Orchid Blues

38

Ham let himself into the beach cottage through the sliding doors. They were all at dinner again. "My God," he said, "don't you people ever eat anything but Chinese food and pizza?"

"You got a Mexican restaurant in this town?" Harry asked. "We'd go for that."

Ham rolled his eyes and pulled up a chair.

"What have you got?" Harry asked.

"Fellas, it's a whole new ball game every day." He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Harry.

"What's this?"

"It's an application to open an account at a warehouse bank."

"Uh-oh," Harry said.

"What's a warehouse bank?" Holly asked.

"The biggest tax dodge you ever heard of," Ham said. He explained it to the group as it had been explained to him.

Holly and the three FBI agents sat, rapt, listening to him.

"Holy cow," Holly said, when he was finished. "Harry, you're going to have to get the IRS into this."

"It can't be that big a deal," Harry said.

"Would you believe a quarter of a billion dollars?" Ham asked.

"That's billion with a B?"

"Correct. That's how much they claim to have cost the IRS over the past ten years."

Harry stared at him blankly. "How many people are we talking about here?"

"I have no idea," Ham replied. "John did say that, recently, someone had become their first member to avoid a million dollars in taxes." He pulled the group's paper money from his pocket and placed it on the table. "They also print this for themselves."

Harry picked up a note. "Jefferson Davis? I don't believe it."

Eddie was holding a bill up to a bare lightbulb. "This is first-class work," he said, "and with Jeff Davis on it, it could never be considered counterfeit currency, legally, unless it was counterfeit Confederate currency."

"How do they use this?" Harry asked.

"They buy and sell among themselves at these gun shows."

"Shit," Harry said, tossing the note onto the table. "We're going to end up with every law enforcement agency in the federal government in on this. There'll be nothing left for us."

"You're forgetting the bank robbery," Holly said. "And there's the murder for me."

"Oh, right."

"Harry, I think you've got to start making some calls to other agencies."

"Yeah, I guess so," Harry replied disconsolately. "And once I call one, I'll have to call them all. I still want some hard information, though. Eddie?"

Everybody turned and looked at Eddie, who was grinning.

"You look like the cat who got into the goldfish bowl," Holly said.

"You could say that," Eddie replied. "Ham, describe the room, Peck's study, where all these meetings take place."

"It's big, maybe twenty by thirty, fairly high ceiling, windows on two sides. The Venetian blinds are almost always drawn."

Eddie set a cardboard box on the table. "This stuff was couriered in today." He held up what appeared to be a smoke detector. "This is really neat: all you do is stick this to the ceiling somewhere in the room, and it sits there, listening. It'll pick up anything said anywhere in the room, then it transmits what it's hearing to an NSA satellite. They can listen to real-time conversation and transmit it to us over phone lines. We'll know everything that's going on."

"What happens if they sweep the room?" Ham asked.

"They'll probably be using readily available commercial stuff, which is pretty good, but very short-range. They'll walk around the baseboards, then the lamps and phones with a detector; they'll look behind pictures and under the rug. Meanwhile, ten or twelve feet above their head, this thing is sending a highly directional signal straight up. Have you noticed that nobody ever looks up in a room? Well, they won't sweep up, either."

"Suppose they do?" Holly asked. "Suppose Peck looks up and says, 'Hey, I didn't install a smoke detector in here.'"

"If Peck takes it down and looks at it, he's going to see a smoke detector. It will even work like a smoke detector. If you blow cigarette smoke at it, it'll squawk. What he won't see is a layer of electronics that's sealed into seamless plastic."

"How is it powered?" Ham asked.

"The only difference between this and a regular smoke detector is it has two nine-volt batteries, instead of one. Except they're not really nine-volt batteries, they're made of a new, extremely high-powered battery material developed by the NSA. They're disguised to look like regular nine-volt batteries. The two of them would give you a month's talk time on your cell phone, and this unit uses a little less power than a cell phone."

"Neat," Ham said.

"What's not neat," Holly pointed out, "is that Ham has got to go into that room and install the thing."

"All he does is peel off a strip of plastic, exposing a sticky tape and glue it to the ceiling."

"You're missing my point," Holly said. "Ham has to do it; he has to go into that room, unseen by anybody, get on a ladder, or something, and stick it to the ceiling without getting himself shot."

"Well, there is that," Eddie admitted.

"Ham, have you ever been alone in that room?" Harry asked.

"No, there have always been at least half a dozen people there."

"How long do you think it might take you to get in there by yourself?"

"I don't know," Ham said, "I can only try."

"There's more," Eddie said. "Ham, you wear your old army fatigues a lot, don't you?"

"I do when I go out there," Ham said.

Eddie held up a button. "They have buttons like these, don't they?"

"Yes."

"You sew this onto your fatigues, top front button, or on a pocket. There's a tiny microphone inside that transmits a very short-range signal."

"What good is a very short-range signal going to do us?" Ham asked.

Eddie took a pair of well-worn combat boots from his box. "It has to broadcast only as far as your feet. These will fit you," he said. "We got your shoe size from your military record." He took a tiny screwdriver from his pocket. "This is the kind of tool you use to replace a screw in your eyeglasses. You also use it to switch on a tape recorder in the right heel of the boots." He demonstrated. "Insert it a quarter of an inch, make sure it mates with the screw head inside and give it a short turn clockwise. You're up andon two memory sticks imbedded in the heel." running, and you have an hour and forty minutes recording time

"What if he's swept while it's running?" Harry asked.

"Then they'll pick it up and zero in on the button." He turned to Ham. "Don't let that happen," he said.

"Gee, I'll try not to," Ham replied.