Killing Floor (26 page)

He nodded.

“And Margrave is a very weird place,” I said. “It’s deserted most of the time. There’s no life. There’s practically no commercial activity in the whole town. Nothing ever goes on. Nobody is earning any money.”

He looked blank. Didn’t follow.

“Think about it,” I said. “Look at Eno’s, for example. Brand-new place. Gleaming, state-of-the-art diner. But he never has any customers. I’ve been in there a couple of times. There were never more than a couple of people in the place. The waitresses outnumber the customers. So how is Eno paying the bills? The overhead? The mortgage? Same goes for everywhere in town. Have you ever seen lines of customers rushing in and out of any of the stores?”

Finlay thought about it. Shook his head.

“Same goes for this barbershop,” I said. “I was in here Sunday morning and Tuesday morning. The old guy said they’d had no customers in between. No customers in forty-eight hours.”

I stopped talking then. I thought about what else the old guy had said. That gnarled old barber. I suddenly thought about it in a new light.

“The old barber,” I said. “He told me something. It was pretty weird. I thought he was crazy. I asked him how they make a living with no customers. He said they don’t need customers to make a living because of the money they get from the Kliner Foundation. So I said, what money? He said a thousand bucks. He said all the merchants get it. So I figured he meant some kind of a business grant, a thousand bucks a year, right?”

Finlay nodded. Seemed about right to him.

“I was just chatting,” I said. “Like you do in the barber’s chair. So I said a thousand bucks a year is OK, but it’s not going to keep the wolf from the door, something like that, right? You know what he said then?”

He shook his head and waited. I concentrated on remembering the old guy’s exact words. I wanted to see if he would dismiss it as easily as I had done.

“He made it sound like a big secret,” I said. “Like he was way out on a limb even to mention it. He was whispering to me. He said he shouldn’t tell me, but he would, because I knew his sister.”

“You know his sister?” Finlay asked. Surprised.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “He was acting very confused. On Sunday, I’d been asking him about Blind Blake, you know, the old guitar player, and he said his sister had known the guy, sixty years ago. From that, he’d got mixed up, must have thought I’d said I knew his sister.”

“So what was the big secret?” he said.

“He said it wasn’t a thousand dollars a year,” I said. “He said it was a thousand dollars a week.”

“A thousand dollars a week?” Finlay said. “A week? Is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “At the time, I assumed the old guy was crazy. But now, I think he was just telling the truth.”

“A thousand a week?” he said again. “That’s a hell of a business grant. That’s fifty-two thousand bucks a year. That’s a hell of a lot of money, Reacher.”

I thought about it. Pointed at the total on Gray’s audit.

“They’d need figures like that,” I said. “If this is how much they’re spending, they’d need figures like that just to get rid of it all.”

Finlay was pensive. Thinking it through.

“They’ve bought the whole town,” he said. “Very slowly, very quietly. They’ve bought the whole town for a grand a week, here and there.”

“Right,” I said. “The Kliner Foundation has become the golden goose. Nobody will run the risk of killing it. They all keep their mouths shut and look away from whatever needs looking away from.”

“Right,” he said. “The Kliners could get away with murder.”

I looked at him.

“They have got away with murder,” I said.

“So what do we do about it?” Finlay said.

“First we figure out exactly what the hell they’re doing,” I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

“We know what they’re doing, right?” he said. “They’re printing a shitload of funny money up in that warehouse.”

I shook my head at him.

“No, they’re not,” I said. “There’s no serious manufacture of counterfeit money in the U.S. Joe put a stop to all that. The only place it happens is abroad.”

“So what’s going on?” Finlay asked. “I thought this was all about counterfeit money. Why else would Joe be involved?”

Roscoe looked over at us from the bench in the window.

“It is all about counterfeit money,” she said. “I know exactly what it’s all about. Every last little detail.”

She held up Gray’s file in one hand.

“Part of the answer is in here,” she said.

Then she picked up the barbers’ daily newspaper with the other hand.

“And the rest of the answer is in here,” she said.

Finlay and I joined her on the bench. Studied the file she’d been reading. It was a surveillance report. Gray had hidden out under the highway cloverleaf and watched the truck traffic in and out of the warehouses. Thirty-two separate days. The results were carefully listed, in three parts. On the first eleven occasions, he’d seen one truck a day incoming from the south, arriving early in the morning. He’d seen outgoing trucks all day long, heading north and west. He’d listed the outgoing trucks by destination, according to their license plates. He must have been using field glasses. The list of destinations was all over the place. A complete spread, from California all the way up and over to Massachusetts. Those first eleven days, he’d logged eleven incoming trucks and sixty-seven outgoing. An average of one truck a day coming in, six going out, small trucks, maybe a ton of cargo in a week.

The first section of Gray’s log covered the first calendar year. The second section covered the second calendar year. He’d hid out on nine separate occasions. He’d seen fifty-three outgoing trucks, the same six a day as before, with a similar list of destinations. But the log of incoming trucks was different. In the first half of the year, one truck a day was coming in, like normal. But in the second half of the year, the deliveries picked up. They built up to two trucks a day incoming.

The final twelve days of his surveillance were different again. They were all from the final five months of his life. Between last fall and February, he was still logging about six trucks a day going out to the same wide spread of destinations. But there were no incoming trucks listed at all. None at all. From last fall, stuff was being moved out, but it wasn’t coming in.

“So?” Finlay asked Roscoe.

She sat back and smiled. She had it all figured.

“It’s obvious, right?” she said. “They’re bringing counterfeit money into the country. It’s printed in Venezuela, some place Kliner set up alongside his new chemical place there. It comes in by boat and they’re hauling it up from Florida to the warehouse in Margrave. Then they’re trucking it north and west, up to the big cities, L.A., Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston. They’re feeding it into the cash flows in the big cities. It’s an international counterfeit money distribution network. It’s obvious, Finlay.”

“Is it?” he said.

“Of course it is,” she said again. “Think of Sherman Stoller. He drove up and down to Florida to meet the boat coming in from the sea, at Jacksonville Beach. He was on his way out there to meet the boat when he got picked up for speeding on the bridge, right? That’s why he was so agitated. That’s why he got the fancy lawyer out so fast, right?”

Finlay nodded.

“It all fits,” she said. “Think of a map of the States. The money is printed in South America, comes here by sea. Lands in Florida. Flows up the southeast, and then sort of branches out from Margrave. Flows on out to L.A. in the west, up to Chicago in the middle, New York and Boston in the east. Separate branches, right? It looks like a candelabra or a menorah. You know what a menorah is?”

“Sure,” Finlay said. “It’s that candlestick Jewish people use.”

“Right,” she said. “That’s how it looks on a map. Florida to Margrave is the stem. Then the individual arms lead out and up to the big cities, L.A. across to Chicago across to Boston. It’s an import network, Finlay.”

She was giving him plenty of help. Her hands were tracing menorah shapes in the air. The geography sounded OK to me. It made sense. An import flow, rolling north in trucks, up from Florida. It would need to use that knot of highways around Atlanta to branch itself out and head for the big cities in the north and west. The menorah idea was good. The left-hand arm of the candlestick would have to be bent out horizontally, to reach L.A. Like somebody had dropped the thing and somebody else had accidentally stepped on it. But the idea made sense. Almost certainly Margrave itself was the pivot. Almost certainly that warehouse was the actual distribution center. The geography was right. Using a sleepy nowhere place like Margrave as the distribution center would be smart. And they would have a huge amount of available cash. That was for sure. Forged cash, but it would spend just the same. And there was a lot of it. They were shipping a ton a week. It was an industrial-scale operation. Huge. It would explain the Kliner Foundation’s massive spending. If they ever ran short, they could just print some more. But Finlay still wasn’t convinced.

“What about the last twelve months?” he said. “There’s been no import flow at all. Look at Gray’s list. The incoming deliveries didn’t happen. They stopped exactly a year ago. Sherman Stoller got laid off, right? There’s been nothing coming up for a year. But they’re still distributing something. There were still six trucks a day going out. Nothing coming in, but six trucks a day going out? What does that mean? What kind of an import flow is that?”

Roscoe just grinned at him and picked up the newspaper.

“The answer’s in here,” she said. “It’s been in the papers since Friday. The Coast Guard. Last September, they started their big operation against smuggling, right? There was a lot of advance publicity. Kliner must have known it was coming. So he built up a stockpile ahead of time. See Gray’s list? For the six months before last September, he doubled the incoming deliveries. He was building up a stockpile in the warehouse. He’s kept on distributing it all year. That’s why they’ve been panicking about exposure. They’ve been sitting there on top of a massive stockpile of counterfeit money for a year. Now the Coast Guard is going to abandon its operation, right? So they can start importing again as usual. That’s what’s going to happen on Sunday. That’s what poor Molly meant when she said we have to get in before Sunday. We have to get in the warehouse while the last of the stockpile is still in there.”

22

FINLAY NODDED. HE WAS CONVINCED. THEN HE SMILED. HE
stood up from the bench in the barbershop window and took Roscoe’s hand. Shook it very formally.

“Good work,” he said to her. “A perfect analysis. I always said you were smart, Roscoe. Right, Reacher? Didn’t I tell you she’s the best we got?”

I nodded and smiled and Roscoe blushed. Finlay held on to her hand and kept on smiling. But I could see him combing backward and forward through her theory, looking for loose ends. He only found two.

“What about Hubble?” he asked. “Where did he fit in? They wouldn’t recruit a bank executive just to load trucks, would they?”

I shook my head.

“Hubble used to be a currency manager,” I said. “He was there to get rid of the fake money. He was feeding it into the system. He knew where it could be slipped in. Where it was needed. Like his old job, but in reverse.”

He nodded.

“What about the air conditioners?” he asked. “Sherman Stoller was hauling them to Florida. That woman told you. We know that’s for real because you saw two old cartons in her garage. And his truck was full of them when the Jacksonville PD searched it. What was that all about?”

“Legitimate business, I guess,” I said. “Like a decoy. It concealed the illegal part. Like camouflage. It explained the truck movements up and down to Florida. They would have had to run south empty otherwise.”

Finlay nodded.

“Smart move, I guess,” he said. “No empty run. Makes sense. Sell a few air conditioners, it makes money both ways, right?”

He nodded again and let go of Roscoe’s hand.

“We need samples of the money,” he said.

I smiled at him. I had suddenly realized something.

“I’ve got samples,” I said. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my thick roll of hundreds. Pulled one off the back of the roll and one off the front. Gave the two banknotes to Finlay.

“These are their counterfeits?” he said.

“Got to be,” I said. “Charlie Hubble gave me a wad of hundreds for expense money. She probably got them from Hubble. Then I took another wad from those guys who were out looking for me Tuesday.”

“And that means they’re counterfeit?” Finlay said. “Why?”

“Think about it,” I said. “Kliner needs operating cash, why should he use real money? I bet he paid Hubble in counterfeit money. And I bet he gave those Jacksonville boys counterfeit money for their operating expenses, too.”

Finlay held the two hundreds right up to the bright light in the window. Roscoe and I crowded him for a look.

“Are you sure?” Roscoe said. “They look real to me.”

“They’re fakes,” I said. “Got to be. Stands to reason, right? Hundreds are what fakers like to print. Anything bigger is hard to pass, anything smaller isn’t worth the effort. And why should they spend real bucks when they’ve got truckloads of forgeries available?”

We took a good look at them. Peered at them, felt them, smelled them, rubbed them between our fingers. Finlay opened up his billfold and pulled out a hundred of his own. We compared the three notes. Passed them back and forth. Couldn’t see any difference at all.

“If these are fakes, they’re damn good,” Finlay said. “But what you said makes sense. Probably the whole of the Kliner Foundation is funded with fakes. Millions every year.”

He put his own hundred back in his billfold. Slid the fakes into his pocket.

“I’m going back to the station house,” he said. “You two come in tomorrow, about noon. Teale will be gone for lunch. We’ll take it from there.”

ROSCOE AND I DROVE FIFTY MILES SOUTH, TO MACON. I
wanted to keep on the move. It’s a basic rule for safety. Keep moving around. We chose an anonymous motel on the southeastern fringe. As far from Margrave as you can get in Macon, with the city sprawl between us and our enemies. Old Mayor Teale had said a motel in Macon would suit me. Tonight, he was right.

We showered in cold water and fell into bed. Fell into a restless sleep. The room was warm. We tossed around fitfully most of the night. Gave it up and got up again with the dawn. Stood there yawning in the half light. Thursday morning. Felt like we hadn’t slept at all. We groped around and got dressed in the dark. Roscoe put her uniform on. I put my old things on. I figured I’d need to buy some new stuff soon. I’d do it with Kliner’s forgeries.

“What are we going to do?” Roscoe said.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about something else.

“Reacher?” she said. “What are we going to do about all this?”

“What did Gray do about it?” I said.

“He hung himself,” she said.

I thought some more.

“Did he?” I asked her.

There was a silence.

“Oh God,” Roscoe said. “You think there’s some doubt about that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Think about it. Suppose he confronted one of them? Suppose he was found poking around somewhere he shouldn’t have been?”

“You think they killed him?” she asked. There was panic in her voice.

“Maybe,” I said again. “I think they killed Joe and Stoller and the Morrisons and Hubble and Molly Beth Gordon. I think they tried to kill you and me. If somebody is a threat, they kill him. That’s how Kliner operates.”

Roscoe was quiet for a while. Thinking about her old colleague. Gray, the dour and patient detective. Twenty-five years of meticulous work. A guy like that was a threat. A guy who took thirty-two patient days to cross-check a suspicion was a threat. Roscoe looked up and nodded.

“He must have made a wrong move,” she said.

I nodded gently at her.

“They lynched him,” I said. “Made it look like suicide.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said.

“Was there an autopsy?” I asked her.

“Guess so,” she said.

“Then we’ll check it out,” I said. “We’ll have to speak to that doctor again. Down in Yellow Springs.”

“But he’d have said, right?” she asked me. “If he’d had doubts, wouldn’t he have raised them at the time?”

“He’d have raised them with Morrison,” I said. “Morrison would have ignored them. Because his people had caused them in the first place. We’ll have to check it out for ourselves.”

Roscoe shuddered.

“I was at his funeral,” she said. “We were all there. Chief Morrison made a speech on the lawn outside the church. So did Mayor Teale. They said he was a fine officer. They said he was Margrave’s finest. But they killed him.”

She said it with a lot of feeling. She’d liked Margrave. Her family had toiled there for generations. She was rooted. She’d liked her job. Enjoyed the sense of contribution. But the community she’d served was rotten. It was dirty and corrupted. It wasn’t a community. It was a swamp, wallowing in dirty money and blood. I sat and watched her world crumble.

WE DROVE NORTH ON THE ROAD BETWEEN MACON AND MARGRAVE
. Halfway home Roscoe hung a right and we headed for Yellow Springs down a back road. Over toward the hospital. I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten breakfast. Not the best state for revisiting the morgue. We swung into the hospital lot. Took the speed bumps slowly and nosed around to the back. Parked up a little way from the big metal roller door.

We got out of the car. Stretched our legs on a roundabout route to the office door. The sun was warming the day up. It would have been pleasant to stay outside. But we ducked in and went looking for the doctor. We found him in his shabby office. He was at his chipped desk. Still looking tired. Still in a white coat. He looked up and nodded us in.

“Morning, folks,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

We sat down on the same stools as Tuesday. I stayed away from the fax machine. I let Roscoe do the talking. Better that way. I had no official standing.

“February this year,” she said. “My chief of detectives up at the Margrave PD killed himself. Do you remember?”

“Was that some guy called Gray?” the doctor said.

Roscoe nodded and the doctor got up and walked around to a file cabinet. Pulled open a drawer. It was tight and made a screeching sound. The doctor ran his fingers backward over the files.

“February,” he said. “Gray.”

He pulled a file and carried it back to his desk. Dropped it on his blotter. Sat back down heavily and opened it up. It was a thin file. Not much in it.

“Gray,” he said again. “Yes, I remember this guy. Hung himself, right? First time we had a Margrave case in thirty years. I was called up to his house. In the garage, wasn’t it? From a rafter?”

“That’s right,” Roscoe said. She went quiet.

“So how can I help you?” the doctor said.

“Anything wrong with it?” she asked.

The doctor looked at the file. Turned a page.

“Guy hangs himself, there’s always something wrong with it,” he said.

“Anything specially wrong with it?” I said.

The doctor swung his tired gaze over from Roscoe to me.

“Suspicious?” he said.

He was nearly smiling the same little smile he’d used on Tuesday.

“Was there anything suspicious about it?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Suicide by hanging. Open and shut. He was on a kitchen stool in his garage. Made himself a noose, jumped off the stool. Everything was consistent. We got the background story from the local people up there. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“What was the background story?” Roscoe asked him.

He swung his gaze back to her. Glanced through the file.

“He was depressed,” he said. “Had been for a while. The night it happened he was out drinking with his chief, who was the Morrison guy we just had in here, and the town mayor up there, some guy called Teale. The three of them were drowning their sorrows over some case Gray had screwed up on. He got falling down drunk and they had to help him home. They got him in to his house and left him there. He must have felt bad. He made it to the garage and hung himself.”

“That was the story?” Roscoe said.

“Morrison signed a statement,” the doctor said. “He was real upset. Felt he should have done more, you know, stayed with him or something.”

“Did it sound right to you?” she asked him.

“I didn’t know Gray at all,” he said. “This facility deals with a dozen police departments. I’d never seen anybody from Margrave before then. Quiet sort of a place, right? At least, it used to be. But what happened with this guy is consistent with what usually happens. Drinking sets people off.”

“Any physical evidence?” I asked him.

The doctor looked back in the file. Looked over at me.

“Corpse stank of whiskey,” he said. “Some fresh bruising on the upper and lower arms. Consistent with him being walked home by two men while inebriated. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“Did you do a postmortem?” Roscoe asked him.

The doctor shook his head.

“No need,” he said. “It was open and shut, we were very busy. Like I say, we have more to worry about down here than suicides over in Margrave. February, we had cases all over the place. Up to our eyes. Your Chief Morrison asked for minimum fuss. I think he sent us a note. Said it was kind of sensitive. Didn’t want Gray’s family to know that the old guy had been blind drunk. Wanted to preserve some kind of dignity. It was OK with me. I couldn’t see a problem and we were very busy, so I released the body for cremation right away.”

Roscoe and I sat looking at each other. The doctor stepped back to the cabinet and put the file away. Closed the drawer with a screech.

“OK, folks?” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do.”

We nodded and thanked him for his time. Then we shuffled out of the cramped office. Got back out into the warm fall sunshine. Stood around blinking. We didn’t speak. Roscoe was too upset. She’d just heard about her old friend getting murdered.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“A bullshit story from beginning to end,” she said. “He hadn’t just screwed up on a case. He never screwed up on any case. He wasn’t especially depressed. And he didn’t drink. Never touched a drop. So he certainly wasn’t falling down drunk. And he would never socialize with Morrison. Or the damn mayor. He just wouldn’t. He didn’t like them. Never in a million years would he spend a social evening with them. And he had no family. So all that stuff about his family and sensitivity and dignity is total bullshit. They killed him and bullshitted the coroner so he wouldn’t look too closely.”

I sat there in the car and let the rage pour out of her. Then she was quiet and still. She was figuring out how they’d done it.

“Do you think it was Morrison and Teale?” she asked me.

“And somebody else,” I said. “There were three guys involved. I figure the three of them went around to his place and knocked on the door. Gray opened up and Teale pulled a gun. Morrison and the third guy grabbed him and held him by the arms. That explains the bruising. Teale maybe poured a bottle of whiskey down his throat, or at least splashed it all over his clothes. They hustled him off to the garage and strung him up.”

Roscoe started the car and eased it out of the hospital lot. She drove slowly over the speed bumps. Then she swung the wheel and blasted up the road through the countryside toward Margrave.

“They killed him,” she said. Just a simple statement. “Like they killed Joe. I think I know how you must be feeling.”

I nodded.

“They’ll pay for it,” I said. “For both of them.”

“You bet your ass,” she said.

We fell silent. Sped north for a while, then merged with the county road. A straight twelve miles up to Margrave.

“Poor old Gray,” she said. “I can’t believe it. He was so smart, so cautious.”

“Not smart enough,” I said. “Or cautious enough. We’ve got to remember that. You know the rules, right? Don’t be on your own. If you see somebody coming, run like hell. Or shoot the bastard. Stick with Finlay if you can, OK?”

She was concentrating on driving. She was doing a hell of a speed up the straight road. Thinking about Finlay.

“Finlay,” she repeated. “You know what I can’t figure?”

“What?” I said.

“There’s the two of them, right?” she said. “Teale and Morrison. They run the town for Kliner. They run the police department. Between them, they run everything. Their chief of detectives is Gray. An old guy, a wise head, smart and stubborn. He’s been there for twenty-five years, since well before any of this shit started up. They inherited him and they can’t get rid of him. So sure enough, one day their smart and stubborn detective sniffs them out. He’s found out that something is going on. And they find out that he’s found out. So they put him out of the way. They murder him to keep it all safe. Then what do they do next?”