The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned (Coinworld: Book Two)

by Benjamin Laskin

  The Grand Canyon base was Darla’s baby. She founded it and oversaw its construction. Ned had visited the base twice and thought it the best of all those they had opened. Thanks to Darla and Kipp Quarter, it also produced some of the finest operatives outside Coin Island.

  Darla ran a tight ship. It surprised Ned, considering how easygoing she was. It also attested to the talent Deirdre saw in the dime; the way she had with her fellow coins, and her ability to sweetly bend their wills. Knowing how important the base was to Darla, Ned figured having to leave its operations to Damian Dime, or any other coin for that matter, probably didn’t sit well with her.

  “Can we expect you by the end of the week?” Deirdre asked Darla.

  “I’ll leave this evening, Director.”

  The chief grinned. Not only did he look forward to seeing the charming dime again, but he knew that Darla was one of the few coins who called the head of Coin Intelligence, “Director.”

  Deirdre liked the title, and she wished everyone referred to her as Director, but she doubted she’d ever overcome Coin Island’s established laxness when it came to divisions of authority. She had tried to persuade her fellow coins to use military titles for commanders, but it never caught on. For the most part, the coins remained on a first-name basis, except for Chief Iron Tail, who everyone called “Chief.”

  Darla’s use of “Director” was an example of her savvy way of appealing to other coins’ sense of self-worth, and vanity. Ned and the chief recognized Darla’s ploy, but Deirdre’s lofty self-regard kept her blind to it. The two Mercury dimes couldn’t be more different, and Ned and the chief got a kick out of both of them.

  They held the powwow in Deirdre’s office. Ned rolled in, glanced about, and let out a long, admiring whistle.

  “This must have cost a pretty penny,” he joked.

  “There are no pretty pennies on this island, Four,” Deirdre replied. “But there are plenty of moldy Lincolns who like to be on my good side.”

  “I didn’t know you had a good side,” Two Loons teased.

  “Not one you’ll ever see,” Deirdre rejoined.

  CIA headquarters occupied the largest cave inside Coin Gulch. A team of Lincolns expanded the cavern ten fold, and the island’s best artist, Brave Frail Feather and his temperamental bison, Limp Paw, etched murals and maps into the chalky stone of both the ceiling and walls.

  Coins had no need of furniture, so the only item in the cave was Deirdre’s private reflecting pool. The pool sat recessed into the dirt floor and was made from a used KIWI Boot Polish tin. Two years earlier, Camille Quarter spotted the tin in a trash can while on a scrounging mission in neighboring Cranston, Rhode Island. The tin was too large for her to carry, so she returned with two recent eagle-backed Washington recruits, and together they flew it back to Coin Island.

  A series of windows made from shards of broken bottles provided lighting for the cavern. Originally, the office was operational only during daylight hours, but after Harper the Ben Franklin half dollar had introduced oil lamps, Deirdre could be found there almost around the clock.

  In order to plan out various missions, a portion of the floor was covered with fine dust that the coins could draw on, similar to how a football coach would diagram plays on the ground.

  The powwow consisted of Deirdre, the chief, Two Loons, Ned, and Darla, who had arrived the previous night. Pete Penny was conspicuously absent, but everyone kept their concerns to themselves.

  Inside the cave the coins stood on their rims, as doing so took up a lot less space. They had become so adept at standing over the years that it was as easy for the coins as lying face-up.

  The team gathered below a map of the US on the office’s southern wall, and Deirdre opened up the meeting with a recap of recent victories and failures.

  “Among our accomplishments,” she said, “we have redeemed an average of a hundred coins a month for the past year. The resistance now numbers over three thousand coins across the United States. Next month we will open our eighth bullion base. Until now we lacked a fort in the northwest. The base is located on the north slope of Mount St. Helens and will fill an important void.”

  “Deirdre,” Ned interrupted, “some of us are concerned that we might be expanding too fast. New recruits are hitting the field without having been sufficiently trained.”

  “I was planning to get to that, Four, but since you raised it, I’ll skip ahead. My idea is to initiate an officers training program. I propose we take the time to select and train the best recruits we have to go on and train our ever-increasing numbers. In the short term it slows us down, but long term we’ll produce better operatives, and hopefully fewer screw-ups.”

  Chief Iron Tail grunted. “That would take our top coins out of the field.”

  “Only until we train their replacements,” Deirdre said. “The alternative is lesser and lesser quality operatives sustaining more and more losses.” Deirdre saw Ned shaking his head and intuited his disapproval. “And yes, Four, that means putting your search for the Peace Dollar on hold for half a year or so.”

  “No can do,” Ned said. “I’m very close to finding Franny.”

  “We heard that last year,” the chief said. “I don’t like having our top operatives out of the field either, but Deirdre is right. We have to be farsighted about this. We need better trained leaders and operatives.”

  “I have new intel,” Ned said. “No mere hearsay this time either. It came from an 1838 Liberty dime from the LA mission back in April.”

  Two Loons said, “It’s July, Four. If the intel was so good, what have you been waiting for?”

  “November.”

  “What’s so important about November?” Deirdre asked.

  “Hear me out and I’ll explain. The dime said the numismatist holding Franny is looking to sell her off at a big coin convention in Memphis in November.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t lying?” Two Loons asked. “Dimes lie.”

  “Hey,” Deirdre and Darla said.

  “What? All coins lie. Don’t get so huffy.”

  “I checked out her story,” Ned said. “There is indeed a big coin convention in Memphis from November 14th through the 16th.”

  “But how do you know Franny will be there, Ned?” Darla asked.

  “I don’t for sure, but another part of the dime’s story checked out too. She said the collector’s name was Charles, and she thought he lived in Providence.”

  The other coins exchanged surprised looks.

  “That’s right,” Ned said, “Providence, Rhode Island, fifteen minutes as the half dollar flies. And that’s why I’m here now and not next month like expected. Hannah flew me there to investigate. Charles from Providence wasn’t much to go on, as there could be hundreds of people with that name. But how many of them would be interested in coins? Numismatists are a gregarious group. Most join different coin clubs, chapters, societies, and the like. We found a phone book, and a week later we found Charles, or someone we’re pretty sure is the same Charles.”

  “So why didn’t you raid him?” Two Loons asked.

  “For one, it was just Hannah and I. But also because his home was tighter than Fort Knox. We decided that our best shot was an interception in Memphis.”

  The chief said, “Four, have you forgotten Philadelphia? If it hadn’t been for a palm jump and that thief, we wouldn’t be here today.”

  Buffalo, who remembered the chase well, snuffled his agreement.

  “It’s a three-day show. Numismatists have to eat and sleep.”

  “His hotel,” Darla said.

  Ned smiled. “We tail him to his hotel, case the place, and wait for our chance. At some point his collection will be alone in his room. When it is, we swoop in.”

  Deirdre said, “I’ve spent a lot of time in hotels, remember? This guy sounds like he has money, and so he’ll probably stay at a classier place than most. Such places have safe-deposit boxes, and a lot of security too.”

  “A safe-deposi
t box is far too small for a collection his size,” Ned rejoined. “And if the room has a safe, that wouldn’t work either. They are meant for a few valuables—jewelry, cash, important papers—not a big collection like this fellow has, display cases and all.”

  “I don’t like it,” Deirdre said. “It’s very dangerous.”

  “We might never get another chance. The dime told me the man is looking to sell Franny. If he makes the exchange, we’ll lose her. It could be years, decades before we pick up her trail again.” Ned narrowed his eye, first at Deirdre, and then at the chief. “This is the deal,” he said, his voice absent of any compromise.

  Everyone knew the call was up to Deirdre and the chief. The two exchanged looks of annoyance. The chief appeared ready to have Buffalo stamp down his hoof in rejection of the scheme. He felt he had been more than patient with Ned and his insistence in finding Franny.

  The chief opened his mouth to rebuke him, but Deirdre spoke first. “November, you say?”

  Ned nodded.

  “That’s over three months away.”

  Ned saw where Deirdre was going and sought to head her off at the pass. “Such a mission will require extensive preparations and training.”

  Deirdre smiled shrewdly. “Just the sort of mission our first class of newly trained officers should take part in.”

  Ned grimaced. He opened his mouth to object, but finding it absent of a reasonable argument, his lips smacked shut.

  Darla tittered. She got a kick out of how wily Deirdre could be.

  “You just told him it was too dangerous,” the chief said.

  A crafty grin blossomed one of Deirdre’s dimples. “Not with you and Two Loons going with him, it isn’t.”

  Darla giggled. Double whammy.

  “Look, Chief,” Deirdre explained, “whether we like it or not, The Four is obsessed with this Peace Dollar, and we’ll never right this ship until we get his mind straight.”

  She turned her spanking eye on Ned.

  “And Four, whether you like it or not, you’re part of a team. In the field are hundreds of coins risking their lives and liberty for you every day. Where’s your sense of honor? Pull your Jeffersonian head out of your Monticello estate, and get with the project. Coinworld is depending on you.” Deirdre paused to allow her censure to sink in, and then finished addressing the deflated nickels. “Three months should be plenty of time for you tough guys to both train and plan. Show some mettle, metal.”

  Darla almost cheered, but instead she stabbed her tongue into her cheek, looked up at one of the skylights, and hummed a tune. She loved Ned and the chief, but a little humbling now and then was good for them.

  The nickels exchanged chastised glances and shuffled their rims in the dirt floor.

  The chief cleared his throat. “Deirdre, Four, Darla, you swap recommendations and decide which coins should be in the first graduating class. I’ll place the calls to the bases to hustle the agents over here. At least half the class ought to be eagle-backed coins.”

  Deirdre nodded.

  “What about me?” Two Loons asked.

  “You work with Leo and his team of engineers to ready the island for more incoming. Tell him to make the new obstacle course a top priority too. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”

  6

  kicks on route 66

  September 1958

  Pete Penny wobbled into a sliver of shade cast by an ocotillo cactus. His rim burned from days of travel in the blazing desert sun. Rolling along the hot asphalt of Route 66 had cooked him like a rotisserie chicken, and he felt his alloys melting from the inside out.

  Stranded in New Mexico between Tucumcari and Santa Rosa, and nearly delirious from heat exhaustion, Pete feared his fate was soon to resemble that of the coin corpses he saw strewn along the side of the highway over the past mile.

  Pete had no idea how the coins got there, but like the bleached skulls of cattle along a desert wagon trail, the oxidized coins seemed to mock his hopes of ever reaching civilization again as vain and delusional.

  Most of the skeletons he slogged past were Lincoln wheaties like Pete, only older and all pre-1937. He saw a dime and a nickel too, or the remains of them anyway. Entombed at the edge of the side of the road where the merciless desert met with the uncaring asphalt, the coins’ eyes followed him like those in a portrait painting.

  Pete Penny had seen many a battered coin in his life, bruised and bent like himself, but until now he never saw a dead one. Just as the sky held millions of birds, how often did a person see one lying blank-eyed and stiff-legged on the ground? And even when one was spotted it was most likely the victim of a cat or some accident. Where did all the birds go when their time was up? Coins were like that, Pete thought. When commerce no longer called, they mysteriously disappeared.

  He looked skyward and saw a vulture circling above. Pete grimaced and trudged on. The shadow from the cactus hadn’t made much of a difference anyway. He noted the sun over the mountains. It would dip behind their peaks in a couple of hours, and that would bring more relief than the wispy shade of an ocotillo.

  Pete couldn’t rid the looks of those coins from his mind. Their drawn, flattened and chalky faces haunted him. Was he soon to be added to that ghastly collection?

  He limped ahead and came across another mutilated penny. Pete stared down at it and whispered, “Rest in peace, penny.”

  The penny did not answer. It didn’t have the animating spirit to speak, having given up that ghost a long time ago. Pete wanted to dig shallow graves for each coin he passed but he didn’t have the energy. The little prayer he offered up was all he could do for them, and he hoped the few words he muttered covered them like a shroud.

  He lumbered on.

  Pete’s time in young Cassius’s jar seemed like happy days now. Had he known then where his escape would eventually lead him he’d never have slipped out the boy’s bedroom window and dropped to the street below.

  Freedom had started out promisingly enough. Within an hour he had hitched a ride on his first tip taxi. An old man pushing a hotdog cart had spotted him on the sidewalk and dropped Pete into a tin cup marked TIPS. Inside he jangled along with thirty cents worth of change. He felt confident that soon he’d be reentering the world of commerce. Commerce meant civilization, and civilization meant people, and people meant liquid. Water, tea, even beer or whiskey; he only needed a medium clear enough to allow him to get a message to CBS back at Coin Island.

  The next transaction arrived when the hotdog vendor dumped Pete and the other coins from the tin cup into the hand of a salesman as change for a dollar.

  So far, so good.

  The salesman worked for Fruit of the Loom and stopped at three department stores to see if his clients would place orders to help him make his monthly quota. In each case the store already had enough underwear and T-shirts, but they placed orders to help the guy out anyway. He had been servicing those stores for years and his clients liked him. T-shirts had been popular throughout much of the 1950s thanks to stars like Marlon Brando and James Dean, but the fad was wearing thin. Still, it was proving to be a hot summer, and the salesman convinced the store managers that it could payoff to be well stocked.

  On the way out the last department store, and now in good spirits, the man thought having met the month’s quota deserved a little celebration. He spent Pete as part of a purchase of a cigar, a rose, and a bottle of cheap champagne to share with his girlfriend, Stella.

  To Pete’s continued glee, he didn’t remain in the cash register long. Within twenty minutes he was in the hand of a woman who had bought a can of Aqua Net hairspray.

  From there he swapped hands seven times in the next five days. He kept his eye out for a chance to slip away, but the opportunity to do so never appeared. After each exchange he was either locked in a register, zipped up in a purse, or in one case, rolled up too tightly in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans.

  Things went downhill from there.

  Over
the next two months Pete passed three weeks in a bubble gum machine in Cincinnati, ten days in a Pittsburgh charity box, and a week in Nashville as a stand-in for a missing thimble in a Monopoly game. The happy family took turns pushing him around the board where he competed with a cannon, a Scottie dog, a wheelbarrow, and an iron. As luck would have it, he spent the greater part of each game in jail.

  From there Pete found himself glued to a bunch of toothpicks as part of a child’s art class for five days, followed by three days in a boot crammed with smelly socks. Eventually, he ended up in the ashtray of a truck driver in Joplin, Missouri headed to California on Highway 66.

  The driver wasn’t a smoker and used the ashtray for spare change. The trucker had recently spent his saved coins for snacks at his last fill-up, and so Pete was the first coin in. Do to his darkened state he laid unseen in the shadows of the tray.

  A mile outside of Amarillo, the trucker picked up some chatty company in the person of a hitchhiker named Jack who was on his way to visit a friend in San Francisco. The man drank and smoked heavily, but the lonely trucker found the fellow and his endless stories about life on the road amusing, even thought-provoking at times.

  The chain-smoking passenger slowly buried Pete beneath a mountain of cigarette butts and ashes. Out of sight and out of mind, the driver forgot about his penny, and so neglected to retrieve Pete before he became engulfed in Camels.

  And then things went from bad to worse. In one fell swoop, the driver yanked the ashtray from the dash and shook its contents out the window. The butts and ashes went east, swept away with the wind, and Pete dropped tumbling down the center of the highway where he was promptly run over by a westbound semi, then an eastbound station wagon, then a westbound trailer truck, followed by an eastbound U-Haul.