Money Men (7 page)

"Got a date yet, Freddie?"

"I was supposed to have a date by now, but they turned over my house during a lockdown and found some seed, so they held up my date. The grass wasn't even mine...What do you want to talk to me about?" He pushed his glasses back on his nose.

"Some of your old twenties have been showing up recently," Carr said.

Roth leaned forward, interested, elbows on knees. The glasses slipped again.

"Which old twenties?"

"The ones you printed just before this stretch."

Roth rubbed a hand across the desert of his scalp. "Yes, the plate had a bad key in the Treasury seal." He shook his head. "I should have burned the whole friggin' batch instead of putting them out on the street. I'm almost embarrassed to say they were my work."

"Santa Anita and Hollywood Park didn't think they were so bad," Carr said.

Roth beamed. "The casinos in Las Vegas put out a notice on them, too, as a matter of fact. I had a friend there who checked for me...I was peddling them for
thirty
points on the dollar.
Six bucks
apiece. And even with that price, my phone was ringing off the hook."

"Who has the rest of the notes, Freddie?" Carr's tone was fatherly.

Roth held out his hands. "Wait a minute! Did you come here to lay a goddamn case on me while I'm in the joint? What the hell do I know about who has a few twenties that I printed three years ago? How do I know what's happening on the street right now? I'm in a
cage,
man. I..."

"Thanks, Freddie," Carr interrupted. "You can go now. Sorry to bother you."

Roth's yellow jaw dropped. "What?"

"I said you can go back to D wing. I don't have any more questions," Carr said. Through the years Carr had learned that Roth had to be kept on the track.

Roth slid his chair back to stand up. He stopped.

"What if I was to remember something about a stash on the outside. What's in it for me?" He sat down again.

"What do you
want
to be in it for you?" Carr said.

Roth put his hands in his lap. "It's like this. I'm on the list to get a gate pass to minimum security so I can work outside on the grass. I'm sick and I need some sun and fresh air-vitamin C. You know how it is...If you could talk to the captain and move my name up on the gate-pass list, I think I might be able to remember something about the twenties. Get the picture?"

"I get the picture," Carr said. "I'll go see the guard captain and see what I can do."

Carr stood up and knocked on the door. A guard unlocked and opened it. He stepped out into the shiny corridor and walked toward the prison-staff coffee room. As he walked he noticed the yellow that was building up along the baseboards. Unnecessary waxing, like the cheap labor of an army headquarters company.

In the empty coffee room, Carr picked up a well-worn copy of the
Los Angeles Times.
He read halfway through a feature article on how a small town in Ohio had lowered the crime rate by arresting all its heroin addicts. He thought of one apartment house near McArthur Park where at least fifty addicts lived. The addicts in that apartment house alone would fill up most small-town jails. He threw the paper down.

Leaning back on the sofa, he thought of the smelly Quonset hut outside Seoul where he first practiced real-life interrogation. The methods were different then, but the motivations the same. It was simply a matter of finding the right chord and playing it no holds barred. Carr closed his eyes.

A half hour later, he got up
from the sofa, returned to the interview room, and sat down. He looked Roth directly in the eye.

"It looks like you
are in luck. I had to take a lot of jaw from the captain, but he finally agreed to go along with the gate pass if I tell him you cooperated with me fully. The deal is on." Carr continued to peer into the other's eyes, for a sincere effect.

"How do I know you're tellin' me the truth?" Roth said. Using his index finger he made a figure-eight pattern on the table top.

Carr stared at the floor for a moment, then spoke clearly and loudly. "I just went in and made a fool out of myself making a deal for you, clown. Either give me the story right now or you go back to your cell, and I'll be on my way. I don't like people who waste my time. I'm tired of this stinking room. I have a hangover. Fuck you."

Carr stood up, knocking his chair back violently, and walked toward the door.

"Okay," Roth said "Sit down and I'll tell you the whole thing. But I better not be ripped off. If anybody finds out I'm helping the Feds, I could end up
getting shanked. There's guys in here that actually
like
to
do
it
..."

"So I've heard," Carr interrupted. "Who's holding your stash?"

"I don't want to get anybody else involved. I gave my stash to a friend to hold for me. He's got about fifty
grand. It
was left over from the printing. You guys missed it when you broke down the door. I had it buried two blocks away." Roth cleaned his glasses on his shirttail.

"What is your friend's name?"

Roth put his glasses back on. "This guy is a real friend, man. I don't want to see him drop behind a deal where he was just doing me a favor. You know what I mean?"

"How bad do you want the gate pass?" Carr asked.

Roth closed his eyes, opened them, then spoke. "Virgil Leach. He deals in paper. You can find him at the Paradise Isle in Hollywood. He's called 'Pleach.' That's a combination of 'pimple' and 'leach.' You'll know why when you see him. Gotta girlfriend named Vikki; she has a big habit. Now you know as much as I do. "

"Why is Leach holding your stash?"

"He's just a friend, a paper passer from the old days. After you guys busted me I knew there would be heat on the serial numbers. I asked him to hold the stuff for me until I got out of the joint. I wasn't going to pass any. I just didn't know what to do with them." His expression was somber.

Carr nodded, as if he understood. He stood up to leave.

"When do I get my gate pass?" Roth said.

"Just as soon as it's typed up." Carr knocked on the door. It was opened. He stepped into the hallway and told the guard to take the prisoner back to his cell.

****

SEVEN

It was dark.

Carr looked through the binoculars at Virgil Leach's small wood-frame
house. It
was nestled next to a modern-looking, pink stucco apartment house. A Cadillac was parked in the driveway. Except for the apartment house, the neighborhood was run down; property values on the decline. "Urban decay," as
Time
would say.

Kelly dozed at the wheel.

After stopping by the state parole office to pick up Leach's mug photo and current address, they had driven directly to Leach's house and begun the surveillance. It had been a long day.

Carr put the binoculars back in the glove compartment. Out of boredom he picked up the Xerox copies of the parole reports again. Leach's mug shot was stapled to the first page, Carr thought of the "before" photograph in an acne-medicine ad.

Leach was described in the reports as a forty-year-old with a "sociopathic personality with emotional blunting."

Kelly yawned loudly and began rubbing his eyes. "You still reading that bullshit?" he said.

"I thought it was more interesting than listening to you snore.

"Man, am I hungry." Kelly rubbed his stomach.

"So what else is new?" Carr smiled, lifting the binoculars to his eyes again. He adjusted the lens.

"I got my evaluation today. No Waves put it in on my desk so he wouldn't have to face
me. It
was a sandwich job as usual."

"A what?"

Kelly reached into his inside coat pocket and took out a typed Special Agent Yearly Evaluation Form. "Listen to this," he said. "Special Agent Kelly is an experienced senior agent who can be counted upon to fulfill his responsibilities. He is an excellent marksman and has a high record of arrests and convictions. At times his outspokenness causes problems with his coworkers. Kelly has a thorough knowledge of the operations manual and keeps his reports up to date." Kelly folded the paper and stuffed it back in his coat pocket. "See? A sandwich job. He starts with good points, then the bad, then ends with something good. A shit sandwich. Just enough to keep me from getting promoted, but not enough to get me pissed off...What did he put in yours this time?"

"Same as yours, except for the bad part. Mine said something like 'Carr has a tendency to be too independent. He objects to proper supervision and has on occasion refused to identify his informants when told to do so.'"

"Good old No Waves. He wouldn't know an informant if one bit him on the ass. The pipe-smoking, briefcase-carrying, ass-licking, back-stabbing prick. Did I ever tell you about the time he interviewed me on a brutality allegation?"

Carr shook his head no even though he knew the story by heart.

"He sits there behind his desk with two inspectors in the room, tape recorder on. The interview was almost over, and he says, 'Well, you know how it is. We have to follow up on rumors.' I said, 'I hear rumors every day.' He said, 'Like what?' So I said, 'Yesterday somebody told me you were a queer.' The friggin' inspectors almost fell off their chairs!" Kelly laughed furiously, caught his breath, and laughed again.

Leach walked from his front door. He wore European-cut trousers that were too small for his chunky frame, and a waist-length leather jacket that would have looked good on a nineteen-year-old.

"Okay. We've Finally got some movement," Carr said.

Kelly rubbed his face roughly with both hands and started the engine.

Leach got into the Cadillac. The headlights came on. He backed out of the driveway and pulled into traffic.

Kelly, without headlights, kept at a safe distance behind the Cadillac as it drove along shabby side streets toward Wilshire Boulevard. Carr wished Leach would get onto a larger street so the tandem turns would not be so obvious.

The Cadillac turned west on Wilshire Boulevard.

Carr thought they had lost him for a moment when he made a left turn on Vermont. They caught up to the Cadillac as it entered the freeway. The trip to Marina Del Rey was easy because there were a million cars on the freeway. Carr knew that all headlights would took the same in Leach's rearview mirror; an easy tail.

As Leach pulled into a valet lot at the Captain's Disco he almost ran into a bevy of sun-tanned young women dressed in jeans and tank tops. He got out of his car and handed the keys to the valet. He walked up the steps and in the front door.

"Everybody here is either a pipe smoker or a stewardess," Kelly said. "If Leach brought a pipe, he should fit right in."

"You take the point," Carr said. "I'll wait here."

Kelly took off his Suit coat and gun and threw them on the back seat. He trotted up the steps, paid his cover charge at the door, and went in. Carr could hear the faint echo of rock music.

Waiting, Carr turned on the radio and listened to a late-night talk program. The disc jockey's voice sounded bored, sleepy, as he discussed capital punishment with a shut-in who kept coughing. They used the word
deterrent
over and over again. Carr leaned back in the seat.

It was 1:30 A.M. when Kelly, came back out. He waved to Carr and headed for a phone booth in the parking lot next door. The phone call was brief.