Coinworld [Book Three]

by Benjamin Laskin

  Nicolai and Dominique had already introduced themselves to the two coins weeks back when the boy was away at school. Porter and Quimby were astonished to learn that the four-cent nickel they had seen under the cushion at Seymour Sterling’s home was not the only coin to have achieved locomotion. Not only that, the double eagle lady could fly! Since Nicolai never turned his back to them, however, they didn’t know he was a six-cent nickel.

  Nicolai had earned their confidence and probed them about their experience with The Four and inside Monroe Stryker’s cellar. He also asked them to keep an eye on the boy when they weren’t around.

  To repay them for their cooperation, Nicolai promised the two coins that he would return them to the marketplace where they could once more enjoy the thrill of commerce. Since it appeared to Porter and Quimby that the boy had no intention of spending them, they readily agreed. Besides, their episode in Monroe Stryker’s dungeon had been so harrowing, they’d do anything to get the heck out of that house.

  Porter and Quimby didn’t know why the nickel was so interested in the boy, but they saw no harm in the request. All they had to do was keep track of the boy’s interests and inform the nickel if the kid did anything out of the ordinary.

  “Gentlemen,” Nicolai greeted.

  “We were afraid you had left for good,” Quimby said.

  “I’ve been busy,” Nicolai said curtly. “Have you anything for me?”

  “No, sir,” Porter said. “All the boy does is study.”

  “Has he tried to communicate with you?”

  “He talks to us, yeah, but we play dead.”

  “He doesn’t seem convinced by our act,” Quimby added, “but he hasn’t tried to torture us like his maniac father did.”

  “Have you noticed anything different about the boy? Any new behaviors?”

  Porter and Quimby exchanged glances, and shrugged.

  “Nothing that I could see,” Porter said.

  “Has he tried to enter Coinworld?” Nicolai asked.

  Quimby laughed. “How would he do that?”

  Nicolai silenced the quarter with a sneer. “What about the boy’s father? Have you heard him discuss Coinworld with him?”

  “I think they only talk about such stuff in the coin chamber,” Porter said. “The father comes in now and then, but usually just to say hello or good night.”

  “Nothing else?” Nicolai pressed.

  Quimby said, “I’m not sure if this counts, but today’s the boy’s birthday, and this morning his dad told the kid that as one of his birthday presents he was going to take him to his first coin show next month.”

  Nicolai arched his brow and glanced at Dominique. “Did he say where?”

  “Reno, wasn’t it, Porter?”

  “Yeah, he said Reno. The dork was really excited. I mean, come on, a coin show? Most kids get excited like that about a baseball game or the county fair. He even said he planned on taking us along.”

  “Nicolai,” Dominique said, “we have a long journey ahead of us. We should be going.”

  Quimby said, “Can I ask where it is you guys are always flying off to?”

  Nicolai didn’t like questions, and he didn’t like being called ‘guy’ either, but he answered anyway. “Reno, if you must know.”

  Porter said, “What a coincidence!”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidences, penny,” Nicolai said.

  Quimby Quarter winced at the ominous look in the nickel’s eye. “Don’t mind my friend here,” he said. “He’s just anxious to get back into circulation. It’s been a long time. You know how it is, right?”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Nicolai replied coolly. “But would today be soon enough for you?”

  Porter and Quimby swapped excited smiles.

  “Really?” Porter said, “Like now?”

  Nicolai nodded towards the open window. “We’re leaving and don’t expect to be back for some time. Dominique will drop you at the nearest business.”

  Dominique said, “I saw a coin laundromat about three blocks from here. Will that do, gentlemen?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” they said.

  “Very well, one moment.”

  Dominique rolled off the desk and took flight. She replaced Nicolai on the dinosaur shelf in case the boy returned while she was gone, and then snatched up Porter and Quimby and left with them out the window.

  “Wow,” Porter said as they sailed through the air, “no one is going to believe this!”

  “No, I don’t suppose they will,” Dominique said.

  Quimby didn’t like the look on the double eagle’s face. He glanced down and saw the sign for a laundromat, but the coin didn’t slow and flew past it.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Quimby said nervously, “wasn’t that the laundromat you mentioned?”

  “You don’t want to spend weeks inside a noisy machine, do you?” she answered.

  “We don’t mind,” Quimby assured her.

  “Pshaw,” Dominique said, “we can do better than that.”

  Erica Eagle veered from the main roads and headed towards the outskirts of town.

  Porter and Quimby exchanged anxious looks. Even if they could squirm they’d have been unable to extricate themselves from the eagle’s talons.

  Below, the terrain turned from suburbs to open fields to a stretch of barren dirt, and then a little beyond, to huge craters.

  Porter grimaced and wrinkled his nose. “Pyew, what stinks?”

  Quimby, who smelled the rotten garbage and saw the giant earthmovers, didn’t have the heart to tell his friend.

  Instead, he looked beseechingly up at the golden coin and whimpered, “Why?”

  Dominique looked away from the quarter’s bewildered and tearing eye. “Dead coins tell no tales,” she said.

  “But-but we won’t tell anybody anything! Will we, Porter?”

  Porter had gone completely zinc. He too heard the menace in the woman’s voice and saw their impending doom.

  “No. Nothing. Never!”

  Dominique ignored their pleading as Erica Eagle glided towards an earthmover about to shove tons of refuse into a deep, rank-smelling pit.

  “Bombs away, fellas,” she said, and released the coins.

  Porter and Quimby plummeted screaming into the waste.

  Dominique grinned, and Erica Eagle banked and headed back to the Stryker home.

  17

  jack of hearts

  February 1965 — Reno, Nevada — The Gold Mine Hotel and Casino

  The elevator door slid open with a ting. Dressed for dinner and a show, Harold Auden and his niece Fiona stepped into Reno’s Gold Mine Casino. Bells rang, slot machines whirred and jingled, winners cried out, losers groaned, croupiers and dealers shouted to players to place their bets, and leggy cocktail waitresses in low-cut, eye-catching costumes breezed to and fro with trays full of drinks.

  Fiona looked about as if at a carnival, a smile on her face and full of wonder.

  “Are you going to play a game, Uncle?”

  “I’m not much of a gambler, Fiona. I prefer the odds in my favor.”

  “But it looks like so much fun. Play a little just so I can watch, please!”

  Mr. Auden smiled at his niece’s excitement and recalled the thrill he felt the first time he’d ever been to a casino. “Seeing as though our dinner reservation is at eight, I don’t suppose I can lose too much money.”

  “Thank you!”

  “What game would you like to see?”

  “Whichever you’re the best at, of course,” Fiona answered.

  “I stink at them all. Do you know the rules of any of them?”

  “Father taught me blackjack. That was fun.”

  “They’re all fun if you win, and none of them are fun if you lose. Was your father a winner?” he asked slyly.

  “I guess. He didn’t say.”

  “Winners love nothing better than to brag about their winnings,” her uncle said.

  Fiona frowned in understanding, and ta
king her uncle’s hand strolled with him through the casino and over to the rows of blackjack tables.

  “Do any of them feel lucky to you?” he asked.

  Fiona put finger to chin and scanned the area. The casino was busy and she saw only one or two vacant seats, but she didn’t like the unhappy-looking faces of the players at those tables, or the smug expressions of the dealers. To her left she spotted a heavy-set man squirm off his stool at the end of a table and stand to leave. Fiona tugged on her uncle’s coat sleeve, pointed, and hurried him over.

  Harold Auden sat down and Fiona stood behind him next to a small group of fellow onlookers who were offering advice and encouragement to the players. Mr. Auden set a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the table.

  The dealer, a tall, curly-headed man whose name tag said he was Clay from Texas, called out the exchange to the pit boss. The dealer selected an assortment of chips representing different denominations, pushed the stacks towards Mr. Auden, and wished the new player good luck.

  The dealer dealt the players’ cards face-up, and Fiona observed how the players played their hands. Each player, she thought, seemed to know what he or she was doing, but the dealer was hot and the table ice cold.

  In no time her uncle was down to two green $25 chips.

  “You can break those chips, Uncle,” Fiona said.

  “And draw out the agony?” He checked his watch. “Our reservation is in fifteen minutes. Let’s go out with a bang, shall we?”

  He pushed forward the green chips and the dealer dealt the next game.

  Harold Auden looked at Fiona and bounced an eyebrow. Before him was a pair of jacks. The dealer showed a six. Fiona clapped her hands and patted her uncle excitedly on the back.

  The other players all shook their heads and stayed with their lousy hands. They groused to one another and crossed their fingers that the dealer would bust. The dealer looked expectantly at the man with two jacks.

  Just as Mr. Auden was about to utter the obvious ‘stay,’ a young-sounding voice blurted, “Split, mister.”

  The entire table and their onlookers turned to see who had voiced such nonsense. A few laughed, but the grimmer among them snarled.

  Harold Auden smiled at the handsome boy. “Thanks for the advice, son, but I doubt anyone is that lucky.”

  “Or dopey,” Fiona said. Although usually polite and composed, the girl had a low tolerance for stupidity. She scowled at the boy and said, “Excuse me, dummy, but everyone knows you don’t split tens, especially when the dealer is showing a six.”

  “Fiona,” her uncle scolded, “be nice. He’s just trying to help.”

  The boy said, “I think the dealer has an ace under there, that makes seventeen.” He pointed to a small sign on the table that read: Dealer must stand on all 17’s. “The dealer has to stay, and unfortunately all these people are going to lose.”

  The other players didn’t like the boy’s cocky prediction one bit, and they expressed their disapproval by telling the kid to scram and go find his daddy.

  “Listen, shorty,” Fiona said, drawing herself up to her full measure. “If we split, then the odds are we will steal the dealer’s bust card, and everyone at this table will hate us.”

  The boy ignored the girl’s reasoning and addressed her uncle. “Mister, why win just once when you have three winning hands coming your way? The others are going to lose anyhow.”

  “Three?” Fiona snorted. She nudged her uncle and circled her ear with a finger, hinting ‘cuckoo’.

  “Sir?” the dealer prompted.

  Mr. Auden shot the dealer a stern eye and raised his hand, demanding Clay demonstrate a little patience. Clay grimaced and backed down.

  “How sure are you, son?” the old man asked.

  “Pretty sure, sir.”

  Mr. Auden considered the boy’s sincere blue eyes. The lad radiated a quiet, easy confidence, like a rose exudes fragrance. Harold Auden liked boldness and poise in people, a trait that had always endeared him to Fiona, despite her current theatrics, anyway. Winning the bet was not an issue for the man. He had plenty of money, and his ego could easily withstand losing a few hands of blackjack without bruise or dent.

  The boy had sparked a curiosity in him, and the man wanted to see where it would lead. How would the kid react when he was proved devastatingly wrong? This was the sort of game Harold Auden relished—observing people and seeing what made them tick.

  Mr. Auden reached into his jacket and withdrew his leather billfold. He slipped out another hundred-dollar bill and set it in front of his cards. “Split,” he said.

  Texan Clay snickered to himself as the other players grumbled their disapproval. Fiona’s jaw slackened, and then she glowered at the floppy-haired boy, who smiled innocently back at her.

  The dealer announced the hundred to the pit boss, a large, pot-bellied man in black horn-rimmed glasses and a red blazer, who strolled over to observe the game. He gandered at the table and shrugged apologetically to the other players.

  Clay broke the bill into four $25 chips, rearranged the man’s hands and bets, and then slid a card from the near-empty chute. He flipped it face-up and set it on top of the first jack.

  The table broke out in groans—another jack!

  Had the old man listened to reason, the jack would have surely caused the dealer to bust.

  “Again,” the boy said without flinching.

  Amused by the youth’s audacity, and enjoying the table’s chagrin, Mr. Auden chuckled and placed his third bet, bringing his wager to $150, the largest bet the other players had seen that evening. He nodded to the dealer to split the new pair.

  Clay divided the cards again and proceeded to slide out three more cards—a nine of hearts, a ten of hearts, and an ace of spades, which gave Mr. Auden 19, 20, and 21, blackjack.

  The other players murmured to one another and Fiona and her uncle exchanged looks of anticipation. Secretly, the girl had begun to enjoy the suspense.

  The boy said nothing. He stood with his hands calmly at his sides, and demonstrated not so much as a subtle squint of his eyes.

  Harold Auden hadn’t won yet, and everyone but the boy expected the dealer to either still go on to bust, or as they now feared—thanks to the jerk at the end of the table—draw one or more cards that would doom them.

  Clay pulled the covered card from beneath his hand and turned it over. The table erupted with dismay as they gaped at the ace of hearts and the dealer’s 17, just as the boy had predicted.

  Fiona turned open-mouthed to the youth and stared at him with suspicion. “How did you know that?” she demanded.

  “I didn’t know for sure, of course, but I have been watching since the dealer shuffled and filled the chute. The chute’s almost empty.”

  “Son,” the pit boss growled, “were you counting all those cards?”

  “Not exactly, sir,” the boy answered artlessly. “They just sort of arranged themselves in my head.”

  The dealer swept up the losing bets and paid out the old man’s winnings.

  Mr. Auden collected his chips and stood from the table. He slid a red, $5 chip to the dealer as a tip, and announced that he and his niece had a dinner reservation.

  Mr. Auden turned smiling to the lad and put out his hand. “I’m Harold Auden, and this is my niece, Fiona. What’s your name, son?”

  “Adam Stryker, sir,” the boy answered, shaking hands. The girl didn’t offer to shake, and so not knowing what he should do, he stuffed both hands safely into his pockets.

  “Well, Adam, here you go,” the man said, holding up a green $25 chip. “This is for you.”

  The boy gawked at the chip, and then shook his head. “That’s your money, sir. If I had been wrong, I’d have felt pretty lousy.” He pulled the front pockets of his pants inside out. “See, rabbit ears. I couldn’t have repaid you for my mistake.”

  Mr. Auden chuckled. “A noble gesture, but you weren’t wrong. Besides, that was quite a show you put on, and worth the price of admission.” He dro
pped the chip into the boy’s shirt pocket. “You earned it.”

  “Son,” the pit boss said, “you’re going to have to leave. Unaccompanied children aren’t allowed around here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who are you here with?” Mr. Auden asked the boy.

  “My dad. He’s at the slot machines. They’re boring and the odds stink, so I left.”

  “And he’s okay with that?” Fiona asked, surprised, if not a little envious. She doubted either her father or uncle would approve of her wandering alone around a casino, and she was fourteen. “How old are you?”

  “Nine.”

  “Where are you from, Adam?” Mr. Auden asked.

  “Pasadena, sir.”

  Mr. Auden already had an image of the boy’s father sitting in a rumpled suit, unshaven and smelling of gin, recklessly stuffing coin after coin into a slot machine and yanking at the lever like a drowning man. The boy, however, was well-mannered and obviously very intelligent. The conflicting images intrigued him.

  “Have you been to a casino before?” Mr. Auden asked.

  “No, sir. First time.”

  “Did your father teach you blackjack?” Fiona asked.

  “Dad isn’t a gambler. He’s just blowing through a roll of nickels that my mom gave him to play. He promised he would. I just watched people play and learned it. There aren’t many rules and it’s easy.”

  “I take it you’re an excellent student at school,” Mr. Auden said.

  Adam shrugged. “It depends who you ask, I guess.” He looked at the floor and shuffled his feet. “I get into trouble sometimes.”

  Mr. Auden chuckled. “I mean your grades.”

  “Oh. Pretty good,” he said humbly.

  A heavily made-up woman with a cocktail in her hand slid into the vacant seat. She set her purse on the table, fumbled for her wallet, and knocked over her drink. Chaos ensued and Mr. Auden, Fiona, and Adam took it as their cue to move on.

  The three strolled through the casino in the direction of the lobby. The man and the girl continued to fire questions at Adam, and although he didn’t mind, he wondered why they were so interested in him. The man seemed nice, and the girl wasn’t as snotty as at first, he thought.