on his thighs to steady his legs before the sound of his elevator heels on the parquet floor rose to ear level and revealed the flaw in his nerves of steel. For as many times as he’d been through one of these negotiating confrontations, he had never quite mastered anything beyond a poker face.
“Terrific, except it’s not you I want, Mr. Coopersmith. I want your client. I want to bring Diana Demarest back to life and give her fans throughout the world an opportunity to relive the magic moments they spent with her over all those decades in darkened movie palaces.”
“Mickey, perhaps you didn’t hear me when I said you aren’t the first promoter—”
“Entrepreneur. I do other things. Also quite well.”
“—You aren’t the first... entrepreneur to come at me with this type of proposal.”
“But I am the only Mickey Barnum, Mr. Coopersmith, the man who created Absolutely Live in Person.”