The Quality of the Informant (15 page)

Mora's arms were folded across his chest. "I saw
LaMonica
a couple of days ago in the Castaways," he said. "I see a lot of people there."

"What did you talk about?" Carr said.

"About money. We always talk about money-business deals. I'm an entrepreneur."

"Where do you know him from?" Carr said.

Mora unfolded his arms and tried to rest them in his lap. This didn't work. He folded them across his chest again.

"Terminal Island. We did time together. I'm sure you already know that."

"So you talked about money..." Carr said.

"That's right. He had some kind of a deal going, and it turned to shit.
Some kind of a real-estate deal.
Of course he didn't go into detail about it. I assumed it had turned to shit when he came and asked me for a loan. I told him no. That's all I know about him. As far as my head shop, he was there once and he probably figured it was a good place to escape through...the alley and all."

Carr stood up and removed his coat. He hung it on the back of his chair. He sat down again. "Where can we find him?" he said.

"I have no idea. Maybe San Francisco or Las Vegas. But I truthfully have no idea where he lives," Mora said.

Carr was silent for a moment. He looked at Kelly. "If you don't tell us everything you know about
LaMonica
, we'll be forced to camp out on your ass just like we did today. We'll either end up arresting you again or putting you out of business, or both."

"Get the picture, clown?" Kelly said.

Mora stared at the wall. Sitting there, his sagging body barely fitting the government-issue chair, the angular man looked foolish, perhaps inconsequential. "
LaMonica
lives out of the state," he said. "I swear I don't know where. He was here in L.A. putting together some sort of a legitimate business deal. If you know anything at all about him, you'll know that he never tells anyone his business. As God is my witness, that's all I know about the
sonofabitch
. Now will you let me post bail? I have appointments to keep."

Carr stood up and opened the door. He nodded at Kelly.

Kelly stood up. "Sure," he said. "We wouldn't want to keep all those nice folks down at the Castaways waiting for
their
twenties." He grabbed the man's arm and pulled him out the door.

Carr and Kelly pulled up in front of a large
store front
with a sign that read "Lithographic Supply Service of Los Angeles." They went in.

Three hours later they were still there, coats off, crowded around a messy desk in the manager's office. The manager, a neat, older man who wore glasses with wire frames and a long-sleeved dress shirt that was a size too big, hovered over them as they sorted through piles of invoices.

"How do you know he ordered the supplies from here?" the manager asked sternly.

"Your telephone number was on the toll record we subpoenaed from the phone company," Carr said without looking up.

"And the name
Robert French?"
The manager folded his arms across his chest.

"Someone heard him make a call and order some ink," Carr said. He pushed aside a stack of invoices and dug into another.

"It seems to me," said the manager, "that what we're talking about here is
counterfeiting."
His tone was grave.

Kelly gave the man an odd look.

"All printers have tried it once," the stern man said.

"What's that?" Carr said. He smiled courteously.

"Counterfeiting," the manager said. "Every printer tries it once. They try it just as a lark and destroy the bills afterward. You know, just to see if they can do it."

"Hot damn!"
Kelly said, holding up one of the invoices like a rat's tail. He dropped it in front of Carr.

Carr read the invoice. It listed a sale of black, blue, green, and red ink plus fifteen reams of No. 53 paper to Robert French. Carr handed the invoice to the manager.

The manager studied the paper with a determined look. "Fifty-three is Ardmore Bond, a fairly high-quality paper. We don't get much call for it. This was a cash deal. An over-the-counter transaction."

Carr scribbled something in his notebook and stuffed it into his coat pocket. The agents stood up to leave and Carr thanked the manager.

"No thanks are necessary," he said with a sour look. "This shop has been broken into twice during the last year. I hope you catch the man you're looking for and put him in a penitentiary forever. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Forever." He pursed his lips.

"We'll sure try," Carr said on his way out the door. Kelly gave the man a little salute.

Carr and Kelly were alone in the squad room.

Files, all bearing
LaMonica's
name, were spread out across Carr's desk. Most of them were marked "Career Criminal," as if such a term had real meaning. Carr had spent the last two hours carefully going over the reports, summaries, and evaluations in them. The Treasury main file included specimen photographs of the counterfeit notes
LaMonica
had printed throughout the years, mixed in with arrest sheets, conviction forms, intelligence reports, and a stack of booking photographs in which
LaMonica's
hair became progressively grayer, his jowls slacker. He and Carr were about the same age.

The only remarkable difference from other such files was the absence of confession forms. Even
LaMonica's
first arrest (caught red-handed in a bank changing twenties into hundreds) reflected a refusal to give out anything other than his name. As a matter of fact, after his last arrest, he had refused even that.

Carr pulled a memorandum from a banded stack of papers covered by a note labeled: "Not for Dissemination Outside Department of justice." It read:

TO: Chief Federal Probation Officer

FROM: Carl
Teagarten
-Deputy Federal Probation Officer

SUBJECT: Probationer Paul A.
LaMonica
-Six-Week Release Report

1. Although probationer
LaMonica
has a bad habit of falling back into a criminal pattern, he has been out of federal prison for six weeks now and seems to be adjusting. Although he has not gained employment yet, he tells me that he has made a number of applications seeking work as a salesman. I have not allowed him to seek any printing-related occupation for the obvious reasons.

2.
LaMonica
remains somewhat of a loner and tells me that his free time is spent reading and going to the movies.

3. He rented a fairly expensive apartment in Beverly Hills last week. When I questioned him about it he was very cooperative. Apparently he has recently come into some sort of an inheritance from a distant relative (I haven't had time to verify this, but hope to by the next six-week report). He also made a down payment on a sports car with the same source of income.

4. I have received a number of calls from various law-enforcement agencies for
LaMonica's
current address, but have refused to provide it under terms of the Privacy Act.

5. Overall, Mr.
LaMonica
seems to be adjusting quite well at present. He continues to have an overwhelming desire to be accepted by others.

Carr shook his head. He turned to Kelly who was dialing a phone at the next desk. "Ever meet anyone who didn't have a desire to be accepted?"

"
Whatsat
?" Kelly said.

"Never mind," Carr said. He read the last report in the file. It was a year old and described how
LaMonica
had been caught in his Beverly Hills apartment with $50,000 in counterfeit twenties.

Carr closed the file.

Kelly jammed the phone down. "That was headquarters," he said. "
LaMonica
learned to print years ago in the Terminal Island print shop - some sort of a prison
rehabilitation program."
He gave a harsh laugh.

Carr stood up and stretched. He walked to the window. "
LaMonica
is getting ready to print," he said. "He bought black, green, red, and blue ink and a lot of paper. He would need black and green in order to print money, but I can't figure the blue and red."

Kelly shrugged. "Who the hell knows?" he said. "But there's one thing you can count on. He wouldn't buy ink and paper unless he already had everything else he needed: press,
platemaker
,
photo
equipment. He's probably running off a load somewhere right now."

"There's another thing that's for sure," Carr said, still staring out the window. "We don't have any leads."

****

Chapter 14

IT WAS Saturday afternoon.

Charles Carr slowed down to the speed limit as he approached the garish neon billboards that marked the beginning of the Las Vegas strip. He'd been lounging around Sally's apartment drinking coffee that morning when Sally had pointed at a newspaper advertisement for Las Vegas. With that, she'd jumped up and started throwing things into an overnight bag. "If you won't go with me, I'll go alone," she said.

He went with her. And during the trip she managed to talk the whole way. It was as if she were trying to compensate Carr for the long hours of sagebrush and telephone-line scenery. Her topics were familiar ones: judge Malcolm's college-age girl friend, the stenographers association's proposed fifteen-day bus tour of Europe, burgeoning rent and inflation, her sister's beautiful and talented children, and Judge Malcolm's shrewish, menopausal wife.

Sally finally stopped talking. She slid over next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. "It's been such a long time since we've taken one of our spur-of-the-moment trips," she said. "Get an idea and just go." She slid a hand inside his shirt and touched the hair on his chest. "You're so quiet."

At the check-in desk of the Silver Dollar Hotel and Casino, a mirrored place with a casino lobby the size of a football field, Carr signed the guest register "Mr. and Mrs. Charles Carr."

They spent the evening strolling in and out of the casinos, sipping cocktails, playing slot machines, people-watching along the strip. Carr rolled dice for a while at one place, but stopped when he realized Sally was bored. They caught the midnight stage show at the Dunes Hotel and afterward they ordered more than they could eat at a swanky Italian restaurant.

They didn't get to bed until after 3:00 A.M., and then they made love for a particularly long time. Sally joked about the therapeutic effects of wine. After exchanging tender goodnight kisses, Carr dropped off into slumber.

During the night he reached over to touch Sally and she wasn't there. She came back to bed and was silent for several minutes, but Carr could tell by her breathing that she hadn't gone to sleep.

"Are you awake?" Sally finally whispered.

"Yes."

"We don't communicate on the same wavelength," she said. "We communicate in bed and when we're out and have had a few drinks. Other than that, you're like a stranger. You could be someone I sat next to on a bus. We've dated for years and I still truly do not understand you. Damn."

Carr fluffed a pillow. He leaned back against the headboard. "Let's get up and hit a couple of crap tables before we go back," he said. "We might get lucky."

"Please
communicate
with me, Charlie."

Carr rubbed his eyes for a moment. He sat up in bed. "We once stood in line in a Vegas parking lot in order to pay some clown fifty dollars to read marriage vows off a three-by-five card. But I couldn't go through with it. I don't want to buy a tract house. I don't want to join the P.T.A. I don't want to go to cocktail parties with the neighbors. I don't want to wear matching tennis shorts. I don't like picnics or Little League games..."