Chapter 13: Numismatics

Clink, whirr, chink – or vice versa. The coin that dropped onto my desk would have been at home on dark, dully gleaming rosewood. What I had was thin mahogany veneer, curling at the edges – and I won’t go into detail about the gouges, cigarette burns and other evidence of misuse. I’d bought my office furniture – desk, three ladder-back chairs, typewriter with its own little stand, and two filing cabinets – for a hundred and ninety dollars, from a dealer in used items.

The waiting roomlet was different, in that almost everything there – a low, wobbly table, three straight back chairs, two ashtrays and a wastebasket – had come gratis, courtesy of the previous tenant. All I’d done was augment his collection of ancient magazines with a few equally venerable ones I’d picked up here and there.

With regard to professional activity, my state was practically comatose. There were times when that didn’t bother me, but on this occasion I’d had enough of abstract thinking and was pleased to have a caller. Not that this one would have cared about my state of mind. I could tell that before he spoke. The currency came to rest between a mug ring I’d inherited and a knife-cut I’d inflicted myself, while trying to open a parcel.

Outside, a team was working with a compressor, two pneumatic drills and a stone-saw, and as I’d left the inner door ajar I was not aware that I had a visitor until the coin landed. In my defence, I must say that he tossed the thing from just inside the doorway while I was staring at a notepad splattered with calculations arising from my immersion in rocket propulsion – and lest you should think me a dilettante, I’d worked out all by myself that a three-stage job was the right one for a lunar shot. It’s a question of mass ratio and exhaust velocity. I know NASA got the same result, but we’d worked independently. Rocket science wasn’t such a big deal, I’d concluded.

I looked at my man, waving him to a seat, as I examined his introductory offering. It was a double-eagle, face value twenty dollars, market price surely much higher. I peered at it, and my failure to note the date probably gives some indication that I had little interest in such items. I did observe that the specimen was well-worn, but assumed that I was looking at some real gold.

The intruder didn’t quite match up to his flamboyant approach, which I immediately associated with fedora hats and chalk-stripe outfits. He was impressive in the width and depth departments. I put him at five-eleven and ten or fifteen pounds over the two hundred mark. The face looked as though someone had broken rocks on it. He wore a shiny dark-blue suit which did little to conceal the muscles it sheathed, plus a mid-blue shirt and a tie of a floridity I’d rather not dwell on. If he wasn’t a heavy, he’d do until one came along.

Despite my being in a trough, businesswise, I submit that my repartee was up to standard. “I’ll give you a B-plus for histrionics,” I said, “but would you like to enlarge?”

It was the theatrical allusion that got him – I just knew he wouldn’t be able cope with ‘histrionics’. He was submerged for a moment, but fought his way back to the surface. “You know what that is?” he said, pointing at the coin.

I gave him my supercilious smile. “Of course,” I said. “Is it my retainer, or just bait?”

With his big entrance squelched, he’d already lost the psychological high ground, so he relaxed. “Belongs to Mike Mulrooney,” he said. “You heard of him?”

If he was referring to the long-time sparring partner of my late – in both senses – client, Howling Jack Lanigan, I had indeed. “Possibly,” I said. “Would that be the gentleman sometimes known as Horsehead Mulrooney?”

“Yeah, right,” Mr Bulk grunted. “Seems Howling Jack gave you a big boost after you tangled with Slugs Kalinski.’

How well I remembered that encounter; a meeting of bodies rather than minds. The incident had already been brought up by another client. Now, here was a second. I wondered how long I would be able to live on that minor triumph. “Ah, Slugs,” I said. “How is the lad?”

My visitor sneered. “He ain’t around no more. Got plugged a while back. He was tough, but I guess he didn’t have it upstairs. I took over.”

That was puzzling. If Slugs Kalinski had been cerebrally deficient, how was this goon an improvement? Maybe Mulrooney was finding it hard to get the right help. “Okay,” I said. “Slugs is out, you’re in and Horsey thinks I’m wonderful. I’m struggling to connect all that with a gold bauble. Do you have a point? I’m pretty busy.”

He looked at the desktop, festooned with my notebook and his coin. “Yeah,” he sniggered, “you’re up to your ears. Look, Horsey’ll be in New York till Monday mornin’ an’ he don’t want to lose time on this. He’ll pay your fees an’ a bonus, if you see to it.”

“See to what?”

Talking was clearly a chore for action-man. He sighed. “Mulrooney had a good few gold coins. Just kept this one in his pocket. Sorta lucky piece. Somebody busted into his office, blew the safe an’ took the lot, plus two thousand in cash.

“I see,” I said. “Mr Mulrooney would like me to find the culprit, eh?”

“That’s it.”

I nodded, emanating thought. “I wonder he didn’t summon me to the presence.”

That was a hard one for my man, but he triumphed. “Like I just told you, he’s tied up, but he said to tell you it’s a competitive advantage thing. Said you’d know what that means.”

The poor fellow was uneasy with ‘competitive advantage’, but all credit to him, he got it out. Moreover, his chief was probably right. Mulrooney was accustomed to exploiting others, but when the tables were turned, he needed the help of someone who could cut corners. And his kind didn’t enlist the official forces. “Right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do. I imagine your boss wasn’t insured against this?”

My man looked at me as though he doubted my sanity. “That a joke?” he said. “Insurance people mean alarms an’ alarms mean cops, right?”

“Okay,” I said. “I had to ask. Now, can you give me anything else?”

His Heftiness shrugged. “Nix. We got no idea. Your ball.”

“Right,” I said. “Tell him I’ll work on it, but it’s probably an opportunist thing.”

“A what?”

“Just repeat that to him. He’ll know what I mean.”

The hunk recovered the coin and departed, leaving me to ponder. It was inconvenient. I mean there I was planning space missions when this earthbound matter cropped up. Still, possibly there was money to be made, and that was why I was in business, wasn’t it?

A man couldn’t be in my kind of work for long without knowing a little about the criminal mind. I suspected this was a local affair, no matter that the locality was a little way north of my normal playground. Well, parochialism is an elastic concept.

Another three-pipe problem, Watson, was my first thought. Actually, one pipe would have sufficed. My mental whirligig stopped at Pale Pete Parsons. I’ve mentioned Pete – a small-time stick-em-up and B&E man – in connection with another case. When he wasn’t engaged in his professional work, Pete spent most of his waking hours at Kelly’s Pool Hall, within easy walking distance of my office. Well, my job was mostly shaking trees and seeing if anything fell. It was worth a try, so I phoned the ball-and-cue palace, identifying myself and asking for Pete.

The unmistakable grating voice of the owner replied: “Now just a minute. I’m not sure I know any –”

“Cut it out, Kelly,” I snapped, “or I might feel compelled to remember certain transactions at your place, concerning –”

“All right,” he yelled. “I’ll get him.”

“Excellent,” I said. “And tell him this is good news.”

There was a rumble of background noise, then Parsons came to the phone. “Yeah, what?” he muttered.

“And greetings to you, too, Pete,” I said. “In case Kelly didn’t tell you, this is Cyril Potts. I’m about to transform your drab existence. Just step along here – and make it lively. I can’t talk on the phone. Get to my office in fifteen minutes.”

As a result of the earlier incident with the gold Balinese cat, Pete Parsons had probably decided that I was infallible. He mumbled something I didn’t catch, then agreed to call on me right away. Within the specified quarter-hour he was sitting opposite me. I told him about the coins. He assumed his puzzled look. “I get you,” he said. “I just don’t see wh –”

“Listen Pete,” I snapped. “This is no time for fooling around. I know you boys have a network that would turn the Mob green with envy. I just want you to use it – and there’s money for you here.”

That was a gamble, pure and simple. I’d no idea whether Pete and his cronies were a closed society or not. Still, it was interesting that he didn’t deny it. I noted the point for future reference. Living by one’s wits is a precarious matter, much dependent upon the snapping up of trifles.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

Bingo! “Look, Pete, these coins have written pedigrees. There’s no way they can be sold off. They’re useless to anyone who doesn’t have the paperwork.” I made that up and for all I knew it might have been true. “Now, I’m empowered to get them back. We can operate my way or Mulrooney’s. If I do the job, there’s no problem. Some cash changes hands and that’s it. If I pass the matter back to my client, he’ll be even more upset than he is now. He’ll want to interview people. Do I really need to talk to you about cement boots, fingernails, heads clamped in vi –?”

“No,” he yipped. “I don’t know why you picked on me, but I’ll put the word around. How’s that?”

“It’s a start,” I said, “and if you play it right, you’ll come out way ahead. There’s a two-grand payoff in this and I don’t mind who gets it. Now move – and make it quick.”

Pale Pete slunk out, leaving me to think some more. If he didn’t bring home the bacon, I’d no idea about the next step. Also, I’d been pretty free with reward money, considering that I hadn’t discussed it with the prospective payer.

I did my best to return to rocketry, but it was no good. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought in all that stuff about what Mulrooney might do if pressed. My comments had been wildly speculative, but they’d scared me as much as they had Pale Pete.

With no other business distractions, I mulled the matter over, finally realising that maybe this was a war of nerves between me and Parsons. Maybe he wasn’t much closer to the rock-face than I was. Maybe all sorts of things. Still, I’d acted.