39P: a sequel (about a $10 bill)

The Game Room
61

“Uh… I’m just leaving the store. Headed home.”

“Not so fast,” replied Det. Frank Delgado of the Stockton Police Department’s Narcotics Division. “I need to you to help me with a bust.”

Secord was too tired to notice the incongruity of Delgado’s reference to a “bust” given his recent embarrassing and entirely uncharacteristic behavior with the Bradley women. He’d acted as a confidential reliable informant (a “CRI,” or more colloquially, “snitch”) for Delgado a few dozen times over the previous three years, and would’ve gotten out of the game had (1) the money not been so good, and (2) his parole not been coming up for review. He sighed and said, “OK, where should I meet you?”

Ten minutes later he was sitting in an unmarked police car a block away from the Mabley Estates, a housing project on the side of Stockton not frequented by tourists. Delgado was, as always, all business. He carefully searched Secord, wired him, and checked the sound quality on the radio/recorder. Then he said, “Shit, I forgot to bring some cash from the FOJ box. Um… what’ve you got on you?”

“Goddammit, Frank, now I have to put my own money into these busts?” Secord asked, rolling his eyes.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Delgado said coolly. “You’re getting paid. By check, later, same as always. Now what’ve you got?”

Muttering under his breath, Secord took out his wallet and pulled out 39P and some other bills. Delgado wrote down all of their serial numbers and handed them back, and said, “The guy you want to ask for is Big Bob. He’s in Unit 221. Say Donnell sent you, and ask for a dime bag of crack.”

Secord was just ravaged enough, and just streetwise enough, that he made a better snitch than you might’ve thought to look at him. He got back in his car, did another microphone check with Det. Delgado, and drove down the block and into the desolate, harshly-lit parking lot of the Mabley Estates. Three young Korean (Chinese? Hmong? He didn’t know, or care) men with punkish hair stared at him as he parked and got out. He ignored them and walked into the building, finding Unit 221 on the second floor without any problem. A TV was blaring inside. He knocked.

The TV was turned down after a few seconds. “Who is it?” came a deep male voice from within.

“Donnell sent me. You Big Bob? I think you may, y’know, have something for me.”

Another few seconds, and he heard several bolts turn and a security chain being drawn back from the other side of the door. It opened a few inches, and an enormous, shirtless black man stared back at him. “I’m listening,” he grunted.

Secord looked both ways down the hall and held up 39P. “You Big Bob?”

The man grunted again. “Yeah. What you want?”

“I need a dime bag. Can you hook me up?”

Big Bob, whose real name was Robert Benton Sanders III, reached through the slit between the door and the frame, and 39P disappeared. “You came to the right place, man. Gimme a sec. I’ll be right back,” he said.

Big Bob closed the door and went down the hall into his bedroom, where his fat girlfriend Vanessa was watching some shitty reality show on the TV. He reached under the bed and took out his stash box. He had close to two dozen ten-dollar bags of crack cocaine at his fingertips (not to mention an interesting variety of other controlled substances), and took the top one out, putting 39P into a large leatherette money pouch on the right side of the box. Then he walked back down the hall, opened the door again and handed Secord the bag of crack.

“Thanks, man,” Secord said, smiling with what he knew from past experience was a pretty convincing display of both pathetic gratitude and naked jonesing. “I really appreciate it.”

Big Bob grunted and closed the door. He wasn’t noted for his sunny disposition.

Nor was it improved when, an hour later, armed with a search warrant, the Stockton SWAT team kicked in his door and arrested both him and a screaming Vanessa. After they’d secured the premises, Det. Delgado and his partner Det. Sarah Morgan - who had been running an investigation into Big Bob for almost three weeks - soon found the stash box and the money pouch. It was all itemized and logged before being put on a shelf in the evidence locker at the station house.

39P remained there for another two weeks, until…

62

…Big Bob, now in the jail ward, convulsed and died.
“What set him off?” asked Detective Delgado, questioning the physician in charge of the jail ward.
“Overdose of crack, complicated by contamination,” answered the doctor, Ferruccio Luglio. “He was one of his own biggest customers. So was Vanessa.” Luglio glanced at a litter being carried down the hall with a sheet over the head. On the litter was the body of Vanessa, also dead from overdose and contamination.
“Damn–these people never learn,” said the detective. “Well, the case is closed. Is there anyone in Bob’s family willing to pick up his stuff from evidence and property?”
“Yup–this young attorney Arthur Terwilliger,” said the doctor. “He’ll probably come by the station within two weeks to claim the property.”
Terwilliger did so, returning Bob’s property to his surviving cousin Joseph Eccles. Eccles, interestingly, had been one of the bidders for 39P on eBay and once he sorted through Big Bob’s cash, he recognized the bill. George Sharp had included his e-mail address on eBay, so Eccles sent him an e-mail asking whether George was interested in the bill himself at this time:

63

George fired back an e-mail to Eccles, inquiring what his asking price for the bill was. This bought George a little time while he tried to divine what effect Tuesday’s event would have on the value of a ten-dollar bill touched by Obama.

Eccles clearly thought the value would skyrocket. He told George he wanted $50 for 39P. George snorted in derision when he read that. He e-mailed Eccles and told him “thanks, but no thanks.” (Actually, what he really wrote was, “Go fuck urself u damn Jew.” He thought Eccles sounded like a Jewish name.) But the exchange did inspire George to dig a ten out of his wallet, take a photo and list a “Ten Dollar Bill Touched by Obama L@@K!” on eBay with a starting price of $29.99.

Eccles was disappointed George didn’t bite. He briefly thought about listing it on eBay, but a quick search revealed George’s listing. Eccles rolled his eyes. He was tempted to report the listing but realized the provenance of the bill would come down to “he said, she said” and probably wasn’t worth anyone’s trouble to chase down. Caveat emptor.

Eccles put 39P in his wallet while he considered whether or not he wanted to hang onto it. It stayed there for three days, when his wife, Julianne, answered the door bell and found three members of the Stockton High School band on her door step, asking for donations to support a trip to Disney Land in exchange for an “SHS Band Booster” window decal. Remembering her own majorette days, Julianne went for her purse, only to discover she had nothing but loose change. “Hey, Joe,” she hollered toward the den. “Do you have any cash?” “Sure, hon,” he said as he emerged and tossed her his wallet. 39P was in the hands of the band members before Joe remembered that he’d stuck the bill in his wallet.

64

The person to take possession of 39P was Katrina Oranjeboom, a clarinetist. She was the youngest member of the school’s student body (not quite thirteen) and the youngest female in the community to have a figure like Carmen Electra.
Katrina duly recorded the day’s donations in her log book but substituted another bill for 39P: she seemed to have some intuition about it.
Meanwhile, George’s brothers–Andrew (Henry), Carl , Eddie, Irwin, Kenneth, Martin, and Owen–joined in ragging George about his three unsuccessful efforts to keep 39P, since all of them were computer mavens same as he was and all used their parents’ expensive computer equipment at home. This infuriated George, of course, since he could not blow off his brothers with profanity as he might an unseen stranger on the Internet–they might tell the parents and all of them could best George in a fight.
Katrina knew George–her family had known the Sharps for years. But she decided to discuss the bill with her parents, Pete and Loora, who had practically psychic minds.
“This bill’s been around, I can tell you that,” Loora said while inspecting it for her daughter. “What was George Sharp so interested in the bill on eBay for?”
Katrina giggled a little. “He showed me once–he went online and showed me the eBay pages he was checking. He thinks Barack Obama handled the bill.”
“So?” asked her mother (a lifelong Democrat, anyway). Then she handed the tenner back to Katrina. “I can’t see how it’s worth anything special to George.”
Katrina sometimes met George in the local shopping mall. She had 39P with her when she saw him–and his two eldest brothers Andrew and Carl, both attached: Andrew was married and Carl was squiring a former tramp named Olivia Short. But these women weren’t present when Katrina met George, Andrew, and Carl outside the McDonalds in the mall. She spoke first.

65

Written but not posted before dougie’s previous post… consider it an alternate universe… d’oh!

Joe Eccles pounded down the street after the SHS band members. “Wait! WAIT!” he shouted. They froze and spun around, looking at him warily. “Sorry, girls,” he puffed, winded from the short run, “but that $10 bill my wife just gave you has some… uh… sentimental value for me. Could I have it back, please?”

Marjorie Kregg, the pride of the SHS tuba section, glanced briefly back at her friends, Kimberly Welles and Luisa Perez. Marjorie put her hands on her ample hips and said, “We’re not supposed to give money back once it’s been donated, sir. Do you have another $10 bill you’d like to exchange for it?”

“Or would you like to make another contribution with a larger bill?” asked Kimberly, who was nothing if not opportunistic, even as she looked at Joe with a mixture of skepticism and disdain. “It’d really help us for our band trip to Disney Land.”

“Sure, girls, sure! How about a twenty?” Joe reached for his wallet and realized that he’d left it at home. He stood there for a moment, his mind racing, before he held up a finger and said, “Tell you what, I’ll be right back. Stay right here, OK? Don’t move!”

Without waiting for an answer, he raced home, to find that Julianne had locked the door on him. He didn’t have his key, of course, so he pounded on the door and rang the doorbell. By now he was sweating. “Honey, open up, dammit! Open up, it’s me!”

The curtains to the side of the door parted, and Julianne glared out at him through the glass. “Not until you promise to leave those poor girls alone. We made our donation and that’s that.”

“No, it fucking well isn’t ‘that’! I was saving that ten bucks, dammit.”

“Language, Joe. Mind those curse words. Then why’d you give me your wallet?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I forgot. C’mon, open the door, and I’ll give the girls a twenty.” He looked over his shoulder and saw them restlessly standing on the sidewalk. The big one said something to the other two, and they laughed. That couldn’t be good, he realized. He waved encouragingly at them and turned back to the window. “I already told them I would. For chrissakes, Julianne, just open the door. I promise I’ll give them more money. I just want to get the ten back. It’s important, OK?”

“Well…” she said skeptically. “You promise?”

He looked back at the girls, and saw to his horror that they had begun to walk away. “Yes, I promise, open up, quick, they’re leaving!”

Julianne seemed to take an agonizingly long time to unlock the door, and he practically knocked her down as he came charging into the house. His wallet wasn’t in the front hall. "Where’s my wallet? Where’s my fucking wallet?"

“Language, Joe,” his wife said primly. “We’ve spoken about this before. You know I don’t like that.”

Joe felt like his head was going to explode. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then said with a concerted effort at icy calmness, “Where. Is. My. Wallet.”

“On your bureau. I put it back there while you were outside.”

Joe said explosively, “Motherfucker!”, because it felt so good just to see the look on her face, and charged down the hallway to their bedroom. He grabbed his wallet from the bureau and raced back outside again, back out into the sunshine. He pounded down the sidewalk and saw the SHS band members just leaving the front stoop of another house a few more doors down. He waved his wallet in the air and said, “Here you go, girls, I’ve got my wallet! How about we do a little swap now, huh?”

They looked at him through narrowed eyes and Marjorie said, almost sullenly, “Do you have that twenty, sir?” She said the last word as if it was something she’d found on the bottom of her tasseled white leather marching boots.

Joe grinned as he opened his wallet to find several loose bills. Had to be a twenty. Had to be a twenty. Had to be! “Well, let’s see, I’ve got a…um… well, here’s a ten, a five, and a one, and… another one… then that’s three…” His face fell, and he dug frantically through his pocket to find a quarter, three nickels and a penny. He thrust the handful of money towards Marjorie with a hopeful smile that felt like it was cracking around the edges.

Marjorie looked over the money, being careful not to actually touch it, or him. “Sir, that’s just eighteen dollars.”

“It’s $18.41!” he said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “It’s almost twenty dollars!”

“It’s almost twenty dollars, I guess,” she replied, “but it’s not, like twenty dollars.” She stared at him expectantly and raised an eyebrow.

He pulled out his Visa card, his pulse pounding in his ears. “I know! Could you run my card? I’ll let you charge me, uh, $30!”

Marjorie shook her head slowly, and Luisa said in the snottiest voice imaginable, “We’re just not set up to do that, sir. We can only take cash or checks.”

Now blinded by fury, Joe had almost, crazily, decided to grab Marjorie and just take 39P back from her, when he heard a car rolling up beside him on the street…

66

…he released his arm after almost grabbing Marjorie. The car had several other band members in it, including Katrina Oranjeboom, the clarinetist.

[This connects the last post up with mine.–Dougie_monty]

67

So now Katrina, with 39P in her possession, confronted George Sharp and his two eldest brothers Andrew and Carl outside the McDonalds in the mall…

68

“So, George,” Katrina said, in a more annoyingly whiny voice than she really wanted to use, “I have that $10 bill you were talking about!”

“What $10 bill?” he asked.

“The one you think Obama touched. Remember?”

George was in front of his brothers and was, as always, anxious not to seem uncool, so he just shrugged. “Oh, that. No, I think I was wrong. How should I know one bill from another? It could be anything, y’know.”

Katrina’s face fell. “So you don’t want this one?”

Yes, yes, oh God, more than anything, George thought. “Nah,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “OK, then. I think I’ll go get a chocolate shake.”

“Whatever,” George said, shrugging. He forced a laugh as he strode away with his brothers.

Katrina wondered what had just happened and also turned away, walking into McDonalds. She folded 39P in half lengthwise and nervously tapped it against her fingers as she stepped up to the counter.

69

As she stepped up to the counter to give her order, she heard Carl’s angry voice, followed by Andrew’s:
“George! Get back here!” They were about 30 feet away from the entrance to McDonalds.
She was still mulling over this when she felt a bra strap snap slightly and George’s voice yelling “YAAAAAA!!” in her ear.
“You’re gross, George,” she growled. “Get lost!” He slipped away snickering.
Muttering under her breath, Katrina made her order–a Filet-O-Fish sandwich, a chocolate shake, and an apple pie. She paid and when she was served she went over in a corner to eat.
She then looked in her purse to find 39P. It wasn’t there. She’d used it at the counter! George had successfully distracted her to get her to use the wrong bill.
She glanced toward the mall walkway and there was George Sharp, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.
She finished her meal and left, hearing the usual whistles and catcalls an overdeveloped 12-year-old girl gets used to. Perhaps George was one of those giving her the wolf-whistle. Oh well, she thought, You’ll get yours, George Alexander Sharp…
That Saturday afternoon Katrina went to visit her older brother and his wife. 23-year-old Cornelis Oranjeboom and his wife Hanna were there, playing with their toddler Harold.
After the usual greetings–during which her brother and sister-in-law could tell she was put out–Katrina told them what had happened at the mall. All of the Oranjebooms lapsed into a Dutch accent when they were agitated or angry.
“Dat George,” muttered Cornelis. “He’ll be at da bowling alley dis afternoon. Ya, I’ll go ‘talk’ to him about it…”
A couple of hours later, at the local bowling alley, named the House of Tracy…

70

…George was in the middle of his first game and ready to roll the ball down the alley when he saw the tall, lithe Cornelis approaching.

71

Cornelis had harsh and angry words for George, and George could barely understand every third word. This only confirmed George’s view of foreigners of any stripe, and his deep conviction that they should all stay where they were, that being not-in-the-USA. But Cornelis looked like he could bench press about 300 pounds, so George kept his opinions on immigration to himself.

And in truth, George had nothing of interest to say. Although he had affected a “cat that ate the canary” look as he left the McDonald’s register, the truth was he had been unable to get 39P back in change; the pimple-faced Mex wroker had just stared at him when he asked for a different ten dollar bill and said, “We no supposed to do.” Further sotto voce inquires (made quietly so as not to raise Katrina’s awarenesss) had not been fruitful, and in the end George had been forced to nonchalantly stroll away as if perfectly satisfied, while seething inside and reflecting that it was twice now that the damn Mexicans had cost him this bill.

Meanwhile, Katrina had handed 39P to Marisol Fuentes, who was in fact Mexican, and she had closed her cash drawer shortly after George’s entreaties. 39P had been part of the late night bank deposit, and once again moved from the commercial stream into the federal banking system.

This time, however, fate was not so kind to 39P. While the average age of a $10 U.S. note is eighteen months, 39P had led a more active life than the average $10 note. It had been folded, blown, dropped, tapped, rolled, and generally abused enough that the automatic counting machines flagged it as a candidate for replacement. And 39P’s journey came to a dignified if anticlimactic end at a shredder in the federal reserve basement, where it joined some 1.5 million other notes as wastepaper. As it happened, the local federal reserve had signed a one-year recycling contract with Verdetech, a local company, in which the company agreed to incorporate much of the bank’s 110 tons a year of worn-out money into fuel pellets. 39P’s individual shreds thus passed forever beyond the ken of man and into the word of recycled power.

THE END