by Tod Goldberg
“How long will he be here?”
I had to think about that. “Two days, if everything goes according to my plan. If he’s still here by the end of the week, that just means we’ve both been murdered.”
Father Eduardo looked stricken.
“Kidding,” I said.
“He’ll come for you,” Father Eduardo said. “That’s his nature.”
“I know,” I said. “He won’t get the chance.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am,” I said. “In the meantime, you need to be in a safe house.”
“I am safe in the Lord’s house,” he said.
“I respect that,” I said, “but I’m the only one who does. Sam will be your shadow for the next few days, but at night, you’re sleeping elsewhere.”
Father Eduardo nodded his assent. “Do you have a secure facility somewhere?”
“You could say that.” I pulled out my cell phone and made a call. “Ma,” I said, “you remember Little Eddie Santiago from the other day? Turns out he’s getting his house fumigated and needs a place to stay for a few nights.”
“Michael,” she said, “is he in danger?”
“Of course, Ma,” I said.
“I thought he was a priest.”
“He is,” I said. “But he’s a priest who needs my help.”
“You lead a very strange life, Michael.”
“I know, Ma. I know,” I said. I checked my watch. “Sam will drop him off in a few hours. That okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No,” I said. “You made me get the car washed, remember?”
“You just can’t stop blaming me for one minute, can you?”
“Appears not,” I said. “I appreciate this, Ma. And so does Father Eduardo.”
“I’ll put on some coffee,” she said, and hung up.
“All taken care of,” I told Father Eduardo.
“Fine, fine,” he said. He reached into his desk and pulled out a Bible. “Would you mind leaving me alone for a few moments? I need to pray.”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course.”
“You can let yourself out?”
I told him I could, and then got out of his office as quickly as possible. It was hard to see him as the religious man he was when in my mind he was Eddie Santiago, not Father Eduardo. He was a man to be feared, and now he had the fear of God. It was a turnaround I wasn’t practiced in, and not one I yearned to be overly familiar with.
I found Sam in the empty office, stacking extra Bibles. It was one of strangest things I’d ever seen.
“Take a picture,” Sam said, “before I go up in flames.”
“Where’s Fi?” I said.
“She ran back out to get the bugs. Barry’s in the bathroom, shaking and sobbing quietly.”
“Really?”
“I dunno, Mikey, but he’s not made for hostage situations. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I thought he did well.”
“He’s lucky Junior didn’t plug him.”
“We’re lucky Junior didn’t try to plug all of us.”
“That won’t be the case next time,” Sam said. “How long we planning on pulling this off?”
“Couple of days is all we’ll need. Get him on tape in here, get the counterfeiting operation up and running, which should take only a day if we get some decent plates, and then see about maybe pulling it all together with a police action that doesn’t implicate anyone but Junior.”
“How you planning on doing that?”
“I was thinking of starting out with a Chechnyatype situation in the printing press,” I said, “but without killing anyone.”
“Good luck with that,” Sam said.
“You’ll be helping,” I said.
Fiona stepped back into the office then and set down a small container of bugs. One for the phone; a tracking device on the computer that would clone all of the work Junior did, as well as send cloned e-mails to a private server; and a small camera that would fit inside the spine of one of the Bibles.
“It’s on you, Fi, to put the cameras inside the books,” Sam said.
“Why, Sam, are you afraid?”
“You ever go to Sunday school, Fiona?”
“I grew up in Ireland,” Fiona said. “Maybe you heard of the place? Years of armed religious conflict?”
“Well, wonderful. Then you shouldn’t have a problem with doing things in the name of a greater good with religious icons. Me, it makes me a little nervous. My family came over on the Mayflower.” Neither Fi nor I bothered to respond to Sam. He wanted us to, so we didn’t. “So,” he said, after it became clear to all involved that we weren’t going to engage him on what had to be a lie, “I’m morally disallowed from bugging Bibles. Miles Standish runs through this blood, sister.”
“But shooting people for the last thirty years has been fine?” Fiona said.
“Hey, sweetheart, those were all in the service of this great country,” Sam said. “Or a lot of them, anyway.”
“Michael, I expect that you’ll speak for us at the pearly gates?” she said.
“I’ll do my very best,” I said.
“See, Sam? Nothing to be concerned about,” Fi said. “Oh, and here.” She handed me a sheet of paper with a bunch of numbers listed on it. “Your dirty work.”
“What’s this?”
“The license plate of the police cruiser, as well as the car number from the roof.”
“Nice.”
“I’m a professional, even when I’m saddled with a sweating Chatty Cathy,” Fiona said. “You know, I actually think Barry really did enjoy me cutting him.”
“Everyone is into something strange.” I handed the numbers to Sam. “You got someone you can check these with?”
“I’ll have to tread delicately here, Mikey. One wrong step, and these guys are on to our operation.”
“I know you’ll find just the right person,” I said. “Maybe you can use your standing as a founding father of the country to sway the right people.”
Fiona handed me a Bible. “Hold this open,” she said, and I did. She took a bottle of nail polish remover from her purse and poured about a teaspoon of the fluid down the interior spine of the book. She then shoved two fingers into the spine and gently pulled the pages from the binding—the nail polish remover had made the fine gold threading far more elastic, which is what you want to do if you’re going to hide something inside of a book instead of, say, cutting a hammer into the pages. Even people being spied on have seen movies, so they have a general idea what an amateur might do and may even look for a few telltale signs.
But what Fiona was doing was essentially the same process an antiquarian book restorer might do. Except that instead of restoring the Bible, she slid a small camera about four inches in length down the spine of the book.
Back in the Cold War—and in the 1990s, too—if you wanted to film someone, you needed to have a camera that was routed into a recorder somewhere, usually not too far from the camera itself. Any decent, paranoid person could discover these things in just a few minutes of frenzied searching. But the camera Fiona had just slipped into the book was no thicker than her thumb and was able to use motion-detection technology to record directly to a chip inside it. While we wouldn’t have remote access, we would have a fine digital recording of all Junior was doing.
Or, since I saw that Fiona had ten of these cameras, several digital movies of the life and times of Junior Gonzalez.
Fiona sealed the book back up, poked several small holes into the spine so that the camera could view the activity and then placed the book back onto the shelf.
“Good work,” I said.
“You should see what I put in your loft last week.”
“You bugged my loft?”
“You’ll never know without checking. Will you, Michael?”
I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, and fortunately I was saved by Barry’s appearance in the doorway. He’d washed his face so
me, but it was still a light pink color, and his clothes were covered in blood. He looked like a man who’d been strangled with a whip and beaten, essentially.
“Come on, Barry,” I said, “you’re going to help me with a secret mission.”
“I’d like to go home,” he said.
“You are home,” I said, “for now.”
“That wasn’t fake blood, Michael,” he said. “You let her cut me!”
“There is no letting,” Fiona said.
“She’s right,” I said.
“Free country,” Sam said. “It’s what we came here for.”
Barry looked like someone had just hit him in the back of the head, so I made it simple for him. “A little blood for a good cause, Barry. Namely, your life.”
“That makes sense,” Barry said. “And that it makes sense means that I have made some terrible mistakes in my life, doesn’t it?”
“You can always change,” I said. “Look at Father Eduardo.”
Barry considered this. “Where are we going?”
“I need you to get me the best money plate your money can buy,” I said.
“My money?”
“This is your problem we’re solving,” I said.
“I know a guy named Jacques,” he said. “He’s from the old school. He might not deal with you.”
“I’m sure you can be persuasive,” I said.
“I’m only saying I may need to take the lead here.”
“Like you did with Junior?”
“Similar situation, possibly,” he said, which meant to me that no matter what relationship Barry had with this Jacques, by the end of our time together, he’d understand who was really in charge, even if I didn’t make a single move.
“All right,” I said, “we’ll do it your way.”
“I’ll need some new clothes,” he said. “And is there any way we could get some lunch?”
When you’re a spy, sometimes your toughest job is keeping your informants dressed and fed. It’s not always about beautiful women, shiny cars and blowing things up.
Unfortunately.
15
Making money costs money. This is true as both a frothy maxim you might read on a poster and in reality. Each note the U.S. government prints costs four cents in simple materials, but the lead-up process is far more costly. The plates used in the production of money are hand engraved, a meticulous process that takes a substantial amount of time and dedication, but this is done for a very exacting purpose: You can re-create a computer’s etchings very easily, but it’s impossible to precisely emulate the hand of a human being. There will always be subtle differences.
So if you really want to counterfeit money, a printing system like the Latin Emperors had set up at the Ace Hotel would suffice only for the short term. You can print and press money using only computer software and a particularly detailed reproduction of an actual bill. But if you want to make money to make money, you’ll need a hand-engraved plate.
And it would help if you had Barry, too.
While Sam and Fiona finished setting up Junior’s office with the appropriate listening and tracking devices (and to ensure that no one came in and made an attempt on Father Eduardo’s life), and to manage the Leticia situation if she bothered to return to work, which was not something I was sure would happen, I set off to learn just how Barry handled his business.
Not that I didn’t have a pretty good idea as it was, but it was always interesting meeting new friends. Or new friends of friends. And, really, Barry was eager to help this project along.... Or, well, he was eager for this project to be over so he could leave town for as long as possible without worrying about his family being killed.
I sat in my Charger and waited for Barry to come out of the Dillard’s department store he’d gone into to purchase a new outfit, since the one he was wearing just had too much blood on it. I opted not to join him, figuring it would probably be better all around if security cameras picked up one shady, blood-covered individual and not his friend, too. And since this Dillard’s was housed inside a nice suburban mall in Doral, I really didn’t want to have to fight off a SWAT team.
That, and I was afraid of watching Barry shop. There are some things you simply do not want to do with certain people, and I had a feeling shopping with Barry would be a situation that might engender thoughts of murder in me. But the real reason we were at this mall and not some other clothing store was that Jacques, the engraver Barry had contacted about our specific job, told him he’d only speak to him from a certain pay phone, and that certain pay phone was located just adjacent to the men’s room on the second floor of Dillard’s.
Finally, after at least thirty minutes, Barry came out of the store, wearing a cream-colored, short-sleeve button-down that was opened (none too discreetly) to the center of his rather clammy-looking chest, brown chinos and a pair of braided leather flip-flops. He looked like he was ready to play badminton in someone’s backyard. He’d also purchased a new pair of sunglasses and, judging by the smell when he slid into the Charger, stopped by the cologne counter, too.
“That’s a wonderful new fragrance,” I said.
“You like it?”
“Not really.”
“And I didn’t like getting strangled by Fiona, so that makes us even.”
“If that’s what does it, fine.”
Barry inhaled. “I think it smells fresh.”
“Barry,” I said, “did you talk to your guy?”
“It has a vanilla scent on the back end,” Barry said. “You don’t get that?”
The issue with Barry is that he’s stubborn. He’s used to doing things on his own timeline. Occasionally, you have to work within that knowledge if you wish to have a successful interaction with him.
“You look and smell just like a vanilla bean,” I said.
“I appreciate that, Michael,” Barry said. “I like to think that if you look good, you feel good, and I feel good now. Better than I have all week.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said. I gave him a big, warm smile. “Now tell me what your guy said before I strangle you, too.”
Barry cleared his throat and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a torn out page from the phone book with scribbles on it. “You’re gonna wanna get onto Sixteenth Avenue and turn left.”
“Where are we going?” I said.
“I’m just following directions,” Barry said. “My guy was very specific.”
“Who is this guy?” I said.
“I’ve only ever known him as Jacques,” Barry said. “Never seen him in person. But I told him I was in a bind and I really needed his help. He owes me a few favors.”
If you’re the kind of guy who knows how to move things on the black market—and Barry was pretty much the Walmart of the black market—you end up with plenty of acquaintances who owe you a favor or two. In that way, Barry wasn’t so different than Sam. In all other ways, it was like apples and chainsaws.
“This is a guy who can keep a secret?” I said.
“He’s a ghost,” Barry said. “Really. The guy is Fort Knox. You think guys who can hand engrave plates for money just blab to everyone they meet about their special skill?”
I started the car and headed out of the mall and followed Barry’s circuitous directions until we came to a stop on Aragon Avenue in Coral Gables, some ten miles from where we started, even though we’d traveled closer to twenty. I looked around for some obvious sign of the world’s finest plate engraver, but all I saw was a taupecolored strip mall that boasted a hair salon, a coffee place called Cliffhanger and ...
“What did you say this guy’s name was?” I said.
“Jacques,” Barry said.
“Not Harvey?” I said.
“Why would it be Harvey?”
“I don’t know, Barry. Maybe because we’re currently parked in front of Harvey’s Trophy World,” I said. I pointed out the window to the storefront. A painted sign in the window announced that Harvey’s was THE OFFICIAL HOME
OF ALL YOUR LITTLE LEAGUE NEEDS!
“Everyone has a day job,” Barry said.
“Yeah,” I said, “what’s yours?”
I got out of the car, and Barry trailed after me. “He said no guns,” Barry said.
“I’m not coming to rob him,” I said.
“He might pat you down,” Barry said.
The door to Harvey’s shop opened up and a young boy and his mother came out clutching an armful of awards. “Great,” I said. I went back to my car and dumped my guns. I didn’t even bother to pick up the paintball gun, for fear that I might shoot Barry with it. “You sure this guy is what you say he is? Because I don’t want to walk into this place and find out we’ve wasted the afternoon.”
“Mike, trust me,” Barry said. “Have I ever steered you wrong where money was concerned?”
He had a point. Barry was especially good for his word with money, so I let him lead the way across the street and into the shop.
The interior of Harvey’s was filled, wall to wall, with awards, trophies, pendants, charms, commemorative cups, water bottles, fake fish mounted above empty gold labels, tote bags that said YOUR LOGO HERE on them. There were also pennants, dish towels, sun visors and every other conceivable item that could possibly have a logo or saying or award declaration placed on it.
The store was a narrow funnel that led to a single counter in the back, where the cash register was located. Behind the counter was a double door that led into, presumably, Harvey’s great factory of fame and recognition. All I knew for certain from where I stood soaking up the ambience of Harvey’s was that he hadn’t dusted in at least a decade, nor bothered to change any of his displays.
“Nice place,” I said.
“Maybe he does a big mail-order business,” Barry said. “Now, just follow my lead here. He was very specific in his directions.”
“You’re the boss,” I said.
We walked to the back of the store and Barry rang the bell on the counter ... the one that had a sign next to it that said PLEASE RING THE BELL. I MAY NOT HEAR YOU COME IN OTHERWISE, which to me sounded like an invitation to pull the cash register off the counter. Except, oddly, the register was bolted to the wall and down to the floor using thick titanium bars. Not exactly standard for a trophy shop.