Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

  2

  Before the Massachusetts armored car job went sour, Parker had had clean documents under a couple of names, papers that were good enough to pass through any usual level of inspection. In getting out from under that job, he’d burned through all of his useful identification, and made it very tough to move around. He had to deal with that right now, make it possible to operate in the world.

  How much of a problem this lack of identification meant was shown by the fact that Claire had to drive him to Maryland Friday afternoon. With no driver’s license and no credit cards, he couldn’t rent a car, and if he borrowed hers and drove it himself and something went wrong, it would kill her identity as well.

  Early in the evening of Friday they checked into a motel north of Baltimore and had an early dinner, and then she drove him to Robbins’ address on Front Street in a very small town called Vista, near Gunpowder Falls State Park. They’d driven several uphill miles of winding road, but if there was a vista it was too dark to see.

  The town, when they got there, wasn’t much: one crossroads, a church and firehouse, and half a dozen stores, a couple of them out of business. Robbins’ building in this commercial row, two stories high and narrow, with large plate-glass windows flanking a glass front door, still bore a wooden sign above the windows reading vista hardware. Inside, through the front windows, the interior was brightly lit, but had not been a hardware store for a long time.

  Parker said, “You want to come in or wait?”

  “Easier if I wait.”

  She had parked at the curb in front of the place, the only car stopped along here. Getting out to the old uneven slate sidewalk, Parker saw that the interior of the building was now a kind of gallery, a high-ceilinged room with large paintings on both white-painted side walls. In the middle of the room stood a large easel with a good-size canvas on it, in profile to the windows so that the subject couldn’t be seen. In front of the canvas, stooped toward it, brush in right hand, was what had to be Robbins, a tall narrow figure dressed in black, head thrust up and forward as he peered at his work. What he most looked like, the thin angular dark figure in the brightly lit room, was a praying mantis.

  Parker rapped a knuckle on the glass of the front door. The painter looked this way, tapped his forehead with the handle end of his brush in salute, put the brush down on the tray beneath the canvas, and walked over to unlock and open the door. His walk looked painful, a little crabbed and distorted, but it must have been that way a long time, because he didn’t seem to notice.

  He pulled the door open, his leathery face welcoming but wary, and said, “Mr. Willis?”

  “For now.”

  He smiled. “Ah, very good. Come in.” Then, looking past Parker, he said, “Your companion does not wish to join us?”

  “No, she doesn’t want to be a distraction.”

  “Very astute. I find all beautiful women a distraction.” Closing the door, he said, “I think you would prefer to call me Robbins. Kazimierz is not easy for an American to pronounce.” He gestured toward the rear of the long room, where a couple of easy chairs and small tables made a kind of living room; or a living room set.

  As they walked down the long room, on an old floor of wide pine planks, Parker said, “Why didn’t you change the first name?”

  “Ego,” Robbins said, and motioned for Parker to sit. “Many are Robbins, or my original name, Rudzik, but from earliest childhood Kazimierz has been me.” Also sitting, he leaned forward onto his knees, peered at Parker, and said, “Tell me what you can.”

  “I no longer have an identity,” Parker said, “that’s safe from the police.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “If we’re at the point of fingerprints,” Parker said, “it’s already too late. I need papers to keep me from getting that far.”

  “And how secure must these be?” He gave a little finger wave and said, “What I mean is, you want more than a simple forged driver’s license.”

  “I want to survive a police computer,” Parker said. “I don’t have a passport; I want one.”

  “A legitimate passport.”

  “Everything legitimate.”

  Robbins leaned back. “Nothing is impossible,” he said. “But everything is expensive.”

  “I know that.”

  “We are speaking of approximately two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “I thought it might be around there.”

  Robbins cocked an eyebrow, watching him. “This number does not bother you.”

  “No. If you do the job, it’s worth it.”

  “I would need half ahead of time. In cash, of course. All in cash. How soon could you collect it?”

  “I brought it with me in the car.”

  Robbins gave a surprised laugh. “You are serious!”

  “I’m always serious,” Parker told him. “Now you tell me how you’re gonna do it.”

  “Of course.” Robbins thought a minute, looking out over his studio. The paintings on the walls, mounted three or four high, were all portraits, some of well-known faces ranging from John Kennedy to Julia Roberts, some of unknown but interesting faces. All were slightly tinged with a kind of darkness, as though some sort of gloom were being hidden within the paint.

  Finally, Robbins nodded to himself and said, “You know I come from the East.”

  “Yes.”

  “I did this kind of work for the authorities back there,” he said. “For many years. False identities, false papers. There was much work of that kind to be done in those days.”

  “Sure.”

  “I imagine there is work of that kind to be done in this country as well,” Robbins said, and spread his hands in fatalistic acceptance. “But I am a foreigner, and not that much to be trusted. And I am certain there are Americans who can do the same work.”

  “Sure.”

  “I still retain many contacts with my former associates, and in fact travel east two or three times a year. When a change as complete as you need is called for, my old friends are often of assistance.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes.” Robbins leaned forward, “When my part of the world was the proletarian paradise,” he said, “unfortunately, the infant mortality rate was higher than one would prefer. Many children, born around the same time as yourself, are memorialized by nothing more than a birth certificate and a small grave.”

  “I get that.”

  “We start with such a birth certificate,” Robbins told him. “To explain your lack of accent, we add documentation that your family emigrated, I think to Canada, when you would have been no more than thirteen years of age. Do you know people in Canada?”

  “No.”

  “Unfortunate.” Robbins shook his head at the difficulty. “What we must do,” he said, “is bring you to this country very recently, so you will be applying for a Social Security card only now.”

  Parker considered that. “I was the Canadian representative of an American company,” he decided.

  “You can do that?”

  “Yes. I’ll have to phone the guy to tell him about it, that’s all.”

  “Good. Do you have an attorney you can trust?”

  “I can find one.”

  “I think,” Robbins said, “you changed your name many years ago, when you were first in Canada. Because of your schoolmates, you see. But never officially. So now that you are in the US, you will first go to the court to have your name legally changed from whatever is on that birth certificate to whomever you would rather be than Mr. Willis.”

  “Go through the court,” Parker said.

  “If we are going to legitimize you,” Robbins said, “we must use as many legitimate means as possible. What state do you live in?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “They process many name changes there,” Robbins assured him. “It will not be a problem. So with your birth certificate and your court order for the name change, you will apply for and receive your Social Security card. After that, there is no quest
ion. You are who you say you are.”

  “You make it sound pretty easy,” Parker told him.

  “And yet, it is not.” Robbins’ smile, when he showed it, was wintery. Reaching for a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen on the table beside himself, he said, “Your employer while you lived in Canada?”

  “Cosmopolitan Beverages. They’re based in Bayonne, New Jersey.”

  “And the man there I would talk to? To get some employment documents, you see.”

  “Frank Meany.”

  “You have his e-mail address?”

  “No, I have his phone number.”

  “Ah, well, that will do.”

  Parker gave him the number and, as he wrote it down, Robbins said, “E-mail has the advantage, you see, that it has no accent. The only three things left for right now are the money, and I must take a photograph of you, and you must tell me your choice of a name.”

  “I’ll bring the money in,” Parker said, and went outside, where Claire lowered the passenger window so he could lean in and say, “It’s gonna be all right. We’re still happy with the name?”

  “I am. You want the money from the trunk?”

  “Yes.”

  Opening the trunk, he brought out the duffel bag he’d brought down with him from upstate New York and carried it into Vista Hardware, where Robbins had moved to stand beside a refectory table along the right wall, beneath portraits of Kofi Annan and Clint Eastwood. In all the pictures, the eyes were as wary as Robbins’ own.

  He seemed amused by the duffel bag. “Usually,” he said, “people who traffic in large quantities of cash carry briefcases.”

  “The money’s just as good in this.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is.”

  Robbins picked up from the floor under the table a cardboard carton that had originally contained a New Zealand white wine. “it will be just as good in this as well,” he said.

  Parker started lifting stacks of currency from the duffel bag. They were both silent as they counted.

  3

  Driving east across New Jersey on Interstate 80 Monday afternoon, Parker passed a car with the bumper sticker drive it like you stole it, which was exactly what he was doing. On long hauls like last weekend’s trip down to Maryland, it would be too risky for him to drive, but for the sixty-mile run across the state from Claire’s place to Bayonne there shouldn’t be a problem. He held himself at two miles above the speed limit, let most of the other traffic hurry by—including drive it like you stole it—and stayed literally under the radar.

  To get to Cosmopolitan Beverages, he had to drop south of the interstates just before the Holland Tunnel, and drive down into what was still called the Port of New York, even though years ago, with the changeover from longshoremen to containers, just about all the port’s activity had moved over to the Jersey side of the bay: Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and Bayonne.

  Bayonne, being at the southeast edge of northern New Jersey, with Staten Island so close to its southern shore there was a bridge across, was protected from the worst of the Atlantic weather and out of the way of the heaviest of the shipping lanes. This was the home of the legitimate part of Cosmopolitan Beverages, in an area totally industrial, surrounded by piers, warehouses, gasoline storage towers, freight tracks, chain-link fences, and guard shacks. Most of the traffic here was big semi trailers, and most of those were towing the large metal containers that had made this port possible.

  In the middle of all this, standing alone on an island of frost-heaved concrete spottily patched with asphalt, stood a broad three-story brick building long ago painted a dull gray. On its roof, in gaudy contrast, a gleaming red-and-gold neon sign proclaimed cosmopolitan in flowing script and, beneath that, beverages in smaller red block letters.

  A chain-link fence stretched across the concrete-and-asphalt area in front of the building, extending back on both sides toward the piers and Upper New York Bay. Gates in both front corners of the fence stood open and unguarded, the one on the left leading to a mostly full parking lot beside the building, the one on the right opening to a smaller space with only two cars in it at the moment, and with a sign on the fence near the gate reading visitor parking.

  Parker turned in there, left the Toyota with the other visiting cars, and followed a concrete walk across the front of the building to the revolving-door entrance. Inside was a broad empty reception area, containing nothing but a wide low black desk on a shiny black floor. Mobbed-up businesses do try to look like normal businesses, but not very hard. It hadn’t occurred to anybody there to put visitor seating in the reception area because they really didn’t care.

  The wall behind the desk was curved and silver, giving a spaceship effect. Mounted on that wall were bottles of the different liquors the company imported, each in its own clear plastic box, with that brand’s Christmas gift box next to it.

  The man seated at the desk was different from the last time Parker’d been here, a few years ago, but from the same mold; thirties, indolent, uninvolved. The only thing professional about him was his company blazer, maroon with cb in ornate gold letters on the pocket. He was reading a Maxim magazine, and he didn’t look up when Parker walked over to the desk.

  Parker waited, looking down at him, then rapped a knuckle on the shiny black surface of the desk. The guy slowly looked up, as though from sleep. “Yeah?”

  “Frank Meany. Tell him Parker’s here.”

  “He isn’t in today,” the guy said, and looked back at his magazine.

  Parker plucked Maxim from the guy’s hands and tossed it behind him over his shoulder. “Tell him Parker’s here.”

  The guy’s first instinct was to jump up and start a fight, but his second instinct, more useful, was to be cautious. He didn’t know this jerk who’d just come in and flipped his magazine out of his hands, so he didn’t know where in the pecking order he was positioned. The deskman knew he himself was only a peon in the grand scheme of things, somebody’s nephew holding down a “job” until his parole was done. So maybe his best move was not to take offense, but to rise above it.

  Assuming a bored air, the deskman said, “You can bring back my magazine while I’m calling.”

  “Sure.”

  The deskman turned away to his phone console and made a low-voiced call, while Parker watched him. When he hung up, he was sullen, because now he knew Parker was somewhere above him in importance. “You were gonna get my magazine,” he said.

  “I forgot.”

  Sorely tried, the deskman got to his feet to retrieve the magazine himself, as a silver door at the far right end of the silver wall opened and another guy in a company blazer came out. This one was older and heavier, with a little more business veneer on him. Holding the doorknob, he said, “Mr. Parker?”

  “Right.”

  Parker followed him through the silver door into another world. Beyond the reception area, the building was strictly a warehouse, long and broad, concrete-floored, with pallets of liquor cartons stacked almost all the way up to the glaring fluorescents just under the ten-foot ceiling. There was so much clatter of machinery, forklifts, cranes, that normal conversation would have been impossible.

  Parker followed his guide through this to Meany’s office, off to the right, a roomy space but not showy. The guide held the door for Parker, then closed it after him, as Meany got up from his desk and said, “I didn’t know you were coming. Sit down over there.”

  It was a black leather armchair to the right of the desk. Parker went to it and Meany sat again in his own desk chair. Neither offered to shake hands.

  Meany said, “What can I do you for today?”

  “You liked the sample.”

  “It’s very nice money,” Meany said, “Too bad it’s radioactive.”

  “Do you still want to buy the rest of it?”

  “If we can work out delivery,” Meany said. “I got no more reason to trust you than you got to trust me.”

  “You could give us reason to trust each other,” Parker s
aid.

  Meany gave him a sharp look. “Is this something new?”

  “Yes. How that money came to me, things went wrong.”

  Meany’s smile was thin, but honestly amused. “I got that idea,” he said.

  “At the end of it,” Parker told him, “my ID was just as radioactive as that money.”

  “That’s too bad,” Meany said, not sounding sympathetic. “So you’re a guy now can’t face a routine traffic stop, is that it?”

  “I can’t do anything,” Parker told him. “I’ve got to build a whole new deck.”

  “I don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”

  “For years now,” Parker told him, “I’ve been working for your office in Canada.”

  Meany sat back, ready to enjoy the show. “Oh, yeah? That was you?”

  “A guy named Robbins is gonna call you, ask for some employment records. I know you do this kind of thing, you’ve got zips, you’ve got different kinds of people your payroll office doesn’t know a thing about.”

  “People come into the country, people go back out of the country,” Meany said, and shrugged. “It’s a service we perform. They gotta have a good-looking story.”

  “So do I.”

  Meany shook his head. “Parker,” he said, “why in hell would I do you a favor?”

  “Ten dollars for one.”

  Meany looked offended. “That’s a deal we got.”

  “And this is the finder’s fee,” Parker said, “for bringing you the deal.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Meany laced his fingers over his chest. “And if I tell you to go fuck yourself?”

  “Tell me,” Parker said, “you think there’s anybody else in this neighborhood does export?”

  “You’d walk away from the deal, in other words.”

  “There’s no such thing as a deal,” Parker told him. “There never was, anywhere. A deal is what people say is gonna happen. It isn’t always what happens.”