Jasper and Pike put down the suitcases by the long tables, then Jasper came over and shook Clark 's hand. Clark seemed embarrassed.
Jasper put his hands on his hips and looked at the lithograph press and the plate maker and the computer. 'Well, I don't blame you for being scared after what happened that night, but you should've stayed in the program. After that night, you would've been fine.'
Clark said, 'I'm sorry about your friend.' Peterson.
'Yeah, well.' Jasper walked over to the big press and ran his fingers along it. Billings took off his jacket, folded it, then put it on one of the long tables. Jasper said, 'I understand there's a problem with your boy. I'm sorry about that.'
Clark stopped futzing.
'We'll try to do a little bit better by you this time.' Jasper offered a friendly smile when he said it.
Clark turned back to the Macintosh and scanned a one-hundred-dollar bill. I watched him, and Billings came over and watched with me. Clark scanned the Franklin side, then turned the bill and scanned Independence Hall. When the images were scanned, he brought them up on the Macintosh, enlarged them, and began isolating sections of the bills. I said, 'What are you doing?'
'I have to make plates, and to make the plates I need a clean image. We're making Federal Reserve notes, and that means we need three plates. A back plate because the back of the bill is printed in a uniform green, and two front plates because the face of the bill is printed in black, but the serial numbers and Treasury seal are printed in green, so those images have to be separated.'
'Oh.'
Clark stopped what he was doing and looked at me and Billings. 'Do you have to watch me?'
'Sorry.'
Billings and I went to the table. There were five people and only two chairs, so I sat cross-legged on the table. Billings took one of the chairs.
The time oozed past like cold molasses. Clark worked steadily and hard, but the rest of us could only watch. Pike went into the far corner and stood on his head. I did a little yoga and felt myself getting sleepy. Jasper paced. Billings blew bubbles. Crime fighting at its most exciting.
Jasper said, 'I'm starving. Is anyone else hungry?'
Pike and Billings and I said, 'Yes.'
'Saw an In-n-out Burger on the way.'
I said, 'Joe doesn't eat meat.'
Jasper frowned, like that was the world's biggest problem.
Clark said, 'There's a Chinese place close by.'
Billings said, 'I could go for that.'
Pike and Jasper went for Chinese, got back just before ten, and we ate. Clark never stopped working, and didn't eat. Maybe the dope killed his appetite, or maybe he was thinking about Charles.
When Clark had perfect separate images, he had the computer reverse them and build perfect photonegatives, then copied the negatives in a pattern that would let him print twenty bills at a time. One million dollars was ten thousand hundreds, but if you could print twenty bills per every sheet, that meant only five hundred sheets. Of course, you had to run each sheet through the press three times, but it still meant that the press only had to run for three or four hours. All the time was in getting ready.
When Clark had the three master negatives, he mounted them in a plate maker and burned a positive image on a thin aluminum sheet, then, one by one, washed the sheets in a chemical bath to ready the plates for the ink. It took Clark about six hours to make the plates, and it was time that passed ever more slowly, with nothing for me or Pike or Jasper or Billings to do except offer the occasional word of encouragement. The In-n-out Burger was open twenty-four hours, and once Jasper went for drinks, and once I went, but most of our time was spent doing nothing. Clark grew pale again, and his skin seemed clammy, and twice he sat down, but neither time for very long. I said, ' Clark, why don't you take a break. Let's get some air.'
'It won't be very much longer.' He said it even when I didn't ask. He said it maybe a hundred times.
Jasper would watch Clark, then walk away, then watch some more, then walk away, like he was nervous about all of this and losing his patience. Finally, he said, 'It doesn't have to be perfect, for chrissake.'
Clark stopped working and stared at him. Jasper walked away.
At ten minutes after six that morning I went out into the parking lot and breathed the cool night air and watched the first traces of pink freshen the eastern sky. Moths swarmed around the parking lot lamps, banging into the glass with a steady tap-tap-tap, and I wondered if they welcomed the dawn. At dawn, they could stop slamming their heads into the thing that forever kept them from the light. People don't have a dawn. We just keep slamming away until it kills us.
Clark had worked steadily through the night, and I thought that his pain must be terrible, but, unlike the moths, he was doing it because he loved his son. I guess I would do it, too, and I hoped that the love helped with his pain.
When I went back inside, Clark Hewitt was still working. Billings had fallen asleep.
At eight minutes after seven that morning, Clark brought the plates to the lithograph machine, fitted the portrait plate to the printing cylinder, then filled the inkwell with black ink. He looked at me and said, 'I think we're ready.'
Jasper said, 'About goddamned time.'
Pike was still in his corner. I don't think he had moved for hours. Billings sat up, blew another bubble, then stared at Pike. I think he found Pike odd.
Clark said, 'We'll run some test sheets through, first. Just to see.'
I brought over a bundle of the paper. It made me feel useful.
Clark fitted a stack of the paper into the paper feeder, then ran through two sheets. The big machine made a whirring, snapping sound as the paper went through, and the paper went through faster than I'd expected. It came out smudged and dark. Clark said, 'Sucks.'
He made some adjustments with a little screwdriver, then ran through two more sheets. These looked fine to me, but Clark frowned again. Jasper rolled his eyes. Clark made another adjustment, printed two more sheets that I thought were identical to the last two, but this time he seemed pleased. 'This should do. I think we're ready to print.'
That's when Joe Pike said, 'Listen.'
Billings said, 'What?' He blew an enormous pink bubble.
Jasper said, 'For chrissakes, let's just print the money and get going.'
Pike moved to the lithograph and slapped the shut-off switch. The drum whined down and the humming stopped. Clark said, 'It's going to take a while to reheat.'
Jasper said, 'What are you people talking about?'
Pike held up a finger, his head cocked to the side, and then he took out his gun. 'Listen.'
There might have been the faint squeal of a door hinge, and there might've been the faraway thump of something hard bumping into a doorjamb or a wall. My first thought was that it was Dak and his people, coming to check on us, but it wasn't, and I didn't have time for another thought.
Claude Billings trotted to the door, stepped into the hall, and that's when Alexei Dobcek shot him once through the great pink bubble and blew out the back of his head.
CHAPTER 34
Pike pushed Clark down behind the litho press. I ran for the door, shooting three times into the darkness and once into the wall. Dobcek yelled something in Russian, and he and another guy fell back along the hall into the parking lot. I fired twice more, then pulled Billings back into the big room, but he was already dead. I said, 'The Russians. We're outta here now.'
I saw a flash of men moving in the parking lot, and I heard crashing at the front of the building.