The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned
Coinworld: Book 3
Benjamin Laskin
Aretê Books
Copyright © 2017 by Benjamin Laskin
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Published by Aretê Books
Cover design by Domi at Inspired Cover Designs
ISBN: 978-1-5405-5279-2
Created with Vellum
For the amazing Maman family—Avner, Dina, Yakov, Naomi, Natan, and David. Thanks for helping me to keep body and soul together with all your loving kindness and generosity.
Contents
Coinworld: Book Three
Map of Coin Island
1. wheatman
2. bank account
3. dragon slayer
4. pillow talk
5. better off dead
6. bombs and psalms
7. old blue eyes
8. placebo effects
9. attila the hound
10. double bogie
11. garden parties
12. double vision
13. jackpot
14. warts and all
15. mail call
16. the pits
17. jack of hearts
18. poker faces
19. bugged
20. nickel pickle
21. birdies
22. smoke signals
23. nummus animabilis
24. beached promise
25. destiny turns on a dime
26. e pluribus detritus
Message from the Author
Other Novels by Benjamin Laskin
Special Offer
Special Thanks
About the Author
Coinworld: Book Three
There’s no companion like a penny.
—English Proverb
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
—Carl Sandburg
1
wheatman
November 1962 — Los Angeles, California
The black and white screeched to a halt in front of the grocery. Two police officers bounded from the car and rushed over to a thin, elderly man in a dirty apron. Blood smeared his wispy white hair. In one hand the store’s panicky owner held a push broom, and in the other he shook a two-foot salami.
The old man greeted the police shouting, “That way! That way!” He pointed the salami down the sidewalk. “Hurry, you can still catch him!”
The officers swung their heads and glimpsed a sprinting man clutching a small canvas sack skid around a corner. The policemen exchanged words, and then the shorter of the two bolted down the sidewalk. The bigger officer hustled back to the car to call in the crime.
Above, a bald eagle the size of a silver dollar swooped down over the rooftops. The eagle wore a painted purple mask. In its beak trailed a long kite string, and in its talons, two Lincoln wheat pennies: one grungy brown and wearing a mask of red acrylic paint, and the other shiny steel, its Lincoln whooping and hollering, a black mask over his eyes.
“Head him off at the pass!” shouted the brown penny.
The silver dollar veered left.
“The other pass, Sadie,” he cried.
The silver dollar’s old Liberty lady giggled. “Oopsy-poopsie.”
The eagle flitted into the far end of the alley, deposited the two coins and string, and flew off.
The brown penny called to the steely, “Grab your end and wrap it around that water drain on the wall. I’ll do the same on my side.”
“You got it, Wheatman!”
The steel penny snatched up the string in his teeth and zipped rolling towards the wall. When he arrived at the drainage pipe, he sprang the two inches over the pipe’s lip and repeated the action until he hung dangling at the end of the string by his teeth.
The bandit, a woman’s nylon stocking smooshed over his head, charged down the alley, the bag clenched in his hand. He glanced behind and saw a policeman wheel around the corner behind him.
The thief grinned. He knew the neighborhood well. A left at the end of the alley would dump him onto the next street, and then he was just a twenty-yard sprint to the barrio where he could lose the cop in no time.
He returned his eyes ahead and his foot hit the kite string. The string snapped, but so did the man’s gait. He sprawled chin-first to the ground, the bag flying from his hand.
A rain of coins and greenbacks spilled onto the grimy asphalt before him. Ones, fives, tens, and some twenty dollars in loose change fluttered or rolled in all directions.
The thief cursed and yanked the stocking from his head. Still on his stomach, he grabbed madly for the money. In front of him he saw a slew of coins and swept them up into his hand. A shabby penny sprang from his grasp and bucked out of arm’s reach. To the thief’s further mystification, the penny righted itself, spun twice around, and sped rolling up to the man’s nose.
“Naughty, naughty,” the coin scolded.
The crook couldn’t hear the penny, but he knew that something was wrong with this picture. He shot his hand out to snatch the coin, but it darted away.
The man flinched with surprise.
Behind him he heard a police whistle and shouts of “Freeze!”
Now on his knees, the thief grabbed for what bills he could. He rose, took one step, and fell on his face again. He looked at his feet in bewilderment. His shoelaces were undone; undone and tied together.
“How the—?”
Hopping and gamboling at his feet he saw two silvery coins, one a silver dollar and the other a dime. No, wait, too big for a dime. A penny? He sat up and squinted at the coin. A masked penny? He glanced again at the silver dollar. A purple-masked silver dollar?
The police officer ran up and ordered the thief not to move. The cop holstered his gun, cuffed the man’s hands behind his back, and yanked him to his feet.
The officer’s partner jogged up, and behind him shambled the grocer, the two-foot sausage still in his hands.
“That’s him!” cried the old man. “That’s the guy who robbed me and smacked me with my own salami!”
The second officer picked the sack off the ground and handed it to the shop owner.
The grocer scurried about collecting the stolen money, stuffing it back into the bag.
The first cop turned to the thief. “You’re under arrest for robbery and assault with a salami.”
The criminal stared at the coins by his tied shoes, trying to point at them with his head. “But-but, look—!”
“Zip it, pal,” the cop said, grabbing the thief’s elbow to lead him away. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you—”
The thief tripped stumbling into the cop, knocking him to the ground, the thief on top of him.
The second officer whipped out his gun and pointed it at the criminal. “Resisting arrest!”
“What? No!”
“Shoot him, Officer!” the old grocer said.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr.
Giovanni.”
“No?” Mr. Giovanni said, a little disappointed. “Fine.” He took to thwacking the thief on the head with his salami.
“Ouch!” the thief cried. “Hey…!”
The officer tore the salami from the old man’s hand. “Calm down, Mr. Giovanni.”
“Yes, Officer,” Giovanni said apologetically. He stomped on the thief’s fanny and then shuffled victoriously back towards his store.
“Get up, buddy. And don’t try anything like that again.”
The two cops jerked the thief to his feet. The first officer gave the culprit a shove to get going. The man teetered and toppled to the ground.
“I said no more games!”
“My shoes are tied together,” the man explained urgently. “I can’t move!”
“Huh?”
The officers glanced at the man’s feet.
“Wise guy, are you?” said the second cop.
“When did he have time to do that?” said the first, removing his hat and scratching his head.
“I didn’t!”
“Oh,” said the policeman, “I’m supposed to believe that an alley cat slunk over and pawed your shoestrings together while no one was looking?”
“No, not a cat. A silver dollar!”
“A what?”
“And a dime! Or maybe a penny. Is there such a thing as a silver penny?”
The two cops exchanged puzzled looks.
“Has there ever been a silver penny?” asked the second officer.
“Not that I can recall,” answered the first. “But I seem to remember seeing a steel penny now and then when I was a kid.”
“You don’t say? Huh. I wonder why.”
The first officer shrugged. “Not sure, but I think it had something to do with a shortage of copper during World War II.”
They looked at the thief, who was nodding along with them.
“A steel penny,” the thief said. “Yeah, that explains it! And he wore a mask too!”
The two cops turned to one another, and then as if snapped from a trance, the second cop barked, “It doesn’t explain squat, you lunatic.”
The officer tugged off the culprit’s shoes, and with jabbing pokes of the salami, the two cops frog marched him back down the alley.
The coast clear, an edge to the lid to a corrugated metal trash can lifted slightly off the ground. As the steel penny held the lid aloft, his two crime-fighting friends scooted out from beneath and into the open. The steel penny gave the lid a heave and shot rolling out to join them. The lid clanged back onto the ground, startling an alley cat from its perch on the ledge of a back alley window. The cat let out a screech and scampered off.
“We did it, Wheatman!”
“Pete,” Pete Penny replied with a sigh. “Just Pete. Okay, Lenny?”
“Aw, c’mon, Wheatman,” Lenny groused. “Where’s the fun in that? We just helped apprehend a dangerous criminal!”
“Takes one to know one,” Sadie Silver Dollar said.
“Exactly!” Lenny said. “Reformed dangerous criminal, thanks to Wheatman!”
“Oh, brother,” Pete groaned.
“Knowing criminals when I see ‘em is one of my superpowers. The other being my superior strength and my mask of invisibility, and again thanks to Wheatman!”
“Lenny, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not invisible.”
Lenny laughed. “Aw, Wheatman, you’re a crack up. Of course not to you and Sadie. I want you to see me.”
“I don’t know, Paul,” Sadie said. “I like Wheatman better than Paul.”
Pete sighed. “Pete, Sadie. Pete.”
“You see? You see?” Lenny said excitedly. “Sadie’s no killjoy. She gets it.”
“I should have let you drown in that river,” Pete muttered.
“Not you,” Lenny proclaimed. “Nuh-uh, nohow, and no ways. Not the Wheatman! Wheatman doesn’t let any coin down ever!”
“Lenny,” Sadie asked, “if Paul’s the Wheatman, who are you and I?”
“Me? I’m Steelman. And you, Sadie, you’re, let’s see…” Lenny tapped his rim on the ground in thought. He jumped up and spun around. “You’re The Silver Soarer!”
Sadie frowned.
“It’s good, Sadie,” Lenny insisted. “It’ll grow on you, I promise.”
Sadie wasn’t so sure, but she had nothing. “And Ernie Eagle?” she asked.
Lenny shifted his jaw and pursed his lips, and then he opened his eye wide and declared, “The Bald Avenger!”
Ernie screeched and hid his head under his wing in embarrassment.
“Okay, okay, Ernie,” Lenny said, “I’ll work on it.”
Just then they heard a cry. “Help! Help me, somebody!”
“It came from over there!” Pete said. He shot off rolling in the direction of the scream, the others hustling after him.
The coins skidded to a halt before a grilled storm drain. Perched precipitously on one of the narrow gratings teetered a 1945 Mercury dime, the last in her series before the wing-capped Liberty was replaced by a portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As if the dime’s predicament wasn’t perilous enough, at the edge of the grill sat the feral tomcat. Malice in its yellow eyes, the cat stabbed its paw towards the frightened dime, its swipes just missing her. At any second the dime could topple into the storm drain never to see commerce again.
The arrival of the coins caught the cat’s attention. The cat spat, warning them to mind their own business.
“She must have gone skidding from the thief’s sack,” Pete said. “It’s a miracle she didn’t fall in.”
“Good gracious, Paul,” Sadie said, “what are we going to do? We can’t just leave the poor girl there. If we do, she’ll be a goner for sure.”
Lenny the penny bellowed, “This is a job for Wheatman!”
“Aw, jeez,” Pete muttered. He thought for a few seconds and said, “Sadie, you and Ernie try to lure the cat away from the grill. Dive bomb him if you have to, but be careful. Cats are wicked fast, and we don’t want him to step on the grill either. The dime is balancing on a hair.”
“Rodney that,” Sadie said.
“Roger,” Pete corrected. “Roger that.”
“You just told me to call you Peter, Paul. I really wish you’d make up your mind.”
“Go!”
“No need to get testy. Sheesh.”
Sadie rolled off and took flight.
Lenny said, “What about me, Wheatman? What can I do?”
“Once the cat is out of the way, you head to the other side of the grill and get your wheat stalk ready to help pull the woman to safety.”
“My stalk isn’t nearly long enough to do that, Wheatman.”
“I’m going to go out there and bring her to you.”
“But, Wheatman, those gratings are round bars. You can’t just prance out over that abyss. It’s like bucking on a tightrope!”
“We have no choice, Lenny.”
“How about Ernie snatching her up?”
“Shh,” Pete said. “Of course I thought of that, but I didn’t want to hurt the eagle’s feelings. Ernie’s a little too cockeyed for such pinpoint accuracy. One false move and the dime would be history.”
“Always thinking, that Wheatman,” Lenny said with an impressed shake of his head.
“Yeah, thinking,” Pete mumbled to himself. “Thinking I should have left you in that river…”
“What was that, Wheatman?”
“Nothing, Lenny. Nothing at all.”
Pete looked up and saw Sadie and Ernie swoop down for the cat. They missed him by two feet. Oblivious to the barnstorming silver dollar, the tomcat didn’t blink an eye.
Sadie made another pass, this time missing by the same distance on the other side. Again, the stray failed to notice the coin.
Pete and Lenny exchanged glances, and sighed.
“Sadie,” Pete called out, “aim for the trash can!” He turned to Lenny. “It’s a bigger target, and either the cours
e correction will do it, or the bang of smacking into the metal can will scare the cat.”
Sadie and Ernie circled again and dove. They crashed into the galvanized can and the cat screeched and scampered off. The silver dollar bounced off the metal bin and went rolling down the alley.
“Lenny, go see if they’re okay.”
“Wow, look at them roll.”
“Lenny, before they roll right into the street and are run over by a delivery truck or something.”
“Right. On it, Wheatman!” He sped off after Sadie.
Pete shook his head and approached the storm drain.
“Okay, ma’am,” he said to the dime. “Stay calm, I’m coming to get you.”
“Get me?”
“Yeah, relax and don’t move.”
“Move? If I could move, do you think I’d be in this predicament to begin with, you pukey penny?”
Sheesh, Pete thought, recalling Deirdre’s earlier days, what is it with Mercury dimes?
Pete leaned over the edge of the storm drain and peered into its murky depths. It stank and he thought he detected an oily swirl below.
He eyed the grating. Lenny was right. Crossing one of those bars would be like rolling across a high wire; rolling on a razor’s edge. Pete took a deep breath and steadied his nerves.
He hopped onto the crossbar and rolled two wobbly inches. “The heck with this,” he said, and rolled back to where he started.
“Hey, mister,” the dime pleaded, “don’t go. I’m sorry about the puke comment. Help me!”
“I’m not leaving you, ma’am. Hold your horses. I’m just going to try a different tack.”
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