by James Norton
August 7, 1937
My darling Hildi,
In 1933 the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, ordered all the new $20 gold pieces destroyed. I handled the final melting of the coins. I’m ashamed to say that I took some. Technically they are not stolen because I replaced the new coins with old ones. I hid what was left in the office where I worked, but never got the opportunity to take them out before I was transferred to New York.
The map and directions on the next page show the hiding place. Do what you think best.
Love,
Your Grandfather
Rhonda sucked in a whistle.
“Who’s Hildi?” Bernie asked.
Rhonda shook her head. “Maybe Nana knows. I sure don’t.”
She opened the other envelope with a paring knife and removed the contents. The pale green stationery was flimsy and discolored with age. The handwriting was small and legible. Rhonda counted the pages
“Four pages.” She cleared her throat.
“You want some soda?” he stood.
“Yeah. … You want me to start?”
“Knock yourself out.”
July 7, 1964
Dear Cousin Sal,
I’m writing to you because you are my last living relative. If you haven’t read the letter from my grandfather you should do that before going any further.
When Rhonda paused he handed her a can of Grampa Graf’s Creamy Top Root Beer.
She took a sip and put it on the counter. “Sal was my grandfather. So Hildi is his cousin. My great aunt, I guess.”
“Well, that’s something.”
Rhonda cleared her throat and continued.
When I got the letter from him at his death I was employed as a secretary in the same building where he worked. I got my job because he was such a high, muckty muck in the Treasury Department. ‘Iron Joe,’ they used to call him because he was such a stickler for the rules. When I read his letter it was a real shock.
I didn’t do anything about it for several weeks, then my curiosity got the better of me. One day I asked a couple of the old timers where my grandfather’s office was when he worked in the building. They told me it was in the oldest part of the building. It was being used for storage. That night I spent several hours memorizing the directions grandpa left in the letter.
The next day I begged off going out to lunch. When I was pretty sure most people were gone, I went up to get a look at his old office. It was filled with odds and ends that probably hadn’t been used for years. The room was so cluttered I couldn’t even see where grandpa said the hiding place was.
That afternoon I filled out a form to have all the things on that floor removed to a warehouse in Virginia. I slipped it in with a bunch of other correspondence my boss would sign. He never questioned it.
To avoid suspicion, I waited a few days before going back. When I went up there to look around, a fella who was a new employee in the department came into the room. He scared me, but I tried to be casual. He asked me what I was doing and I told him how my grandpa’s office used to be here. I asked him what he was doing. He said just looking around and trying to get his bearings. About then the building supervisor came into the room. He said hello, looked around quickly and left. I was terrified. The next day my boss told me that the old area was going to be remodeled.
At first I wasn’t concerned, but in a few days there were workmen looking the place over. I thought that if they remodeled enough they’d find grandpa’s secret and his reputation would be ruined. Maybe mine, too.
I decided to act the next day. Grandpa said I’d need a pry-bar to open the hiding spot. It was winter so it was easy to hide the one I brought in my coat. I did the lunch trick again and went up to the old office space. They were there like his letter said under the chair molding in the partition. I took the coins down to my floor and hid them in my desk behind a drawer along with the pry-bar.”
Rhonda took a sip of her soda and then another. She re-paged through the letter. “This is amazing.”
“Yes. You want me to read?” he asked.
She shuffled the pages, shook her head and took another sip. “That’s okay, I’ll finish.”
“I took them home the next day, Saturday. It seemed too simple. The only thing I could think of was that that part of the building was completely walled off from the area where we made the money so the security wasn’t as tight. I walked out with the remains of grandpa’s stolen coins. Who would have thought to check for someone removing loot from twenty years ago?
Someone had. As I was leaving my apartment building that night to meet friends for a movie, the new man from the office met me at the lobby door. He told me he was a Treasury Agent and that he knew all about it. He hustled me around the corner into an alley and began to threaten me. I really wasn’t listening to what he said, I was just trying to think of a way to get away from him. He said something about calling the police. He grabbed me by the wrist and started to pull me toward the street.
With my free hand I pulled out my pry-bar and hit him on the head. He fell right down. He moaned. I hit him again with everything I had and once more. He didn’t make a sound or move. I felt for a pulse in his neck, but he was dead. I dragged him behind a dumpster and left to meet my friends. I wiped the bar clean with a bunch of tissues and dropped it in a trash can near the movie theater.
Monday went by uneventfully. Tuesday people began to ask about the new guy. On Thursday the police came to the office and questioned me. I told them I hadn’t seen him since Friday. They questioned me a few times, but I stuck to my story. Nothing more ever happened. I don’t think he was a Treasury Agent.
After the publicity about King Farouk’s ’33 Double Eagle, I knew the coins grandpa took were rare. I never told anybody. Now they’re yours.
Love,
Aunt Hildi”
Bernie walked around the kitchen island and stood next to Rhonda. If the letter was legitimate, this woman, her great aunt, killed a man over this coin. The women in this family were something else!
Rhonda moved the paper around and picked it up. “Is this for real?”
“Hildi talks about coins. Where are the rest of them?”
Rhonda shook her head. “All we have is this one coin and these letters.” She picked up the coin and weighed it in her palm. “We’ve got one maybe two dead guys.”
“Don’t forget the skeleton in the yard.”
“And a fourth, if you believe Hildi.” Bernie arranged the letters on the counter.
Rhonda touched her chin. “Sounds pretty real to somebody.”
Chapter 66
Rhonda held the coin close to her left eye. “What do you think its worth?”
“I don’t know.” Bernie took a seat on one of the chrome legged chairs of his hand-me-down kitchen set. “Do you think it’s real?” Bernie asked.
“Well, let’s assume it’s real.”
He frowned. “Hell of an assumption.”
“Yeah, but let’s go with it for the moment. What’s it worth?”
“First, we have to find someone to buy it.”
“Actually, we need several someones to hold some kind of auction.” She smiled. “Yeah but, we should have an idea about what to charge.”
He grabbed her arm. “Hold it, hold it. This is stolen property. Federal government property at that. Off hand, I think they send you to jail for possession of that sort of thing, to say nothing of trading in the stuff.”
“Relax,” she said. “We don’t know if the coin is stolen. It all reads like one big fairy tale.”
She had a point, but he was still talking with Rhonda, a woman of the Lapinski family. One thing he learned in the past week is that the women in her family appeared to have a broad mercenary streak and a loose interpretation of the truth.
“We need to talk with an expert. Where do you keep your Yellow Pages?” Rhonda asked.
Chapter 67
Half an hour later Bernie and Rhonda pulled up to a little storefront on
70th and North Avenue. The sign over the door read “Henry’s - Coins, Gold and Silver Bought and Sold.”
Rhonda twisted the rearview mirror and studied her face, then applied some new lipstick and fluffed her hair with her fingers. When she unbuttoned her blouse and tied it under her breasts, Bernie had to ask, “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to talk to Henry, right?” She rolled up the leg of her shorts to show as much skin as possible.
He glanced through the small window in the door at the lump behind the counter. “Yes, it’s Henry Koppelstein.”
“Don’t know him.”
“He was two years behind us in school.”
“Is he straight?” she asked.
“Far as I know. They kicked him out of junior high for having skin mags in his locker.”
She smiled and nodded. “I didn’t spend all that time on-stage in LA and Vegas without learning a thing or two about persuading men to help me.” She stepped out of the car and strutted toward the little shop. “Let me do the talking.”
“Just so long as you keep your clothes on.” What kind of psycho-sexual judo was she using on him?
Rhonda winked at him.
Inside the twenty by twenty foot room they found Henry. He was medium height and, without the dozen gold chains around his neck, he weighed somewhere north of two-hundred pounds. His long black hair and goatee matched his T-shirt and jeans. He look up from a magazine, put it under the main counter and said, “Hey, how ya doin’?” With his eyes glued to Rhonda’s chest, he didn’t acknowledge Bernie’s existence. The air conditioning ran full-blast and the clear, orange shade on the south-facing windows gave the shop a glow that was almost golden.
“You always keep it this cold in here?” she asked.
“Mostly,” he replied.
“You, I know you. You’re Henry Koppelstein, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Rhonda Lapinski.” She nodded in her companion’s direction. “That’s Bernie Keagan.”
Henry squinted at them. “I know you guys. Grade school summers, I saw you two around the playground and the pool.”
Bernie leaned against the wall near the door and gave him a wave.
“Good memory,” she said.
Henry smiled and rested his hands on the counter. “Neat, swell, good to see you again.”
“Well, I really don’t know anything about coins.” Rhonda stepped right up to the counter and in a voice so soft Bernie could barely hear it said, “Can you help me?”
The lump leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. “Maybe, what kind of help do you need?”
Bernie wondered if Henry had been to strip clubs in LA and Vegas and was now not that easily persuaded.
“What would a 1932 Double Eagle be worth?”
Henry’s small eyes hid under his broad eyebrows. “Why do you ask?
Rhonda leaned on the counter showing him a significant amount of cleavage over the knot in her blouse. “Well, if someone wanted to sell me a ‘32 Double Eagle for $1,000 would that be a good deal?”
A toothy smile from Henry’s small mouth snaked its way from between his mustache and beard. “If it was real it would be a hell of deal, but at that price it’s probably a fake.”
“Good to know.” She looked to her left and spoke to Bernie over her shoulder. “See, I told you Henry was the man.” She turned back to their coin expert, looked into his eyes and asked, “How do I tell?”
“Tell what?” he asked.
“If the coin is a fake or not?”
Henry took a deep breath and touched his mustache with his right hand. “First, you’ve got to make sure its real US government issue. Second, you need to confirm its provenance, its pedigree is sound.”
“I’m lost, Henry. How do I do that?”
He turned and searched the bookshelf behind him. “There are several things you can do.” His hand twitched. “Measure and weigh it.” He selected a paperback volume with a worn maroon cover. After a quick consultation of the index he found the page he needed. “Okay, if it’s in good shape, a Double Eagle will weigh 33.463 grams. It should have a diameter of 34 millimeters.” He closed the book. “Next, you put a drop of aqua regia on the coin. If nothing happens, it’s real. If it eats through the coin, doesn’t matter ‘cause it’s a fake.”
“Oh, you know so much.” Rhonda touched the screaming eagle tattooed on Henry’s left forearm. “What’s this aqua regia?”
Henry looked at her hand. “A mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid. Any chemical supply house can get you some. Just be careful.”
“What if the seller doesn’t want to do that?”
“I’d be suspicious, but you can determine the specific gravity of the coin by measuring the volume displacement in water.” Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Henry, you’re amazing. I didn’t know any of that.” Rhonda leaned closer to the coin expert. “What will the … ah … specific gravity tell me?”
Henry smiled and consulted the book again. “US gold coinage is 90% pure gold and 10% copper. Most fakes are made with something less pure. The difference in specific gravity will be readily apparent with something less than the 18.28 used in a real coin.”
She said. “Got that, Bernie? That’s important.”
“Yeah.” He wrote deliberately in a pocket notebook.
Henry looked at Rhonda’s cleavage. “But, there’s more.”
She patted his arm. “Hear that, Bernie, more. I knew we came to the right guy.”
“When you’re right, you’re right,” Bernie said. It was fun watching a master and even more alarming to think of how she was using her talents on him.
Henry was almost glowing. “Sometimes less knowledgeable forgers try to pass off pure gold coins as fakes. The specific gravity of pure gold is 19.32. Bottom line, something too high or too low is suspect.”
Rhonda considered the comment and straightened up. “Have you ever done any of this testing?”
He pointed to a framed document on the wall behind him. “To get that professional certification I passed a test using them all.”
“Terrific, what about the pedigree, the provenance?”
“Much more difficult,” he fished a cigarette out of a pack on the back counter, lit it and took a drag. “That’s the paperwork that tells you the history of the coin - who owned it and when. Any breaks in the ownership record are very bad. Usually you need someone to insure that the information on the paperwork is the truth. Kind of like title insurance on a house. Know what I mean?”
“You are so smart.” She smiled her best smile at him. “Ah, how much should a real ‘32 cost with good paperwork.”
Henry retrieved the magazine he’d been reading when they walked in and flipped to the back. “Ah … depending on the condition …” He ran his finger over a page. “Maybe a fifteen, twenty grand.”
Rhonda whistled. “Why so much?”
“It was the last year they circulated that type of coin.”
“Mind if I have one of your cigarettes?” she asked.
With a hairy hand the coin dealer shook one up from the pack and offered it to her. She took it and put the cigarette to her lips. He lit it. She took a drag and said, “So there wasn’t any 1933?”
“No, Franklin Roosevelt melted all of them down to stop hoarding. Well, almost all of them.”
She half turned toward Bernie and smiled. “None survived?”
Henry took a drag. “The story goes that three proofs turned up missing. Two were recovered. One is reported to be in the Middle East with some oil sheik.”
“How much is a thing like that worth?” Rhonda asked.
Henry let the smoke roll out of his mouth. “Shit, who knows? A couple a mil?”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “Henry, you are the man.”
“The man,” Bernie agreed.
They stood there in silence.
From the back of the shop a young female voice called, “Hey, swe
etie, lunch.”
Henry let go of Rhonda’s hand like it was on fire. His eyes bugged out. “I’ve got customers up here, honey.”
“Okay, I’ll put it in the fridge.”
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
Rhonda patted him on the arm. “Thanks, we’ll get back to you.”
“What’s this all about?” the pear shaped numismatist asked.
Rhonda straightened up and adjusted her blouse to show more skin. “Believe me, Henry, if this deal moves forward we’ll need someone with your background. We will get back to you.”
He reached under the counter and produced a business card which he offered her. She took it and stuffed it into her blouse over her left breast. Henry held his breath.
Bernie let his out. “Thanks.” He took Rhonda’s arm and lead her out the door.
She waved back at Henry and breathed, “Bye. Thanks.”
Bernie guided her into the car and drove away quickly.
“What’s this getting back to him shit?”
She shifted back to her business persona. “We are going to need a reputable person to do those tests for anyone buying the coin. Henry could be our man.”
Once again, she silenced him with a logical point. That is unless they remembered that this was most likely stolen Federal property. Obviously, she didn’t care.
Chapter 68
They were a good half mile from Henry’s before Rhonda let out a whoop. “Hot damn, Bernie, two million bucks!”
“I suppose we should do the test to make sure the coin is real.”
“Yeah, sure.” Rhonda threw her head back against the seat as they made the turn south from North Avenue onto 76th Street. “Holy shit, two million dollars! Yeow!”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Who you gonna sell it to?”
“What’d ya mean?”