A minute later Annabelle led Leo into a high-end clothing boutique. Inside the store, they were greeted by a lean, good-looking young man dressed all in chic black with slicked-back blond hair and a day’s worth of fashionable stubble on his face.
“You here all by yourself today?” she asked him, looking around at the other well-heeled customers in the store. They’d have to be wealthy, she knew, since the shoes here started at a thousand bucks a pair, entitling the lucky owner to stumble around on four-inch golf tees until her Achilles snapped.
He nodded. “But I enjoy working the store. I’m very service-oriented.”
“I’m sure you are,” Annabelle said under her breath.
After waiting until the other customers had left the shop, Annabelle put the Closed sign on the front door. Leo brought a woman’s blouse to the cash register while Annabelle wandered around behind the checkout area. Leo handed over his credit card, but it slipped out of the clerk’s hand and the man bent down to retrieve it. When he straightened up, he found Annabelle standing right behind him.
“That’s a really neat toy you have there,” she said, eyeing the tiny machine the clerk had just swiped Leo’s card through.
“Ma’am, you’re not allowed behind the counter,” he said, frowning.
Annabelle ignored this comment. “Did you build it yourself?”
The clerk said firmly, “It’s an antifraud machine. It confirms that the card is valid. It checks encryption codes embedded in the plastic. We’ve had a lot of stolen credit cards come in here, so the owner instructed us to start using it. I try to do it as unobtrusively as possible so no one gets embarrassed. I’m sure you can understand.”
“Oh, I completely understand.” Annabelle reached by the clerk and slid out the device. “What this does, Tony, is read the name and account number, and the embedded verification code on the magnetic stripe so you can forge the card.”
“Or more likely sell the numbers to a card ring that’ll do it,” Leo added. “That way you don’t have to get your metrosexual hands really dirty.”
Tony looked at both of them. “How do you know my name? You cops?”
“Oh, much better than that,” Annabelle said, putting her arm around his slender shoulders. “We’re people just like you.”
Two hours later Annabelle and Leo were walking down the pier in Santa Monica. It was a bright cloudless day, and the ocean breeze delivered waves of deliciously warm air. Leo wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, took off his jacket and carried it over his arm.
“Damn, I’d forgotten how nice it was out here.”
“Beautiful weather and the best marks in the world,” Annabelle said. “That’s why we’re here. Because where the best marks are . . .”
“Are where the best cons are,” Leo finished for her.
She nodded. “Okay, that’s him, Freddy Driscoll, crown prince of bad paper.”
Leo stared ahead, squinting against the sun, and read the small sign over the outdoor kiosk. “Designer Heaven?”
“That’s right. Do it like I said.”
“What other way is there to do it but like you said?” Leo grumbled.
They reached the merchandise display where jeans, designer bags, watches and other accessories were neatly arranged. The older man next to the kiosk greeted them politely. He was small and plump with a pleasant face; tufts of white hair stuck out from underneath the straw hat he wore.
“Wow, these are great prices,” Leo commented as he looked over the items.
The man beamed proudly. “I don’t have the overhead of the fancy stores, just the sun, sand and ocean.”
They looked through the merchandise, selected a few items, and Annabelle handed the man a hundred-dollar bill in payment.
He took it from her, put on a pair of thick glasses, held the bill up at a certain angle and then quickly handed it back. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid that’s a forgery.”
“You’re right, it is,” she said casually. “But I thought it was fair to pay for fake goods with fake money.”
The man didn’t even blink; he just smiled at her benignly.
Annabelle examined the bill in the same way the man had. “The problem is that not even the best forger can really duplicate Franklin’s hologram when you hold the bill at this angle, because you’d need a two-hundred-million-dollar printing mill to get it right. There’s only one of them in the States, and no forger has access to it.”
Leo piped in, “So you take a grease pen and do a nifty sketch of old Benny. That gives anyone smart enough to check the paper a little flash and the illusion that he saw the h-gram when he really didn’t.”
“But you knew the difference,” Annabelle pointed out. “Because you used to make this paper about as well as anyone.” She held up a pair of jeans. “But from now on, I’d tell your supplier to take the time to stamp the brand name on the zipper like the real manufacturers do.” She put the jeans down and picked up a handbag. “And double-stitch the strap. That’s a dead giveaway too.”
Seagraves perked up at this. A thunderstorm reference always got his attention. Speaker of the House Bob Bradley had been such a thunderstorm. He was now lying in a plot of dirt back in his native Kansas with a bunch of wilted flowers on top of him.
Seagraves chuckled. “You know what they say about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does a damn thing about it.”
Trent laughed too. “Everything looks good here. We appreciate Central Intelligence’s cooperation as always.”
“Didn’t you know? The ‘C’ stands for cooperation.”
“We still set for the DDO’s testimony on Friday?” he asked, referring