"Did you ever count all the money, Chuck?" he asked as he spooned some ice cream into a saucer..
"Oh yes, the very first thing when I got back. With what we got in Brentwood, San Francisco and don't forget Santa Cruz, we now have almost five hundred thousand dollars."
Lars dropped the ice cream-filled saucer with a smash..
He stared, wide-eyed from the kitchen door.
"That's a half a million dollars, Chuck. I just figured it out,"
"Good for you, Eric. With a mind like that, you ought to be working for the OMB."
"What's that?" Eric-Lars said as he cleaned up the mess on the kitchen floor.
"Office of Management and Budget in Washington. You'd be the very best man they had. Why none of their employees can count past ten unless they take off their shoes. Of course then they can count to twenty. Twenty-one if they open their fly. That only holds good for men, of course. Women can only count to twenty unless they have some kind of an appliance inserted in them."
"Appliance?"
"Go get me a plate of ice cream and forget the appliances. You'll never need to know about things like that."
Later, they found themselves sitting in the living room watching the holocaust of Santa Cruz with the sound turned down.
"That was a nice dinner, Chuck. Where did you learn to cook?"
"I can cook better than most restaurant chefs so why waste the money? What we had tonight would cost us fifty bucks at a fancy restaurant with some faggot waiter hovering around with a giant pepper mill telling us to enjoy."
Lars watched as the roller coaster collapsed again.
"Does that bother you, Chuck? I mean all the people that got squashed?"
Chuck shrugged and turned off the set with his remote.
"Shit happens, Lars, every day. Churches collapse on old ladies at prayer, day care centers blow up, planes full of orphans on their way to see the Pope crash into mountains, the Navy accidentally blows up a passenger plane with a missile and they blame it on a faulty gas tank, some big company pours deadly chemicals into the ground and ten miles away, babies are born without heads. That's shit and it does happen. Lars, next week there will be some other shit for the boobies to drool over. The Prince of Wales is caught nude with a dead sheep or the President throws his wife out the window of the White House and blames it on slippery floors. No one really cares about such things friend, so why not just let me go to bed and watch your tapes? Have you seen them all yet?"
Lars shook his head quickly.
"Oh no, not yet. I still have fifty three to go."
"Be careful that you don't go blind, friend. And a good night to you."
Lars called to him just before Chuck closed his bedroom door.
"Can we do this again sometime, Chuck? That was really an exciting time."
"I don't think so, Eric. When Fortune goes past, one has to grasp the hem of her garment or be left behind. I think we pulled her skirt clean off this time and I don't think we'll be able to do that again. Good night."
Chuck was wrong because other opportunities would arise, ones that would be even more exciting, and he never stopped grabbing.
The next day he was planning to have some business cards and letterheads printed and he was anticipating nothing more than a boring morning. What he would find instead was Fortune, clad in a new skirt, crashing towards him through the underbrush.
The print shop was located in a strip mall, wedged between a pet shop that had a dead rabbit and live flies in its window and a telephone answering service with a bright pink door.
"Insta-print" had no one at the front desk when Chuck walked in but there was the sound of a loud argument in the back that indicated that the OPEN sign was not lying.
"You filthy fuck!" screamed one voice, "you buggered up the entire fucking order! Jesus, you should have stayed in the fucking nut house!!"
"It's not my fault Myron, I told you we ran out of brown ink way last week and you didn't reorder because you got no credit! And I'm not a nut either. I was in a hospital for my nerves! Don't shout at me!"
Chuck rapped on the counter with his car keys.
"Hello! Anyone back there? I'm a customer."
There was silence in the back and a tall, thin man with a large paunch came out of the back. He had protuberant, watery blue eyes and a receding chin and wore a filthy T-shirt that was spattered with multi-colored inks and looked like a Jackson Pollock painting.
He wiped his long, pale hands on pants that were once a light tan and now looked like the contents of a long-unflushed toilet.
"Customer! Can I help you? We are having some problems here, just problems."
Chuck looked at the faded wedding announcements stuck to the walls with pieces of masking tape and decided to find another print shop.
"Actually...I don't suppose you do stationary and business cards?" he said, hoping for a negative.
Another man, short and red of face wearing what looked like an apron stuck his head around the corner of the doorway to the back of the shop.
"Yes, we do, yes indeed. Stationary. Tell him about our special, Edwin."
Edwin glared at him.
"You tell him, smartass. Just tell him about the ink!"
Chuck turned to go and Edwin shouted at him.
"No, I was only kidding, sir. We do lovely stationary here. This is a first class establishment. We were rehearsing for a play, that's all."
"Yes," said the other one, "just a play."
And he disappeared again.
Edwin produced a stained book with samples of letterheads, which Chuck reluctantly leafed through.
He found a sample that looked respectable and pointed at it.
"Can you do these?"
"Why that's easy. A very nice choice if I do say so myself, and I do."
He whinnied like a horse, displaying chipped teeth.
"I need five hundred letterheads and five hundred envelopes, all in this style."
The printer nodded fiercely and then whirled around when something smashed in the back.
"Pardon me, pardon me, I have to attend."
And he vanished leaving Chuck to contemplate a calendar showing a small child patting a large dog.
There was more shouting from the back in which both parties discussed the unmarried state of their respective parents, a discussion punctuated with breaking glass.
Just as Chuck was trying to open the door, Edwin reappeared.
"No problem, something broke. Now how soon do you want the job done? Not tomorrow but the next day perhaps?"
Chuck shrugged.
"That will be just fine. Let me write out the copy for you and give me a price."
He put down the name of his late cousin, added the phrase, 'Investment Counselor.'
This phrase seemed to rivet Edwin.
"Are you an investment counselor, sir? Are you actually one?"
Chuck felt as if he was attending a group therapy session filled with amphetamine addicts.
"Yes, I am."
The printer leaned over the counter and whispered behind his stained hand,
"What do you invest in? Money?"
"Sometimes. How much will I owe you?"
"No, no, I might have a deal for you. Do you deal with foreign money? Like currency from other countries?"
Chuck had no idea what the lunatic Gutenberg was up to but he nodded carefully.
"Why I do handle foreign currency from time to time."
The printer looked over his shoulder and then lowered his voice.
"Do you buy foreign currency, sir?"
"Depends on the price."
Edwin nodded rapidly.
"Why of course, sir, I understand. I mean, do you buy foreign currency? Of course at a great discount, a very great discount."
Chuck, who had absolutely no idea what this manic was about, nodded again.
"Ah yes, you do! I could see right away that you were a man who understands money. Foreign money. I can give you a terribl
e good price on foreign money."
He leaned over the counter again and said very slowly,
"At a very good price!"
A loud voice boomed out from the back.
"Don't sell it too cheap! You always sell things too cheap!"
Erwin wheeled around.
"You shut the fuck up, Myron! Let me handle this and clean up your Goddam mess back there!"
Chuck decided to follow the matter up. The lunatic no doubt had worthless Mexican pesos for sale. As a dollar was now worth six hundred pesos, he could envision a box of them for sale at face value.
The money turned out to be a large box full of Canadian twenty-dollar bills.
Edwin had locked the door and pulled down the broken Venetian blind that covered its glass.
"Magnificent specimens, sir, the very best. And a special price just for you. Three dollars apiece. Just three dollars!"
Chuck picked up several samples and initially believed they were original because the serial numbers were different. If it was counterfeit, it was very good.
"There are thirty sets of numbers, sir. Thirty! No one else does this kind of work anymore."
Chuck held a bill up to the light and then looked at several more. They were of superb workmanship. Certainly fake because he found more with identical numbers but very good.
"Is this your work?" he asked, trying to estimate how many were in the box.
"Oh no, sir. It's illegal to counterfeit. When my associate and I bought this place, we found this box hidden in the back of a closet. Under a grille as a matter of fact. The last owner was arrested by the Secret Service but they overlooked this box..."
He thumped the heavy box with one hand.
"Aren't they beautiful pieces? An investment counselor would know what to do with these, wouldn't he?"
"I'll give you two dollars apiece for all of them. This is all of them?"
"Two dollars!" Myron roared from the back. "That's robbery. Make it two fifty."
They finally agreed on two twenty five and Chuck discovered that there were bills totaling three hundred thousand dollars in the old cardboard box.
He examined every one of the fifteen thousand pieces of paper with both Edwin and his gnome-like partner and finally, after an hour of bargaining, paid them thirty three thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash from a stash of hundred dollar bills he kept under the spare tire of his car.
Chuck took back the copy for his letterhead with his pseudonym and was happy to note that neither printer could see his car nor expressed any interest in noting down its license plate number.
When he left, Edwin and Myron were engaged in a fierce argument about how to divide the money and the last he heard was Edwin advising Myron that he would shove his head into the press and turn it on if he heard another word out of him on the subject.
On his way back to his new apartment, Chuck contemplated his latest venture into crime with some bemusement. Lunatic printers, old but very passable counterfeit at an excellent price. The question was where to pass it or whether or not to wholesale it to professionals at a profit.
If he did this, he could realize a profit of two dollars and seventy-five cents per bill and if he passed it himself, he risked being caught, a probable long jail sentence and a sixteen-dollar profit per bill if he was successful. Given that he would have to buy something with the money, something less suspicious than a package of chewing gum or a pencil, he could probably clear two hundred thousand if he was lucky. That sum, added to what he already had would give him a very nice bankroll indeed.
He balanced the risk against the quality of the money and the important fact that there were thirty different sets of serial numbers. The first bills would be detected by the banks probably the same day or at the latest, the next. That meant he had one full day and possibly part of another to pass nearly five hundred bills. If he could get Lars to pass half of them, that meant two hundred and fifty each. That was highly improbable so perhaps a better solution was to put together packets containing five different serial numbers and then buy expensive items that he could later convert to cash. Gold would do very well as would coins and stamps and there were also items that one could use like expensive luggage, watches, rings, some art, clothes, video equipment, computers and so on.
He would have to hit three major cities as quickly as possible and he thought that he could start in Vancouver and move his way back to Montreal and Ottawa before returning to the States via New York and Chicago.
That meant that there had to be a way to move the loot back to the United States and he decided that a parcel service that served both countries would be the best.
The boxes would have to go to several drop addresses with professional names attached so perhaps several parcel services could be used. The Canadian mail service was notoriously bad so one had to avoid it at all costs. There was no point in enriching criminally inclined Canadian postal employees with the products of his dishonesty.
Then there was the question of disguises. Eric would look much better with some kind of a mustache and he himself could grow a beard. Eric could bleach his dark hair and he could dye his black and no one would remember what they looked like. Fake glasses were a must and a distinctive, removable tattoo on the back of the hand would keep the attention of the victim on the other side of the counter. Perhaps a Masonic ring covered with diamonds would achieve the same effect. Or a fake scar on the side of the face or a clip-on earring with a glittering stone in it. Chuck knew that people would remember a tattoo, a fancy ring, an earring or a scar and nothing else. Both observers and their eyes were easily deceived.
And, he had to admit as he drove through the gates and past the friendly guard, the bills were of remarkable quality.
As he parked the car in his space, he calculated that he had a good week and perhaps a few days over, depending entirely on the press coverage. Eric was competent enough but would have to be instructed in the finer points of passing counterfeit money at the same time he was growing a mustache.
"Funny money," Eric said, staring at the fetch of the Queen.
"Yes, lad, funny money. And very good funny money. Unless you have problem with all this, we are going to Canada and pass it. If we don't get caught, we can make big money one way or the other. (And we can also pull big time one way or the other but we won't discuss this with Lars, he thought.)
* * *
[1] Gehlen Organization or Gehlen Org was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States Zone of Germany, and consisted of former members of the 12th Department of the Army General Staff (Foreign Armies East, or FHO). It carries the name of Reinhard Gehlen.
[2] John Edgar Hoover January 1, 1895-May 2, 1972 Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a part of the Department of Justice.
[3] Cord Meyer November 10, 1920- March 13, 2001 Senior CIA official, earlier involved with Alan Cranston in pro-Russian United World Federalist movement. His former wife, Mary, was later a mistress of President Kennedy.
[4] Benjamin Crowninshield "Ben" Bradlee (born August 26, 1921) is a vice president at-large of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1968 to 1991, he became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and oversaw the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal.
[5] R. James Bender Publisher of Douglas’ four volume works on Heinrich Müller, chief of Hitler’s Gestapo and CIA post-war expert on Communism
[6] SD: Sicherheitsdienst Security Service of the SS, headed by Reinhard Heydrich. Heinrich Müller worked under him in Berlin.
[7] Operation Phoenix was a military, intelligence, and internal security program designed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and US Special Operations Forces such as the Navy SEALs, United States Army Special Forces and MACV-SOG (now Special Operations Group in the CIA's Spec
ial Activities Division) during the Vietnam War. The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" or assassinate any suspected supporters of the Viet Cong. Also in charge of the Regional Interrogation Centers where suspects were tortured and usually executed by CIA/U.S. Military agencies The program was in operation between 1967 and 1972, and at a conservative estimate, “cleansed” over 25,000 Vietnamese civilians to include massacres of entire villages. It must have been very small because so many top CIA and U.S. intelligence people who served in Vietnam, never heard of it, ever.
[8] Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán (September 14, 1913 – January 27, 1971) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician. He served as Defense Minister of Guatemala from 1944 - 1951. He served as President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954. When he attempted to nationalize the extensive United Fruit Company’s extensive holdings, the CIA fomented a coup d'état by a military junta, headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo, a CIA employee. He died in Mexico in 1971.
[9] Lord Louis Mountbatten - June 25, 1900 – August 27, 1979 Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma KG, In 1979 Mountbatten was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who planted a bomb in his boat at Mullaghmore, County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland.
[10] Roosevelt had made J. Edgar Hoover an honorary colonel in the U.S. Army during the Second World War but Hoover, outraged that he had not been made a general, refused to use the title. It was an inside joke in Washington official circles.
[11] Donald Ewen Cameron (1901-1967) was a Scottish-American psychiatrist. Born in Bridge of Allan, he graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924. Cameron lived and worked in Albany, New York, and was involved in experiments in Canada for Project MKULTRA, a United States based CIA-directed mind control program which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual Cameron was the author of the psychic driving concept which the CIA found particularly interesting. In it he described his theory on correcting madness, which consisted of erasing existing memories and rebuilding the psyche completely. After being recruited by the CIA, he commuted to Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of the McGill University, and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKULTRA experiments there. The CIA tasked him with the deadly experiments to carry out, as they would be tried on non-US citizens. However, documents released in 1977 revealed that thousands of unwitting, as well as voluntary subjects, were tested on during that time period. These included United States citizens.
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