“Darling,” Fiona said when I answered, “why don’t you come back to the room? I’m lonely.”
“I’ll even bring a friend,” I said.
Sam and I checked for unwelcome visitors and then headed to the villa. Fiona stood in the doorway, sipping a bottle of water.
“Where’d you get the water?” I asked.
“The mini bar,” she said. “Just four dollars.”
We stepped inside, and Fi closed the door and bolted it behind us. The villa was decorated just like the rest of the hotel, which is to say, at some point the designers began thinking of the 1970s as a period worth revisiting. For added kitsch factor, the walls inside the villa were covered with framed, blown-up photos of B-list celebrities- Zsa Zsa Gabor, Barbie Benton, Ricardo Montalban, the guy who played Potsie on Happy Days-partying in Miami during the period.
“Who would pay to stay here?” Sam said. “I had to live in the 1970s. And let me tell you, it was no vacation.”
“Hipsters,” Fiona said, “love to revisit the time period their parents suffered through.”
The living room and small galley kitchen looked lived-in, but not messy. There were cups in the sink, the garbage had take-out containers and coffee grounds in it and the sofa in the living room was dented from people sitting on it. There were no guns and no stacks of money, at least not in the open. The room was well lit by the sun coming in through a sliding glass door, which opened out to a small patio overlooking the canal. I opened the door and stepped outside. On the patio table was an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Two chairs were pulled slightly away from the table, as well, which told me more than one person had been here.
I came back inside in time to see Sam open up the fridge. “Uh, Mikey,” he said.
“You can have a beer when we’re done,” I said.
“I know,” Sam said, “but you’ll want to take a look at this.”
“Please, tell me it’s a human head,” Fiona said.
“No,” Sam said, “just a lot of dead presidents.”
Stacked inside the fridge and the freezer were bundles of bills: twenties, tens, fives and ones and nothing larger.
I pulled out a stack of twenties and examined it. They were pre-1996 bills, which meant they didn’t have the plastic security strip embedded into the fabric of the bill, nor the extra details such as Andrew Jackson’s hidden watermark photo or the shifting color palettes.
I licked my thumb and ran it across the face of the bill. Surprisingly, no color came up. Surprising since these were clearly counterfeit bills, but ones that would easily pass in the circles where they were likely to be passed-in bars and clubs, the streets, maybe even foreign countries-though certainly not in banks. It was doubtful they’d even be accepted in a soda machine.
If you’re going to make your own American currency, the first thing you need to know is that in all likelihood, you’ll get caught. After you get caught, you’ll go to federal prison, and after you’re released from federal prison, you’ll be audited for the rest of your life by the IRS. If you’re still going to make your own American currency, you need to have access to a high-density printer, rag paper and the ability to compress your paper with tons of pressure in order to make it as thin as the common dollar. An automobile wrecker would do the trick.
And then? Then you’ll probably still get caught, because if you’re dumb enough to try counterfeiting currency, you’re probably not smart enough not to spread the money around to people or businesses who might take notice of your fake bills, because even the best fake bill just doesn’t feel like a real bill. Nor does it smell the same. There’s no way to replicate the process an actual bill goes through from the mint to your wallet, nor is there a way to re- create the wear and tear of the bill’s life span-the average fifty dollar bill lives for a decade, a twenty for half that time.
Junior-or his people-had been smart enough to use rag paper, and it looked like they’d had some success pressing the paper, too, as it had almost the right consistency. And by putting the money in the refrigerator and freezer, they’d even managed to add moisture to the bills, which helped seal in the aging chemical they’d apparently used, too. It wasn’t terribly sophisticated, but it was decent enough to fool someone who didn’t know any better or, more than likely, someone who just didn’t care.
“Not bad,” I said. I tossed the bundle to Fiona. “Go get yourself something nice.”
“Like twenty years in prison?” she said.
“In your hands, as a foreign national,” I said, “I’d say you’d be looking at closer to thirty.”
“How much would you say is in here?” Sam said.
I counted thirty stacks in the fridge-there was also a half gallon of milk, the remnants of a Caesar salad, a six-pack of Coke and five Stellas-and at least twice that many stacks in the freezer. “A couple hundred thousand,” I said.
It was enough to pay some bills, but it wasn’t a real operating budget. No reputable dealer of anything the Latin Emperors would want-like drugs or guns or antiaircraft missiles, if they really wanted to diversify their business interests-would be fooled by the fake stuff. This was money to be spread around the bottom rungs of the ladder.
“You two might want to look at this,” Fiona said. She’d walked down the short hallway that led from the living room and now stood in the entryway to the first of the two bedrooms. “And maybe don’t touch anything else.”
Sam and I walked down the hall and peered over Fiona’s shoulder into the room. There was a stripped bed in the center of the room, surrounded by two night-stands, both of which had been knocked over. At the foot of the bed were the sheets and linens. They were stained with blood.
“I don’t suppose that’s just the latest spring style,” Sam said.
I nudged the ball of sheets with my foot, looked to see if there was something other than blood-like a head or an arm-but there was nothing solid.
“Anyone who bled that much,” Sam said, “probably isn’t bleeding anymore.”
“Hard to say,” I said. “It could be from more than one person.”
“That’s a pleasant thought,” Fiona said.
“Wait here,” I said, and stepped into the room so that I could examine the bed. If someone had been murdered on it, the mattress would be soaked, too, but that didn’t appear to be the case. The room also didn’t smell like death, which was a good sign. It doesn’t matter if you die pleasantly or die violently; if you die in a room, you’re going to leave a lasting olfactory sensation.
I opened a door to what I assumed to be the en suite bathroom, and instead discovered the Latin Emperors’ money factory. There were several printers, lap-tops and reams and reams of paper scattered on the floor and into the exceptionally large walk-in closet, which housed an automated paper cutter.
I looked inside the machine and found the reason why there wasn’t anyone about today and why there were a bunch of bloodstained sheets: Two fingers, cut off at the middle knuckle, sat among a stack of freshly cut five- dollar bills.
“Sam,” I said, “did you say that Father Eduardo has Honrado creating its own newspaper?”
“They hand it out to all the community centers,” Sam said. He and Fi were still in the hallway. “And I think once a month it comes stuffed inside the Herald. Why?”
“I’ve got a feeling the Latin Emperors might have some printing needs.”
I made sure the paper cutter was unplugged and then called in Sam and Fi for a look. Fi took a quick glance but didn’t seem overly interested. Sam, however, spent a good, long time staring at the mess.
“You have a theory, Sam?”
“I’m just curious why they didn’t have K-Dog do some of this stuff,” Sam said. “Seems like he’d at least know how to do it without losing important body parts.”
“Maybe he actually is trying to stay straight?” I said.
“Maybe.” It didn’t sound like Sam believed himself. “Poor guy,” Sam said eventually. “I’m gonna guess the Latin Emperors don’t offer workmen’s comp.”
“Unlikely,” I said.
“So I guess we’re looking for a three-fingered man now?” Fiona said.
“No,” I said, “I think the man I need to talk to is Barry.” Things were starting to make a lot of sense. Father Eduardo wasn’t just getting blackmailed; he was also about to be the victim of a hostile corporate take-over. And I had a feeling that this wasn’t a plan originally hatched by Junior Gonzalez, since the scope of it had suddenly begun
