by Ed McBain
5
For this meet they would be in a car, which Kelp would promote. He picked up Querk first, at the corner of Eleventh Avenue and 57th Street, steering the very nice black Infiniti to a stop at the curb, where Querk was rubbernecking up 57th Street, eastward. Kelp thought he’d have to honk, but then Querk got in on the passenger side next to him and said, “I just saw Lesley Stahl get out of a cab up there.”
“Ah,” said Kelp, and drove back into traffic, uptown.
“I used to watch 60 Minutes regular as clockwork,” Querk said, “every Sunday. Even the summer reruns.”
“Ah,” said Kelp.
“When I was inside,” Querk explained. “It was kind of a highlight.”
“Ah,” said Kelp.
“I don’t watch it so much any more, I don’t know why.”
Kelp didn’t say anything. Querk looked around the interior of the car and said, “I happened to notice, you got MD plates.”
“I do,” Kelp agreed.
“You aren’t a doctor.”
“I’m not even a car owner,” Kelp told him.
Querk was surprised. “You boosted this?”
“From Roosevelt Hospital, just down the street. I give all my automotive trade to doctors. They’re very good on the difference between pleasure and pain. Also, I believe they have a clear understanding of infinity.”
“But you’re driving around—You’re still in the neighborhood, with a very hot car.”
“The hours they make those doctors work?” Kelp shrugged. “The owner’s not gonna miss this thing until Thursday. In the private lot there, I picked one without dust on it. There’s John.”
They were on West End Avenue now, stopped at the light at 72nd Street, and Dortmunder was visible catty-corner across the street, standing on the corner in the sunlight as though a mistake had been made here. Anybody who was that slumped and bedraggled should not be standing on a street corner in the summer in the sunlight. He had looked much more at home in the bar where he and Kelp had conferred. Out here, he looked mostly like he was waiting for the police sweep.
The green arrow lit up, and Kelp swept around to stop next to Dortmunder who, per original plan, slid into the back seat, saying, “Hello.”
Querk said, “Andy boosted this car.”
“He always does,” Dortmunder said, and to Kelp’s face in the rearview mirror as they turned northward on the West Side Highway, he said, “My compliments to the doctor.”
Traffic on the highway was light; Kelp drove moderately in the right lane, and nobody said anything until Dortmunder leaned forward, rested his forearms on the seatback, and said to Querk, “Jump in any time.”
“Oh.” Querk looked out ahead of them and said, “I thought we were headed somewhere.”
“We are,” Kelp told him. “But you can start”
“Okay, fine.”
As Dortmunder leaned back, seated behind Kelp, Querk half-turned in his seat so he could see both of them, and said, “One of the things the printery prints, where I work, is money.”
That surprised them both. Kelp said, “I thought the mint printed the money.”
“Our money, yes,” Querk said. “But the thing is, your smaller countries, they don’t have the technology and the skills and all, they farm out the money. The printing. Most of the money in Europe and Africa is printed in London. Most of the money in South America is printed in Philadelphia.”
“You’re not in Philadelphia,” Kelp pointed out.
“No, this outfit I’m with, Sycamore, about ten years ago they decided to get some of that action. They had a big Canadian investor, they put in the machinery, hired the people, started to undercut the price of the Philadelphia people.”
“Free enterprise,” Kelp commented.
“Sure.” Querk shrugged. “Nobody says the money they do is as up to date as the Philadelphia money, with all the holograms and anti-counterfeiting things, but you get a small enough country, poor enough, nobody wants to counterfeit that money, so Sycamore’s got four of the most draggly-assed countries in Central and South America, and Sycamore makes their money.”
Dortmunder said, “You’re talking about stealing money you say isn’t worth anything.”
“Well, it’s worth something,” Querk said. “And I’m not talking about stealing it.”
“Counterfeiting,” Dortmunder suggested, as though he didn’t like that idea either.
But Querk shook his head. “I’m the guy,” he said, “keeps track of the paper coming in, signs off with the truck drivers, forklifts it here and there, depending what kinda paper, what’s it for. Each of these countries got their own special paper, with watermarks and hidden messages and all. Not high tech, you know, pretty sophomore, but not something you could imitate on your copier.”
“You’ve got the paper,” Dortmunder said. He still sounded skeptical.
“And I look around,” Querk said. “You know, I thought I was gonna be a printer, not a forklift jockey, so I’m looking to improve myself. Get enough ahead so I can choose my own life for myself, not to have to answer every whistle. You know what I mean.”
“Huh,” Dortmunder said.
“That’s back,” Querk pointed out. “That throat thing.” He looked forward as Kelp steered them off the highway at the 125th Street exit. “Isn’t this Harlem?” He didn’t sound as though he liked the idea.
“Not exactly,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder said, “Go on with your story.”
“I don’t think I can yet,” Querk said. He was frowning out the windshield as though rethinking some earlier decisions in his life.
“Be there in a couple minutes,” Kelp assured him.
Nobody talked while Kelp stopped at the stop sign, made the left around the huge steel pillars holding up the West Side Highway, drove a block past scruffy warehouses, turned left at the light, stopped at a stop sign, then drove across, through the wide opening in a chain-link fence, and turned left into a narrow long parking lot just above the Hudson River.
Querk said, “What is this?”
“Fairway,” Kelp told him, as he found a parking space on the left and drove into it, front bumper against fence. It was hot outside, so he kept the engine on and the windows shut.
Querk said, “I don’t get it.”
“What it is,” Kelp told him, putting the Infiniti in park, “Harlem never had a big supermarket, save money on your groceries, they only had these little corner stores, not much selection on the shelves. So this Fairway comes in, that used to be a warehouse over there, see it?”
Querk nodded at the big warehouse with the supermarket entrance. “I see it.”
Kelp said, “So they put in a huge supermarket, great selections, everything cheap, the locals love it. But also the commuters, it’s easy on, easy off, see, there’s your northbound ramp back up to the highway, so they can come here, drop in, buy everything for the weekend, then head off to their country retreat.”
Querk said, “But why us? What are we doin’ here?”
Dortmunder told him, “You look around, you’ll see one, two people, even three, sitting in the cars around here. The wife—usually, it’s the wife—goes in and shops, the husband and the houseguests, they stay out here, keep outa the way, sit in the car, tell each other stories.”
Kelp said, “Tell us a story, Kirby.”
Querk shook his head. “I been away too long,” he said. “I hate to have to admit it. I don’t know how to maneuver any more. That’s why I need a cushion.”
Dortmunder said, “Made out of South American money.”
“Exactly.” Querk said, “I’m pretty much on my own at the plant, and I’ve always been handy around machinery—starting with locks, you know, that was my specialty—and also including now the printing presses they don’t use any more, and so I finally figured out the numbers.”
Kelp said, “Numbers?”
“Every bill in your pocket,” Querk told him, “has a number on it, and no two bills in th
is country have the same number. That’s the same for every country’s money. Everything’s identical on every bill except the number changes every time, and it never goes back. That’s part of the special machinery they bought, when they went into this business.”
Kelp said, “Kirby, am I all of a sudden ahead of you here? You figured out how to make the numbers go back.”
Querk was pleased with himself. “I know,” he said, “how to tell the machine, ‘That last run was a test. This is the real run.’” Grinning at Dortmunder, he said, “I also am the guy puts the paper here and there inside the plant, and checks it in when it’s delivered, and maybe makes it disappear off the books. So you see what I got.”
Kelp said, “It’s the real paper, on the real machine, doing the real numbers.”
“There’s no record of it anywhere,” Querk said. “It isn’t counterfeit, it’s real, and it isn’t stolen because it was never there.”
As they drove back down the West Side Highway toward midtown, each of them drinking a St. Pauli Girl beer Kelp had actually paid for in Fairway, Dortmunder said, “You know, it seems to me, there’s gotta be more than one chapter to this story.”
“You mean,” Querk said, “what do we do with it, once we got it.”
“We can’t take it to a bank a hundred dollars a time to change it back,” Dortmunder said.
“No, I know that.”
Kelp said, “I suppose we could go to the country and buy a hotel or something . . .”
Dortmunder said, “With cash?”
“There’s that. And then sell it again for dollars.” He shook his head. “Too complicated.”
“I got a guy,” Querk said. His shoulders twitched.
They gave him their full attention.
“He’s from that country, it’s called Guerrera,” Querk said. “He’s a kind of a hustler down there.”
Dortmunder said, “What is he up here?”
“Well, he isn’t up here,” Querk said. “Basically, he’s down there.”
Dortmunder said, “And how do you know this guy?”
“I got a friend,” Querk said, “a travel agent, she goes all over, she knows the guy.”
Dortmunder and Kelp exchanged a glance in the rearview mirror at that pronoun, which Querk didn’t appear to see. “We run off the money,” he went on, “and it comes out in cardboard boxes, already packed by the machinery, with black metal straps around it. We get it out of the plant, and I got a way to do that, too, and we turn it over to this guy, and he gives us fifty cents on the dollar.”
“Half,” Kelp said. “What are we talking about here?”
“The most useful currency for Rodrigo—that’s my guy—is the twenty million siapa note.”
Kelp said, “Twenty million?”
Dortmunder said, “How much is that in money?”
“A hundred dollars.” Querk shrugged. “They been havin a little inflation problem down there. They think they got it under control now.”
Kelp said, “So how much is this run?”
“What we’ll print? A hundred billion.”
Dortmunder said, “Not dollars.”
“No, siapas. That’s five thousand bills, all the twenty million siapa note.”
Dortmunder, pretending patience, said, “And what’s that in money?”
“Five hundred grand,” Querk said.
Kelp said, “Now I’m getting confused. Five hundred. This is in dollars?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Querk said.
Dortmunder said, “And we get half. Two hundred fifty thousand. And Kelp and me?”
“Half of the half,” Querk said promptly.
They were now back down in a realm where Dortmunder could do calculations in his head. “Sixty-two thousand, five hundred apiece,” he said.
“And a little vacation in the mountains,” Kelp said.
“Next week,” Querk said.
They looked at him. Dortmunder said, “Next week?”
“Or maybe the week after that,” Querk said. “Anyway, when the plant’s shut down.”
“We,” Dortmunder decided, “are gonna have to talk more.”
6
“May?” Dortmunder called, and stood in the doorway to listen. Nothing. “Not home yet,” he said, and went on into the apartment, followed by Kelp and Querk.
“Nice place,” Querk said.
“Thanks,” Dortmunder said. “Living room’s in here, on the left.”
“I used to have a place in New York,” Querk said. “Years ago. I don’t think I’d like the pace now.”
They trooped into the living room, here on East 19th Street, and Dortmunder looked around at the sagging sofa and his easy chair with the maroon hassock in front of it and May’s easy chair with the cigarette burns on the arms (good thing she quit when she did) and the television set where the colors never would come right and the window with its view of a brick wall just a little too far away to touch and the coffee table with all the rings and scars on it, and he said, “I dunno, the pace don’t seem to bother me that much. Take a seat. Anybody want a beer?”
Everybody wanted a beer, so Dortmunder went away to the kitchen to play host. When he was coming back down the hall toward the living room, spilling beer on his wrists because three was one more can than he could carry all at once, the apartment door at the other end of the hall opened and May came in, struggling with the key in the door and the big sack of groceries in her arm. A tall thin woman with slightly graying black hair, May worked as a cashier at Safeway until Dortmunder should score one of these times, and she felt the sack of groceries a day was a perk that went with the position, whether management thought so or not.
“Damn, May!” Dortmunder said, spilling more beer on his wrists. “I can’t help you with that.”
“That’s okay, I got it,” she said, letting the door close behind her as she counted his beer cans. “We’ve got company.”
“Andy and a guy. Come in and say hello.”
“Let me put this stuff away.”
As May passed the living room doorway, Kelp could be heard to cry, “Hey, May!” She nodded at the doorway, she and Dortmunder slid by each other in the hall, and he went on into the living room, where the other two were both standing, like early guests at a party.
Distributing the beers, wiping his wrists on his shirt, Dortmunder said, “May’ll come in in a minute, say hello.”
Kelp lifted his beer. “To crime.”
“Good,” said Querk, and they all drank.
May came in, with a beer of her own. “Hi, Andy,” she said.
Dortmunder said, “May, this is Kirby Querk.” They both said hello, and he said, “Whyn’t we all sit down? You two take the sofa.”
Sounding surprised, Querk said, “You want me to tell this in front of, uh, the lady?”
“Aw, that’s nice,” May said, smiling at Querk as she settled into her chair.
Dortmunder said, “I’ll just tell her anyway, after you go, so you can save me some time.”
“Well, all right.”
They all seated themselves, and Dortmunder said to May, “Querk has a job upstate at a printery, where one of the things they print is South American money, and he’s got a way to run off a batch nobody knows about.”
“Well, that’s pretty good,” May said.
“Only now, it turns out,” Dortmunder said, “there’s some kind of deadline here, so we come over to talk about it.”
Kelp explained, “Up till now, we weren’t sure we were all gonna team up, so we met in other places.”
“Sure,” May said.
“So now,” Dortmunder said, “Querk’s gonna explain the deadline.”
They all looked at Querk, who put his beer can on the coffee table, making another mark, and said, “The plant’s called Sycamore Creek, and there’s this creek runs through town, with a dam where it goes under the road, and that’s where the electricity comes from to run the plant. But every year in August there’s two weeks
when they gotta open the dam and just let the water go, because there’s always a drought up there in the summer and it could get too low downstream for the fish. So the plant closes, two weeks, everybody gets a vacation, they do their annual maintenance and all, but there’s no electricity to run the plant, so that’s why they have to close.”
Dortmunder said, “Your idea is, you do this when there’s no electricity.”
“We bring in our own,” Querk said.
Dortmunder visualized himself walking with a double handful of electricity, lots of little blue sparks. Zit-zit, worse than beer cans. He said, “How do we do that?”
“With a generator,” Querk told him. “See, up there, it’s all volunteer fire departments and rescue squads, and my cousin, where I’ve been living temporarily until I find a place, he’s the captain of the Combined Darby County Fire Department and Rescue Squad, and what they got, besides the ambulance and the fire engine, is a big truck with a generator on it, for emergencies.”
Dortmunder said, “So first you boost this truck—”
“Which I could do with my eyes closed,” Querk said. “The locks up there are a joke, believe me. And the keys to the emergency vehicles are kept right in them.”
Kelp said, “Do we do it day or night?”
“Oh, night,” Querk said. “I figure, we go pick up the generator truck around one in the morning, there’s nobody awake up there at one in the morning, we take it over to the plant, hook up the stuff we need, the run’ll take just about three hours for the whole thing, we take the boxes with the money, we put the generator truck back, we’re done before daylight.”
Dortmunder said, “You’re gonna have to have some light in there. And some noise.”
“Not a problem,” Querk said.
Dortmunder said, “Why, is this plant out in the woods all by itself or something?”
“Not really,” Querk said. “But nobody can see it.”
Kelp said, “How come?”
“High walls, low buildings.” Querk spread his hands. “The way I understand it, in the old days the plant used to dump all its waste straight into the creek, the people downstream used to make bets, what color’s the water gonna be tomorrow. Every time the state did an inspection, somehow the plant got tipped off ahead of time, and that day the water’s clean and clear, good enough to drink. But finally, about thirty years ago, they got caught. People’d been complaining about noise and stink outa the plant, in addition to this water even an irreligious person could walk on, so they did a consent. The plant upgraded its waste treatment, and did a sound-baffle wall all around, and planted trees so people wouldn’t have to look at the wall, and now those trees are all big, you’d think it’s a forest there, except the two drives in, with the gates, one for the workers and one for deliveries, and they’re both around on the stream side, no houses across the way.”