Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

Fiona handed me a Bible. “Hold this open,” she said, and I did. She took a bottle of nail polish remover from her purse and poured about a teaspoon of the fluid down the interior spine of the book. She then shoved two fingers into the spine and gently pulled the pages from the binding-the nail polish remover had made the fine gold threading far more elastic, which is what you want to do if you’re going to hide something inside of a book instead of, say, cutting a hammer into the pages. Even people being spied on have seen movies, so they have a general idea what an amateur might do and may even look for a few telltale signs.

But what Fiona was doing was essentially the same process an antiquarian book restorer might do. Except that instead of restoring the Bible, she slid a small camera about four inches in length down the spine of the book.

Back in the Cold War-and in the 1990s, too-if you wanted to film someone, you needed to have a camera that was routed into a recorder somewhere, usually not too far from the camera itself. Any decent, paranoid person could discover these things in just a few minutes of frenzied searching. But the camera Fiona had just slipped into the book was no thicker than her thumb and was able to use motion-detection technology to record directly to a chip inside it. While we wouldn’t have remote access, we would have a fine digital recording of all Junior was doing.

Or, since I saw that Fiona had ten of these cameras, several digital movies of the life and times of Junior Gonzalez.

Fiona sealed the book back up, poked several small holes into the spine so that the camera could view the activity and then placed the book back onto the shelf.

“Good work,” I said.

“You should see what I put in your loft last week.”

“You bugged my loft?”

“You’ll never know without checking. Will you, Michael?”

I didn’t know whether to believe her or not, and fortunately I was saved by Barry’s appearance in the doorway. He’d washed his face some, but it was still a light pink color, and his clothes were covered in blood. He looked like a man who’d been strangled with a whip and beaten, essentially.

“Come on, Barry,” I said, “you’re going to help me with a secret mission.”

“I’d like to go home,” he said.

“You are home,” I said, “for now.”

“That wasn’t fake blood, Michael,” he said. “You let her cut me!”

“There is no letting,” Fiona said.

“She’s right,” I said.

“Free country,” Sam said. “It’s what we came here for.”

Barry looked like someone had just hit him in the back of the head, so I made it simple for him. “A little blood for a good cause, Barry. Namely, your life.”

“That makes sense,” Barry said. “And that it makes sense means that I have made some terrible mistakes in my life, doesn’t it?”

“You can always change,” I said. “Look at Father Eduardo.”

Barry considered this. “Where are we going?”

“I need you to get me the best money plate your money can buy,” I said.

“My money?”

“This is your problem we’re solving,” I said.

“I know a guy named Jacques,” he said. “He’s from the old school. He might not deal with you.”

“I’m sure you can be persuasive,” I said.

“I’m only saying I may need to take the lead here.”

“Like you did with Junior?”

“Similar situation, possibly,” he said, which meant to me that no matter what relationship Barry had with this Jacques, by the end of our time together, he’d understand who was really in charge, even if I didn’t make a single move.

“All right,” I said, “we’ll do it your way.”

“I’ll need some new clothes,” he said. “And is there any way we could get some lunch?”

When you’re a spy, sometimes your toughest job is keeping your informants dressed and fed. It’s not always about beautiful women, shiny cars and blowing things up.

Unfortunately.

Making money costs money. This is true as both a frothy maxim you might read on a poster and in reality. Each note the U.S. government prints costs four cents in simple materials, but the lead-up process is far more costly. The plates used in the production of money are hand engraved, a meticulous process that takes a substantial amount of time and dedication, but this is done for a very exacting purpose: You can re-create a computer’s etchings very easily, but it’s impossible to precisely emulate the hand of a human being. There will always be subtle differences.

So if you really want to counterfeit money, a printing system like the Latin Emperors had set up at the Ace Hotel would suffice only for the short term. You can print and press money using only computer software and a particularly detailed reproduction of an actual bill. But if you want to make money to make money, you’ll need a hand-engraved plate.

And it would help if you had Barry, too.

While Sam and Fiona finished setting up Junior’s office with the appropriate listening and tracking devices (and to ensure that no one came in and made an attempt on Father Eduardo’s life), and to manage the Leticia situation if she bothered to return to work, which was not something I was sure would happen, I set off to learn just how Barry handled his business.

Not that I didn’t have a pretty good idea as it was, but it was always interesting meeting new friends. Or new friends of friends. And, really, Barry was eager to help this project along… Or, well, he was eager for this project to be over so he could leave town for as long as possible without worrying about his family being killed.

I sat in my Charger and waited for Barry to come out of the Dillard’s department store he’d gone into to purchase a new outfit, since the one he was wearing just had too much blood on it. I opted not to join him, figuring it would probably be better all around if security cameras picked up one shady, blood-covered individual and not his friend, too. And since this Dillard’s was housed inside a nice suburban mall in Doral, I really didn’t want to have to fight off a SWAT team.

That, and I was afraid of watching Barry shop. There are some things you simply do not want to do with certain people, and I had a feeling shopping with Barry would be a situation that might engender thoughts of murder in me. But the real reason we were at this mall and not some other clothing store was that Jacques, the engraver Barry had contacted about our specific job, told him he’d only speak to him from a certain pay phone, and that certain pay phone was located just adjacent to the men’s room on the second floor of Dillard’s.

Finally, after at least thirty minutes, Barry came out of the store, wearing a cream-colored, short-sleeve button-down that was opened (none too discreetly) to the center of his rather clammy-looking chest, brown chinos and a pair of braided leather flip-flops. He looked like he was ready to play badminton in someone’s backyard. He’d also purchased a new pair of sunglasses and, judging by the smell when he slid into the Charger, stopped by the cologne counter, too.

“That’s a wonderful new fragrance,” I said.

“You like it?”

“Not really.”

“And I didn’t like getting strangled by Fiona, so that makes us even.”

“If that’s what does it, fine.”

Barry inhaled. “I think it smells fresh.”

“Barry,” I said, “did you talk to your guy?”

“It has a vanilla scent on the back end,” Barry said. “You don’t get that?”

The issue with Barry is that he’s stubborn. He’s used to doing things on his own timeline. Occasionally, you have to work within that knowledge if you wish to have a successful interaction with him.