Short Fiction, Mack Reynolds [best book reader txt] 📗

was possible, but difficult, for anything in espionage to develop without his having an inkling.

The phone rang back. It was Steve Hackett of Secret Service on the screen.

Hackett said, “Woolford, you coming over? I understand you’ve been assigned to get in our hair on this job.”

“Huh,” Larry grunted. “The way I hear it, your whole department has given up, so I’m assigned to help you out of your usual fumble-fingered confusion.”

Hackett snorted. “At any rate, can you drop over? I’m to work in liaison with you.”

“Coming,” Larry said. He hung up, got to his feet and headed for the door. If they could crack this thing the first day, he’d take up that vacation where it’d been interrupted and possibly be able to wangle a few more days out of the Boss to boot.

At this time of day, parking would have been a problem, in spite of automation of the streets. He left his car in the departmental lot and took a cab.

The Counterfeit Division of the Secret Service occupied an impressive section of an impressive governmental building. Larry Woolford flashed his credentials here and there, explained to guards and receptionists here and there, and finally wound up in Steve Hackett’s office which was all but a duplicate of his own in size and decor.

Steve Hackett himself was a fairly accurate carbon copy of Woolford, barring facial resemblance alone. The fact was, Steve was almost Lincolnesque in his ugliness. Career man, about thirty, good university, crew cut, six foot, one hundred and seventy, earnest of eye. He wore Harris tweed. Larry Woolford made a note of that; possibly herringbone was coming back in. He winced at the thought of a major change in his wardrobe; it’d cost a fortune.

They’d worked on a few cases together before when Steve Hackett had been assigned to the presidential bodyguard and cooperated well.

Steve came to his feet and shook hands. “Thought that you were going to be down in Florida bass fishing this month. You like your work so well you can’t stay away, or is it a matter of trying to impress your chief?”

Larry growled, “Fine thing. Secret Service bogs down and they’ve got to call me in to clean up the mess.”

Steve motioned him to a chair and immediately went serious. “Do you know anything about pushing queer, Woolford?”

“That means passing counterfeit money, doesn’t it? All I know is what’s in the Tri-D crime shows.”

“I can see you’re going to be a lot of help. Have you got anywhere at all on the possibility that the stuff might be coming from abroad?”

“Nothing positive,” Larry said. “Are you people accomplishing anything?”

“We’re just getting underway. There’s something off-trail about this deal, Woolford. It doesn’t fit into routine.”

Larry Woolford said, “I wouldn’t think so if the stuff is so good not even a bank clerk can tell the difference.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about now. Let me give you a run down on standard counterfeiting.” The Secret Service agent pushed back in his swivel chair, lit a cigarette, and propped his feet onto the edge of a partly open desk drawer. “Briefly, it goes like this. Some smart lad gets himself a set of plates and a platen press and⁠—”

Larry interrupted, “Where does he get the plates?”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Steve said. “Various ways. Maybe he makes them himself, sometimes he buys them from a crooked engraver. But I’m talking about pushing green goods once it’s printed. Anyway, our friend runs off, say, a million dollars worth of fives. But he doesn’t try to pass them himself. He wholesales them around netting, say, fifty thousand dollars. In other words, he sells twenty dollars in counterfeit for one good dollar.”

Larry pursed his lips. “Quite a discount.”

“Um-m-m. But that’s safest from his angle. The half dozen or so distributors he sold it to don’t try to pass it either. They also are playing it carefully. They peddle it, at say ten to one, to the next rung down the ladder.”

“And these are the fellows that pass it, eh?”

“Not even then, usually. These small timers take it and pass it on at five to one to the suckers in the trade, who take the biggest risks. Most of these are professional pushers of the queer, as the term goes. Some, however, are comparative amateurs. Sailors for instance, who buy with the idea of passing it in some foreign port where seamen’s money flows fast.”

Larry Woolford shifted in his chair. “So what are you building up to?”

Steve Hackett rubbed the end of his pug nose with a forefinger in quick irritation. “Like I say, that’s standard counterfeit procedure. We’re all set up to meet it, and do a pretty good job. Where we have our difficulties is with amateurs.”

Woolford scowled at him.

Hackett said, “Some guy who makes and passes it himself, for instance. He’s unknown to the stool pigeons, has no criminal record, does up comparatively small amounts and dribbles his product onto the market over a period of time. We had one old devil up in New York once who actually drew one dollar bills. He was a tremendous artist. It took us years to get him.”

Larry Woolford said, “Well, why go into all this? We’re hardly dealing with amateurs now.”

Steve looked at him. “That’s the trouble. We are.”

“Are you batty? Not even your own experts can tell this product from real money.”

“I didn’t say it was being made by amateurs. It’s being pushed by amateurs⁠—or maybe amateur is the better word.”

“How do you know?”

“For one thing, most professionals won’t touch anything bigger than a twenty. Tens are better, fives better still. When you pass a fifty, the person you give it to is apt to remember where he got it.” Steve Hackett said slowly, “Particularly if you give one as a tip to the maître d’hôtel in a first-class restaurant. A maître d’ holds his job on the strength of his ability to remember faces and names.”

“What else makes you think your pushers are amateurs?”

“Amateur,” Hackett corrected.