DOUBLE MINT

by Gretchen Archer

  “What?”

  “It’s a setup.” I shook a few thousand dollars. “The man who left this money here either fell into a trap or he was setting one.”

  She rocked back on her heels. “You’re right. This money is a one-way ticket to federal prison.”

  Weird.

  * * *

  The fake money wouldn’t fit in the missing man’s suitcase. We arranged it several ways.

  “He got it in here,” Fantasy said. “Surely, we can get it out.”

  “I’ll sit on the suitcase, you zip.”

  Ten minutes later, me falling off the suitcase twice, I stuffed eighty thousand or so in my bra. Fantasy, after winning the fight with the suitcase, rocked back on her heels. “What’s going on? Missing people? Fake platinum? Fake cash?”

  “Those are questions for Magnolia.”

  Fantasy shook her head. “You’re giving that woman way more credit than she deserves. She can’t put a sandwich together, much less a con. In a million years Magnolia Thibodeaux couldn’t fill a bathtub with counterfeit money, rob a vault, and pull off a double kidnapping.”

  Five

  When Bradley and I had been married for forty-eight hours and the smoke cleared enough for us to look around and see exactly where we were, I flew into a panic.

  “We have to go home, Bradley. This whole New Orleans thing is freaking me out.”

  “We have to take it a day at a time, Davis.” He stared at an elaborate oil painting above the bed of an expressionless alligator with huge marble eyes. Beside the alligator were the words Peace, Love, and Gumbo. “It is a little,” he blinked, “much.”

  He took off for his new job downstairs and I took off for the Bayou Bureau of Printing and Engraving down the hall.

  Wrapped in a blanket, armed with a cup of black coffee (my half and half had curdled in the big red refrigerator overnight), I set out to explore the casino manager’s residence, huge place, way more than we needed or wanted, to make my peace with it. We might be here a few weeks.

  My tour started at the front door with the ridiculous magnolia tree in the cast iron tub. The wide green leaves reached all the way to the copper dome ceiling. I was on my way to the next room, the circular tearoom decorated like a King Cake, when I spotted a door to the right of the magnolia tree in the foyer. A hidden door. It was seamlessly wallpapered against the rest of the foyer, totally inconspicuous in the background of the busy black and gold fleur-de-lis wall. A door I hadn’t noticed, having been in and out of the residence a dozen times already, a door that led to a place I wish I’d never gone, a door that once opened couldn’t be closed.

  Feeling along the seams, I nudged and it protested. It was a swinging door, no knob, hidden hinges, much wider than a regular door and at least ten feet tall. I used my hip to knock it in and when I did, the noise it made was nothing short of a train crash, bouncing off the foyer walls and copper ceiling, scaring me to death. I sloshed scorching hot coffee all over my hand. While I was dancing away the sting, the door swung back and hit me in the head, and there went the rest of my coffee, burning down the front of my bathrobe. (Looking back, I think it was a telekinetic message: Do not enter.) The only thing I’d managed to see was a pitch black open space, and the smell that escaped whatever was behind the door was musty—moth ball, attic, tomb musty, as if fresh air wouldn’t dare go there. I bravely reached in with my scalded hand and didn’t immediately locate a light switch. Not wanting to set off a bomb or meet up with a gumbo-loving alligator, I marched back to the kitchen, snarled at the refrigerator, and dug around until I found a flashlight. I thought about getting my gun. I pushed through again, same railroad scream from the door, located a light switch on the wrong wall, and flipped it. It didn’t help much, but after a minute my eyes adjusted and I found myself in a dimly lit hallway looking at a second door, this one locked. The hallway was wide and empty—no Catholic homages, saxophone chandeliers, or magnolias. Everything was thick, dark wood: paneled walls, ceiling, floor.

  The second door had a Kwikset five-pin deadbolt, just like every other deadbolt installed when the Bellissimo was built, with a standard five-pin cylinder. I left again, and this time I did get my gun, and my Quik-Piks, back through the door, down the dark hall, and popped right through the lock. Gun first, I found myself in another dark airless hall looking at yet another locked door, a door that occupied the next two hours of my day.

  The lock on the second door was a high-security Medeco, the same lock used to secure drugs, guns, and ATMs. I tried everything short of a chain saw and calling Fantasy, who could bust through anything, to get in. Finally, I did what all good thieves do when faced with a lock challenge (honestly, they don’t bother, they happily fire up a blow torch rather than stand there for a week trying to hack a Medeco, but I didn’t have a blow torch option), I watched a YouTube video. Word to the wise: Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube. I did not get past the Medeco with a #9 nail and a bent paperclip. I wasted a good thirty minutes locating a paperclip in the NOLA Nuthouse. The nail was easier. I tossed ridiculous crawfish pictures and pulled forty nails straight out of the walls until I found the one I needed. Still in my bathrobe. All morning long. YouTube showed me where and how to jab a step protrusion in the lock’s interior with the nail, then ping just below it with the paperclip, which should have rendered it toothless, at which point my Quik-Piks would have worked. None of that happened, so I shot the lock off the door. Bang. Then I stepped into a money factory.

  I batted my way back to the foyer, closed the door with a screech, fell against it, and slid down the fleur-de-lis wall to the floor where I sat staring at my fuzzy slippers for I don’t know how long. I worked on my speech to Bradley about how we couldn’t spend one more night in this place. I didn’t care if we checked into a regular guest room below us and lived there until we could go home to our beautiful condo. I honestly didn’t care if we moved into my black Volkswagen Bug, his new office, or a yurt. I just knew we couldn’t live here. The people who lived here before us were criminals, and if we stayed here, we’d be accessories. To their crimes. For the most part, I don’t care what people do behind closed doors, but my new husband and I had our toothbrushes behind these closed doors. To stay in this place for ten more minutes might mean spending the rest of our lives in separate federal prisons.

  We’d only been there two nights, so it didn’t take long to pack. I was zipping the last bag when I heard the distant trill of my phone. I followed the noise to the kitchen and saw I’d missed several calls from my new husband while I was exploring our honeymoon hideaway’s hidden agenda. Bradley texted: I’ve tried to call ten times. Are you lost in that big place? Check your email.

  To: davisway@Bellissimo.com

  From: bradleycole@Bellissimo.com

  How’s my bride? I’m between meet-and-greets with accounting and marketing, and thought I should mention something’s up with the refrigerator. Can you call a repairman? For some reason, our new home has always been off-limits to all Bellissimo staff, an odd rule instituted by Thibodeaux. Why, I don’t know. Alligators? Privacy? Not a bad policy for us to continue and probably our best effort at keeping your job secure. So call a repairman from the phone book, not anyone with the Bellissimo. Maybe Sears? Just took a conference call from Tunica, Davis, and Sanders wants to step up the Jolie opening by six months, but only if we agree to stay on the property 24/7. I don’t see where we have a choice. We can handle anything for six months, right? My last meeting is at nine tonight and if I can still form words after, we’ll talk about redecorating. Maybe you’ll have time to sightsee through the rest of the residence, find a part of it we’ll be more comfortable setting up camp in. It’s only six months. Thank you, Mrs. Cole.

  * * *

  “We can’t.”

  “Davis.”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “Why not?”
>
  Our first married argument. Two days in.

  We were in the kitchen, the big red refrigerator providing annoying background music to our first marital fight. Pandora would call it Drainpipe Hits.

  Bradley, after a ten-hour day at his new job, looked beat. He leaned against the kitchen island as he tugged his tie loose and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. I studied the wine rack above the sink, chose a bottle, blew off the dust, then checked the label for skulls and crossbones. It was a brand served all over the Bellissimo, it was sealed and corked; hopefully we’d live. I opened it and poured. We pulled chairs away from the breakfast table and sat down.

  “I don’t like it here either,” he said.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it.”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “Which is not to say I do.”

  He looked relieved. I poured more wine.

  “Richard’s request is reasonable, Davis. Not only do I agree with him that if he’s going to be off-site I should be on, but it will be easier for me to learn the ropes of my new job if I’m here.” He tapped the table. “And six months isn’t forever.”

  Then he did this thing he does. He barely tilted his head back so that he led with his chin, and smiled at me with his eyes. It was adorable and I fell for it every single solitary time.

  My head hit the table. He patted it. Good girl.

  “Come on, Davis. We can handle it.”

  I looked up. “No. We can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.” I used the same tone of voice I’d use to announce the imminent end of the world.

  He used the same tone of voice he’d use if he knew the end of the world was imminent. “Why not?”

  “Because then you’ll know.”

  Our eyes met and I realized he already knew. His head dropped an inch and shook slowly. We sat in relative silence (gurgle gurgle) until the bravest of us was willing to discuss it further. “Let’s go,” he said. He stood. He held out his hand.

  When we passed the refrigerator something deep inside it exploded. We stopped dead in our tracks, and after, when our lung and heart functions resumed, hand in hand we took a slow walk out of the kitchen, through the King Cake room, into the foyer, past the stupid magnolia tree and down the long dark hall to Crescent City Currency.

  * * *

  “What happened here?”

  “It was a small gun accident.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It had taken four shots to blow through the Medeco. My ears were still ringing. Or maybe that was the refrigerator.

  “Who told you, Bradley, and how long have you known?”

  “One day,” he said. “I’ve known for one day.”

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  Stunned. “What purpose could it possibly serve to keep it a secret from me?” Especially considering I snoop for a living.

  “The same reason you didn’t want to tell me. I don’t want you responsible for this information, Davis. And I certainly had no idea you’d stumble back here,” he said. “Even if you did, I didn’t think you’d get in.”

  It did take all morning.

  We stepped in, our footsteps echoing around the twenty-by-twenty room. All concrete: floor, walls, ceiling. There was barely room to walk around the two huge pieces of equipment. We stopped between them. Big equipment. Machines. As in production factory. One looked like a copier on steroids, and the other was unrecognizable.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “We’re in a vault.”

  We’d been married two days. We still had wedding cake. I’d spent most of the two days (honeymooning) processing the fact that Bradley Cole was the Bellissimo’s new casino manager. He was my husband and he was my boss in one fell swoop. To say my head was spinning is to say there’s a big round hot thing in the sky during the day.

  And now this.

  * * *

  We sat on a metal desk against the back wall and stared. I counted four exposed electrical outlets, and not for lamps. These outlets were for plugging in Best Buy stores. So whatever these machines did, they did it big. The few bulbs that worked in the overhead florescent light fixtures barely worked; they flickered. The air was old and thick, and everything was covered in a fine layer of oily black dust.

  “This will be our only conversation about this room and about vault operations, Davis. So whatever questions you have, ask them now.”

  I had a million, but no words came. He began answering what I couldn’t ask.

  “Of the three vaults at the Bellissimo, two, including this one, are obsolete.”

  Quiet. Mouse quiet.

  “We have one vault in operation behind the main cage.”

  One plus one only equals two.

  “The third vault is in the casino. When the Bellissimo was built, there was also a slot machine vault. It went out of operation ten years ago.”

  About when the slot machines were converted from coin pay (the big, dirty, noisy slot tokens everyone loved) to cash-out tickets. Vault no longer needed. I wondered what happened to it.

  “That vault is now the wine cellar in Bones.”

  Bones, the steak house in the casino. I’d seen the wine cellar. I’d been in the wine cellar. I never knew it was originally a vault. I never knew any of this.

  When I finally found my voice, it cracked. “What are these machines?”

  “A printer and a press,” he said. “Salvatore Casimiro printed his own money.”

  Well, there you go. My worst fears confirmed.

  A country mile later, I asked, “For his personal use? Or business?”

  “I don’t know,” Bradley said. “I don’t know what he did with the money and I don’t want to know.”

  Neither did I.

  “Blanks were shipped in for the coins,” Bradley said. “They’re called planchets. The printer,” he pointed to the machine on our left, “is a fifty-thousand-dollar optimized DPI Heidelberg. And there’s a stash of cotton paper in the cabinets.” He pointed again.

  “This is so United States Treasury.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why? Why do this? Why take this kind of risk? Why break this many laws?”

  “I don’t know why,” Bradley said, “but I do know it was all shipped to Vegas. He didn’t print money and send it downstairs to the Bellissimo casino.”

  A good thing. A very good thing.

  “Where did the machines come from?” I asked.

  “They bought the printer, and the coin press was custom built. Casimiro hired Thibodeaux, and Thibodeaux knew someone. They worked with a family-owned milling company out of Baton Rouge and had the machine built.”

  “So it was a joint operation between Casimiro and Thibodeaux.”

  “I don’t know the details, Davis, and I’m sure I don’t want to.”

  The less we knew, the better. We already had a moral and legal obligation to do something about it by knowing at all, but several factors came into play. For one, four thousand people, including us, would lose their jobs for the old sins of a few. For another, it was history. No one was minting or printing money in here now. And lastly, both Salvatore Casimiro and Ty Thibodeaux were out of commission. Casimiro had spent the past year getting out of the casino game, and when he wasn’t busy doing that he was in the hospital, and from what I’d heard, Thibodeaux had gotten his Bellissimo gold watch, then went straight to his sick bed, where he remained. Both men were in their late eighties, sick, and what good would it do?

  My last question, and the one weighing heaviest on my heart. “Bradley, did Mr. Sanders sanction this?”

  “Richard didn’t know anything about any of this until Thibodeaux ret
ired six months ago and not a minute before.”

  Three of us knew.

  “Let me get this straight,” I whispered. “Cash was printed in this room.”

  “Yes.”

  “And coins were minted right here.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the refrigerator doesn’t work.”

  “Weird.”

  We went back to being married and the vaults, vault operations, counterfeiting, The Money Room, Salvatore Casimiro, and Ty Thibodeaux were all subjects Bradley and I hadn’t discussed one time since that night. The Thibodeauxs we discussed, but not in this context. And here we were, nine months later, and it was the only subject in town. Holder Darby walked away from a good job, which I’m now suspecting might not have had a thing to do with Hello Kitty. Next, the vault was inventoried, only to discover millions in platinum gone, replaced with fakes, and now, a guest had disappeared and left us with a bathtub full of counterfeit money. Counterfeit money I suspected came from a secret vault room down the hall. Of our home.

  Time for me to have a little chat with Magnolia Thibodeaux.

  Six

  “What are we going to do with this?” Fantasy and I were waiting on elevators with a suitcase full of counterfeit money. It’s exactly one-half of our work day, waiting on elevators.

  “I’ll take it upstairs to the Bayou Barn. Grab Baylor, if you can find him, and we’ll meet at my place and try to track down Mr. Funny Money.” I adjusted the stiff stacks of bills in my bra to itch a little less.

  “I’m wondering if I should book a room here tonight.” Fantasy couldn’t stop staring at the suitcase. “It looks like it’s going to be a long one.”

  “You can stay with us.”

  “No way in hell I’m staying at your place, Davis. I don’t have time for all that bad juju.”

  Everyone hated where we lived. Everyone. Except my grandmother.