Carr stood up and removed his coat. He hung it on the back of his chair. He sat down again. 'Where can we find him?' he said.
'I have no idea. Maybe San Francisco or Las Vegas. But I truthfully have no idea where he lives,' Mora said.
Carr was silent for a moment. He looked at Kelly. 'If you don't tell us everything you know about LaMonica, we'll be forced to camp out on your ass just like we did today. We'll either end up arresting you again or putting you out of business, or both.'
'Get the picture, clown?' Kelly said.
Mora stared at the wall. Sitting there, his sagging body barely fitting the government-issue chair, the angular man looked foolish, perhaps inconsequential. 'LaMonica lives out of the state,' he said. 'I swear I don't know where. He was here in L.A. putting together some sort of a legitimate business deal. If you know anything at all about him, you'll know that he never tells anyone his business. As God is my witness, that's all I know about the sonofabitch. Now will you let me post bail? I have appointments to keep.'
Carr stood up and opened the door. He nodded at Kelly.
Kelly stood up. 'Sure,' he said. 'We wouldn't want to keep all those nice folks down at the Castaways waiting for their twenties.' He grabbed the man's arm and pulled him out the door.
Carr and Kelly pulled up in front of a large store front with a sign that read 'Lithographic Supply Service of Los Angeles.' They went in.
Three hours later they were still there, coats off, crowded around a messy desk in the manager's office. The manager, a neat, older man who wore glasses with wire frames and a long-sleeved dress shirt that was a size too big, hovered over them as they sorted through piles of invoices.
'How do you know he ordered the supplies from here?' the manager asked sternly.
'Your telephone number was on the toll record we subpoenaed from the phone company,' Carr said without looking up.
'And the name
'Someone heard him make a call and order some ink,' Carr said. He pushed aside a stack of invoices and dug into another.
'It seems to me,' said the manager, 'that what we're talking about here is
Kelly gave the man an odd look.
'All printers have tried it once,' the stern man said.
'What's that?' Carr said. He smiled courteously.
'Counterfeiting,' the manager said. 'Every printer tries it once. They try it just as a lark and destroy the bills afterward. You know, just to see if they can do it.'
Carr read the invoice. It listed a sale of black, blue, green, and red ink plus fifteen reams of No. 53 paper to Robert French. Carr handed the invoice to the manager.
The manager studied the paper with a determined look. 'Fifty-three is Ardmore Bond, a fairly high-quality paper. We don't get much call for it. This was a cash deal. An over-the-counter transaction.'
Carr scribbled something in his notebook and stuffed it into his coat pocket. The agents stood up to leave and Carr thanked the manager.
'No thanks are necessary,' he said with a sour look. 'This shop has been broken into twice during the last year. I hope you catch the man you're looking for and put him in a penitentiary forever. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Forever.' He pursed his lips.
'We'll sure try,' Carr said on his way out the door. Kelly gave the man a little salute.
Carr and Kelly were alone in the squad room.
Files, all bearing LaMonica's name, were spread out across Carr's desk. Most of them were marked 'Career Criminal,' as if such a term had real meaning. Carr had spent the last two hours carefully going over the reports, summaries, and evaluations in them. The Treasury main file included specimen photographs of the counterfeit notes LaMonica had printed throughout the years, mixed in with arrest sheets, conviction forms, intelligence reports, and a stack of booking photographs in which LaMonica's hair became progressively grayer, his jowls slacker. He and Carr were about the same age.
The only remarkable difference from other such files was the absence of confession forms. Even LaMonica's first arrest (caught red-handed in a bank changing twenties into hundreds) reflected a refusal to give out anything other than his name. As a matter of fact, after his last arrest, he had refused even that.
Carr pulled a memorandum from a banded stack of papers covered by a note labeled: 'Not for Dissemination Outside Department of justice.' It read:
TO: Chief Federal Probation Officer
FROM: Carl Teagarten-Deputy Federal Probation Officer
SUBJECT: Probationer Paul A. LaMonica-Six-Week Release Report
1. Although probationer LaMonica has a bad habit of falling back into a criminal pattern, he has been out of federal prison for six weeks now and seems to be adjusting. Although he has not gained employment yet, he tells me that he has made a number of applications seeking work as a salesman. I have not allowed him to seek any printing-related occupation for the obvious reasons.
2. LaMonica remains somewhat of a loner and tells me that his free time is spent reading and going to the movies.
3. He rented a fairly expensive apartment in Beverly Hills last week. When I questioned him about it he was very cooperative. Apparently he has recently come into some sort of an inheritance from a distant relative (I haven't had time to verify this, but hope to by the next six-week report). He also made a down payment on a sports car with the same source of income.
4. I have received a number of calls from various law-enforcement agencies for LaMonica's current address, but have refused to provide it under terms of the Privacy Act.
5. Overall, Mr. LaMonica seems to be adjusting quite well at present. He continues to have an overwhelming desire to be accepted by others.
Carr shook his head. He turned to Kelly who was dialing a phone at the next desk. 'Ever meet anyone who didn't have a desire to be accepted?'
'Whatsat?' Kelly said.
'Never mind,' Carr said. He read the last report in the file. It was a year old and described how LaMonica had been caught in his Beverly Hills apartment with $50,000 in counterfeit twenties.
Carr closed the file.
Kelly jammed the phone down. 'That was headquarters,' he said. 'LaMonica learned to print years ago in the Terminal Island print shop — some sort of a prison
Carr stood up and stretched. He walked to the window. 'LaMonica is getting ready to print,' he said. 'He bought black, green, red, and blue ink and a lot of paper. He would need black and green in order to print money, but I can't figure the blue and red.'
Kelly shrugged. 'Who the hell knows?' he said. 'But there's one thing you can count on. He wouldn't buy ink and paper unless he already had everything else he needed: press, platemaker, photo equipment. He's probably running off a load somewhere right now.'
'There's another thing that's for sure,' Carr said, still staring out the window. 'We don't have any leads.'
Chapter 14
It was Saturday afternoon.
