Two-Dollar Bill

46

SANDY PETERSON arrived at MB Electronics half an hour after Lance had dispatched him. He had been buying electronic components there for nearly a year, and the staff knew him, at least by sight. He always paid cash, and they liked that.

He parked across the street and looked at the building for a moment; it was a single-story building that covered a third of the block. On the corner was a retail electronics shop, which took up about a quarter of the building, and next to that was a corrugated steel door that could be operated with a remote control. He walked to the end of the block and a few steps farther. There was a wide alley behind the building, which had a loading dock. Across the street, he saw two men sitting in a car.

He walked back around the building, checking for windows- there were none on the side-and into the retail shop through the front door. He bought a hundred-foot reel of cat five wire and paid for it in cash, glancing at himself in the mirror behind the counter. "Is Marty in?" he asked the girl who was helping him. "I'd like to ask him about something."

"I'll check," she said. She went to a door, knocked and went inside, behind the mirror. A moment later she came out, followed by a stocky man in his midforties, balding, dressed in suit pants, shirtsleeves and a loosened tie.

"I'm Marty Block,'" he said and pointed a finger at Sandy. "And you are…?."

"Sandy Peterson; I've been doing business here for a while."

"Yeah, I've seen you in the shop, didn't know your name. You don't have an account, do you?"

Sandy shook his head. "I prefer dealing in cash."

Marty grinned. "That's okay; we take American dollars."

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" Sandy asked.

"Sure, what's up?"

"It's kind of confidential."

"Come into my office," Marty said. He lifted the counter barrier, let Sandy through, then led him through the door into a large, comfortably furnished office with a six-foot-tall safe against one wall. "Take a seat."

Sandy sat down. "I've got a particular job to do for a client, and I need something custom."

"Tell me about your business," Marty said.

"I got started putting in alarms for people, and I did good work, so my business grew, and once in a while, a client would ask me to do some special work-personal stuff, usually-guy suspected his wife of screwing around, suspected his business partner of stealing, stuff like that."

"I know the kind of thing," Marty said. He held up his hands. "Not that I'd ever do anything illegal."

"Yeah, of course. It's like this…"

Marty held up a hand and came around the desk. "Before we have this conversation, I'm going to have to frisk you."

"Yeah, sure," Sandy said, standing up and holding his arms away from his body.

Marty proceeded to not just frisk him, but to do a body search more thorough than any Sandy had seen since he had finished his training at the Farm. He started with a normal search, looking for a recorder, then he went over Sandy's clothing in a minute way that would have detected a hidden microphone. He took Sandy's cell phone and set it on his desk, then he unbuckled Sandy's belt, inspected it and handed it back to him.

"Let me see your shoes," Marty said.

Sandy shucked them off and handed them over.

Marty inspected the soles, the insoles and the laces. He handed them back, then ran his fingers through Sandy's hair and checked his wristwatch. After several minutes of this, he waved him back to his chair.

Marty picked up the cell phone, removed the back and the battery, then took a small screwdriver from his desk drawer and partially disassembled the phone. Satisfied, he reassembled it and handed it to Sandy.

"Sorry about that," Marty said. "I can't be too careful."

"It's perfectly okay," Sandy said. "Believe me, I understand. Can I speak freely now?"

"Go ahead; what do you need?"

"I've got a client who's in the middle of a big divorce. He wants me to bug his own house-he's moved out. He wants a mike in every room-just audio, no cameras. My problem is, his wife rarely goes out for more than a few minutes. The most time I'm going to get inside without being disturbed is, maybe, thirty minutes. You think you could put something together that would work for me?"

"Sure, but it ain't going to be cheap."

"How long would it take you to get it together?"

"How about ten minutes?" Marty said.

Sandy grinned. "Ten minutes would be good."

Marty went to a large safe in the corner, worked the combination with his body between Sandy and the safe, and opened it. He removed a plastic box, and as he turned to close the door of the safe Sandy was able to get a glimpse of the inside. It was filled with electronic components, what appeared to be a considerable amount of cash and two handguns on the top shelf. Marty locked the safe and returned to his desk.

"You recognize this?" he asked, opening the plastic box and handing Sandy a black, plastic object.

"Looks like a standard domestic circuit breaker," Sandy replied, turning it over in his hand.

"How about this?" Marty asked, handing him a plastic object about two inches long and half an inch wide. It was hinged lengthwise, and short spikes protruded from the back.

"You got me," Sandy said. "Never seen anything like it." In fact, he had seen something exactly like it. Marty was copying things that the Technical Services Department at the Agency had been making for years.

"Well," Marty said, sounding very pleased with himself, "here's what you do with your client's house. You go to the main breaker box and replace one of the breakers with mine. Then you go into each room of the house you want to bug, unscrew a power receptacle and crimp the other little thing so that the spikes penetrate both the positive and negative wires. Then you go outside and find an outdoor power receptacle and plug this into it." He handed Sandy a small, black box with a short antenna attached. "What you've done is turned the whole house's wiring grid into a receiver system that's picked up and retransmitted by the box with the antenna. I'll sell you a receiver with a dedicated, off-the-books frequency, and you'll be able to hear and, if you want to, record everything that's said in the house. You can even make it voice activated."

"Wow," Sandy said, pretending to be impressed. "How much?"

"The circuit breaker is eight grand, the crimpers are two hundred each and the retransmitter is two grand. Your receiver is a grand."

"Well, it's not like I'm the one paying for it," Sandy said. "The client will pick up the tab."

"How many crimpers you want?"

Sandy counted on his fingers. "Eighteen."

Marty turned to a calculator on his desk and began tapping in numbers. "That comes to fourteen thousand six hundred bucks," he said. "Call it fourteen thousand even, and with cash, no tax."

"Done," Sandy said. "I'll need to make a run to get the cash; that's more than I walk around with."

"Sure; I'll have everything packed up and ready for you in half an hour; you can pick it up anytime today."

Sandy stood up to go. "You must have a great workshop here," he said.

"I do. You want a gander?"

"God, yes, please!"

Marty walked him through another door and into a large, beautifully equipped workshop where four men were hunched over work-tables, wiring and soldering. "There you go. I can build you just about anything you want in here."

"This is really something," Sandy said. "I mean, I'm working out of my basement, you know?"

"Listen, I used to work out of my basement," Marty said.

"You've got a lot of building here," Sandy said. "What do you do with the rest of it?"

Marty walked him through another door into a storeroom filled with components and wiring, then into a large garage. Sandy counted four unmarked vans and half a dozen cars. "I keep larger equipment and my vans in here, and my employees park here, too. That's about as big a draw as health insurance. You got any idea what it costs to park in this city these days?"

"Tell me about it," Sandy said. He turned and saw a staircase going up to a windowed office in the high-ceilinged garage. "More work space?" He noted that blinds were pulled down over the windows.

"Nah, just storage," Marty said, steering him back toward the retail shop.

"I'll be back in a little later with your fourteen grand," Sandy said.

"You do that," Marty said, turning back toward his office. "Bye-bye. Nice doing business with you."

Sandy picked up his wire in the shop, then walked back to his car. He got out his cell phone and called Lance.

"Yes?"

"It's Sandy. Martin Block gave me the ten-cent tour. He's got four vans that the lady could be moved in, and there's a room I didn't get to see, up a flight of stairs in the garage. If Block has her, that's where she'll be. By the way, there are two cops in a Crown Vic sitting near the building, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts."

"Good work, Sandy."

"Oh, one more thing, Lance."

"What?"

"I'm going to need fourteen thousand dollars."

"What?"