Overview

The floorboards in our office always vibrated at 4:30 AM. That was when the industrial mixers in Rosie's Panaderia downstairs kicked into high gear. To anyone else, it was just the sound of breakfast being born. To Pablo and me, it was the start of the shift. We'd sit there in the dark, the room smelling of yeast and old cigarette smoke, watching the early commuters on Whittier Boulevard through the slats of the Venetian blinds. We weren't the guys who made the bread. We were the guys who watched the people who bought it. Being a detective in East L.A. in 1994 wasn't about high-speed chases or cinematic shootouts. It was about knowing which delivery trucks were running heavy, which shipping containers at the harbor weren't on the manifest, and why a ""construction site accident"" at the new Montebello Plaza looked a lot more like a professional execution. The city was changing. You could feel it in the air, the ozone of the coming digital age clashing with the salt of the old harbor. People were talking about the ""information superhighway,"" but they didn't realize that every highway needs a toll booth. I looked down at my desk, at the photograph of my uncle standing in front of this very building in 1978. He'd been a driver for the wrong people, a man who got lost in a paper trail that ended at the bottom of the Port of Los Angeles. Pablo tossed a cigarette into the tin tray and pointed at the street. A black Suburban was idling at the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the neon ""OPEN"" sign from the bakery. ""The delivery is early,"" Pablo said, his voice grating like gravel. ""It's not a delivery,"" I said, reaching for the magnifying glass. ""It's an audit."" I didn't know it yet, but the bill in my pocket, a banknote that technically wouldn't exist for another two years, was about to turn our second-story office into the front line of a war for the soul of the dollar. The mixers downstairs kept humming, heavy and rhythmic, unaware that the foundation of the building was sitting on a secret that was about to blow the neighborhood wide open.

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About Robert Nerbovig: I have been married for 59 years to my wife Pat. I am a former active duty Marine as are my 2 sons. We live in the mountains of Arizona. I have been programming computers for business since 1970 and designing and developing web pages since 1996. I am familiar with computer viruses and the havoc they wreak. I am the 26th great great grandson of King Olaf of Norway.(Saint Olaf)

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