Did you know that fires are good for forests?” Quake asked Heydale. They were sitting at a small table behind the police station. Quake had grown tired of “interviewing” Heydale in his cramped, foul-smelling cell, so he’d told Hornsweller that criminals were more forthcoming with confessions when in the outdoors. Now they conducted their talks at a table set up for that purpose. Quake leaned back in his chair as he spoke, his arms up, hands hooked behind his head, a posture Heydale could not mimic even if he wanted; he was handcuffed to his chair.
Quake had stopped asking Heydale about the Spokane Falls fire, however, unless someone else was within earshot. Such questioning was all for show anyway. This day in particular, frustrated with Hornsweller—and everyone else in Spokane Falls, for that matter—he preferred to talk of almost anything else. He had let himself spend his morning in his forest daydream and he wanted to stay in that world. Heydale could come along if he wanted.
“Like the fires that are happening in those mountains, just outside town.” He pointed south. Heydale, without speaking, pointed north. Quake adjusted north.
“Anyway, did you know that those forests need fire?” Quake asked. “It’s important. It clears out all the dead stuff, makes way for new growth, new life. There are certain types of trees whose spores won’t open until they get heated up. They need fire to spread their seeds. That’s how essential it is. People are generally opposed to fire because it’s an inconvenience, or they’re fearful of it. But it’s natural. It’s a good thing. Did you know that?”
Heydale seemed to consider this question carefully before speaking. “Did you know more than half the money in circulation in the United States is counterfeit?” he asked. “Did you know that?”
Quake stopped thinking about his forest fantasy then. He unhooked his hands and leaned forward in his chair. No, he said, he didn’t know anything about that at all.
Well, not half of all currency, Heydale corrected himself. Maybe 10 percent. He didn’t know for sure. But there was a time when it was more than half.
“Go on,” Quake said.
Heydale told him that before greenbacks became standard, all banks printed their own notes. And because there were so many different versions of currency around the country, there was no good way to tell what was real and what wasn’t. So, there proliferated a vast counterfeit industry, to the point that most ordinary merchants and citizens never had any idea if the money they’d been given was genuine or fake. Banks still had the power to print their own notes, Heydale explained. But it was no longer a necessity, and so most, like his bank in Spokane Falls, chose not to as a general rule. Though they did continue to accept notes from other banks, which meant there was always the possibility of taking and giving counterfeit bills.
“We have books at the bank called counterfeit detectors. They describe every legitimate banknote in circulation and its known counterfeits,” he said.
“Do you know a counterfeit bill when you see one?” Quake asked.
“Sometimes,” Heydale said.
“Then what do you do?”
“Wad it up and throw it back in the guy’s face!”
“Really?”
“No. I take the bill, I guess,” Heydale said, his expression turning hangdog. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Money is worth money as long as everyone agrees it’s worth money. I’m the bank. If I take a bill and then give the bill to someone else, well, that makes it money, even if it’s not.”
“Just like the banknotes you were giving out.”
Heydale slumped into his chair. “I said I was sorry for that,” he said. “You know I said I was sorry,” and Quake agreed he did.
“Now, tell me something else,” Quake said. “At the time of your arrest, how much real cash was still in your bank?”