Warren Murphy: Funny Money

He remembered putting his .38 in the shoulder holster at the office but he could not remember now whether or not he had taken off the safety. He was going to look very foolish grabbing for a gun and then squeezing a locked trigger. What would he do? Yell "bang"? Then again, there were those experts on the rooftops and it was too late now to take his gun out and examine it. The night was hot and Castellano was perspiring and his shirt became wet, even at the waist. His lips tasted salty.

"Good evening; I'm Mr. Gordons," came a voice from behind Castellano. He turned and saw a very calm face and cool blue eyes and lips that were parted in a half smile. The man was a good two inches taller than Castellano, perhaps six foot one or one-and-a-half. He wore a light blue suit and a white shirt with a white and blue polka-dot tie that was almost fashionable. Almost. In theory, white and blue were good combinations, and in practice, a blue suit with a white shirt was very safe. But this combination of bleached white and glaring blue seemed beyond dashing and even tacky. It was funny. And the man did not sweat.

"Do you have your package?" asked Castellano.

"Yes, I do have the package intended for you," said the man. The voice lacked even a hint of regionalism, as if he had learned to talk from a network announcer. "The evening is rather warm, don't you think? I am sorry I do not have a drink to offer you but we are in an open street and there are no faucets in open streets."

"That's okay," said Castellano. "I've got your package. You've got mine?"

Castellano felt the heaviness of his breathing as if there could never be enough oxygen in the air this night. The strange man with the peculiar conversation seemed as calm as a morning pond. The courteous smile stayed affixed to the face.

"Yes," the man said. "I have your package and you have mine. I will give you your package for mine. Here is your package. They are the Kansas City Federal Reserve Notes 1963 Series E, front plate 214, back plate 108, which your country desperately needs out of the hands of counterfeiters. It is worth more than the life of your President, since in your eyes it affects the very basis of your economy which is your livelihood."

"Okay, okay," said Castellano. "Just give me the plates." The man was a daffodil, thought Castellano, and reminded himself that when he was sure he had the goods he was to fall down. He would not test his own gun. Leave it to the sniper to make this one into a dead daffodil. Well, Castellano hadn't advised him to go into counterfeiting.

The man held the two plates bare in his right hand. Between them was a thin piece of butcher's paper. Which meant to Castellano that the plates were already ruined from rubbing together. It would not have been possible for the contact to hold the plates together with the necessary pressure to keep them from sliding across one another without exerting so much pressure as to dull the fine engraved ridges.

And it occurred to Castellano as he gave over the felt-covered box in his right hand and took the two plates very carefully in his left that Group Leader Forsythe had not given him instructions on what to do if the plates were damaged, although if they were damaged that was as good as their being out of circulation. No one would pass a fifty with a scratch in the printing.

Taking the plates, Castellano, to assure that they would never be used again, rubbed them together hard with his left hand before he separated them to examine them. It was a foolish move, Castellano realized, seeing the scratch across Grant's beard on the front plate. It might have angered his contact. Castellano placed the front plate with Grant's head on top of the backplate with the picture of the U.S. Capitol and, with a penlight, started examining the seal. It was the J for the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank. The spokes on the seal surrounding the J were so good that Castellano again felt a surge of admiration for the craftsmanship. He heard his contact make ripping sounds with the gray felt package and thought that no matter how loudly the man opened it, there would still be plenty of time for Castellano to examine the plates. After all the man had to go through tape and wire and plastic to get to the computer program. Castellano would not let the ripping noise rush him.

"This program does not meet specifications," said the contact. Castellano looked up, confused. The contact held a small wheel in front of him. The heavy tape and wires and plastic dangled from his hands. The felt was shredded on the sidewalk at his feet.

"Oh, Jesus," said Castellano and waited for someone to do something.

"This program does not meet specifications," said the man again, and Castellano felt as if he were being told some abstract far-off fact that had nothing to do with their lives. Then the man reached for the plates, but Castellano couldn't return them. Even with the scratch through Grant's beard, he couldn't let those plates out of government hands. He had spent a lifetime protecting the verity of American money, and he would not give it up now.

He rammed the plates into his stomach and let himself fall toward the sidewalk. He heard an instant ping, apparently from his primary sniper with the curare-tipped bullet, but then felt a wrench crush his left wrist with an incredibly painful cracking sound and then there was a feel of hot molten metal pouring into his left shoulder and he saw his own left arm go by his face with the plates washed in a dark liquid that was his own blood and then the right shoulder socket was searing pain and that arm was under his knee as he settled back onto the sidewalk screaming for his mother. And then blessedly there was a wrenching in the back of his neck as if someone pulled a switch that ended everything. His eye caught a glimpse of a bloody shoe and then there were no more glimpses.

When the films of James Castellano's dismemberment were shown at the Treasury Building in Washington, Francis Forsythe, group leader, ordered the projector stopped and with his pointed touched the splotched hand holding two oblong metal plates.

"It's our belief that the plates were ruined in the scuffle. As most of you gentlemen know, the surface ridges of currency plates are highly critical. It is the belief of your own Treasury people that our group has ended the menace."

"But are you sure the plates are scratched?" came a voice from the darkened room. In the dark no one saw Forsythe's triumphant little grin.

"In our group, we prepare for the unexpected. Not only did we have three movie cameras with infrared light and film, we had still cameras with mirror telephoto lenses and special emulsion film that could blow up a fingernail the size of a wall and you could see the nail cells." Forsythe cleared his throat, then in a loud command, ordered a still of the plate. The screen with Castellano's hand clutching the two plates became dark and the room with it. Then the black outlines of an engraving plate enlarged many times filled the screen.

"See," said Forsythe. "There's a scratch across Grant's beard. Right there."

Now there was a lemony voice speaking from the dark in the back of the room. "That probably happened when Castellano took the plates," the voice said.

"I don't think we should argue over who gets credit. Let's just be grateful this menace is no longer a menace. After all, no one knew this money was in circulation until our contact, this Mr. Gordons, tried to get that space program," said Forsythe.

"How did he escape? I still don't understand," came the sharp lemony voice again.

"Sir?" asked Forsythe.

"I said Mr. Gordons should not have escaped."

"You saw the film, sir. Do you want to see it again?" asked Forsythe. His tone was both condescending and threatening, implying that only someone who did not know what he was doing would be so silly as to ask to see again what had been obvious. It had worked hundreds of times in Washington briefings. This time it did not.