Shamrock Alley (8 page)

He eased back in his desk chair and rubbed his eyes. Before him, the city was black and dotted with colored lights. Glancing at his watch, he saw he only had about ten more minutes before he’d have to head back into the city to meet with Sloopy Black, one of his regular informants, at the Paradise Lounge. Since Biddleman’s insistence that Kersh and John sever ties with Deveneau’s coterie, Kersh had again immersed himself in his informants and his contacts. Yet despite this revival, Kersh couldn’t help but feel that he was looking in the wrong direction. That tonight’s meeting with the reptilian-like Sloopy Black would yield no fresh avenues, Kersh had no doubt. He would go merely to get out of the office for a while, to actually walk the streets again like a human being, to smell the air.

Three days since the fiasco at the club, and Francis Deveneau’s phony bills were still popping up throughout the city. In the past week alone, the Secret Service had received roughly $100,000 worth of phony notes that were passed in New York, and just about the same amount cropped up in Jersey, Boston, and even Miami. Kersh had a number of the bills laid out across his desk now, most of them individually sealed in plastic bags. The most recent ones were still attached to the description sheets sent over from the various banks that had acquired them throughout the city.

With a sigh, Kersh leaned back in his chair.

Genuine U.S. bills are printed by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington, D.C. The paper is comprised of 75 percent cotton, 25 percent linen, and contains tiny red and blue fibers throughout. The front of the bill is printed intaglio-style in black ink with green ink used typographically to imprint the note’s specific serial numbers and Treasury seal. The back of the bill is printed in green intaglio. Generally, counterfeiters produce their ware by taking photographs of authentic bills, touching up the negatives, and burning the negatives onto plates. Two plates are used for the front—one plate for black ink, one plate for green—and a third is used for the back of the bill. A meticulous counterfeiter may even create two more plates to mimic the strands of blue and red fibers that are embedded in the paper of genuine bills. Due to most counterfeiters’ inability to duplicate very minuscule details, quite often the sawtooth points of the Federal Reserve and Treasury seals are slightly uneven and uncharacteristically blunt. However, Deveneau’s bills were nearly perfect. The safety features included in the “new money,” the redesigned notes, are nearly impossible to duplicate even with the assistance of a competent computer. Yet Deveneau’s notes were forgeries of the
old
bills, which made detection that much more difficult. The printer had even used special acid-etched plates to imitate the intaglio printing.

The printer…

Charlie Lowenstein.

It was no secret Charlie Lowenstein printed Francis Deveneau’s counterfeit money. The Secret Service maintained an extensive catalogue of every phony bill ever to be scrutinized by federal eyes, and when Deveneau’s bills had begun popping up like ruptured sores throughout the city several months back, Kersh had recognized them immediately. Lowenstein had been arrested two years earlier during a dispute with a couple of street thugs in Harlem. In Lowenstein’s car, the police uncovered roughly $150,000 in counterfeit hundreds. The bills were excellent reproductions, yet they enjoyed no circulation due to Lowenstein’s total lack of distribution. A thin, spindly man with ink-blotch eyes, a beaky nose, and a nearly lipless mouth, Charlie Lowenstein was the proprietor of a small printing press in Queens. His talents unbound, he soon found easy money in the printing of counterfeit football and baseball tickets for neighborhood wiseguys. Soon after, he began exercising his talents with the reproduction of U.S. currency. Upon Lowenstein’s arrest, the Secret Service assaulted his printing establishment, only to find no trace of evidence whatsoever—much to the Service’s indignation. Yet despite the lack of evidence, the Service knew Lowenstein had printed the money, and they had many questions:
Was there any more? Where were the plates? Did he have any partners, any regular customers? How much had he sold?
But just as his stodgy and unaccommodating demeanor dictated, Charlie Lowenstein refused to cooperate with the Secret Service and was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.

Now, two years later and with Charlie Lowenstein still behind bars, Lowenstein’s money had resurfaced. There was no mistake about it—all the incoming bills possessed one of the ten alternate serial numbers found on the counterfeit money taken from Lowenstein’s vehicle.

Once the bills began resurfacing, the first thing Kersh did was pay Charlie Lowenstein a visit in his cell up in Connecticut. And just as he’d surmised, Lowenstein refused to cooperate—he merely watched Kersh from across the interview room with dead eyes. Before leaving, Kersh checked the prison’s guest log to see who might have been interested in visiting Charlie Lowenstein. Aside from his wife, Ruby, no one had. In a last-ditch effort to catch a break, Kersh had pulled the telephone logs from the Lowenstein residence, on the off chance Ruby Lowenstein had been passing information between her husband and any known criminals. Yet none of the names on the toll reports matched any known street guys. Lowenstein was a dead end.

Kersh stood and popped the tendons in his back. He thought of sleep—thought of his single bed in the remoteness of his apartment, cloaked in darkness, the shade of the tiny window across from his bed drawn against the harsh glare of too many streetlights. Moving across the floor, the carpet crackling with static, he could hear someone running a vacuum down the hallway.

Earlier in the day, a C-note came in with some handwriting scrawled along one side, too small and cramped to read. It was a long shot—what passer would be so careless?—but Kersh brought the note down to the Forensic Services Division nonetheless. The FSD examiners ran the handwriting sample through FISH, the Forensic Information System for Handwriting, to see if they could come up with a match, but it was a futile attempt.

“Just some arbitrary scribble. You were expecting to hit the jackpot?” one of the technicians had asked Kersh nonchalantly.

Kersh only shook his head and scratched at his unshaven throat. He was grasping at straws and suddenly felt very aloof, like a small child abandoned in the middle of a desert wasteland. “You guys have any fresh coffee down here?” was his response.

Now, looking at the money spread out across his desk, he continued to wonder how Francis Deveneau managed to stumble across it. His mind ran over scenarios, too esoteric and bumbling to be spoken aloud.

He shuffled through the description sheets sent in along with the counterfeit money from various banks in the past week: a fake hundred from some expensive downtown boutique; two more from a department store; another hundred from an upscale restaurant. Green and black ink printed on crinkled paper—some folded lengthwise, some dog-eared and damaged, some smeared with grease or frayed at the corners. So many bills … so many people to handle it all. There could be hundreds of fingerprints. Pieces of paper. That was all—just
paper
. Paper that ran the world.

What was the solution to the equation? He couldn’t see it.

As if startled by some unseen force, Bill Kersh suddenly looked at his watch, grabbed his coat, and shuffled out of the office.

Sloopy Black was the living embodiment of the Paradise Lounge. Like the club, Sloopy was a narrow structure with nondescript features, and his skin was the color of smoke-stained cinderblocks. His eyes were so close together they nearly shared an eye socket, and his teeth—or what remained of them—were encased in so much gold that if a smile was executed, neon lights from the Paradise Lounge flecked off them like stars in some distant galaxy. Around him, like a mist of invisible insects, hung an odor three parts alcohol, one part something frighteningly similar to putrefaction. When he talked, Sloopy was inclined to run his tongue between his thick, livery lips with such feverish rapidity that it wouldn’t have surprised Kersh if, on any particular occasion, the man’s tongue simply fell out of his face.

Kersh was late meeting Sloopy, and when he first stepped into the Paradise Lounge, he thought perhaps the sleazy creature either had already split or hadn’t shown up at all. Then he caught Sloopy’s fervent wave from across the club and headed in the man’s direction. Of course Sloopy wouldn’t skip the meeting; none of Bill Kersh’s informants ever skipped their meetings. Meetings made them feel important. Besides, Kersh bought them drinks.

“Hello, Sloopy. Sorry I’m late.”

“Awright, Mr. Bill. It’s mighty cold outside tonight anyhow.” Wasting no time, the incredible flitting tongue made its first appearance of the evening.

“You want a drink?”

“Beer’d be nice.” Sloopy was looking over Kersh’s shoulder at the Lounge’s main stage. A half-nude girl twisted herself between two brass poles. The club was small and oppressively hot, and beads of sweat dotted her body, reflecting the stage lights.

Kersh ordered two beers and did not say anything until they arrived and Sloopy started to drink.

“You remember those counterfeit bills I mentioned to you last week?”

“Oh, sure.”

“You heard anything, seen anything since then?”

Sloopy feigned contemplation, contorting the contours of his face until he resembled the twisted crown of a tied garbage bag.

“No, no, no cunnerfut.”

“Those guys you run with, Sloopy—you think they’d know anything?”

“No, sir. I ast around about it for you. Ain’t none of ‘em deal in cunnerfut. We all gettin’ ourselves cleaned up, don’t you know?”

“How’s your beer?”

“A little warm. It’s good, though. I’ll drink it, sure.”

Sloopy Black usually slithered around the city with a horde of similar degenerates, eating where he found food, stealing what he could use to get by. The most harmful crimes committed by Sloopy Black and those like him were the crimes they committed against themselves. The morning after a good night, the gray skin of Sloopy’s forearms was bruised to a brilliant purple and dotted with needle pricks. On the same mornings, Kersh also noticed a fading resonance in Sloopy’s eyes … like a roaring fire slowly being starved of oxygen. Yet Sloopy and his ilk were the truest eyes and ears of the city. They crept along the sewer-laden streets on their bellies, sniffing the ground, the air, the people. They knew of murders before bodies were ever discovered; they lived among the refuse of mankind only to become quite adept in recognizing their kin, and found great satisfaction relating such information to anyone who bothered to spare the time and the dollar. Sloopy was no different than any other informant—it was important to listen to what he had to say, lies and all. It was Kersh’s job to sift through the muck and compile the salvageable bits of information, no matter how diluted in bullshit they may be.

Kersh tapped a finger on the tabletop to gather Sloopy’s attention. “You still got that card with the phone number I gave to you?”

“Sure.” Sloopy’s eyes lingered on Kersh. “Mr. Bill? You okay?”

From across the room, Kersh watched as the young stripper swayed over to the edge of the stage, squatted down on her haunches while flipping back her mane of hair, and extended a libidinous smile to the middle-aged gentleman seated at the foot of the stage. She seemed to rise in slow motion, and just as the horizon of her g-string crested the brass railing, the middle-aged man reached out to her, a slender dollar bill folded lengthwise between his fingers, and slipped his stubby fingers beneath the elastic lip of her underwear.

“Mr. Bill—”

Kersh stood up sharply. Without glancing down at Sloopy, he tossed some money on the table and waved his hand at the informant.

“Mr. Bill…”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Kersh said. “I have to go.”

He was already moving toward the door.

“W
HAT ARE YOU DOING?”
K
ATIE GAME UP
behind him and began rubbing his shoulders. The ceiling light threw her shadow across the kitchen table.

“Going over some paperwork,” he said. “Is it late?” He was bent over the kitchen table like a monk in prayer. An hour ago, his back had started hurting; now, the pain had grown so dull—or he’d become so accustomed to it—that he hardly felt anything at all.

“Sort of. Do you know what I think?”

“Hmmm?” he responded noncommittally.

“I think we should get some of those fancy Italian fixtures for the bathroom. The real shiny ones.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I forget the brand name I’m thinking of…”

“I like what’s in there already.”

“You do not,” she said, pushing her mouth against his ear. “You don’t even know what’s in there. What’s in there?”

He shrugged, smiled. Spread out on the table before him were the telephone records for Francis Deveneau’s cell phone, going back the past three months. He’d gone over the numbers countless times before, circling and re-circling specific numbers, but he’d been unable to finger another thread, unable to find any other lead.