Money, Money, Money

7 .

THE RESTAURANT SPECIALIZED in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Here, in the virtual shadow of the mosque near the ramp approach to the River Dix Drive, one could feast upon delicious dishes from Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Republic. The restaurant was smoke-filled even at lunch time, when it was packed with men and women-but mostly men-on breaks and longing for the taste and the aroma of the food and drink they had enjoyed in Damascus or Baghdad, Beirut or Teheran. The entertainment, even during the lunch hour, helped to remind them of their homelands, but it was the fare that drew them here, exquisite to the taste and to memories too long submerged in an accursed foreign land.

Mahmoud Gharib looked the most benign of the three men sitting at the little round table near the small stage where a Raqs Sharqui belly dancer gyrated to a recorded mix of electronic instruments and violins. Resembling a chubby cheerful standup comic from the good old days before comedians turned lean, mean, and obscene, he sported a tiny mustache somewhat uptilted at the tips, giving him the appearance of a man who was perpetually smiling. His complexion was the color of bread lightly toasted, his eyes the color of the very dark brown Turkish coffee they brewed here. His comrades knew him as Mahmoud. The dispatcher at the cab company for which he worked called him Moe, which Mahmoud knew was a Jewish name, and therefore a hundredfold more offensive. He looked plump and jolly and content. He was the most dangerous of the three men.

The men were talking about the proper way to prepare a fish dish that was enormously popular throughout the Middle East. Jassim, the smallest of the men, was saying that the secret was in refrigerating the fish for an hour before it was cooked. Akbar, who worked for a sporting goods store on the South Side, told him that refrigeration had nothing to do with it, he had eaten the fish in poor little villages where no one had evenheard of ice. Jassim insisted it was the refrigeration. You had to keep the fish on ice for an hour before placing it in the skillet, skin side down, and cooking it. It was the refrigeration, he said, that caused the skin to crisp so swiftly and effectively. Mahmoud said that was nonsense.

"The fish is inconsequential to the dish," he said, waving his hand in a manner that defined leadership and dismissed argumentation. The gesture seemed exceptionally grandiose in light of the comic little mustache under his nose. "You can use any kind of white-fleshed fish," he said. "So long as you wash it clean and season it with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, you can let it stand outside while you make the sauce. I'm not saying forever. It is dangerous to let any fish stand forever. But it's the sauce and the nuts that give the dish its succulent flavor."

"The onions," Akbar agreed.

"The caramelized onions, yes," Jassim said, nodding.

"But especially the pine nuts," Mahmoud said, again superseding all discussion. "Swiftly fried in oil, browned to a pale golden perfection, and thenshowered on the fish."

"On a bed of rice," Akbar said.

"On a bed of rice," Mahmoud said, and kissed his fingertips.

It was odd that the men were discussing fish because at the moment they were eating pancakes stuffed with cheese. In Morocco, where they were cooked on one side only and served with only a warm honey-butter sauce, these little semolina-yeast crepes were traditionally served on the feast ofaid el seghir, toward the end of the Islamic month of fasting called Ramadan. Here in this restaurant, the pancakes were prepared in the Lebanese manner, stuffed with ricotta and shreds of mozzarella, broiled on both sides to a succulent crispness, and then drizzled with a syrup made of sugar, lemon juice, orange blossom honey, and orange flower water. The men ate ravenously. Jassim licked his lips. Mahmoud found this disgusting, but he made no comment.

A dark-eyed, dark-haired waitress brought them thick black coffee. The belly dancer was wearing a beaded bra and matching belt, a sequined skirt over a body stocking. Her veil work was hardly Egyptian. To Mahmoud, it looked more like the modified strip tease one would find in the so-called American Nightclub style. The girl was wearing finger cymbals, although they had for the most part gone out of style in Egypt. She was more adept at twirling her veil and snapping her hips than she was at playing the cymbals.

"When does the Big Jew arrive?" Akbar asked.

Given the origins and political dispositions of the trio, this could have been a derogatory remark, but it was not meant to be. Svi Cohen was in fact an Israeli Jew, and he was in fact a very big man, standing some six feet, three inches tall and weighing close to two hundred and forty pounds.

"Tomorrow," Mahmoud said.

"And his performance at Clarendon?" Jassim asked. He was still licking traces of syrup from his lips. His fingernails were grimy with traces of his trade; he worked as an automobile mechanic in a garage at the foot of the Calm's Point Bridge. Mahmoud found the filthy fingernails disgusting, too.

"On the thirtieth," he said. "This Saturday night."

"So where's the money?" Akbar asked.

It was a good question.

THE SQUADROOM WAS relatively calm on that Wednesday morning two days after Christmas. Today was only the twenty-seventh and the week was lurching steadily forward into another big weekend that would culminate on Sunday with the tolling of the bells and the falling of the ball in the square. But the squadroom was enjoying a comparative period of calm, a respite from the usual hubbub and hullabaloo that accompanied its normal pace.

Carella and Meyer sat poring over the letters Mark Ridley had written to his sister in the months and weeks preceding her death. From references he made to her own letters, it became clear almost at once that she was terribly excited about a job she'd be flying early in December, which would change her circumstances considerably, enabling her to move East, where she'd always wanted to live, be there long before Christmas, in fact. In the letter they'd already read-the one dated November 13-her brother wrote to say that the job sounded good to him, "so long as you won't be flying anything that might get you in trouble."

The words still rang meaningfully in the stillness of the squadroom.

On November 16, Cassandra Jean Ridley opened a safe deposit box at Banque Francaise here in this city and placed in it $50,000 in cash. Apparently, her circumstances had infact changed considerably by then. They were to change even more dramatically. Her calendar for December 7 was marked with the words "End Mexico." On December 8, she presumably flew East again. Three days later, she placed another $150,000 in the safe deposit box. Twelve days after that, she was dead.

Their computer told them there'd been seventy-four reported incidents of kidnapping in the United States during the first three weeks of December. Most of these were abductions of children from parents in divorced or separated circumstances. Some of these cases might have attracted the attention of the FBI, in that state lines had been crossed. None of them would have warranted the attention of the Secret Service.

Yet the Treasury Department had braced a small-time burglar named Wilbur Struthers, confiscating bills he'd stolen from Cassandra Jean Ridley's apartment, checking out the serial numbers against ransom notes used in an alleged kidnapping, and then-remarkably-giving him a clean bill of health and returning the bills to him that very same day.

Something stank in the state of Denmark.

They figured it was time they paid a personal visit to Special Agent David A. Horne.

A WHOLE LOT OF hundred-dollar bills were fanned out on Horne's desk.

"A hundred and four thousand dollars," Carella said.

"Some of it recovered in the dead woman's apartment," Meyer said.

"The rest from her safe deposit box."

"All receipted and accounted for," Meyer said.

"So?" Horne said.

He looked like a used car salesman who'd eaten and drunk too much over the weekend, jowly though not paunchy in a dark blue suit, brown shoes, a white button-down shirt, and a blue tie. The circular seal of the Department of the Treasury hung on the wall behind his desk, its gold shield decorated with a pair of scales representing justice, a key symbolizing official authority, and a blue chevron with thirteen stars for the original thirteen states. A little black plastic placard, with Horne's name on it in white lettering, sat near his telephone.

"We think the eight thousand we found in her apartment is the money you appropriated from Wilbur Struthers," Carella said flat out.

"What makes you believe that?"

"Struthers does. Apparently, Miss Ridley located him and went to get her money back. At gun point, incidentally."

"I'm assuming Struthers told you this as well."

"Yes."

"A petty thief," Horne said, dismissing him.

"Big enough to have captured your attention, though," Meyer reminded him.

Horne looked at him. "I don't like unannounced visits," he said belatedly.

"We'd like to see that list of ransom-note serial numbers," Carella said.

"As I told you on the phone …"

"We'd like to know just which kidnapping you were investigating," Meyer said.

"I have no authority to release that information to you. And you have no authority to request it."

"We're investigating a murder," Carella said.

"Top of the food chain," Meyer reminded Horne.

"I'm sorry," Horne said, and shook his head.

"We won't go away, you know," Carella said.

"Detective," Horne said, and paused to give the word weight. "Go home, okay? Go arrest some pushers around the schoolyard. Keep your nose out of affairs that don't concern you."

"Gee," Carella said, "all at once I'mreally interested."

"Me, too," Meyer said.

Horne looked at them both. He sighed heavily.

"I'm not free to discuss any case currently under investigation," he said. "I can, however, show you the list of suspect serial numbers for you to make a comparison check. You'll have to do it here in this office, under my supervision. If that's satisfactory to you …"

"It's a start," Carella said.

THE SERIAL NUMBERS were a random lot.

There were numbers in the A series …

A63842516A, A5315898964A, A06152860A …

… and numbers in the B series …

B35817751D, B40565942E …

… and numbers in the C and F and H and G and E and L and K and D series …

But none of these numbers matched those on the separate caches of hundred-dollar bills they'd seized by court order from Cassandra Jean Ridley's desk and her safe deposit box.

They thanked Horne for his time and courtesy …

"Always a pleasure," he said.

… and went back to the squadroom.

It was not yet twelve noon.

DAVID HORNE was trying to convince his boss that the two Keystone Kops had no idea the bills had been switched.

"This is like the old shell game," he said. "You have to guess which shell the pea is under. But the pea is really in the palm of our hand."

"I'm not familiar with the shell game," Parsons said.

His full name was Winslow Parsons III, and he had been recruited into the Secret Service when he was twenty-two and a senior at Harvard. He'd been present in Dallas, walking alongside the presidential limo when Kennedy was assassinated, but he hadn't been the one to protect the President with his own body-well, no one had, for that matter. Similarly, when John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, Parsons had missed his big chance at immortality by not hurling himself in the path of the bullet. At the age of sixty-four, he was still tall and lean and he had all his hair, albeit turning gray, and he thought he looked like Charlton Heston, whom he greatly admired, but he bore no resemblance to him at all. In any case, he didn't know what a shell game was. In Cambridge, they did not have such things as shell games.

"You palm the pea," Horne explained. Or tried to explain. "Same way we palmed the bills."

He was thinking this is four days before New Year's Eve, and we're having a big party, and I should be checking my booze, see how much I have to order. Setups, too.

"How did they come across the bills in the first place?" Parsons asked.

"A case they're investigating."

"What kind of case?"

"A woman was murdered."

Parsons looked at him.

"It gets complicated," Horne said.

"Life gets complicated," Parsons replied.

"Yes, sir, it does."

"Lifeiscomplicated."

"Yes, sir, it most certainly is."

"How'dweget involved in this, is what I'd like to know," Parsons said. "If you please."

"A flagged super showed up on our list, sir. Man who passed it had eight thousand total in similar bills. We yanked them out of circulation. Should have been the end of the story." Horne shrugged. "Instead, the woman got killed and suddenly it's Mickey Mouse time."

"What's the woman got to do with it?"

"He stole the bills from her."

"The eight thousand?"

"Yes, sir."

"He admitted that?"

"No, sir. He told me he won them in a crap game."

"Is that likely?"

"Hardly."

"And you say you recovered eight thousand supers?"

"Yes, sir, and replaced them with clears. The old shell game, sir," he said, and smiled.

Parsons did not smile back.

"Why the hell did you do that?" he asked.

"Do what, sir?"

"Give the man good money for bad?"

"In retrospect, I'm glad I did, sir. All this sudden police interest."

Parsons looked at him skeptically.

"Never mind in retrospect," he said. "Why did you do it in thefirst place?"

"I thought he might make a fuss, sir, if we simply grabbed eight thousand dollars of his."

"Has this man got a record?" Parsons asked.

"Yes, sir. Took a burglary fall seven years ago, did three and a third at Castleview."

"Ex-cons don't usually make fusses."

"But he might have, sir."

"Any chance we can pop him back in?"

"Not unless he commits a crime, sir."

"How'd this woman get the eight thousand?"

"I have no idea. But, sir …"

"Yes?"

"There's more."

"Let me hear it."

"The locals found close to a hundred thousand in her safe deposit box."

"Supers?"

"I didn't check them, sir."

"Why not?"

"Well, they had them in their possession, sir. They were here to look at the list of serial numbers used in a kidnapping …"

"What kidnapping?" Parsons asked at once. "Has there been a kidnapping?"

"No, sir, that was just confetti."

"But you say they were here with a hundred thousand dollars …"

"Ninety-six, actually, sir."

"… that they found in her safe deposit box?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you didn't check thebills?"

His eyes were wide open now.

"I had no opportunity to do so, sir. Without arousing suspicion."

"Suspicion isalready aroused," Parsons said. "Why the hell do you think they came here? They'realready suspicious!"

"I don't think so, sir. They're a simple pair of flatfoots investigating a murder. Nothing more."

"Nothing more," Parsons said sourly. "Nothing more than a murder."

"That's all, sir."

"Ninety-six thousand dollars in cash and you don't think they're going to smell something fishy?"

"Sir, my job was to yank those supers out of circulation. That's what I did, sir."

"Splendid," Parsons said.

Horne never knew when he meant it.

"But how long do you think it'll be before these nitwits realize there aremore phony hundreds out there?" Parsons asked. "How long will it be before they come back to us?"

The room went silent.

"Why was the woman killed, do you know?" Parsons asked.

"I would suspect to keep her quiet," Horne said.

"Do you think this may be Witches and Dragons again?"

"It could be, sir."

Parsons nodded.

"Find out," he said. "Give Mother a call."

THE SIGN OVER the cash register read:

WE WILL NOT CASH BILLS LARGER THAN $50. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. THANK YOU.

Wilbur Struthers took umbrage at this.

Perhaps this was because the only money he had in his wallet was a pair of singles and $400 in hundred-dollar bills. A glance at the cash register total informed him that he had spent $95.95 for two bottles of Simi Chardonnay, two bottles of Gordon's gin, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.

"I'm afraid I only have hundred-dollar bills," he told the cashier.

"We accept American Express, MasterCard, and Visa," the cashier said.

"I only have cash."

"Take a personal check, too, if you have proper ID," the cashier said. "Driver's license, or even a MetTrans card with a photo on it."

"I only have cash."

"We can't accept a hundred-dollar bill, I'm sorry," the cashier said.

"Why's that?"

"Been burned too often. Lots of phonies in circulation."

"These aren't phonies," Struthers said.

"Hard to tell 'em apart nowadays," the cashier said.

So much easier to stick up the fuckin joint, Struthers was thinking.

"Tell you what I'm gonna do," he said. "I'm gonna lay a hundred-dollar bill right on the counter here and forget all about the four dollars and change I got coming. You can either pick up the bill and put it in your cash register and tell me 'Thanks for your business, sir,' or you can shove it up your ass. Either way, I'm walkin out of here with my purchases. Good day to you, sir."

The Eighty-seventh Precinct car patrolling Adam Sector picked him up before he'd walked three blocks from the store.

FIRST THING Detective Andy Parker learned about the perp the blues brought in was that he'd walked out of a liquor store with purchases totaling close to a hundred bucks without paying for them- or at least paying for them with a bill the cashier had refused to accept because it might have been counterfeit. Nobody-least of all Parker-as yet knew whether the bill was queer or not. That wasn't the point. You could not simply walk out of a store without paying for your purchases even if you kept insisting afterward that youhad paid for them-which Struthers was insisting now, over and over again, bending Parker's ear and breaking his balls.

This was not a court of law here. This was a police station. Parker was a detective and not a judge. He was not being paid to administer justice here, any more than cops in a park during a riot were expected to determine whether a crowd of unruly assholes wereactually sticking their hands up under girls' skirts. Those cops were being paid to sit on park benches and watch the parade go by. Parker was being paid to sit here and write up a DD form that would follow this man through the criminal justice system-where, by the way, the dude had been before, Parker was just noticing on his computer. This did not bode too well for Mr. Wilbur Struthers here, who seemed to have taken a burglary fall not too long ago and done some fine time upstate. This was enough to put Mr. Struthers in serious trouble here, though certainly Parker did not wish to seem judgmental.

"What you did, it looks like," he said, "was walk out of a store with close to a hundred bucks in merchandise, without paying for it. Is what you seem to have done, Willie."

"I paid for the merchandise," Struthers said.

"Man said you placed a possibly phony …"

"Man had no reason to believe the bill was phony."

"Says you forced it on him even though he told you it was store policy not to accept …"

"No one forced anything on him. I merely placed the bill politely on the counter top …"

"And told him to shove it up his ass."

"He could've also just put it in the cash register and shut his fuckin mouth."

"Language, Willie, language."

"Well, he could've avoided a lot of unnecessary trouble here."

"Which he chose not to do because his boss has been stung with queer C-notes before."

"This one was not queer."

"How do you know?"

"The Secret Service told me," Struthers said.

This was not exactly true.

The Secret Service had told him that $8,000 of the $8,500 he'd stolen from Cassandra Jean Ridley's apartment was not part of a ransom paid in some mysterious goddamn White House kidnapping, but they had not said the bills weren't counterfeit. In any case, the lady had reclaimed the eight large and had been eaten by lions for her boldness. The $100 bill Struthers had subsequently passed across the counter of S amp;L Liquors on Stemmler Avenue was one of the bills first Special Agent David A. Horne and later the redheaded lady herself had overlooked in their zeal to make everything right again. Struthers had no idea whether it was phony or not.

Besides, intent was ninety percent of the law, a jailhouse attorney had once informed him, true or not. He'd had no intention of passing counterfeit money. His only intention was to stock up on alcoholic beverages for New Year's Eve, which he hoped to perhaps spend with that girl Jasmine he'd tried to introduce to good champagne, if ever he could find her again. He now had $300 left of the money he'd stolen from the Lion Lady, as he thought of her, and if Jasmine would accept that in trade, he would be willing to pay for a woman for the first time in his life. What the hell, a new year was coming. After which, he figured he might have to run out and do another little burglary, provided this asshole detective here in the rumpled suit and the razor cuts all over his face let him go. Struthers didn't see that anybody had a case here. He'd paid for the goddamn booze!

"Here's the way I look at it," Parker said. "If the bill you gave that guy was genuine, then you in fact paid for the merchandise, and we've got no beef. If, however, the bill is phony, then not only were you passing bad money, you were also committing Petit Larceny, a class-A misdemeanor as defined in Section 155.30 of the Penal Law, punishable by a term not to exceed a year in the slammer. I'm not paid to be judgmental," Parker said judgmentally, "but why waste the city's time and money if in fact the bill is genuine?"

Struthers held his breath.

"Let's take a walk over to the bank," Parker said.

"Let's," Struthers said confidently.

"Well, well, look who's here," Meyer called from the corridor. He swung open the gate in the slatted wooden railing, walked into the squadroom, tossed his hat at the hat rack, and missed. Kneeling to retrieve it, he asked, "What's it this time, Will?"

"Walkaway," Parker said.

"Oh dear," Meyer said.

"Hello, Will," Carella said, just behind him.

Struthers didn't like all this fucking cordiality. He wanted to go to the bank, show the bill to whoever understood counterfeits there, and get on with his preparations for New Year's Eve.

"Also he insisted on passing a C-note may be phony," Parker said.

"I was paying for my merchandise. Incidentally," he said, "there's no law against innocently passing a counterfeit bill if there is no intent to deceive."

The detectives looked at him.

Parker sighed.

"We were just on our way to the bank," he said.

"Where'd you get that bill?" Carella asked.

Struthers didn't answer.

"Will? Where'd you get that C-note?"

Still no answer.

"Was it part of the money you stole from Cass Ridley?"

Struthers didn't know what he might be getting into here. He figured maybe he just ought to keep still.

"Was it?"

No answer.

"Cause I'll tell you what," Carella said. "We've got a whole pile ofotherhundred-dollar bills here. Why don't we all walk over to the bank?"

IT WAS TEN MINUTES TO THREE when Struthers and the detectives walked through the revolving doors of the First Federal Bank on Van Buren Circle. Not too long ago-well, perhaps longer ago than Carella chose to admit-a criminal alternately known to the squad as "Taubman" or "L. Sordo" or most commonly "The Deaf Man"-had tried to rob this bank,twice. Carella still felt a faint shiver of apprehension at the memory. They had not heard from The Deaf Man in a long, long time-well, perhaps not as long a time as Carella might have wished-and he had no desire to hear from him again anytime soon.

The manager back then had been named Somebody Alton, Carella no longer remembered the first name, if ever he'd known it. The new manager was a woman named Antonia Belandres, a stately plump brunette in her forties, wearing no makeup and a dark gray suit. She looked up at the clock the moment they approached her desk.

"Little late for business, gentlemen," she said.

Carella showed his shield.

"Detective Carella," he said. "Eighty-seventh Squad."

"This is the Eighty-sixthPrecinct," she said.

Carella didn't know what that had to do with anything. The bank was on the Circle, directly across Tenth, the wide avenue that slivered the two precincts roughly in half, north to south. First Federal was most convenient to the station house, and besides it was a federal bank. If anybody should know anything about counterfeit money, it was the Feds.

"We're just across the avenue," Parker explained helpfully.

"We're investigating a homicide," Carella said.

She looked at the clock again.

"We need some suspect bills checked," Meyer said.

"We're kind of in a hurry here," Struthers added.

Antonia turned to look at him. Something flashed in her dark eyes. Perhaps she was wondering if he was in charge of this little band of Homicide detectives. He certainly looked intelligent enough. Perhaps she liked the long rugged cowboy look of him. Whatever it was, she addressed her next question to him. With a smile.

"May I see the bills, please?" she said.

They spread the bills on her desk.

$96,000 in hundreds from Cass Ridley's safe deposit box …

$8,000 in hundreds from the desk drawer in her apartment …

And next the solitary hundred-dollar bill Struthers had placed on the counter at S amp;L Liquors in payment for his various alcohol purchases.

"You have to understand," Antonia said, as she delicately leafed through the money, "that for every man, woman, and child in the United States, there are six or seven hundred-dollar bills in circulation. That means for every person in the work force, there are more than adozen hundred-dollar bills out there. That comes to something like a billion and a half dollars."

It had begun snowing again. The snow was fierce. Tiny little needle-like crystals blown by a bitter wind. The snow and the wind lashed the long windows of the bank where they sat around Antonia's desk covered with hundred-dollar bills.

"Now who do you think is in possession ofmost of those bills?" she asked, and smiled at Struthers.

"Who?" he asked.

"Vicious criminals, drug dealers, and tax cheats," Antonia said.

"I'm not any one of those," Struthers explained to the detectives.

They did not appear impressed.

"The Secret Service gave me a clean bill of health," he explained to Antonia. She seemed more impressed than the detectives. She raised her eyebrows appreciatively, gave him an approving little nod.

"You may not know," she said, "that the United States Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department."

"Yes, Idid know that, in fact," Struthers said. "It was explained to me."

"They don't merely protect the life of the President of the United States. Actually, themajor part of their job is the detection and prevention of currency counterfeiting. Not many people know that," she said.

"ThatI didn't know till this very minute," Struthers said-kissing ass, Parker thought.

"I'm happy you came to me today," Antonia said. "I've had occasion to work with the Secret Service before, you see, on cases regarding counterfeit United States currency." She was carefully turning over the stack of hundreds on her desk, bill by bill, checking for whatever. "Though at first glance, I must say these bills do not strike me as being super-bills. Or super-dollars, whichever terminology you gentlemen prefer. Or even super-notes. Whichdo you prefer, Lieutenant?"

Struthers realized she was addressing him.

"I never heard any of those terms in my life," he said.

"The Arabic writing on the face of some of these bills is suspect, of course," Antonia said, "but not all bills passing through the Middle East are fake. In fact, sixty percent ofall United States currency is in circulation abroad. You probably didn't know that, either."

"I certainly didn't," Struthers said.

"In fact, the hundred-dollar bill is the most widely held paper currency in the world. Which is what makes it such an attractive target for counterfeiters," Antonia said. "What I'm trying to tell you, however, is that the signature of a money-changer-on this bill, for example, the handwriting means 'Son of Ahmad'-in itself does not indicate a fake bill. As a matter of pride, a money-changer will sign or put some other personal mark on a stack of bills. It's like an author signing his book at Barnes amp; Noble."

Struthers thought a money-changer was some guy who cashed checks on Lambert Av, up in Diamondback. And he didn't know any authors who signed books.

"In the Arab world," Antonia said, "money-changers are financial middlemen. They've been around since well before Jesus. You need to buy commodities in the West? Simple. You just take your cash to a second-story office in the old quarter of Damascus. The money-changer will arrange for the transfer. I've seen these money-changers' signatures many times before," she said, exhibiting another of the bills. "They don't necessarily indicate a bill is counterfeit. We see entirefamilies of counterfeit bills …"

Families, Struthers thought.

"… with the same serial numbers on them," Antonia said. "But none of this larger stack of bills belongs to any of those families."

"Then they're genuine," Carella said.

"They're not counterfeit, that's right," Antonia said, and shoved the stack of bills to one side of her desk, summarily dismissing $104,000 as beneath further scrutiny. "But let's look more closely at this lone hundred-dollar bill here," she said, and picked up the bill Struthers had used in the liquor store. "Henry Loo," she said, staring at the face of the bill.

The man on the bill looked like Benjamin Franklin to Struthers, but he didn't say anything.

"The manager of Ban Hin Lee," she said. "The bank I worked for in Singapore, many years ago. On Robinson Road."

"I know Robinson Road," Struthers said.

"You do?"

"I was in Singapore many years ago, too," Struthers said.

"What's Henry Loo got to do with this bill?" Carella asked.

"He was the first person who showed me a super-bill," Antonia said. "Or a super-dollar, if you prefer. Or a super-note."

Struthers was trying to figure what the rap might be for passing a phony hundred-dollar bill he hadn't known was phony to begin with.

"I studied economics in Manila," she told Struthers, trying to impress him, Parker figured. "After graduation, I got a job at Ban Hin Lee …"

"I spent some time in Manila, too," Struthers told her-still kissing ass, Parker thought. "After I escaped from the Khmer Rouge. But that's another story," he said, and Antonia noticed for the first time the almost imperceptible tic and small white scar near the corner of his left eye.

"And later in Singapore," he said. "That's how I happen to know Robinson Road."

"It's a small world," Antonia said.

"I'm amazed we didn't meet there," he said. "In Singapore. We probably passed each other all the time on Robinson Road."

"Yes," she said. "We probably did."

Staring at each other across the desk where the genuine bills were stacked to one side, and Struthers' lone C-note was sitting in front of her.

"I started as a bank messenger," Antonia said. "Worked my way up to teller and then assistant manager, which was when Henry Loo showed me a hundred-dollar bill soreal -looking I thought old Ben Franklin would any minute go fly a kite off it!"

Antonia laughed at her own witticism.

"But it was as queer as monkey soup," she said, on a comic roll. "A lot of these C-series hundreds were coming through at the time, all of them printed in Teheran on high-tech intaglio presses."

"Whatkind of presses?" Carella asked.

"Intaglio," she said.

"What's intaglio?" Meyer asked.

"An embossing technique that uses a very thick gummy ink."

"Is that what intaglio means?" Parker asked Carella. "Thick and gummy?"

"How should I know what intaglio means?" Carella said.

"Maybe it means embossing technique," Meyer suggested.

"I thought you were supposed to be Italian," Parker said, and shrugged.

"Intaglio produces a three-dimensional effect you can't get with any other printing technique," Antonia said. "Whatever the engraver designs, intaglio gives youexactly."

"And you say these presses exist inTeheran?" Parker asked. He was thinkingTeheran? Where they wear baggy pants and turbans?

"Yes," Antonia said. "Identical to the ones used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing."

"Bureau of Engraving presses inTeheran?" Meyer said. He was thinkingTeheran?Where they shoot guns in the air and burn American flags?

"Oh yes," Antonia said.

"Let me get this straight," Carella said. "You're saying …"

"I'm saying that the late Shah of Iran bought two high-tech intaglio presses from the United States to print his own currency. When the mullahs took over, they put the presses to their own use."

"Printing counterfeit hundreds, you're saying," Parker said.

"Printing super-bills, yes. On plates and paper purchased from the East Germans, yes. Is what I'm saying."

"Printing high-quality …"

"Printingsuper-bills," Antonia repeated, stressing the word this time. "Notes so close to the original, they're virtually impossible to tell apart. In fact, I suspectthis may be a super-bill," she said, and gingerly tapped Struthers' hundred-dollar note.

Uh-oh, he thought.

"How can you tell?" Carella asked.

"Experience," she said.

He looked at her.

"How?" he asked. "If they're so close to the original …"

"There are detection machines at the Federal Reserve," she said.

"Do you have one of those machines here?"

"No. I'm judging by eye."

"I thought you said it was virtually impossible …"

"Yes, well, I have a trained eye."

He looked at her again. It suddenly occurred to him that she didn'tknow for sure whether or not that hundred-dollar bill was a phony.

"But if it's soeasy," he said.

"No one said it's easy."

"Well, you took one look at that bill …"

"I've been looking at it all along."

"Without a machine, without even a magnifying glass …"

"There are machines at the Federal Reserve. I told you …"

"But not here."

"That's right. We send any suspect bills to the Fed."

"How many suspect bills do you get on any given day?"

"We get them every now and then."

"How often?"

"Not very often. Now that the Big Bens are in circulation …"

"The what?"

"The new hundreds with the big picture of Franklin on them. Little by little, they're replacing all the old hundreds. That means all the super-bills will eventually be pulled out of circulation, too."

"When?"

"That's difficult to say. It might take years."

"How many years?"

"Five? Ten? Why are you being so hostile?" Antonia asked.

Struthers was wondering the same thing.

"Maybe because a woman was killed," Carella said. "And you're telling me a bill stolen from her apartment may be one of thesesuper -bills that are so good nobody can tell them from the real thing."

"The Federal Reserve can detect them. They have machines."

"But how about mere mortals? Canwe detect them?"

"I just told you this bill looks suspicious, didn't I?"

"Which means you'll be sending it to the Federal Reserve to check on one of its secret machines, right?"

"They're notsecret machines. Everyone knows they exist."

"How many of these super-bills find their way to those machines?"

"I'm sorry?"

"How many of the bills end up in the Federal Reserve's vaults?"

"The Fed doesn't release those figures."

"Well, how many of them are still incirculation? I'm not talking about the ones you see here at your bank, I'm talking about …"

"I don't understand your question."

"I'm asking howmany of these super-bills are still floating around out there."

"I've heard an estimate."

"And what's the estimate?"

"Twenty billion dollars," Antonia said.