“Officer Borsch, really,” I plead. “I didn’t know it was fake. He told me to get rid of it, but I didn’t know why! So I was getting rid of it by spending it.” He’s just staring at me, so I say, “You’ve got to get moving, and you’ve got to be careful! They thought I was a cop and—”
“They thought you were a cop? Dressed like that?”
“An undercover cop! And I swear they were going to kill me! They’re probably making their getaway right now!”
He frowns at me. “Two seniors. Making a getaway. One with one eye, one with one leg…”
I stomp one rubbery tan foot. “Officer Borsch! They’re counterfeiters! And they’re good. They’ve got the watermark and the security thread and the…and the everything! Everything except color-shifting ink.”
He studies me a second, then gives me a pained squint. “You look like Tweety Bird’s granny, you know that?” He looks at my feet. “And those are amazingly ugly shoes.”
“Officer Borsch!”
“All right, all right!” he grumbles. “I just can’t believe I’m talking to a Tweety granny look-alike about one-eyed, one-legged counterfeiters.”
“Just do something!”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” he gripes, “but this whole thing’s unbelievable.”
So he radios for backup, tells Grams and me, “Don’t leave this apartment!” and heads out.
The minute he’s gone, Grams turns on me and says, “You have some explaining to do, young lady.”
“I know,” I whimper. “And I’m really, really, really sorry. I was just afraid you’d make me give it back! I’d never had money before—it was really fun to have money. I could buy anything and do anything…. And it’s not like I was being selfish! I gave you money, I bought stuff for Marissa, I bought Hudson a surprise…. If I wanted a pretzel at the mall, I could just buy a pretzel at the mall—”
“How much did you spend?” Grams gasps, sinking into a chair.
I look down. “About a thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“Well, Hudson’s present was over five hundred—”
“Five hundred dollars? Five hundred dollars? No wonder the gallery was able to give a description of you.”
“The gallery did?”
Her head wagged from side to side. “It’s a lot of cash for a young girl to hand over.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling suddenly very stupid.
“Oh, Samantha! How are we ever going to pay all of it back?”
“Maybe they won’t make us?” I asked, but my voice sounded really small. Like I was talking from way down at the bottom of a big muddy pit.
“And if those men get away…”
“They won’t!” I gave a halfhearted hoist to the fake leg and the eye. “They can’t see, and they can’t run.”
Grams held her forehead like she was holding back a migraine. “I can’t believe Tommy Egbert is a counterfeiter!” She looks at me. “Are you sure you’ve got this right?”
I pull off my wig and set it on the coffee table along with the leg and the eye. “Yes! And he and Jack Allenson both have angel wing tattoos on their necks. With letters arching over the wings.”
“They do?”
“Do you think they’re in some kind of counterfeiting cult or something?”
“A counterfeiting cult? Samantha, really!”
“So why would they all have the same tattoo in the same place? Maybe they’re in some kind of underground moneymaking association, or something! Like the winged-neck Mafia!”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” She thinks a minute, then shakes her head. “But why would two seniors in their condition, living here, counterfeit money? Were they expecting to start living the good life?”
I blink at her as this queasy feeling slowly tide-pools in my stomach.
“What’s the matter, Samantha? What are you thinking?”
“Buck’s daughters said something about him living in a trailer—that he deserved better. And he was a war vet, too!”
“Buck’s daughters? When did you talk to Buck’s daughters?” Her brow pinches down. “What else have you not told me? How long has this been going on?”
“Uh…sorry, Grams, but I have to make a phone call.”
“To whom? Samantha, get back here!”
I race over to the phone. “I promise I’ll tell you everything, but first I’ve got to call André.”
“André? At the Heavenly? What does he have to do with this?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute!”
I whip out the phone book, look up the number for the Heavenly, and dial. “André?” I ask when he answers the phone. “It’s Sammy. Do you still have Buck Ritter’s daughter’s card?”
“Uh, I might….”
Through the phone, I can hear sirens wailing in the distance. “Can I, uh…can I have the phone number?”
“Is this another one of those don’t-ask-questions situations?” he growled.
The sirens are getting louder—I can hear them in one ear through the phone and also kinda muffled through the apartment. “It’s actually an extension of the same one,” I tell him. “And I really need to come over and explain a bunch of stuff, but it won’t be for, you know, a while.”
“Hmm. Well, I got the card right here. You ready?”
So I scrawl down the information, get off the phone, and get right back on again.
“Now who are you calling?” Grams asks.
The phone’s already ringing, so I hold up my finger, and when a woman answers, I say, “Hi. Is this Buck Ritter’s daughter?”
“Why, yes. Who’s this?”
The sirens are suddenly quiet.
“A friend of Jack Allenson and Tommy Egbert’s.”
“Oh my!” she says. And after a short eye-opening conversation with her, I get off the phone feeling totally shaken. And now I don’t know what to do.
So I do the only thing that seems to make any sense—I run back to the coffee table, wrestle on my granny wig, grab the leg and eye, and race for the door.
THIRTY-SIX
“Samantha, wait! Where are you going? Why are you taking those…body parts?”
“I have to find Officer Borsch!”
“Just let him handle it! He said not to leave the apartment.”
“You don’t understand!” I cry, and take off running for the fire escape.
I’m feeling so strange. Completely confused. And when I pass by the fourth-floor landing, I get all choked up. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Officer Borsch is at the white van, all right. So are two squad cars, which are parked on the lawn and aimed at the van like black-and-white cannons.
The Jackal’s and the Sandman’s heads are bowed, and their hands are being cuffed behind their backs by Squeaky and the Chick.
“Officer Borsch,” I cry, flying off the last few steps of the fire escape. “Officer Borsch, wait!”
He takes one look at me, grabs me by the arm, and yanks me aside. “What are you doing? And why are you carrying those things? Why are you here at all? Go home!”
“I have to give them back! I…” I tear away from him and run over to where the Jackal and Sandman are looking totally defeated. “I’m so sorry,” I tell them, and I’m trying to return their body parts when it hits me that the Sandman is standing on two feet and the Jackal has two eyes.
Apparently, they have backup body parts.
Anyway, I’m just gawking at them like an idiot, holding out a leg and an eye, when the Jackal says, “Who are you?”
Squeaky and the Chick are obviously wondering the same thing, because Squeaky pipes up with, “Excuse me, ma’am, but your presence here is not constructive or warranted,” and the Chick is blinking her ultra-tarred lashes at me like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.
Officer Borsch tries to pull me away, but I wrestle my arm back and say to the Jackal and Sandman, “Buck’s daughter told me about you guys.
Said that your whole platoon got killed except for the three of you.” I turn to the Jackal. “That’s how you lost your eye.” I look at the Sandman. “That’s how you lost your leg. And that’s why you have those tattoos on the backs of your necks.”
Everyone goes dead quiet.
Finally the Jackal sort of nods and says, “That’s right.”
“Buck’s daughter said you had the tattoos done at the same time. She said those letters are the initials of your friends who died.”
The Jackal and Sandman exchange looks, and finally Sandman says, “It’s been forty years of nightmares. You think you’ll get over it, but you never really do.”
“Please try to understand,” the Jackal says. “We felt…disposed of. And we all thought Uncle Sam owed us more than he was willing to pay.” He shrugs. “So after forty years, we came up with a way to make him pay. We weren’t trying to get rich, we just thought we deserved better.”
“Poor Buck,” the Sandman says in a really heavyhearted way. “He was nervous about it the whole time.”
The Jackal rolls his good eye my way. “I know you thought we were going to hurt you, and I’m sorry. We just wanted to restrain you until we could leave town.” He frowns. “I know it didn’t look that way, but that’s the truth.”
I look at Officer Borsch and whisper, “Can’t you just let them go?”
Officer Borsch pulls me aside. “I understand why you want to, but the answer’s no. They broke the law. They were skipping town with big duffel bags of counterfeit money.”
“But—”
“Look, it’s not really Uncle Sam who pays—it’s the people who get stuck with the phony cash.” Then he drops his voice even further and says, “Now please. Go home. And don’t use the fire escape. These other officers are witnesses to everything, you got that?”
I nod, and after a little more shooing on his part, I trudge around to the front of the building and head for the front door.
My feet are killing me in my rubbery old shoes, but my heart feels even worse. It’s like a lump of cement in my chest. I mean, usually a bad guy is just that—a bad guy.
Or a psycho sicko.
Or, you know, just plain crazy.
But it wasn’t so cut-and-dried with these guys. It didn’t seem right that they were stuck living in the Senior Highrise or some trailer park in Omaha, Nebraska. But I knew that Officer Borsch was right—counterfeiting cash wasn’t right, either.
And even though I had really thought that I was in, you know, mortal danger, I was feeling really, really bad for ripping off a war vet’s leg and using it to pop out another war vet’s eyeball.
Not to mention having scared the third one to death.
So I didn’t go in the front door right away. I just sat down on one of the wooden benches by the walkway to the Highrise entrance and felt miserable. My feet were hurting, my tummy padding was itching like crazy, and I knew I looked ridiculous in my stupid granny getup, but I didn’t care.
All I could feel was my block-of-cement heart, pulling me down, down, down, making it hard to breathe, hard to want to do anything.
Which is why I didn’t hear the clickity-clack of the skateboard right away.
Why I didn’t notice that it was actually coming up the Highrise walkway.
Why I didn’t even look up until it was clickity-clacking right past me.
All of a sudden my heart forgot about being a lump of cement and started bouncing around in my chest. “Casey?”
He stopped and looked around, and when all he saw was a crazy-looking old lady on the Highrise bench, he pushed off again.
“Casey!” I called, and when he stopped again, I started laughing.
His face went all funny as he cocked his head.
I waved him over. “It’s me!”
“No way…,” he said, coming toward me. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” I laughed, because he’d never come to the Highrise before and something about him being there made me feel all bubbly inside. All bubbly, and light-headed, and happy.
He moved closer and sort of peered at me. “Is that really you?”
“Yes, sonny,” I warbled.
He looked over both shoulders. “Do you always wear a disguise when you’re here?”
“No!”
Now, I’ve been in some pretty embarrassing situations with Casey before, but this was on beyond embarrassing.
It was totally absurd.
Laughable, actually, and boy, did I laugh.
He sat next to me on the bench and shook his head. “Man, you’ve got that lipstick thing down, that’s for sure. My grandmother used to wear hers just like that.” Then he whispered, “So why are you in an old-lady disguise?”
I made my voice all quivery as I said, “It’s kind of a long story, sonny.”
“Well?”
So I started at the beginning and told him everything. About scaring Buck Ritter to death, about taking the money, about…everything. And when I was all done, I came up for air and said, “I dug myself in pretty good, huh?”
He let out a low whistle. “Wow.” Then he kinda grinned at me. “Who says living with old people is boring? Man!”
I snorted. “Yeah. Well, this was a little too much excitement.” I shook my head. “I wish I hadn’t found the money or gotten nosy or tried to figure it out. I’m all, like, confused.” I looked at him. “I know that counterfeiting money is wrong, but I still feel really bad for them.” I took a deep breath. “And I’m gonna be in total hot water with Grams.”
He nodded, then reached over and held my hand.
My very spotty, very ugly hand.
I looked at his hand on mine, then looked into his beautiful brown, caring eyes.
It was a perfect moment, us alone on the bench, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes.
Trouble is, I looked like Tweety’s granny, and he looked like a kid making eyes at an old lady.
After a few seconds of this, his mouth twitched.
My big orange lips pinched down a smile.
He snickered.
I snorted.
And then we both just busted up.
When we were all done laughing, he said, “I actually did come over for a reason.” He pulled a square yellow envelope out of his pocket. “Here. It’s from Heather.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
The flap was licked to death. It took me forever to peel it open, and when I finally got the note out and unfolded it, I found myself face to face with three bold blue words.
I HATE YOU!
“Gee, thanks,” I said, handing it back to Casey.
“What!” He jumped off the bench. “She was supposed to thank you. Even my mother said she had to!”
I shrugged. “All the more reason for her to hate me.”
“Man! I can’t believe her.” He grabbed his skateboard. “I’ll call you later, okay?” Then, when he was a few yards away, he grinned at me over his shoulder. “Go do something about those lips, would ya?”
I laughed and blew him a great big granny kiss.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Apparently, the only one who actually laundered any of the counterfeit money was me. Well, Grams did, too, but that was thanks to me.
Laundering, it turns out, has nothing to do with washing machines. It means exchanging fake money for real money. Like, if you go spend a fake twenty and get back fifteen dollars in change, you’ve just laundered a twenty.
Who knew I’d been laundering more than blackmailer briefs?
Anyway, Officer Borsch says that the Jackal and Sandman’s lawyer will probably argue that making fake money is not a crime if you keep it in your house. He says that it is and that they were obviously planning to spend it, but he also says that, considering all the circumstances and that they have no “priors,” they’ll most likely get off easier than they might have.
Unfortunately for me, I’m in some pretty hot water. Not as hot as it could have been if Offic
er Borsch wasn’t helping me, though. “Can’t have a criminal in my wedding,” he grumbled. “We’re gonna have to get you out of this.”
Saved by the wedding bells.
I turned over all the leftover money to him, and he helped me return everything I could return. No pretzels or Juicers or pool party swimsuits, but he gave back the camera and the clothes, and we even bagged up my Old Lady Superspy disguise and left it on CeCe’s Thrift Store doorstep after hours.
For the rest, he’s arranging to have me do community service. I don’t quite know what that means yet, but I have a feeling it’s going to involve an orange vest and a big trash bag. I don’t mind, though. Even if I have to pick up trash for a year, I know I’m getting off easy. The way Officer Borsch explained it was, “Passing around counterfeit money is like playing old maid.”
“Huh?” I said, and I guess I was squinting pretty good, ’cause he said, “You’ve never played old maid?”
“Uh…yeah. You saw me…?”
“No! Not dress up! I mean the card game. Your grandmother never taught you old maid?”
“Uh…no.”
He let out a puffy-cheeked sigh. “I am getting so old.” But then he went on to explain how in the card game old maid, the person who gets stuck with the old maid card loses. “Counterfeit money is like that. It passes around from person to person, but eventually someone realizes what it is and doesn’t accept it, and the person holding it loses. They get nothing for it.”
“Even if they turn it over to the police?”
“What are we supposed to do about it? Millions of dollars of counterfeit money are confiscated every year. We can’t pay for that!”
“Millions of dollars?”
He nodded. “Besides the jokers in this country, rogue governments in other countries print up our money.”
“No way!”
“It’s a big problem that hurts the whole economy. It waters down the actual value of our real cash. If people don’t trust their country’s money, they lose confidence in the economy, and the finances of the whole country are affected.”
I just looked at him and said, “Wow.” I mean, who knew that buying pretzels with fake twenties could bring down the whole economy?
Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash Page 21