“I know Robinson Road,” Struthers said.
“You do?”
“I was in Singapore many years ago, too,” Struthers said.
“What’s Henry Loo got to do with this bill?” Carella asked.
“He was the first person who showed me a super-bill,” Antonia said. “Or a super-dollar, if you prefer. Or a super-note.”
Struthers was trying to figure what the rap might be for passing a phony hundred-dollar bill he hadn’t known was phony to begin with.
“I studied economics in Manila,” she told Struthers, trying to impress him, Parker figured. “After graduation, I got a job at Ban Hin Lee …”
“I spent some time in Manila, too,” Struthers told her—still kissing ass, Parker thought. “After I escaped from the Khmer Rouge. But that’s another story,” he said, and Antonia noticed for the first time the almost imperceptible tic and small white scar near the corner of his left eye.
“And later in Singapore,” he said. “That’s how I happen to know Robinson Road.”
“It’s a small world,” Antonia said.
“I’m amazed we didn’t meet there,” he said. “In Singapore. We probably passed each other all the time on Robinson Road.”
“Yes,” she said. “We probably did.”
Staring at each other across the desk where the genuine bills were stacked to one side, and Struthers’ lone C-note was sitting in front of her.
“I started as a bank messenger,” Antonia said. “Worked my way up to teller and then assistant manager, which was when Henry Loo showed me a hundred-dollar bill soreal -looking I thought old Ben Franklin would any minute go fly a kite off it!”
Antonia laughed at her own witticism.
“But it was as queer as monkey soup,” she said, on a comic roll. “A lot of these C-series hundreds were coming through at the time, all of them printed in Teheran on high-tech intaglio presses.”
“Whatkind of presses?” Carella asked.
“Intaglio,” she said.
“What’s intaglio?” Meyer asked.
“An embossing technique that uses a very thick gummy ink.”
“Is that what intaglio means?” Parker asked Carella. “Thick and gummy?”
“How should I know what intaglio means?” Carella said.
“Maybe it means embossing technique,” Meyer suggested.
“I thought you were supposed to be Italian,” Parker said, and shrugged.
“Intaglio produces a three-dimensional effect you can’t get with any other printing technique,” Antonia said. “Whatever the engraver designs, intaglio gives youexactly.”
“And you say these presses exist inTeheran?” Parker asked. He was thinkingTeheran? Where they wear baggy pants and turbans?
“Yes,” Antonia said. “Identical to the ones used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”
“Bureau of Engraving presses inTeheran?” Meyer said. He was thinkingTeheran?Where they shoot guns in the air and burn American flags?
“Oh yes,” Antonia said.
“Let me get this straight,” Carella said. “You’re saying …”
“I’m saying that the late Shah of Iran bought two high-tech intaglio presses from the United States to print his own currency. When the mullahs took over, they put the presses to their own use.”
“Printing counterfeit hundreds, you’re saying,” Parker said.
“Printing super-bills, yes. On plates and paper purchased from the East Germans, yes. Is what I’m saying.”
“Printing high-quality …”
“Printingsuper-bills,” Antonia repeated, stressing the word this time. “Notes so close to the original, they’re virtually impossible to tell apart. In fact, I suspectthis may be a super-bill,” she said, and gingerly tapped Struthers’ hundred-dollar note.
Uh-oh, he thought.
“How can you tell?” Carella asked.
“Experience,” she said.
He looked at her.
“How?” he asked. “If they’re so close to the original …”
“There are detection machines at the Federal Reserve,” she said.
“Do you have one of those machines here?”
“No. I’m judging by eye.”
“I thought you said it was virtually impossible …”
“Yes, well, I have a trained eye.”
He looked at her again. It suddenly occurred to him that she didn’tknow for sure whether or not that hundred-dollar bill was a phony.
“But if it’s soeasy,” he said.
“No one said it’s easy.”
“Well, you took one look at that bill …”
“I’ve been looking at it all along.”
“Without a machine, without even a magnifying glass …”
“There are machines at the Federal Reserve. I told you …”
“But not here.”
“That’s right. We send any suspect bills to the Fed.”
“How many suspect bills do you get on any given day?”
“We get them every now and then.”
“How often?”
“Not very often. Now that the Big Bens are in circulation …”
“The what?”
“The new hundreds with the big picture of Franklin on them. Little by little, they’re replacing all the old hundreds. That means all the super-bills will eventually be pulled out of circulation, too.”
“When?”
“That’s difficult to say. It might take years.”
“How many years?”
“Five? Ten? Why are you being so hostile?” Antonia asked.
Struthers was wondering the same thing.
“Maybe because a woman was killed,” Carella said. “And you’re telling me a bill stolen from her apartment may be one of thesesuper -bills that are so good nobody can tell them from the real thing.”
“The Federal Reserve can detect them. They have machines.”
“But how about mere mortals? Canwe detect them?”
“I just told you this bill looks suspicious, didn’t I?”
“Which means you’ll be sending it to the Federal Reserve to check on one of its secret machines, right?”
“They’re notsecret machines. Everyone knows they exist.”
“How many of these super-bills find their way to those machines?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How many of the bills end up in the Federal Reserve’s vaults?”
“The Fed doesn’t release those figures.”
“Well, how many of them are still incirculation? I’m not talking about the ones you see here at your bank, I’m talking about …”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“I’m asking howmany of these super-bills are still floating around out there.”