Warren Murphy: Funny Money

"When was the last time you used it?"

"Nineteen fifty-three or -four."

"That's wonderful, Castellano. Well, just put it in the contact's face and pull the trigger hard and often if he tries something. Let me warn you again. You are not to leave that corner with the plates under possibility… no, make that probability of death."

"You'd shoot me if I disappeared with the plates?"

"With pleasure," said Forsythe and gave the street corner a tap with his pointer.

"Well, I wasn't going anywhere anyhow. What good would the plates be to me? I don't have access to this guy's paper source. What would I print queer on? Paper towels?" asked Castellano.

"It'll take paper towels to pick you up if you try to leave that corner," said Forsythe.

"You must be CIA," said Castellano. "Nobody else on this earth is that stupid."

"Let's calm down," said the district supervisor. "Jim, this plate process is so important it's more than just a counterfeit. It could literally wreck our country. That's why everything is so tight. Please try to cooperate and understand, okay, Jim? This is more than just another bogus bill. Okay?"

Castellano nodded a tired acquiescence. He saw the man with the red leather case come to the table. Forsythe's pointer came down on a rooftop.

"This is our primary sniper post and this man will man it. It has the least obstruction and best view. Show Mr. Castellano your weapon."

Castellano watched the fingers work the combination on the red leather case so quickly no one could get a track on it. The case snapped open, revealing a fine-tooled thick rifle barrel and a metal stock set in red velvet. There were eight two-inch-long stainless steel cartridges, each tipped with a white metal substance that appeared to have been sharpened. Castellano had never seen cartridges that thin. They were like swizzle sticks.

The rifleman snapped his weapon together and Castellano saw that the very thick barrel had a very thin opening. The tolerance in the boring of that weapon, thought Castellano, must be incredible.

"I can pop out the iris of an eye at fifty yards," said the rifleman. "This is the weapon. I saw you notice the bullets. They are designed to disintegrate when they hit metal of any sort so we don't go damaging your plates or any machinery. They will kill very nicely, however. They penetrate skin and are curare tipped, so if you see a little pinprick on your contact's face, or hear a little sort of slap, you will know your man is in the process of dying. I do not need a second shot. So once I get him, don't you go running anywhere."

"Just thought you should know that he's the one who's going to stop you if you decide to move anywhere with the plates," said Forsythe.

"You make me root for the other side," Castellano said and was surprised to hear several of the men carrying M-16s burst into laughter. But when he looked over for expressions of support to accompany the laughter, the men turned away their eyes.

He was shown the street corner again, where he would stand, and given a gray felt-wrapped box.

"And don't forget. Try to keep the contact between you and the primary sniper. He's our best."

The man with the peculiar fat-barreled, thin-bore rifle nodded curtly.

"When you are sure you have the right goods, fall down," said the sniper. "Just collapse and keep the plates protected by your body."

"I'm setting up somebody for a kill?" asked Castellano.

"You're following orders," said the man with the pointer.

"Do what he says, Jim," said the district supervisor. "This is important."

"At this time in my life, I don't know if I want to be responsible for another man's death."

"It's very important, Jim. You must know how important," said the district supervisor, and James Castellano, age forty-nine, agreed for the first time in his life to participate in a killing if it were necessary.

He rode to the corner of Sebastian and Latimer in the back seat of a gray four-door sedan. One of Forsythe's men was at the wheel. The exchange item was wrapped in wire and tape and thick plastic all inside the gray felt-covered box; this was designed to give Castellano more time to look at the counterfeit plates than his contact would have to look at the computer software program for creative intelligence.

The car's back seat smelled of stale cigars and the seat cover felt sticky and the stop and go of the driver made Castellano woozy. He knew a bit about computers and the space age and what he was delivering was designed, he was sure, to enable unmanned space vehicles to make creative decisions when beyond the range of earth control.

But why would anyone want something like this? On earth it was next to useless, because any normal person had many times the creative intelligence of this program.

As the limousine passed a supermarket, Castellano abruptly realized the enormity of the mission. It was just possible that these 1963 Series A Federal Reserve Notes had already watered down the value of the entire currency. Massive use of the printing plates he was to pick up could account for the phenomenon of inflation during an economic depression. In the supermarket window, he saw the price of hamburger at $1.09 a pound and it was clear in that instant. When money is worth less, you need more of it to buy less. It was America's money itself that was becoming worthless if these bills had been passed massively. And why shouldn't they have been? Who could stop them?

If the assistant director for currency of the California area of the Secret Service could be fooled, there wasn't a bank teller in the country who wouldn't accept the notes. They were so good, they were real. And for every counterfeit bill passed, the dollar in the Social Security check for the widow became that much less, the hamburger cost that much more, and every savings account became a little less secure, every paycheck bought less than the week before.

So James Castellano, who had not fired the .38 police special for more than twenty years, who spanked his children infrequently and then only at the overwhelming urging of his wife, prepared himself to help take a life. He told himself that these counterfeiters were daily taking away bits of lives from people who couldn't afford homes or good food because of inflation, and all those little losses of bits of lives added up to the taking of one life completely.

"Bullshit," said James Castellano and took the felt-covered box out of his pocket and rested it on his lap and did not answer the driver who asked what he had said. It was 11:52 P.M. on his watch when he got out at Sebastian and Latimer and began walking slowly through the hot muggy night the few blocks toward Randolph.

The contact would go under the name of Mr. Gordons, and Mr. Gordons, according to Group Leader Forsythe, would make the exchange exactly at 12:09:3.

"What?" Castellano had said, thinking that Group Leader Forsythe had suddenly developed a streak of humor.

"Mr. Gordons said 12:09:3, that's midnight, nine minutes and three seconds."

"What if I'm there at midnight, nine minutes and four seconds?"

"You'd be late," said Group Leader Forsythe.

So Castellano checked his watch again as he walked up Sebastian and he reached the corner of Randolph at 12:05 and with effort he avoided looking at the rooftops of the six-story buildings where the sniper was. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the restaurant where he had often eaten. Its windows were dark and a gray cat stared contemptuously from the cash register drawer on which it sat. A rickety yellow Ford with a wire-tied muffler vomiting black smoke chugged up the block with a half-dozen drunken Mexicans and one old bleached blonde calling the world to revel. The car passed on down the block and far off Castellano could hear an occasional honk in the night.