Into the Fire(78)

Inside her warehouse-size operation in an industrial park, she presided over her restoration service with an emperor’s iron fist. The operation placed vast resources and highly specialized equipment at her disposal. The dozens of workers—every one of them male, every one of them simultaneously terrified of and in love with her—spent their days and nights bent over giant square worktables with atomizers and palette knives, coaxing vintage film posters back to health. Some of the one-sheets sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But that wasn’t where Melinda made her real money.

She made her real money here, in this dark-walled photography room with blacked-out windows, as a world-class forger.

A 000 paintbrush, the most slender of them all, was tucked behind her ear like a pen. Pink tape wrapped its handle, a stamp of ownership ensuring that none of her workers would dare borrow it. Cradled in a hip holster like a six-shooter, her Olympos double-action airbrush was also padded with pink tape.

She looked like a lead character from one of the exploitation posters she so lovingly resuscitated.

From the main floor, sweatshop noises echoed down the hall at them—machinery and conversation and motorized equipment being revved. A horrendous crash sounded, punctuated by a cartoon aftereffect like a hubcap spinning out on asphalt.

Melinda snatched up a phone on a desk scattered with counterfeit passport stamps and hit the intercom button. Then she barked in her native tongue, “You’d better unbreak whatever just broke, or I’ll take it out of your hide.”

She slammed down the phone and turned crisply on her heel to face Evan again. “Well? Are you fucking crazy?”

He said, “Clinically or legally?”

She strode over to him, grabbed both sides of his face, and kissed him full on the mouth. At a hair over five feet, she had to rise to her tiptoes. Her mouth was soft, dewy from lipstick, and she smelled delightfully of lavender skin cream.

She finished and shoved him away. “You know what that is? That’s your long kiss good-bye, Evan.”

“It was worth it,” he said.

Joey was still standing dumbly at his side, her jaw partially unhinged.

“Now we’re never going to get married and have beautiful mixed-race children,” Melinda said.

“You never know,” he said. “I might survive.”

She scowled, a focused effort that at last produced wrinkles. Just as quickly they were gone. All business, she snapped her fingers. “Let me see them.”

He produced the silver case with the fingerprint adhesives. “They’re silicon composite films,” he said. “Fifty microns thin. Developed in a DARPA lab, but I managed to acquire a few sets. You’ve probably never seen anything like them, but—”

“You got ripped off.” She screwed a loupe into her eye, examining one of the slides with a jeweler’s focus. “These are at least seventy-five microns. The ones I deal in are a true fifty, which makes for better adhesion.” She dumped them in a trash can and cast a look at Joey. “Men.”

Joey said, “Right?”

Evan tried to steer the conversation back on track. “Look, I’m not sure if you have the printing technology to transfer someone else’s fingerprints onto the adhesives—”

“My preferred method,” Melinda said, “is to generate engraved plates from my 3-D printer. Since the silicon films are impressionable, etched casting surfaces are ideal.”

She leaned over the computer on her desk, linked to an AmScope binocular microscope and a MakerBot Replicator+. A red glow lit the printer’s black box, an intense spill of color that made the contraption evocative of a futuristic forge, which Evan supposed it was. She brought up the photo detail Evan had forwarded her, Paytsar Hovsepian’s fingers raised in a peace salute.

She let out a hiss of delight through her teeth. “Nice detail. I can get a couple dozen ridge characteristics easy.”

Evan could still taste her lipstick, sugary like frosting. “I pulled the rest of his fingerprints off NCIC. They were ink-rolled at a local station nineteen years ago, middling clarity, but I figure as long as we have two at high-res, you can improvise the rest.”

“Improvising,” Melinda said, “is my life.” She straightened up, flicking her hair expertly over a shoulder.

Joey had to lean back to avoid getting whipped.

“What else do you need?” Melinda said.

“Fake driver’s license,” Evan said.

“Finally a reasonable request.”

“With ink that fades after twenty-four hours,” he added.

“That’s not possible.”

“Even for you?”

“I’m incredible,” she said, “but not magical.” A lash-heavy eyelid dipped in a wink. “Except in bed.”

“First of all … um, gross,” Joey said. “Second, how ’bout a chemical reaction? Layered under the laminate? Something that kicks in after a certain exposure time to oxygen or whatever.”

“She speaks,” Melinda said. “And reveals brains beneath that god-awful haircut.” She went to Joey and smoothed her hair down, covering the shaved strip on the right side. Then she tucked Joey’s locks behind her ears and caressed her cheeks. “Don’t be afraid of how beautiful you are.”

For once Joey didn’t back away. She looked too shocked to react.