He glanced back toward her. “You what?"
Then he turned and walked to one of several green-painted metal filing cabinets against the rear wall, opened one of the drawers, and took out a two-inch-thick folder.
I heard Kay sort of muttering, “You damned pseudo-macho men, you bloody blisters” or something like that. Hard to tell. After all, she was muttering it.
Steve extracted some white sheets and put the folder back, then sat down at his desk again and handed the papers to me. There were three pages of white bond paper, neatly typed, and in capitals at the top of the first page was the heading: “Subject: Shell Scott."
I read it all. Not with undistilled delight, no; but with growing admiration for some of Kay Dark's talents that I had remained blissfully unaware of even while they were being energetically exercised upon me, due to Kay's cleverness in keeping them in the background while focusing my attention upon other talents being energetically exercised upon me in the foreground—which, if I understood it, had to be one of her most impressive talents.
Yes, in retrospect, which we never seem to get around to until later, I had told Kay Dark—and Exposé, Inc.—quite a lot, even while thinking I was revealing nothing at all.
Subject was approached by Reporter in Pete's, a bar near subject's office in Hamilton Building, at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 1. Reporter invented simple cover story designed to interest subject and explain alleged need for employing him.
During subsequent conversation, subject revealed the following information: (1) He had just accepted a case for a new client, something that “came up this morning.” (2) His assignment was to locate a person later specified as a woman. (3) He had talked to his new client that day. NOTES: If subject's new client is Claude Romanelle, the mentioned conversation could only have been by telephone; long-distance records should reveal call (probably a.m.) to S. Memorial placed from—or possibly to—subject's office or apartment phone.
Kay had helpfully included both my phone numbers at that point.
Tuesday, October 2, p.m. Subject interviewed and disposed of thirteen fraudulent claimants to fortune mentioned in above mentioned Personal Message. Key question was maiden name of claimant's mother. (See other information in ad copy.) With one claimant, subject's interest was apparently aroused when she mentioned her alleged nickname, “Spree.” Subject stated that if she was the lady he was looking for (the “real Michelle") she would have a little birthmark on chest (indicating left-breast area).
Wednesday, October 3. About 8:00 a.m. subject received phone call in apt., presumed to be from the “real Michelle.” During conversation, he repeated the name Stooben (phonetic, verified by you as Steuben); later in conversation said, “Spree—from what name?” Agreed to meet her in his apt. Reporter observed this woman upon her arrival at hotel. She is approximately 25 or 26 years old, 5'6” tall, weight (overweight) perhaps 150 lbs, hair blond. Beautiful—very. Too risky to attempt pix, but Reporter can identify positively if required.
CONCLUSIONS: Connection between subject and Worthington/Romanelle confirmed. Subject unquestionably employed to locate Romanelle's daughter; accomplished this on morning of October 3. She is identified (as confirmed by you in referenced telephone call, logged 8:16 a.m. Wed. AZ time) as Michelle Esprit Romanelle, daughter of Claude Romanelle and Nicole Elaine Montapert (maiden name), now Mrs. Lawrence Steuben. Rom.'s purpose in wishing daughter found at this time is not known. Whether subject contacted by atty. Worthington or by Rom. not known. Basic assignment completed. END.
I was impressed. Probably Whistler had been, too. But, then, he'd told me that she was very good. I wondered if he knew just how good, and in how many ways. Curiously, I had a hunch—based in part on his reaction to her sudden arrival—that he probably did.
Both Steve and Kay waited silently while I speedily read the report, and when I placed the three pages back upon the desk, each of them was clearly waiting for my response. Presumably for different reasons.
“Wow,” I said to Steve, “I see what you meant."
And to Kay, “Brilliant job. I mean it. But you left out at least one thing."
She gazed straight at me, unmoving, even her lips motionless, and appeared to be quite—well, apprehensive. I said, “When we met that second time, Tuesday night, you asked me if I'd found my client's daughter yet, if I'd found this Michelle I was looking for. I missed it at the time. Didn't really tag that slip until Wednesday morning sometime. Maybe you missed it, too, Kay?"
“Dammit to hell, I sure did,” she said. But she was smiling. Quite obviously relieved.
“I remember saying I hadn't told you the lady's name was Michelle, and you explained you'd picked that up from my ad—the real impossibility, the client's daughter bit, went right by me, though."
“Me, too,” she said. “I almost blew it, didn't I, Shell?” And then, apparently apropos of nothing, she softly added, “Thanks."
A few minutes later we had covered quite a bit of ground I was interested in. I had skimmed through the files on Groder, Foster, and Keats, making a few notes, but I spent more time on Alda Cimarron. In addition, because of my special interest in Romanelle, Whistler agreed to make a copy of his file for me, and turned the original over to young Weinstein for duplication.
It was nearly 10 a.m. when I leaned back in my chair and said, “Steve, when I asked you if the people I ran into were Mafia, maybe I wasn't too far off target. At least, these guys”—I waved a hand at the stack of bound files—“will do until the real Cosa Nostra stands up. But right now the main thing is for me to locate Romanelle. And I think I ought to know more about this Golden Phoenix situation Romanelle's into so heavily. The involvement of this guy, Cimarron, along with those Arizona mafiosi, doesn't smell good. Is it a scam?"
“Maybe,” Steve said. “Maybe not. We don't know—that's why we're interested, digging into it. It's a real mine, a producing gold mine. It was shut down for several years, but the picture started getting interesting about four years ago. That's when Cimarron, and the people back of him, took over and started spending money."
“People back of him? Like who?"
“The money people. We'll get to that. As I was saying, the picture—and profit, rate of earnings increase—that's steadily improved for three years, and now suddenly the stock has doubled since the release of that incredible assay report I mentioned."
He got to his feet. “Fill Shell in on all that, will you, Kay? You know as much about it as I do. I'm going to get a copy of Toker's report."
As he went out, Kay got up and leaned forward to put her empty coffee cup on the desk. Somehow, when she sat down again, her skirt got hiked up far enough that it exposed a lot of bare thigh. A whole lot. To be honest, it exposed that smooth, firm, warm thigh nearly up to where the thigh ends and the next thing begins. It was, I confess, somewhat distracting, mainly because it was so pretty.
But I realized that this stupendously seductive exposure had to be an accident. No way any gal could accomplish so much just by sitting down. Even if it wasn't accidental, I'd have bet she couldn't do it twice in a row.
“Shell?” she said.
“Hmm?” My mind had been wandering.
“Thanks again."
“You're welcome. But ... what are you welcome for?"
“For not telling Steve—what you could have."
“Forget it, Kay. It goes with the territory—I'm in the business, remember? Once I went to a PCP-pusher's house, got in by telling him I was the plumber, then hit him with a pipe wrench."
“Oh, that was a lot worse than what I did, wasn't it?"
“Well, yes, now that I think about it. Incidentally, as you've probably guessed, I checked out your rooms at the Dorchester. So where were those dazzling photographs of you taken?"
She looked not at me but directly at where Whistler would have been sitting if he'd still been in the room, which he wasn't. “In Chicago,” she said, “two years ago, I was still married then. My ex—well, h
e wasn't my ex-husband then, not quite—took them.” She moistened her lips, gazed intently at a filing cabinet. “Well, Steve said for me to tell you about GPX, so I'd better do what the man said."
“What's GPX?"
“That's our shorthand for Golden Phoenix Mines, part of the GPXM ticker symbol a broker punches into his keyboard when he wants a quote on the stock. Let's see, Steve mentioned that the earnings, and prospects, for GPX started getting better four years ago, that's when Liberty Enterprises installed Alda Cimarron as president of Golden Phoenix Mines—it was called Maricopa Minerals, Inc., before that time—and he started spending money, a lot of money."
“Hey, remember this is all new to me, Kay. What's Liberty Enterprises? Also, what do you mean the company was called Maricopa something?"
“Maricopa Minerals. It was a producing mine in the nineteen-thirties. Just a marginal producer, mining and milling under a thousand tons of ore a day, with a gold-purity ratio of around two tenths of an ounce of gold per ton. No big deal, but the stock was listed over-the-counter, and traded—if I remember, I haven't got the figures in front of me—from about twenty cents to just over a dollar then. It closed down during World War Two, and was never put back into production after the war."
She stood up, saying, “I think I'll have some more coffee. You want a cup, Shell?"
“No, I'll just watch."
She filled her cup from the tall silver pot and sat down again. That's all, just sat. I knew she couldn't do it twice.
“Liberty Enterprises,” Kay continued, “is primarily a real estate development company. They own raw land and developed properties in a dozen states, including Arizona. For several years they've owned about a hundred thousand acres of bare land in Arizona—here in Maricopa County, in fact—but it's just desert, sand and cactus and rocks, maybe to be developed down the road sometime. But included as part of that land was the old, closed-down Maricopa Minerals property, including the nine-hundred-foot main shaft, everything that was in place when the mine was in production before. None of it in very good condition, of course."
Steve Whistler came back in carrying a manila folder in one hand, and sat behind his desk as Kay said, “I guess a number of people knew there had to be gold at the site, maybe a little, maybe a lot, but after the war nobody did anything about it. Besides, since the seventies that property has all been owned by Liberty Enterprises. Well, finally they took a good look at the property, and brought Cimarron in to oversee additional exploration and possible further development. He hired engineers, geologists, all the people needed, and in the first year they did a lot of diamond drilling and delineated a fairly significant ore body."
I said, “I don't understand much of this, but I guess the main thing is that there really is gold in the Golden Phoenix. Right? So what's the problem?"
Steve entered the conversation. “Maybe there isn't any. But a lot of things about GPX—including Cimarron and some of the other principals—smell to me. There's gold, sure. But, remember, it isn't down there under the ground in nuggets and bricks. Maybe there's a tenth of an ounce, or if you're lucky a quarter or half ounce, of gold in a ton of dirt. You can't even properly call mineralized rock ‘ore’ unless you can mine it, mill it, and sell it at a profit—the SEC won't allow it. Just as you can't call your reserves ‘proven’—as opposed to the other two, lesser categories, ‘probable’ and ‘inferred’—unless you can mine those reserves at a profit."
“Look.” I lifted a hand. “I don't want to operate a mine. I don't even want to buy any stock in one. I just want to know if these guys are crooks or not."
Steve grinned. “It ain't that easy to tell, pardner. No question there's gold mineralization. I guess Kay told you GPX used to be Maricopa Minerals."
“She did."
“Well, when they were in production, before the war, Maricopa produced over seven million tons of ore grading around a fifth of an ounce gold per ton. They didn't shut down because they ran out of ore, but because of World War Two. So there's gold, but the question is how much and what's the gold-purity ratio of the remaining ore. If this is corroborated, proven valid”—he waved the manila folder alongside his head—“then Golden Phoenix is a bonanza. Incredible. Especially with the price of gold where it is today."
“If what's corroborated?"
He slid the folder over the desk to me. “That is the latest assay report on new exploration of previously unexplored Golden Phoenix property beginning about three hundred yards from the main shaft. This report became available from Arizona Geological Laboratories only two weeks ago. To be precise, on Friday, September twenty-first—coincidentally, the same day we printed the October Exposé, so we weren't able to include it in the brief write-up on GPX that I showed you. Actual work of the assay was done by Thomas Toker, the company's chief geochemist. He has a good reputation, all the credentials. Take a look at the report."
I did. I looked at it for a full minute, and wound up understanding somewhat less than when Whistler had been waving it alongside his head. “Steve,” I said, passing the folder back to him, “just explain the high points to me, will you? And keep it simple."
“I'll try.” He looked at Kay and said, “You should probably get back into the Bennett subdivision hassle, don't you think?"
“Of course. I've got at least three hours’ work on that.” She got up and walked to the door, but then turned and said, “Now that you're here, Shell, don't be a stranger."
“I'll be in touch."
“Maybe we can ... have lunch, or dinner or something, before you go back to California."
“Maybe."
She gave me a long look, and appeared to be sending a message to me with her lips. They definitely weren't waving good-bye, but seemed to be saying something more like au revoir, which is French for “four at the most."
Steve missed all that, peering at the report, then at me. “The first thing to understand,” he said, “is that when somebody wants to find out if there's mineralization—little bits of gold, in this case—on a piece of property, he'll drill a bunch of holes in the ground. From these diamond-drill holes he'll pull up samples of the ore—or, more likely, just a core of plain old dirt—and ship it to an assay laboratory. There the geochemists and various technical people can, from the ground-up sample—which looks about like concrete mix, by the way—determine if there's any gold present. If there is—and often, along with gold, there'll be small amounts of silver, maybe copper, zinc, lead—the technicians can compute the number of ounces present per ton. Then an estimate of the tonnage of ore available, and total number of ounces of gold in that ore, plus the approximate cost per ounce to mine the stuff, can be made."
He lit up another Tareyton. “Basically that's what happened four years ago. Liberty made the decision to return the mine to production, installed Cimarron as president of the renamed Golden Phoenix, brought in geologists, engineers, equipment. They incorporated under the new name, issued stock, and were in business. The original stock issue sold for only twenty cents a share, but within a little more than a year they'd poured their first gold bar, and naturally the stock went up dramatically—it had actually started up months before, as the market anticipated that future production. Well, production has steadily increased, with the result that this year earnings will be well above last year's forty cents a share even without any extraordinary new discoveries or other developments. And the extraordinary has occurred."
I said, “I suppose that's this assay report you've mentioned two or three times."
“Yes, the Toker report. Briefly, GPX has been mining about four hundred tons of ore a day, with a gold-purity ratio of approximately a quarter of an ounce of gold per ton—we'll ignore the silver, the other metals, to simplify this for you."
“Please do. It's already over my head."
“You don't have to understand every detail, Shell. Just keep in mind what I said, which means production of about a hundred ounces of gold per day. Even after costs of production, that'
s been enough to produce earnings of twenty-five to thirty cents a share. A couple of months ago, Alda Cimarron announced plans to double production—from four hundred tons a day to eight hundred or more—over the next year to eighteen months. And then, last week, the Toker report was released showing phenomenal assay results on a new ore body adjacent to the one being milled at the site now."
“I guess those are the numbers I was looking blankly at in the report you handed me."
“Right. Here's what those numbers mean. If the figures are valid, and can be corroborated, it means Golden Phoenix has discovered drill-indicated reserves of at least a million additional tons of ore grading from fifteen hundredths to six tenths of an ounce gold per ton, with only ten percent of the known mineralized structure drilled so far. Those are exciting assay results. Or, in your language, this could mean not merely a doubling of earnings but perhaps ten times current earnings in the next year or two."
“So that's why the stock jumped up this past week?"
“You bet it is. And that move could be only the beginning."
“You said, if the figures could be corroborated. Corroborated how?"
“There'll have to be more drill holes pulled, and those samples assayed. Maybe by a different lab. If those results repeat, then I'll be buying the damned stock myself. So will everybody else I know. But until that's done, I'm withholding judgment."
“Do you know this Thomas Toker?"
“I know him by reputation—it's good. And I met him this past Friday. Interviewed him, told him I'd be quoting him in the lead article of this month's Exposé. He's young, bright, seemed forthcoming and candid. Told me the results excited him as much as they did anybody.” Whistler paused. “These guys in assay labs, they might go weeks, even months, without finding any mineralization at all. Then here come samples from Alda Cimarron's chief geologist on the Golden Phoenix site and everybody in the lab gets turned on."
“Alda Cimarron,” I said slowly. “I haven't got any proof yet, but there's a pretty good chance be was behind the shooting of Claude Romanelle. Now, I looked through your files on all these guys. Didn't have time to do more than skim them, but I noticed that Foster did time for wire fraud, and Groder fell for ADW and later a manslaughter rap. You mentioned Sylvan Derabian's two-year jolt. What I'm getting at, my impression is that the only one of these cats who hasn't been in the joint is Cimarron. Did I miss something?"
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 19