chapter six

the second oldest profession

Never underestimate the power of food. For the rest of my jail visits, I schlepped doughnuts and bear claws and Starbucks coffee to the guards every morning to grease the wheels, maybe curry a modicum of favor for Lonnie. I learned that Sergeant Donnell Collins had once been a middle linebacker on the Kansas City Chief’s practice squad until he blew out a knee ten years ago. He was nicknamed The Truth. The other guards deferred to him. The Truth settled all disputes at his level.

I also became acquainted on a lesser level with the other guards who regularly trolled for doughnuts. There was Smilin’ Henry who loved to tell bad jokes, Big Daddy Dwight who had eight kids and a fifty-six inch chest the shape of an oak wine barrel, Rain Man Marty who rarely talked and looked like he’d done too many drugs in the seventies, and the crew cut twins, Wilbur-the-Truck and Zack-the-Train Johnson who enjoyed hunting, tattoos, and heavy metal music. I got the impression most of the guards had endured their share of hard times and could have landed on the other side of the bars, given a simple twist of fate here or there.

I like to think the sweets bought me a little more time to connect with Lonnie, because I needed every minute of it. I was not allowed to pass him anything tangible, only the meager comfort of words and my time. I imagine, for a man in his position, that didn’t seem like much.

His prison file read like a rubber-stamped version of the classic disadvantaged black criminal with three glaring exceptions, but the telling part came in what it didn’t contain. It said Lonnie had been born to a mentally retarded woman with a history of drug abuse and psychiatric illness; father unknown, no other family; the state took custody at birth and he’d spent time in, and ran away from, over ten different foster homes; he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder as a child and was non-compliant with his medications; workers and practicum students in various residential facilities that warehoused him between foster home stays labeled him a loner, an antisocial personality with borderline traits who probably abused small animals and set fires when young, though there was no documentation of it. The reports portrayed adult Lonnie as uncooperative during interviews and intentionally inconsistent with his responses to MMPIs and various psychological and personality tests. He reputedly had negligible insight and judgment, poor impulse control, was manipulative, displayed a blatant disregard for authority (again, no corroboration), and was deemed a chronic, recalcitrant criminal, dangerous to others, with poor rehabilitation potential. About the deviations: he received a perfect GED score at age fifteen while in a foster home and, based on his IQ, could have passed the Mensa test in his sleep; he had an uninterrupted work record since age eighteen, at times working two and three jobs; and the file listed no prior crimes against people or property as a juvie or adult, no drug possession or sales charges, not even a jaywalking or traffic ticket. Felony mass counterfeiting was his first known brush with the law, if you don’t count the runaways from foster homes.

On Monday his right hand shot up in the air again.

“What’s with the hand movements? Are you drawing?”

“Force of habit. If I’m a model prisoner, I’m allowed thirty minutes a day to draw. Unsupervised access to pens, pencils, paints, even charcoals, isn’t allowed in special security—potential weapons.” He seemed to look past me, beyond the cinder block walls. “I get the urge to draw something, my hand goes up.” He finished his imaginary picture.

“Drawing is an escape, a release.”

“Did it most every waking hour in the real world.” He looked down at his fingers. “They seem to have a mind of their own in here.”

It reminded me of the pacing behavior of a big cat in a zoo.

I nodded at his slender hands. “Are those tattoos?”

“You’re not the first person to think that.” He turned over his green-and-black stained hands for my inspection. “These are the permanent inks from my trade.”

“The counterfeiting?”

He held my gaze, his eyes hardening. “I work in a printing business. Ten years,” he said. He turned away from me and shut down for the rest of our allotted time.

Smilin’ Henry escorted me out of the room. He thanked me for the doughnuts and said, “Hey, Doc, what costs less, beer nuts or deer nuts?”

“I don’t know, Henry.”

“Has to be deer nuts, ’cause they’re under a buck.” He slapped me on the back and grinned. “See ya next time, Doc.”

$ $ $

On Tuesday I asked Lonnie if he’d seen or spoken to Detective Baker since his arrest.

He briefly averted his eyes to the door. Body language of looking for the exit meant he didn't want to answer. “Why would I?”

I sensed him withdraw from me.

“Your welfare seems important to him. When did you know each other?”

He shrugged, as if to shake off my question. “Don’t remember. It was in another world. School, I think.”

“You certainly made an impression on him.” I leaned back in my uncomfortable metal chair and studied him. “He’s concerned that you're planning to kill yourself. Does he have a reason to worry?”

He didn't answer. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“You told me the other day that you’re already a dead man. Why?”

He ignored me and this time Rain Man Marty silently walked me out, his beady eyes shifting nervously in all directions. Marty didn’t answer my questions about Lonnie, either.

$ $ $

“I read up on counterfeiting last night,” I told Lonnie on Wednesday. “It’s considered the world’s second oldest profession. Seventh century BC saw the advent of currency, and a hundred years later the first counterfeiters appeared.”

He nodded. “European countries would draw and quarter counterfeiters or burn them at the stake. The Netherlands boiled them in oil. In the Coliseum the Roman emperors ordered them fed to the lions to entertain the masses, part of their Bread and Circuses.…” His voice trailed off.

Was he thinking of his future?

“I read about the two big counterfeiting booms in the US when paper money appeared—”

“In the American colonies around 1650, and it peaked during the Civil War, when half of the money script was fake,” Lonnie interjected.

“Abraham Lincoln enacted a law creating the Secret Service to fight counterfeiting—”

“On the very day he was assassinated,” he answered. “Early US counterfeiters were hanged and the first bills bore the warning, ‘Tis death to counterfeit.’ To this day, it remains a capital offense in China, Vietnam, most of the Middle East.”

“You know a lot about counterfeiting,” I said, as an outside commotion in the hallway flared; frenzied screams and shouts, the fast shuffling of feet, and a telltale thud against the cinder block wall. An eerie silence followed.

Ears tuned to the hallway, he listened for movement that never came. He swallowed once and whispered, “I like to read.”

“What about the Superdollar? Do you think it’s an urban myth?”

In the world of counterfeiting, speculation about the Superdollar was akin to talk of the Holy Grail. In the seventies, the US allegedly sold a large printing press to Iran exactly like the ones our Treasury uses. Rumor is that North Korea now has it and is mass producing copies of US currency so perfect you'd need an electron microscope to tell the fakes from the real thing.

He squirmed in his seat as a brief, wistful look filled his face. Was that a flash of thinly concealed excitement beneath his apathetic façade? “I wouldn’t know.”

During my doctoral practicum in a state-funded drug and alcohol program, junkies would wax poetic while describing their drug of choice in group sessions. Lonnie showed the same contact high about counterfeiting. A brief display, but one he recognized and curbed.

“When counterfeiting peaked again in the early nineties, the Treasury redesigned our paper currency in 1996—”

“Increasing jail time and fines for forgers,” he said. Stopping himself, he waggled a green-black finger at me. “We’re done today.”

He’s a smart, patient man. Part of the skill set needed in his profession.

On my way out I followed in Big Daddy Dwight’s immense shadow.

“He’s so small and frail, Dwight; how is he managing?”

He turned back to me. “He hasn’t talked to you about his time?” He read the answer from my look and said, “Happens with a first timer. Some worry they’ll flip out, others think talking about the inside with a visitor makes them relive it instead of forgetting it and focusing on the outside for half an hour. I’m only allowed to say that prisoner Washington is doing his time here. You’re welcome to make an appointment with the superintendent to discuss it further, if you’d like.”

I held out my hands. “What harm could it do to answer? Is this standard guard-speak for all inmates, or just this one?”

He ignored me and resumed walking. We turned a few corners and were back at the guard station. “Here we are, Doc. You may collect your belongings on your way out. Have a blessed day.”

So much for cutting corners.

That night Baker called me at home and said, “Get two beers from the fridge and go to the front door.”

He sat sprawled in one of the chairs on my landing, batting at a persistent fly. “Summer gonna take over soon and make people crazy. People kill each other more when it gets hot. It’s headin’ into my busy season.”

I sat down and passed him a Red Stripe. “What the hell am I doing here?”

He twisted off the red cap. “You goin’ all Sartre on me, Cool Breeze?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. How can I possibly help this guy?”

“You earn his trust yet?”

“No. He’s talking, but only admits he knows a lot about counterfeiting.”

“He must like you if you got him talkin’ already.”

“You say you haven’t seen him for years. How do you know what he’s like now?”

Baker drained the rest of his beer and burped. “Got another?”

“No. You’re not telling me everything, and I’m getting tired of the games. I quit.”

“You can’t!”

“Watch me.”

I saw the panic in his eyes. “What you find out about him so far?”

“He’s genius-level smart and extremely controlled, he won’t discuss suicide and he’s a pro at hiding his feelings. My gut tells me he fears for his life, but that he accepts his fate as if it’s some sort of penance. I expected someone different. His first brush with the law comes this late in life and it’s high-stakes counterfeiting? Why? The only positive human connection he admits to having at this point is with his mentally challenged mother. He’s not telling me everything. Like you.”

Baker nodded. “No minor arrests, nothin’, then at thirty-nine he hits the big time for counterfeitin’. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“Are you saying he’s innocent, that he was set up?”

“No, he’s a counterfeiter, like I told you from the jump. I’m sayin’ we up to our eyeballs in strange here and the little brother needs all the help he can get.”

“Why does he say he’s a dead man? Why would someone want to kill him?” I asked, handing him another beer.

Baker twisted the cap and stared at me like I was being obtuse. “Why do people kill? The answer’s old as man, Breeze. Think about it.”

We sat in silence until he said, “Four hundred seventy-five US bills weigh a pound. One pound of the little brother’s bills is worth $47,500, and twenty-five million weighs over 526 pounds. His share, assumin’ they split it equally, weighed more than he did. Millions in cash, unlike jewels, is heavy to lug around and easier to spot. This batch is hot and heat … leaves a trail.” He leaned back and drank half the beer.

“Maynard said the police recovered ninety-five percent of it, so why would anyone want to kill him for counterfeit money he doesn’t have?”

He stared at me with that you-know-why look again. “Lonnie said he removed all twenty-five million from the basement the night before the raid. They closed up shop and the little brother was about to burn the two flawed test sheets when that old cop came callin’. Those two sheets the only hard evidence they got on him.”

“You said you haven’t talked to him. I quit.”

The unmovable force that is Baker grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks.

“I got a lot of birdies flyin’ out there, Breeze, and this is bigger than that scandal you helped us break last year.”

“Helped you break?”

“You know what I mean,” he said, exasperated.

“Then I’m definitely out.” I looked at my arm he held and then back at him. “Let … me … go.”

His vice grip tightened. “The little brother needs you. I need you. If I gave you the whole story and word got out, lives would be ruined and a lot of good undone. You have to trust me—learn it on your own and you’ll understand. Nothin’ and no one is as you suspect in this cluster fuckin’ melodrama; it’s all upside down and inside out.”

“Why do you need Tony’s help if you have all these birdies out there? Answer that or I’m gone with the wind.”

That confident smirk resurfaced. “Read this.” He handed me Xeroxed pieces of paper that described in bare bones narrative the capture of Lonnie Washington, including a detailed written and pictorial inventory of the impounded counterfeiting equipment, money, weapons, and drugs. The officer in charge at the scene was none other than Joseph Moreno, the city police chief. Assistant Chief Rhymes and officers Carter, Malvern, and Downey were other cops listed as present.
Exactly as Maynard described on camera, it curtly described a coordinated police raid on an illegal counterfeiting operation.

“So?”

He pointed at the sheets. “See the name Dan Quinn anywhere?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t this happen all the time—the higher-ups take credit for the collar? Like in the movies when the FBI swoops in to trump the local fuzz?”

Baker took the paper from me and returned it to his jacket pocket. “One of my birdies saw the bust go down … said Quinn was the only cop there.”

“How reliable is your feathered friend?”

Baker lowered his eyes briefly. “He’s a chippy; smokes crack when he can get it, some weed. He on the payroll, but he’s always been solid with me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I quit,” I said and got up to go inside.

Baker relented. “The little brother told his court-appointed that Quinn was the only cop on the scene. You said it yourself—if this were a coordinated police sting, how could an old man, on oxygen, with one foot in the grave, escape through one of the two exits in the building against five experienced, fully-armed cops? Dan Quinn is a fat, old Irish beat cop with nineteen years’ service; he drinks and eats while marking off the days to his twenty and out. He couldn’t catch a one-legged pickpocket in a closet.”

“So what does Quinn have to say about it?”

Baker tensed. “He’s into the wind. Never clocked out that shift and there’s been no answer on his home phone. Missed his next shift and didn’t call in. Chief Moreno ordered the building super to let them into Quinn’s apartment. No evidence of foul play, but it looked like he’d packed in a hurry. Wife left him years ago; no kids, no siblings.”

I thought back to the report. “What do officers Carter, Malvern, and Downey say about Quinn?”

Baker deftly peeled off the beer label in one whole piece. “That he was never there.”

“And Tony fits into this how?”

A toothpick slid into the side of Baker’s mouth. “I never knew Quinn, but a birdie told me when his wife left him it affected his work and the brass forced him into counseling—”

“Enter Tony.”

He touched the tip of his nose. “Back when he was a hotshot headshrinker like you in private practice. My sources dried up. I can’t ask The Voice about him ’cause I’m a homicide dick and he wouldn’t tell me shit anyway because of confidentiality. You his best friend so maybe you can connive something from him to help us find Quinn or at least what happened to him. You got the gift, man. I seen you in action.”

“Who’s playing whom now?”

Baker rose and patted his breast pocket. “Don’t mention the report, not even to The Voice. Word got out, I’d lose my shield, or worse. You got me over a barrel. I need your help.”

I told Baker the conversation I’d overheard in the bathroom stall before the press conference, what the man who sounded like Maynard had said and the other man’s responses. By the time I’d finished, his muscles were coiled like springs. “I know we’re onto something,” I said.

“It all fits. But we got no proof, even if you were sure it was Maynard.”

I didn’t quit. I still thought about it, but Lonnie remained an intriguing enigma. What is his work and why isn’t it complete? My comfortable—and safe—sofa beckoned, but unknown forces drew me to see whether Lonnie could salvage his life's work from the rubble of his foiled master plan.

He and Baker had blazed a twisting path for me. I decided to see where it led.