Faking It

I still don’t know how to spend it all.  Seven hundred fifty grand in counterfeit $20 bills, stuck in a single large suitcase underneath my bed.  That’s 37,500 individual slips of paper having no value at all but for the deceit they represent.  At face value, they seem easily spent, but in the modern world, crammed with plastic cards and electronic bank transfers, it’s a good deal more difficult that most might imagine.  No one buys a car with a few hundred twenty dollar bills these days—at least not without arousing unwelcome suspicion.  And that’s the last thing I need these days.

Revenge is a tough business, and competition is fierce.

To this end, I’ve enlisted the help of Henry Au downstairs.  He’s the owner of the coffee shop, the Chinese immigrant who took one look at me when I asked to rent a room upstairs and asked me if I spoke Chinese.  “Listen,” he had said in Mandarin, “you and I, we’re Chinese.  If you pay me cash, the rent goes down by half.  No taxes that way.  Better for you, good for me.  Okay?”  No problem.  I asked him if I could pay him to pay me, too.  I’d give him cash, and he’d write me a check every two weeks for helping out in the café.  Business was poor then, anyways, and he didn’t care what my reasons were.  He still doesn’t, so long as I bring in my $1500 each week so he can write me that thousand dollar check.

His bank liked the extra cash, too.  I wonder how many people in this town use false tender.  Probably everyone.

And so I have my modest, if dishonest, income, one which serves my ends.  I will have my revenge.  My father’s spirit will find peace.  I’ll end the acrid anger which eats at my humanity, my sanity.  A man will be destroyed.