Thing was, the private ownership of precious metals in bullion form had been temporarily outlawed, just like during the Depression. People had been ordered to turn in all bullion. Loose jewelry was legal, but if collected it was melted, all of it going into Fort Knox.
As for the cash, a couple million in bills was going to be worth a lot less real soon, chalk it up to “monetary reform.” Every country was on an inflationary spiral, with too many dollars or rubles or marks or pesos chasing too few goods, even though half the population was dead or on the way, the solution was some brand of monetary reform, which was a bureaucratic label for devaluation of the currency, AKA confiscation, which meant the average citizen was about to get fucked but good. In a couple weeks, the government would announce a recall of all bills over $20, redeemed for new bills that would be worth five times less, maybe less, the bean-counters hadn’t said yet. Walk in with a Benjamin, walk out with a sawbuck, was what it looked like.
Meanwhile, all that stray gold and silver coming home was going to put the country back on the gold standard, put the dollar back on top, might throw the balance of trade out of whack, but fuck the Chinese and the renminbi. They’d taken an even bigger hit than the US of A in the Plague, no cheap plastic crap from their deserted sweatshops for Wal-Mart for a while.
So what they had to do, Peters explained as they sat in the kitchen, him keeping a wary eye on Decker, was money laundering. Have Decker pose as an heir, have him cash in the bills and keep it. Let him think he’s getting rich.
The bullion—well, not every place had outlawed the private ownership of gold and silver and precious metals. There were plenty of countries south of here with nice white-sand beaches where you could pass a krugerrand without the federales cuffing you.
“So he’s got an heir?” Foster asked.
“According to the will, yeah,” Peters said, pointing to the will lying on the table in a blue legal binding. It had been in the safe, too. “Only child, a son. Montana address, which is perfect.”
“Why’s that?”
“All those right-wing nuts, talking about black helicopters and computer chips in paper money, all set up their compounds in the Rockies, figured it’d be harder for the government to get to them when civilization collapsed. Some of them tried to set up their own governments, seized cities, caused a breakdown in civil authority right after the Plague hit. Had to send in Airborne units, the Guard, Predator drones, and they’re still there. Complete chaos. We just say the son was visiting, got caught here, was holed up in a relocation camp in Wichita.”
“And if the real McCoy’s dead?”
“We claim it’s an error. It happens. Bodies get misidentified; it was such a rush getting corpses to the pits. Shit, you’re dealing with a bureaucracy here. Same people at the DMV who can’t get it right are running the clean-up of Armageddon.”
“And if he’s alive?”
“Same thing, reverse. And we feel bad about it.”
***
Another day, another dusty deserted sinkhole of dreams, more houses with X’s and depressing statistics—all the children were the worst. They’d holed up in a Bates Motel on the outskirts of the next town, with Decker handcuffed to a metal bed frame. He was with them today. Peters had hauled up the canvas bags, told Decker as little as possible about the contents, instructed Foster not the mention the gold or silver or other coins.
“I don’t get it,” Foster said to him. “You’re planning on jumping a plane or boat out of here to some banana republic?”
“Right. That’s why I need the cash. That’s what’s going to get me out of the country. Then I can use the gold or silver.”
“Why?”
They were sitting under an elm as protection from the sun, windows rolled down, sipping lukewarm bottled water taken from a darkened Kwik store along the highway. No power there. Decker was in the store, looking for lunch.
It was ten, and the day had so far been futile. A few bundles of cash, some jewelry, nothing more, but all properly logged. Apparently, Foster thought, you could take it with you, or maybe the farmers and retirees and losers there never had it to begin with.
“The last President we had, one of his people said never let a good crisis go to waste. Hell, the other side howled about that, said it was proof positive we were gonna get a dictatorship rammed down our throats. Turns out they were cribbing his notes. We have a real crisis here, and the crew in DC is taking it for all it’s worth. The monetary reform is just a start. This bunch thinks they’ve got a hotline to God, and if they’re not speaking Latin they’re speaking in tongues. You tried logging onto the net lately?”
Foster nodded. “Yeah. Servers are all down. Technical—”
“Bullshit. The NSA knows every server and every data junction in the nation, hell, they’ve been using them for a decade now, gift of the war on terrorism. Every call made from a land or cell line goes through encryption at a room the NSA created, with the complicity of the telecom industry. Data mining, word or key term searches, you name it. There’s no privacy anymore. Point is, the feds have a grip on the net, the whole communications grid. They haven’t got around to configuring the software yet, but in a few weeks there’s going to be an announcement about restored service, but with enhanced security features for the present emergency. They’ll control access and content.”
“Meaning?”
“No more porn, for starters. No more unauthorized bulletin boards or chat rooms. No uncensored communications. Any unapproved or negative comments about the present regime will be dealt with severely.”
“Jail?”
“If they’re lucky. They hate Joe Stalin and the commies, but they’re taking a page from his book. I’ve heard about hoarders being loaded onto buses headed for the Rockies.”
Foster sat back, stared out the window at the neighborhood in the hazy light, cottonwood seeds floating in the soft breeze. “How do you know all this?”
“I’m a GS-12. Comes with the territory. We get updates every day.” He took out his iPad. “Government issue. Secure network. Not for general consumption. Hell, I could get fired and disappeared for telling you this much.”
“Then why do it?”
Peters looked at his watch, opened the door. “It’s hard to hold all this in, knowing that your country’s about to become a fucking prison camp. Besides,” he waved at the motionless town, “who’re you going to tell?”
“My superiors.”
Peters laughed. “The barneys you work with couldn’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight. I’m not too worried.” And, Foster had to admit, he was right. Chuck Davis was a nice enough guy, but he was a small-town sheriff, cutting favors to his golf buddies or their drunken idiot kids, putting a boot on the neck of the wetbacks and bad niggers and white trash on the wrong side of the tracks for no other reason than he could.
“You don’t have anyone left, do you?” she asked him quietly. He looked at her, something on his face, but then Decker emerged from the store with an armful of Doritos and Cheetos and potato chips. He tossed the bags into the open rear window, got in.
“Shit, man, no power, no candy bars. All melted in this heat, rest of the shit’s gone bad sitting for a couple months. This is only thing’s left what’s edible.” He tore open the bag, began stuffing Doritos in his mouth, chewing loudly.
“Breakfast of champions,” Peters said wryly.
“Yeah, whatever. So when we gonna cash in alla this?”
“Tomorrow, I told you. Finish up here, head back to Hutch, cash in, and sayonara.” Peters smiled. They’d left Decker blissfully ignorant of the coming monetary reform. Let him think he was going to be the Monopoly Man, buy his silence, while they walked out with millions in illegal bullion.
“Hey, man, long as we’re here, we gotta pick someone up.”
Peters and Foster looked at one another. This was getting too complicated.
Decker had them drive by a run-down prefab on the edge of town. Decker went i
nside, emerged with a skinny girl in cut-offs and a tank top. Peters looked at her arms, saw no needle tracks, her teeth were good, so she wasn’t a hardcore addict who traded pussy for drugs, which was about the only kind of woman that would attach herself to Dewayne Decker, or had, if Foster’s brief recitation of Decker’s history last night was accurate, and Peters had no doubt it was.
Decker introduced her as Ashley, his girlfriend. Ashley stayed quiet. Not shy quiet, scared quiet. Peters had his suspicions, but said nothing.
Peters knew the type that normally hung out with guys like Decker, lower-class girls raised by momma with a deadbeat dad, bad grades, lucky if she made it unobtrusively through high school, likely dropped out to raise the bastard light brown child fathered by another deadbeat, beauty washed out by thirty, a distant memory by forty, living in a rental working a series of dead-end minimum wage jobs and maybe developing a drug or alcohol habit, or both, to take the edge off, a few busts for theft or possession and complaining witness in one domestic violence case after another.
Ashley, with a clear complexion and nicely-filled out body, and eyes that lacked the dull hopelessness of the chronically unemployed and over-jailed underclass of a college girl slumming, either by choice or circumstance, the legs nice and toned under the bruises, the hair in a chic-short shag that needed a wash. Clothes a bit ragged, ripped off from a Wal-Mart somewhere; she probably normally wore khakis and sandals, not short-short cutoffs that barely hid her small shapely ass cheeks and the tank top that covered flea-bite boobs. The big sunglasses probably hid a shiner or two.
Peters was poking his head around the doorframe as they came out. He sniffed the air.
“Fuck you doing, McGarrett?” Decker hissed.
“Seein’ if I can smell anhydrous or ether,” Peters said casually. “You sure you ain’t got a meth lab in there?”
“Fuck no,” Decker spat. “You find any Sudafed on me? I don’t do that shit.”
“Yeah, guess you’re right. You’re not a do-it-yourself guy. Better to get it from a safe source. This why you need the Viagra?”
“Hey, asshole, you want me to help with your little scam, or not?” Decker asked.
“I would, yeah. But you ain’t exactly indispensable. Remember that. Get in,” he said, opening the rear door.
“Dewayne,” the girl said, “who are these people? Are you getting arrested?” Her voice was concerned, but quiet. Not a loud sharp trailer-park fishwife drawl, but a voice that he could imagine answering a professor’s query about pi or Aristotle.
“No, you’re not under arrest,” Peters said sliding behind the wheel, turning over the ignition. “You’re now partners in a joint venture.”
“Are we witnesses? Informants? I didn’t know about that place back in Jetmore—”
“Shut up, Ashley,” Decker ordered. “The cops here have a proposition that’s gonna make us some money. Enough to get us outta here.”
“That’s right,” Peters said. “The hitch is you gotta promise to go far, far away from here.” West, where the chaos from the Plague was still boiling, where tracking them down wouldn’t be easy. Maybe north, to Canada, already under populated but now more so, sneaking across the border to Manitoba, a snap with the Border Patrol occupied with their little war along the Rio Grande with the remaining narco-lords.
“Fine by me,” the girl said. “I was just passing through here when all this shit went down. I’ve been trying to get out for weeks.” Peters didn’t inquire further, let it ride, another idea percolating in his mind.
***
They went back to the Bates Motel to get Decker cleaned up, shaved. The main street held a small Goodwill shop, and they found Decker a set of slacks, polo shirt, loafers. Except for the con’s eyes and hardened set of his jaw, he looked nearly normal. Ashley found khaki shorts and a clean white shirt that she knotted beneath her breasts over a yellow cami top, turning into one of the Sweethearts of Sigma Chi with a little makeup.
“You’re sure this is gonna work?” Foster said, the first words she’d said to him since coming on board, concerned now but not angry. “Are they just gonna take his word he’s the heir, hand over the cash to him?”
“We got documents from the courthouse, remember?” The DMV down in the basement hadn’t cleared out their equipment, and it was so old that it wasn’t computerized, so running off a Kansas license for Decker took about a half hour. Ditto the birth certificate, forms available in the probate court office.
“People have been defrauding the government ever since we had one. This hasn’t changed. You’ve still got foul-ups, missed memos, and stupid people in charge.” Plus, it’s only got to work for a little while, he thought.
It turned out to be easier than they thought. The Asset Recovery Administration Office was in Hutchinson, an hour away. Peters parked in front of the mall, in a small space reserved for the GS workers who manned the office. He took the bag of cash (minus ten thousand for later expenses), led Decker into the mall. Foster would follow with the girl, with the two canvas duffels filled with their take from the last few days and the claim sheets they’d filled out.
The Asset Recovery Administration had commandeered a large storefront in what had to have been a floundering retail center before the Plague, cleared out the tools and mid-price clothing from a JC Penny and set up an improvised office. Peters led Decker through a maze of government issue metal and fake-wood desks and padded folding chairs set up in neat rows, cables snaking away from a warehouse-sized collection of desktop computers, past overworked clerks who were mostly female and minority and older, and clients in varying stages of shock and distress, towards the rear. He found an empty desk, plunked down the bag, sat Decker down.
On the way, Peters had drilled the information into Decker. Thug and junkie he might be, but Decker had a certain animal intelligence that let him catch on quick. Name, address, SSN, relation to deceased, amount claimed, and a dozen other details that Peters had covered from doing this before. Decker finessed it, and the clerk, a forty-something white woman in department-store professional garb with thirty pounds of pregnancy weight un-lost, told them it would be two days before the government would process the claim and issue the check. The clerk handed Decker a claim receipt, and Decker stared at it dumbly, not comprehending the figure written on the yellow carbon copy: $1,015,300.
“So what do we do for two days with them?” Foster asked, keeping her voice calm. “We can’t very well stick ‘em in a motel room for two days, hope they’ll behave. Decker’ll be dealing pills out of the room inside a day. Or he’ll call some other cops, and we’re both in jail. And the girlfriend, she’s out of here her first chance.”
“Funny. That’s just what I planned to do with them,” Peters said, silently enjoying Foster’s open-mouthed gape.
The motel, it turned out, was a U-shaped run-down Motel Hell in one of the new ghost towns sprouting all across the country. Last guest had checked in on April 17, and had checked out in a body bag if the spray paint on the door to Room 7 was correct. Peters decided to give Room 7 of the Surf Motel a wide berth, chose two on the opposite side of the U. They were going to trade off; Foster and Decker would stay in the motel for a day while Peters and Ashley would scour the town for stray, unclaimed loot. It would take a day and a half to cover the place, leaving a half day free, and then back to Hutch, claim the loot, and then make the grand exit.
They discussed what to do with the bullion they’d taken. Stick it in a motel room and Decker or Ashley might stumble onto it, figure that an IOU from Uncle Sam wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, hightail it out for points unknown, get busted the first time they tried to pawn an eagle, and lead the Treasury right back to them. Part of their job was to clear out safe deposit boxes, so he had the combination to the small walk-in safe. He found keys to two large unused boxes, stuffed the bags inside.
The first morning with Ashley was slow. Peters had his black fatigues on, which were in need of a wash, and Ashley had kept the
preppy sorority clothes. She wrinkled her nose when he told her what they were doing. “Kinda like Tomb Raider?” she asked, and Peters could only nod numbly. He’d had the normal response that any thirty-five year old man would have to a blandly pretty girl almost half his age, but it had faded in the face of her self-absorption which might be a reaction to the Plague, but it might just be that she really was that shallow and oblivious.
Not to mention unhelpful. Even though he’d told her that the locals had carted off the bodies, she still refused to enter a house. “What if they missed one?” Which was not an entirely stupid question—in a few areas, the system had broken down so rapidly and completely that removal of bodies remained undone, hence the respirators. Peters simply got used to it. So she sat in the car, strolled about the town with an iPod hooked into her belt and ear-buds stuck in her ears, using vapid dance music in an attempt to recapture a world gone forever.
2013: The Aftermath Page 14