No answer.
“Cause I’ll tell you what,” Carella said. “We’ve got a whole pile ofotherhundred-dollar bills here. Why don’t we all walk over to the bank?”
IT WAS TEN MINUTES TO THREE when Struthers and the detectives walked through the revolving doors of the First Federal Bank on Van Buren Circle. Not too long ago—well, perhaps longer ago than Carella chose to admit—a criminal alternately known to the squad as “Taubman” or “L. Sordo” or most commonly “The Deaf Man”—had tried to rob this bank,twice. Carella still felt a faint shiver of apprehension at the memory. They had not heard from The Deaf Man in a long, long time—well, perhaps not as long a time as Carella might have wished—and he had no desire to hear from him again anytime soon.
The manager back then had been named Somebody Alton, Carella no longer remembered the first name, if ever he’d known it. The new manager was a woman named Antonia Belandres, a stately plump brunette in her forties, wearing no makeup and a dark gray suit. She looked up at the clock the moment they approached her desk.
“Little late for business, gentlemen,” she said.
Carella showed his shield.
“Detective Carella,” he said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”
“This is the Eighty-sixthPrecinct,” she said.
Carella didn’t know what that had to do with anything. The bank was on the Circle, directly across Tenth, the wide avenue that slivered the two precincts roughly in half, north to south. First Federal was most convenient to the station house, and besides it was a federal bank. If anybody should know anything about counterfeit money, it was the Feds.
“We’re just across the avenue,” Parker explained helpfully.
“We’re investigating a homicide,” Carella said.
She looked at the clock again.
“We need some suspect bills checked,” Meyer said.
“We’re kind of in a hurry here,” Struthers added.
Antonia turned to look at him. Something flashed in her dark eyes. Perhaps she was wondering if he was in charge of this little band of Homicide detectives. He certainly looked intelligent enough. Perhaps she liked the long rugged cowboy look of him. Whatever it was, she addressed her next question to him. With a smile.
“May I see the bills, please?” she said.
They spread the bills on her desk.
$96,000 in hundreds from Cass Ridley’s safe deposit box …
$8,000 in hundreds from the desk drawer in her apartment …
And next the solitary hundred-dollar bill Struthers had placed on the counter at S&L Liquors in payment for his various alcohol purchases.
“You have to understand,” Antonia said, as she delicately leafed through the money, “that for every man, woman, and child in the United States, there are six or seven hundred-dollar bills in circulation. That means for every person in the work force, there are more than adozen hundred-dollar bills out there. That comes to something like a billion and a half dollars.”
It had begun snowing again. The snow was fierce. Tiny little needle-like crystals blown by a bitter wind. The snow and the wind lashed the long windows of the bank where they sat around Antonia’s desk covered with hundred-dollar bills.
“Now who do you think is in possession ofmost of those bills?” she asked, and smiled at Struthers.
“Who?” he asked.
“Vicious criminals, drug dealers, and tax cheats,” Antonia said.
“I’m not any one of those,” Struthers explained to the detectives.
They did not appear impressed.
“The Secret Service gave me a clean bill of health,” he explained to Antonia. She seemed more impressed than the detectives. She raised her eyebrows appreciatively, gave him an approving little nod.
“You may not know,” she said, “that the United States Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department.”
“Yes, Idid know that, in fact,” Struthers said. “It was explained to me.”
“They don’t merely protect the life of the President of the United States. Actually, themajor part of their job is the detection and prevention of currency counterfeiting. Not many people know that,” she said.
“ThatI didn’t know till this very minute,” Struthers said—kissing ass, Parker thought.
“I’m happy you came to me today,” Antonia said. “I’ve had occasion to work with the Secret Service before, you see, on cases regarding counterfeit United States currency.” She was carefully turning over the stack of hundreds on her desk, bill by bill, checking for whatever. “Though at first glance, I must say these bills do not strike me as being super-bills. Or super-dollars, whichever terminology you gentlemen prefer. Or even super-notes. Whichdo you prefer, Lieutenant?”
Struthers realized she was addressing him.
“I never heard any of those terms in my life,” he said.
“The Arabic writing on the face of some of these bills is suspect, of course,” Antonia said, “but not all bills passing through the Middle East are fake. In fact, sixty percent ofall United States currency is in circulation abroad. You probably didn’t know that, either.”
“I certainly didn’t,” Struthers said.
“In fact, the hundred-dollar bill is the most widely held paper currency in the world. Which is what makes it such an attractive target for counterfeiters,” Antonia said. “What I’m trying to tell you, however, is that the signature of a money-changer—on this bill, for example, the handwriting means ‘Son of Ahmad’—in itself does not indicate a fake bill. As a matter of pride, a money-changer will sign or put some other personal mark on a stack of bills. It’s like an author signing his book at Barnes & Noble.”
Struthers thought a money-changer was some guy who cashed checks on Lambert Av, up in Diamondback. And he didn’t know any authors who signed books.
“In the Arab world,” Antonia said, “money-changers are financial middlemen. They’ve been around since well before Jesus. You need to buy commodities in the West? Simple. You just take your cash to a second-story office in the old quarter of Damascus. The money-changer will arrange for the transfer. I’ve seen these money-changers’ signatures many times before,” she said, exhibiting another of the bills. “They don’t necessarily indicate a bill is counterfeit. We see entirefamilies of counterfeit bills …”
Families, Struthers thought.
“… with the same serial numbers on them,” Antonia said. “But none of this larger stack of bills belongs to any of those families.”
“Then they’re genuine,” Carella said.
“They’re not counterfeit, that’s right,” Antonia said, and shoved the stack of bills to one side of her desk, summarily dismissing $104,000 as beneath further scrutiny. “But let’s look more closely at this lone hundred-dollar bill here,” she said, and picked up the bill Struthers had used in the liquor store. “Henry Loo,” she said, staring at the face of the bill.
The man on the bill looked like Benjamin Franklin to Struthers, but he didn’t say anything.
“The manager of Ban Hin Lee,” she said. “The bank I worked for in Singapore, many years ago. On Robinson Road.”