Killing Floor (22 page)

“Good for the ego, right?” I said.

I heard her change the phone to the other hand.

“It’s not an emotional thing,” she said. “It’s business. Think about it, Jack. If there’s a hundred-dollar bill in somebody’s bureau in Bucharest, that means somebody somewhere once exchanged a hundred dollars’ worth of foreign assets for it. It means our government sold them a piece of paper with green and black ink on it for a hundred bucks. Good business. And because it’s a trusted currency, chances are that hundred-dollar bill will probably stay in that bureau in Bucharest for many years. The U.S. will never have to deliver the foreign assets back again. As long as the dollar stays trusted, we can’t lose.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked her.

“Difficult to describe,” Molly said. “It’s all about trust and faith. It’s almost metaphysical. If foreign markets are getting flooded with fake dollars, that doesn’t really matter in itself. But if the people in those foreign markets find out, then it does matter. Because they panic. They lose their faith. They lose their trust. They don’t want dollars anymore. They’ll turn to Japanese yen or German marks to stuff their mattresses with. They’ll get rid of their dollars. In effect, overnight, the government would have to repay a two-hundred-sixty-billion-dollar foreign loan. Overnight. And we couldn’t do that, Jack.”

“Big problem,” I said.

“That’s the truth,” she said. “And a remote problem. The fakes are all made abroad, and they’re mostly distributed abroad. It makes sense that way. The factories are hidden away in some remote foreign region, where we don’t know about them, and the fakes are distributed to foreigners who are happy as long as the stuff looks vaguely like real dollars are supposed to look. That’s why not very many are imported. Only the very best fakes come back to the States.”

“How many come back?” I asked her.

I heard her shrug. A little breath sound, like she had pursed her lips.

“Not many,” she said. “A few billion, now and then, I guess.”

“A few billion?” I said. “That’s not many?”

“A drop in the ocean,” she said. “From a macroeconomic point of view. Compared to the size of the economy, I mean.”

“And what exactly are we doing about it?” I asked her.

“Two things,” she said. “First thing is Joe was trying like mad to stop it from happening. The reason behind that is obvious. Second thing is we’re pretending like mad it isn’t happening at all. So as to keep the faith.”

I nodded. Started to see some shape behind the big-time secrecy going on up there in Washington.

“OK,” I said. “So if I were to call the Treasury and ask them about it?”

“We’d deny everything,” she said. “We’d say, what counterfeiting?”

I WALKED THROUGH THE SILENT SQUAD ROOM AND JOINED
Roscoe in her car. Told her to drive out toward Warburton. It was dark when we reached the little stand of trees. Just enough moonlight to pick it out. Roscoe pulled up where I showed her. I kissed her and got out. Told her I’d see her up at the hotel. Slapped lightly on the Chevy’s roof and waved her off. She turned in the road. Drove slowly away.

I pushed directly through the copse. Didn’t want to leave footprints on the track. The fat carrier bag made it awkward. It kept snagging in the brush. I came out right by the Buick. Still there. All quiet. I unlocked the driver’s door with the key and got in. Started up and bounced down the track. The rear suspension kept bottoming out on the ruts. I wasn’t too surprised about that. Must have been about five hundred pounds weight in the trunk.

I jounced out onto the road and drove east toward Margrave. But I turned left at the county road and headed north. Cruised the rest of the fourteen miles up to the highway. Passed by the warehouses and joined the stream north to Atlanta. I didn’t drive fast, didn’t drive slow. Didn’t want to get noticed. The plain Buick was very anonymous. Very inconspicuous. That was how I wanted to keep it.

After an hour I followed the airport signs. Found my way around to the long-term parking. Took a ticket at the little automated barrier and nosed in. It was a huge lot. Couldn’t be better. I found a slot near the middle, about a hundred yards from the nearest fence. Wiped off the wheel and the transmission. Got out with the carrier bag. Locked the Buick and walked away.

After a minute, I looked back. Couldn’t pick out the car I’d just dumped. What’s the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach. The Buick could sit there for a month. Nobody would think twice.

I walked back toward the entrance barrier. At the first trash can I dumped the carrier bag. At the second I got rid of the parking ticket. At the barrier I caught the little courtesy bus and rode to the departure terminal. Walked in and found a bathroom. Wrapped the Buick keys in a paper towel and dropped them in the garbage. Then I slipped down to the arrivals hall and stepped out into the damp night again. Caught the hotel courtesy bus and rode off to meet Roscoe.

I FOUND HER IN THE NEON GLARE OF A HOTEL LOBBY. I PAID
cash for a room. Used a bill I’d taken from the Florida boys. We went up in the elevator. The room was a dingy, dark place. Big enough. Looked out over the airport sprawl. The window had three layers of glass against the jet noise. The place was airless.

“First, we eat,” I said.

“First, we shower,” Roscoe said.

So we showered. Put us in a better frame of mind. We soaped up and started fooling around. Ended up making love in the stall with the water beating down on us. Afterward, I just wanted to curl up in the glow. But we were hungry. And we had things to do. Roscoe put on the clothes she’d brought from her place in the morning. Jeans, shirt, jacket. Looked wonderful. Very feminine, but very tough. She had a lot of spirit.

We rode up to a restaurant on the top floor. It was OK. A big panoramic view of the airport district. We sat in candlelight by a window. A cheerful foreign guy brought us food. I crammed it all down. I was starving. I had a beer and a pint of coffee. Started to feel halfway human again. Paid for the meal with more of the dead guys’ money. Then we rode down to the lobby and picked up an Atlanta street map at the desk. Walked out to Roscoe’s car.

The night air was cold and damp and stank of kerosene. Airport smell. We got in the Chevy and pored over the street map. Headed out northwest. Roscoe drove and I tried to direct her. We battled traffic and ended up roughly in the right place. It was a sprawl of low-rise housing. The sort of place you see from planes coming in to land. Small houses on small lots, hurricane fencing, aboveground pools. Some nice yards, some dumps. Old cars up on blocks. Everything bathed in yellow sodium glare.

We found the right street. Found the right house. Decent place. Well looked after. Neat and clean. A tiny one-story. Small yard, small single-car garage. Narrow gate in the wire fence. We went through. Rang the bell. An old woman cracked the door against the chain.

“Good evening,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for Sherman Stoller.”

Roscoe looked at me after she said it. She should have said we were looking for his house. We knew where Sherman Stoller was. Sherman Stoller was in the Yellow Springs morgue, seventy miles away.

“Who are you?” the old woman asked, politely.

“Ma’am, we’re police officers,” Roscoe said. Half true.

The old lady eased the door and took the chain off.

“You better come in,” she said. “He’s in the kitchen. Eating, I’m afraid.”

“Who is?” said Roscoe.

The old lady stopped and looked at her. Puzzled.

“Sherman,” she said. “That’s who you want, isn’t it?”

We followed her into the kitchen. There was an old guy eating supper at the table. When he saw us, he stopped and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.

“Police officers, Sherman,” the old lady said.

The old guy looked up at us blankly.

“Is there another Sherman Stoller?” I asked him.

The old guy nodded. Looked worried.

“Our son,” he said.

“About thirty?” I asked him. “Thirty-five?”

The old guy nodded again. The old lady moved behind him and put her hand on his arm. Parents.

“He don’t live here,” the old man said.

“Is he in trouble?” the old lady asked.

“Could you give us his address?” Roscoe said.

They fussed around like old people do. Very deferential to authority. Very respectful. Wanted to ask us a lot of questions, but just gave us the address.

“He hasn’t lived here for two years,” the old man said.

He was afraid. He was trying to distance himself from the trouble his son was in. We nodded to them and backed out. As we were shutting their front door, the old man called out after us.

“He moved out there two years ago,” he said.

We trooped out through the gate and got back in the car. Looked on the street map again. The new address wasn’t on it.

“What did you make of those two?” Roscoe asked me.

“The parents?” I said. “They know their boy was up to no good. They know he was doing something bad. Probably don’t know exactly what it was.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Let’s go find this new place.”

We drove off. Roscoe got gas and directions at the first place we saw.

“About five miles the other way,” she said. Pulled the car around and headed away from the city. “New condominiums on a golf course.”

She was peering into the gloom, looking for the landmarks the gas station attendant had given her. After five miles she swung off the main drag. Nosed along a new road and pulled up by a developer’s sign. It advertised condominiums, top quality, built right on the fairway. It boasted that only a few remained unsold. Beyond the billboard were rows of new buildings. Very pleasant, not huge, but nicely done. Balconies, garages, good details. Ambitious landscaping loomed up in the dark. Lighted pathways led over to a health club. On the other side was nothing. Must have been the golf course.

Roscoe killed the motor. We sat in the car. I stretched my arm along the back of her seat. Cupped her shoulder. I was tired. I’d been busy all day. I wanted to sit like this for a while. It was a quiet, dull night. Warm in the car. I wanted music. Something with an ache to it. But we had things to do. We had to find Judy. The woman who had bought Sherman Stoller’s watch and had it engraved. To Sherman, love Judy. We had to find Judy and tell her the man she’d loved had bled to death under a highway.

“What do you make of this?” Roscoe said. She was bright and awake.

“Don’t know,” I said. “They’re for sale, not rental. They look expensive. Could a truck driver afford this?”

“Doubt it,” she said. “These probably cost as much as my place, and I couldn’t make my payments without the subsidy I get. And I make more than any truck driver, that’s for sure.”

“OK,” I said. “So our guess is old Sherman was getting some kind of a subsidy, too, right? Otherwise he couldn’t afford to live here.”

“Sure,” she said. “But what kind of a subsidy?”

“The kind that gets people killed,” I said.

STOLLER’S BUILDING WAS WAY IN BACK. PROBABLY THE
first phase to have been built. The old man in the poor part of town had said his son had moved out two years ago. That could be about right. This first block could be about two years old. We threaded through walkways and around raised-up flower beds. Walked up a path to Sherman Stoller’s door. The path was stepping stones set in the wiry lawn. Forced an unnatural gait on you. I had to step short. Roscoe had to stretch her stride from one flagstone to the next. We reached the door. It was blue. No shine on it. Old-fashioned paint.

“Are we going to tell her?” I said.

“We can’t not tell her, can we?” Roscoe said. “She’s got to know.”

I knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. I heard the floor creaking inside. Someone was coming. The door opened. A woman stood there. Maybe thirty, but she looked older. Short, nervous, tired. Blond from a bottle. She looked out at us.

“We’re police officers, ma’am,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for the Sherman Stoller residence.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Well, you found it, I guess,” the woman said.

“May we come in?” Roscoe asked. Gently.

Again there was silence. No movement. Then the blond woman turned and walked back down the hallway. Roscoe and I looked at each other. Roscoe followed the woman. I followed Roscoe. I shut the door behind us.

The woman led us into a living room. A decent-sized space. Expensive furniture and rugs. A big TV. No stereo, no books. It all looked a bit halfhearted. Like somebody had spent twenty minutes with a catalog and ten thousand dollars. One of these, one of those, two of that. All delivered one morning and just kind of dumped in there.

“Are you Mrs. Stoller?” Roscoe asked the woman. Still gentle.

“More or less,” the woman said. “Not exactly Mrs., but as near as makes no difference anyhow.”

“Is your name Judy?” I asked her.

She nodded. Kept on nodding for a while. Thinking.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Judy said.

I didn’t answer. This was the part I wasn’t good at. This was Roscoe’s part. She didn’t say anything, either.

“He’s dead, right?” Judy said again, louder.

“Yes, he is,” Roscoe said. “I’m very sorry.”

Judy nodded to herself and looked around the hideous room. Nobody spoke. We just stood there. Judy sat down. She waved us to sit as well. We sat, in separate chairs. We were all sitting in a neat triangle.

“We need to ask you some questions,” Roscoe said. She was sitting forward, leaning toward the blond woman. “May we do that?”

Judy nodded. Looked pretty blank.

“How long did you know Sherman?” Roscoe asked.

“About four years, I guess,” Judy said. “Met him in Florida, where I lived. Came up here to be with him four years ago. Lived up here ever since.”

“What was Sherman’s job?” Roscoe asked.

Judy shrugged miserably.

“He was a truck driver,” she said. “He got some kind of a big driving contract up here. Supposed to be long-term, you know? So we bought a little place. His folks moved in too. Lived with us for a while. Then we moved out here. Left his folks in the old house. He made good money for three years. Busy all the time. Then it stopped, a year ago. He hardly worked at all since. Just an odd day, now and then.”