"You'd miss your plane and have to come back to my bed?"
We were approaching the departures ramp. Scotty had barely enough time to make his flight. I was tempted to keep him here, but since the fate of civilization apparently hung in the balance, I promised to see Harry Marley, and I let him go.
"If I get in trouble or he laughs at me, I'm calling you collect. And you'll pay for it next time I see you.,,
"Stop worrying. Harry needs to see those bills and hear what's going on at HI-Data."
"How do I get to him? Will he even agree to see me?"
"Good point. He's in the One South Wacker Drive building, suite 2343, and he'll be expecting you tomorrow-er, today, at eleven. I'll contact his office while I'm changing planes at JFK and set up the appointment."
"What's his last name again?"
"Marley."
I pulled up in front of American Airlines and shifted into neutral. It was deserted. Scotty leaned across the gear shift and took me in his arms.
"I'm going to miss you like hell. Are you going to miss me?"
I never got the chance to answer because he kissed me, and frankly I forgot the question. Even in freezing weather, he was a terrific kisser.
"Now crawl back into your warm bed and you better be dreaming of me." He grabbed his overnight bag and waved. "I'll be thinking of you. And dammit, DD, be careful."
FORTY-TWO
I AWOKE FROM A deep, dreamless sleep, already missing Scotty. I dreaded meeting Harry Marley and wished I'd told Scotty my suspicions that Ken might have been involved in Frank's death. I needed his advice.
Luckily my headache was gone. The bruises were more noticeable this morning, but I wasn't too sore. Cavalier was cranky and even sharing some of my scrambled eggs didn't please him.
I couldn't keep my mind on the crossword. Instead, I phoned Tom Joyce to ask what he knew about counterfeiting.
"Counterfeiting money or counterfeiting goods? They're both hot right now. China's number one in faking goods, and Columbia's number one in fake money."
"Counterfeit bills. Scotty thinks someone gave me some fake hundreds. He wants me to take them to a guy he knows at the Secret Service Forensic Lab. He says the bills are really really good."
"I'm definitely looking forward to meeting your Scotty. He's into a lot of interesting things. Is he in one of the branches-CIA or FBI or Secret Service that he would know counterfeit bills just by looking at them?"
"That's exactly what I asked."
"And?"
"He won't really say, but he's connected to some top-level investigations into fake currency. So what can you tell me?"
"Probably nothing more than Scotty did if he saw the money firsthand. I do know this isn't the first time in history that counterfeiting has been rampant. They say that nearly half of all money in circulation in the U.S. in the mid-1800s was fake. Curiously, Lincoln started the Secret Service on April 14, 1865, the day he was shot, and their first priority was to stop counterfeiting, not to guard the President."
"Scotty said that today's new wave of counterfeiting is such a hot crime because it's so easy with a good scanner, printer and color copier."
"He's right. It's easier than bigamy. And only a few get caught, like my personal favorite, the lady in Rockford, eighty miles outside Chicago, who tried to hand off a one million dollar bill."
"But everybody knows the U.S. doesn't have a one-million dollar bill."
"She apparently didn't! And even though the Feds tell the public that they catch most counterfeiters, there are still plenty out there. They log onto sites on the Internet like HowStuffWorks that tell you how to counterfeit and get away with it. So all things considered, you should probably go see Scotty's Secret Service guy."
"If I don't appear in three days, send Wolfie to find me."
"Good luck DD, and let me know what happens."
On my way to the One South Wacker building, I kept thinking of those hundred dollar bills. They looked so genuine under the harsh light of day. In spite of what Scotty and Tom had said, I didn't believe they were counterfeit. I hoped Harry Marley was as good a friend as Scotty thought.
My weekly Aikido class had been cancelled because Sensei, our leader, was traveling in Japan over the holidays. So instead, I inserted a "Karkicks" CD for some needed exercise. It began with an energetic woman alerting me to keep one hand on the wheel-as if I was going to get so involved in exercising I would forget I was driving. Then the music kicked in for shoulder rolls, tummy-tucks, and knee-knocks.
I kept trying out different scenarios about Ken and Marcie and HI-Data as I did the mouth and neck stretching exercises, ignoring the curious stares I was getting from passing cars. If the money wasn't counterfeit, Marcie had probably been into drugs. Or maybe she was being paid off for something by Ken or somebody else at HI-Data. But if the money was bogus, then HI-Data had to be involved. I was sure Marcie hadn't committed suicide. She and Ken had been murdered. And someone had tried to murder Jeffrey Fere, too. Did the cops consider John Olson/Dan Karton as the prime suspect? How did Ken, Norman, Joe Tanaka, and Sparky Groh fit into the picture? Was Jeffrey's life still in danger? And mine?
By the time I parked in the lot two blocks from One South Wacker, I'd done thirty-five pelvic pushes-which, the perky girl on the tape assured me, "were great for my sex life."
The frigid wind off the Lake was so bitter, I forgot about hundred dollar bills and HI-Data and concentrated on survival. My nose and fingers were frozen, and my feet were almost numb. Every year, I hate winter more.
One South Wacker Drive is a glossy forty-story Helmut Jahn skyscraper, built in 1982. Architecturally, it's three boxes stacked even on one end with each successive box smaller in width giving the building the look of stairs heading into the sky. The exterior is black reflective glass with colored glass in pink and blue that Jahn cleverly used to demarcate cathedral-like windows around the exterior.
A thinly clad street musician was plastered against the lobby door. I felt sorry for him and dropped a fiver in his hat, hoping his lips wouldn't freeze to the harmonica.
I pushed through the heavy revolving door, grateful to get indoors. I hope I'll never get famous enough to have a building named after me, because architects disrespect you. One nearby government building was named after Dirkson, the well-known, deepvoiced Illinois senator, and he got what he deserved. Whoever designed it had forgotten to put in a lobby. The HI-Data building did have a distinctive, all black marble lobby that was almost as impersonal and uninviting as its glass and chrome interior.
The central corridor swarmed with bureaucrats and nonbureaucrats like locusts over Utah. Before 9/11, there'd been only minimal security-a desk with one guard. And because there was no building directory, if you didn't know your way around, you would get stopped and questioned and vetted. But now their security had been revved up, and a uniformed guard shooed me to the rear of a long line where everyone passed single-file through a metal detector.
It was easy to pick out the top government guys and the lawyers waiting in line. Some wore expensive coats while others were carelessly groomed, but they all had bulging briefcases and the same darting eyes, looking for angles in every corner. And they were all talking on their cell phones or text messaging.
When it was my turn, a pasty-faced guard with lazy blue eyes opened my purse and took out a handful of objects, including Marcie's envelope containing the hundred dollar bills. Luckily it didn't open and spill out, or I'd have been arrested on the spot. He took out all my lipsticks and checked them. Then he found the emergency Playtex tampons in the zip compartment. He stuffed them back, handed me my purse, and cleared me through.
The United States Treasury Department, Midwest Operations Center, didn't like to advertise itself, but Scotty had explained it occupied the entire twenty-third floor. There were four banks of elevators. I followed Scotty's instructions and used the south bank elevators on the far side of the lobby to reach the twenty-third floor.
Their reception room was furnished in bureaucratic regulation tasteful, falling somewhere between public aid and the White House. Medium pile carpeting of an indeterminate color covered the floor and most of the furniture was atrocious but matched.
The receptionist, an attractive Latina girl wearing a deep orange outfit with lots of clangy jewelry, cheerily checked me against a list. She said I was expected and asked me to have a seat.
After a few moments she returned with a very handsome black man who looked like Mohammed Ali in his fighting prime. At six foot four or five, he was a big man, but it was more than height that gave him dominance. He smiled slightly, exuding charisma.
"I'm Harry Marley, and you're Scotty's DD McGil, I take it." It wasn't a statement, and it wasn't a question. His rich baritone had that distinctive Caribbean accent, redolent of warm sun and James Bond adventures. I smiled, not knowing what Scotty had told him.
"Follow me," he said and led me down a maze of corridors. I covertly admired the way his tailored gray suit caressed the firm muscles in his back, buttocks, and thighs. Eventually he turned left into the Forensic Lab wing where he motioned me into a large room.
FORTY-THREE
You COULDN'T SEE THE Chicago River from Harry Marley's office window. The view was obstructed by the Mercantile Exchange, but it was still a nice view by my standards. You could see the art deco Civic Opera House, a Chicago landmark and one of my particular favorites.
We were in a room dominated by a large oval table in the center, flanked on one side by glass museum cases filled with exhibits and on the other side by a myriad of instruments and specially adapted microscopes of varying sizes, shapes, and attachments. Harry Marley took my coat and got immediately down to business by asking for the money.
I removed Marcie's envelope from my purse and slid it across the highly polished table. As his long, manicured fingers reached out for it, I noticed he was wearing gold cuff links that were exact replicas of hundred dollar bills at one-eighth the size of the real McCoy. They must have been specially made. I wondered if that was legal.
"Look, Mr. Marley, I'm-"
"Harry. Please call me Harry, Ms. McGil."
He seemed friendly enough, but frankly I couldn't see myself on a first-name basis with anybody from the Treasury Department. After all, the IRS was a part of Treasury. I skipped the salutation altogether.
"I just want you to know I'm here against my better judgment. I respect the fact that Scotty thinks these are fake, but I'm hoping it's a false alarm."
"I would trust Scotty's judgment," he said, his big hands opening Marcie's envelope and withdrawing the bills.
He fanned them onto the table. "Eleven bills. All new style. Different serial numbers, all evenly spaced, all printed in the same ink color as the Treasury Seal, and with a statistically probable mix of issuing Reserve banks. One is torn in half. Interesting."
He took a marking pen and touched each bill in the upper left corner under the "100" engraving. I recognized the instrument as the same kind of stubby black pen used by retailers and banks to detect counterfeit bills-the very one Scotty and I had discussed last night.
He scooped up the stack of bills and looked at each one under the largest microscope behind his side of the table.
"Well?" I asked.
"These are definitely very good fakes, just as Scotty told you."
"How can you be so positive?"
"At this magnification, the saw-tooth points of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Seal aren't distinct and sharp like they are on real bills. With the ultra high-resolution copiers counterfeiters are using now, unless you look at one of these bills under a good mi croscope, you'll never spot that it's copied and not printed. Only the government prints money now."
"But color copiers won't copy money. You just get a black sheet."
His eyes fixed on mine. "I won't ask you how you know that, Miss McGil. But yes, you're right. We've er ... persuaded the companies that manufacture the newest generation color copiers to include our special little sensor in their electronics that does not allow the machine to copy money or bearer bonds or negotiable instruments. Clever, don't you think?" Harry smiled.
I shuddered at the thought of government persuasion techniques. I pictured them waterboarding the CEO of Xerox.
"Much of this technology is, as you can well imagine, topsecret," Harry continued. "We try to stay ahead of the bad guys, and it's not easy. Desktop forgery is the fastest growing white-collar crime in America.
"We've already changed the design of our currency several times to add micro-printing and color-shifting ink. And we've embedded special polymer threads or fibers. If you look close at one of our new bills, you'll see the lines are embedded in the paper and not printed on the surface. That's one way to know it's not counterfeit."
I nodded, putting together the elements of counterfeiting, Ken and Marcie's deaths, high tech and the whole HI-Data circus.
"Right now, we're confiscating over a hundred million dollars a year.
"Wow." I mentally calculated the odds of my getting a counterfeit bill this year.
"The bad news is that some four billion dollars a year is being illegally dumped in the States through forgery and counterfeiting. With all the debt problems right now, we're bracing for even more this year. Overseas, where people aren't as familiar with U.S. currency as we are here, the problem is much worse."
"That's more than the total take from all the robberies that happened last year," I remarked, remembering statistics from a recent loss-prevention seminar I'd attended.
"Just the other day we confiscated $41 million in bogus U.S. dollars in a house in Bogota, Colombia," he said. "And while you might think that's a hell of a big seizure, I can assure you it's only a small fraction of the international counterfeiting industry."
"Now we've got to figure out exactly how this stuff was duplicated," he said. "These bills are so good, I'm thinking they came from computer technology much more sophisticated than a desktop scanner and personal computer setup. That's what we worry about here. A good computer setup could produce as much as the U.S. Mint and completely destroy international confidence in our money, especially when there's already a worldwide economic downturn."
After studying the bills in a comparison microscope, he snatched them out and inserted them under a bank of UV lights. Then he stood up and sighed.
"The boys in Washington will get us an exact answer" The furrow in his brow grew deeper. "These are so good they can defeat our best detection system and the newest system that Scotty is helping us perfect."
He didn't even notice his security gaff about Scotty's work. He pulled out a chair at the conference table and motioned me to sit down. He lit a cigar and smoke began to fill the room.
"These bills might be able to pass our new counterfeit detection system. We've got a real problem." Harry scowled as he puffed. "United States currency is used as a reserve currency by governments and businesses throughout the world. If the U.S. refuses to honor some of it, the whole system will collapse, and we'll see war and famine in less than a month."
More cigar smoke wafted across the table. I coughed but suspected it wasn't the right time for me to mention that this was a no smoking building.
FORTY-FOUR
So SCOTTY HAD BEEN right-the money was funny. Ken was dead and Marcie was dead. Jeffrey had narrowly escaped being blown to bits, and someone might try again. HI-Data was in the middle of it all. I was certain Jeffrey Fere wasn't going to rest until he found out what was going on in his own company. Phil had often counseled me to remember that my client was the insurance company. The rule was that client confidentiality doesn't extend to protecting any illegal activity I might uncover during any given contractual arrangement. Clearly the counterfeiting was illegal, and on top of that, someone at HI-Data was trying to pull me into it. That really made me mad. Under these circumstances, I had no option except to tell Harry what Sparky had told me about Marcie's bank accounts and the offshore transac
tions.
Harry listened intently and made a series of quick phone calls from the red phone in his office. When I mentioned Ken's "Safecracker" program and his rumored affair with Marcie, Harry's eyebrows lifted noticeably. He asked me a lot of questions, only a few of which I could answer. Then he made another series of hurried calls.
Soon Harry Marley's printer and fax machine were spitting out pages of information on how many times Ken had been out of the country in the past two years, his destinations, the hotels he stayed in, and his credit card and phone records. Harry scanned each document faster than an Evelyn Wood speed-reader.
Other agents rushed in and out of Harry's office. Someone took me into an adjoining room where a chicken salad and a Diet Coke had been set out on a table. It was two thirty, and I was hungry. I ate quickly and hurried back to Harry's office but was stopped from entering by a T-woman who took my arm, escorted me nicely back to the adjoining room and told me to wait. I can't say I didn't try to hear what was going on in Harry's office, but the walls must have been soundproofed. It was after three when Harry Marley came in, alone.
"I'm taking you into my confidence for two reasons, Ms. McGil. First, you're Scotty's, er," he paused a shade too long, "`friend,' and because of that, I trust you. Secondly, I think you are in danger. Scotty told me about your brake line being severed. You need to know a few things, but you can't repeat them. I trust I will never have cause to regret this."
He paused, expecting an affirmative answer. But I'm not so good at predicting the future, so I stayed silent, which he might have taken for assent.
"We've noticed a distinct pattern in Ken Gordon's travels. He's made repeated trips to Middle-Eastern and South American countries," Harry said. "We suspect he might be using key contacts with scientific communities in some of these countries-contacts made during the Gulf War when HI-Data helped develop some classified technology. Our best guess scenario is that Ken may have sold them some of HI-Data's export-restricted technology, the kind of sophisticated technology needed for this kind of high-level counterfeiting."
A Cadgers Curse Page 18