Indigo Slam

Dobcek stared at me, then shook his head. 'What do you mean?'

'Bring it to Markov and have him look at it. I'll wait here.'

Dobcek leaned close to me. 'We'll kill the boy.'

'Have him look at the money, Dobcek. I'll wait and so will Clark. We're not going anywhere, and Markov will want to talk about it. Tell him this is a sample.'

Alexei Dobcek looked one hard long time at the bookstore, then walked away with the bag.

I watched couples share coffee and breakfast at the little restaurant next to the bookstore, and I thought I might bring Lucy down here. She'd like the bookstore, and we could sit at one of the little outdoor tables and watch the street performers and enjoy ourselves. Read a little, eat a little. Be nice to do if I survived the next ten minutes or so.

Dobcek reappeared between the street vendor tents, and this time Sautin and Andrei Markov and a fourth man were with him. The fourth man was wearing jeans and a green polo shirt, and he was carrying the bag. Markov was wearing a sharkskin jacket and gold chains, and looked like a second-rate Vegas lounge act. A young woman in a green bikini looked at him as she Bladed past and laughed. Probably wasn't the fashion reaction he was hoping for.

When they reached me, Markov made a little wave at the bag. 'I always worry when someone change the plan on me.'

'So why didn't you just kill the boy and drive away?'

'Maybe I still gonna do that. Maybe the boy and you and Clark, too.' Markov smiled toward the bookstore, then waved toward the bag again. 'Why you wanna show me this?'

' Clark printed it. He's going to print more, and we were thinking you might like some of it instead of killing Clark and his boy. We were thinking that you might like so much of it that you'll forgive Clark for the little problem in Seattle and let bygones be bygones.' They would either go for it or they wouldn't. We could either convince them it was counterfeit, or we couldn't.

The fourth guy put the bag on the ground, and took out one of the hundreds. He snapped the bill and sneered at me. 'You sayin' this is funny?' He snapped the bill again. 'My goddamned ass it is.'

The fourth guy wasn't Russian. He sounded like he was from Georgia or Florida, and I didn't like it that he was here. He sounded like he knew about printing, and he might be able to call Clark a liar and get away with it. Maybe he was Markov's current funny money specialist. I said, 'Who the hell are you?'

'The guy sayin' you're bullshit.'

I smiled at Markov. 'You're not interested, that's fine.' The homeless guy with the dog had set up shop ten yards down the boardwalk in front of a stand selling African robes. I called, 'Hey, dog man.' When he looked over, I closed the bag and tossed it to him. 'Have a party.' I turned back at Markov and spread my hands. 'Your loss, Andrei. We're sitting on a couple million more of this stuff.'

Ten yards away, the homeless guy looked in the bag and shouted, 'Yeow! Jesus has returned!'

Markov sighed and tilted his head. 'Dobcek.'

Dobcek trotted over and pulled the bag away from the old man. The old man didn't want to let go, so Dobcek punched him once in the forehead. Hard. I kept the smile on my face like it didn't matter to me. I kept the smile like I didn't want to take out my gun and shoot Dobcek to death. Like I didn't feel like a dog because I had brought it on the old man.

The fourth guy said, 'Hey, Mr. Markov, if those bills are righteous I'd like to know how.' Wounded and whiny, as if his feelings were hurt that Markov doubted him.

I said, ' Clark 's in the bookstore. You give him a pass to come out here and talk about it?'

'Da.'

I waved Clark out. When Clark reached us he stood a little behind me, and kept his hands in his pockets. The sun made him squint so much that his eyes were little slits. Markov said, 'You look like shit.'

Clark said, 'Hi, Mr. Markov.'

The fourth guy toed the bag. 'This is intaglio, not offset. This is Crane paper.' He shook his head. 'My ass you printed this.'

Clark blinked at me, and I gave him an encouraging smile. 'Guy thinks you're bullshit. Guy wants to know how you did it.' I crossed my arms so that my hand was near the Dan Wesson and hoped that Pike was zeroed on Dobcek because I was planning on shooting Sautin. I would shoot Sautin first, then Markov, and then the fourth man, and hope that I could do all that before someone shot me. We were maybe twenty seconds from all the shooting, and if we survived the boy would still be lost, all because some cracker who knew a little printing just happened to be with Markov.

Clark blinked at me again, and I said, 'Tell the man, Clark.'

Clark blinked once more, then took a bill from the bag, snapped it just as the cracker had, and smiled at Andrei Markov. 'Of course it's Crane paper. You can't fake that wonderful sound.' He snapped it again, then held up the bill. 'They used to be one-dollar bills.'

The cracker frowned.

Clark said, 'Real U.S. money printed on real Crane paper.' He held the bill to Markov. Markov took it. 'But they were ones. I washed them, Andrei. Bleached the original ink, then washed them and pressed them and reprinted them as hundreds.' Clark 's smile widened. 'You wouldn't believe the wonderful technology we have now, Andrei.'

The cracker took a bill from the bag and frowned harder at it.

Clark said, 'I bleached eight hundred pounds of paper, and I've got an intaglio press. It's older, but it's one of the Swiss originals that a printing firm in France had until they went out of business last year.' Clark let the smile turn shy. 'Well, it's not mine, really, but these people I know have it. I'm printing for them just the way I was printing for you.' I was staring at Clark. Staring, and impressed as hell.

Markov said, 'You gonna steal from them, too?'

'If I have to.' He said it directly to Markov and he said it well.

The cracker said, 'Where'd you get the plates?'

'Scanned them off a series of mint collector notes, all perfect hundreds printed between 1980 and 1985.1 used a high-density digitizer to get a pretty clean line, then created a photoneg off the digital image and used the photoneg to acid-etch the plates.' Clark pointed at the hundred the cracker was holding. 'You can see the inks are a little off, but I think I got pretty close.'

The cracker squinted at the bill and nodded. 'Yeah, a little too dark.' Afraid that Clark was showing him up in front of Markov.

Markov watched them talk with no more understanding of what they were saying than any of the rest of us, but he seemed to be buying it and that was all I cared about. I said, 'It doesn't matter that the inks are a little off. What we're talking here is bank-quality notes, counterfeit bills that will fool a bank or a cop or a Secret Service agent. Clark can print some extra for you. You get the money, and he gets his boy and you let them walk.'

Markov stared at me. Probably thinking about his older brother sitting in prison.

I rested a hand on Clark 's shoulder. 'And when he finishes this job, maybe you guys can go into business again.'

Markov's eyes shifted to Clark, then back to me. They went to Clark again. 'How much of this paper you have?'

'Eight hundred pounds, like I said.'

'When it's gone, can you make more, da?'

Clark shrugged. 'Maybe, maybe not. The chemicals were very hard to get. I won't lie to you about that.'

Markov nodded, thinking, then looked at the cracker. The cracker shrugged. 'It's good, Andrei. It's the best I've ever seen.'

I picked up the bag and held it out to Markov. 'Here. You keep it. You got any doubts, go see how it spends and think about getting more of it.'

Andrei Markov took the bag but didn't look into it or think anymore. He said, 'Five million.'

I looked at Clark. 'Can you print five million extra?'