Ross Thomas: Chinaman’s Chance

“You in the market?”

“In a small way,” Durant said.

“It can’t be too small with Reuters in your living room.”

“We’re keeping our eye on one particular little item.”

“Oh?” Piers said, refusing to push for the name, but curious.

“Something called Midwest Minerals,” Durant said.

Piers’s mouth went, down sharply at the corners — a petulant expression that somehow made his fifty-year-old face look younger. Or perhaps just childish. “Christ,” he said, “that’s dropped thirty-two in the last five weeks.”

Artie Wu got up again and moved over to the newsprinter, hardly even limping. He grinned happily and said, “Should be down thirty-three when it opens this morning.”

“You guys went short,” Piers said, making it an accusation, but an admiring one.

“Yeah,” Durant said, “we did.”

“Where’s bottom?”

“We think around twenty-seven, maybe twenty-eight,” Artie Wu said as he moved back to his chair.

Piers nodded thoughtfully. “Way too late for me, even with an uptick.”

“Probably,” Durant said.

“Is this all you do?” Piers said. “Sell short?”

Durant shrugged. “We sort of fiddle around with this and that now and again.”

“That’s not overly explicit.”

“No,” Durant said, “it’s not.”

Piers nodded as if he found that perfectly understandable. He shifted his gaze from Wu and Durant to the ocean and, still staring out at it, said, “Once in a while — not every day, of course, or even every month, but once in a while — just for kicks or maybe even a little excitement — I’ll go in on something that’s just a bit—” He stopped to choose his next word carefully, finally settling on “dicey.” He switched his gaze back to Wu and Durant. They returned it with no more expression than could be found in a saucer of milk.

Piers didn’t mind. “I’m a curious sort of guy,” he went on. “I mean I have a lot of curiosity, so I ask questions. Sometimes it pays off.”

After a long moment Artie Wu said, “Dicey, I think you said.”

Piers smiled. “Dicey.”

Keeping his face perfectly grave, Artie Wu leaned forward, tapped Piers on the knee, and in a low, confidential tone said, “Like to buy a map to the Lost Dutchman gold mine, mister — or is that too dicey for you?”

“Jesus,” Piers said, and smiled again.

“A bit rich, huh?” Durant said.

“A bit. Have you really got one?”

“We’ve got two,” Wu said. “Both very old, very worn, and nicely stained and tattered.”

“What else?” Piers said.

“You sound serious,” Durant said.

Piers shrugged. “Try me.”

Durant looked at Wu, who made his big shoulders go up and down in a small, indifferent shrug. Durant nodded and looked at Piers.

“How about buried treasure?” he said.

“Pieces of eight?” Piers said, and smiled, but not so that the smile would cancel out anything.

“Hundred-dollar bills,” Durant said. “Some fifties. A lot of them.”

“Whose?”

“Nobody’s now,” Durant said.

“How much?”

“A couple of million,” Artie Wu said.

“Where?”

“Saigon,” Durant said. “Or Ho Chi Minh City, if you prefer.”

“I don’t,” Piers said. “Where in Saigon?”

Artie Wu looked up at the ceiling and in an almost dreamy voice said, “When things got tight at the embassy toward the end, they found themselves with six million dollars in cash. They decided to burn it. Well, four million got burned and two million got buried, and for five thousand bucks we can buy a map of the embassy grounds with an X on it.”

“Well, now,” Piers said. “Who buried it?”

“The guy who wants to sell us the map,” Durant said.

“You check him out?”

Durant nodded. “We spent fifteen hundred bucks checking him out. There are, of course, a few obvious problems. That’s why we’ve decided that perhaps keener minds than ours should take over. We’ll sell you our contact for — say, two-fifty.”

“We might even part with him for two hundred,” Artie Wu said.

Piers rose, a grin on his face. He was a medium-tall man with a wedge-shaped head and gray, smooth, thick hair that lay flat on his head. He had some interesting lines in his face — perhaps too many lines for fifty, but he had both worried and laughed more than most people and perhaps the lines could be blamed on that. His eyes were gray and smart, his nose slightly hooked, his mouth wide and thin, and his chin firm without too much sag. All his life he had just escaped being handsome, for which he was mildly grateful, and now almost everyone thought of Randall Piers as being distinguished looking, which he was just vain enough not to mind.

Still grinning, Piers said, “I think you’ve got yourselves one hell of a deal.”

Durant looked at Wu and said, “I think he just said no.”

Wu shook his head sadly. “The chance of a lifetime.”

“If it works out for you,” Piers said, “I’d like to know. But then, if it works out for you, you won’t be letting anybody know, will you?”

“Not right away,” Durant said.

Piers grinned again. “Thanks for the coffee — and the offer,” he said. Piers started for the door, and then almost on impulse, but not quite, because he never did anything entirely on impulse, he stopped and said, “My wife’s having some people over for drinks this evening. Maybe you guys would like to come.”

“What time?” Artie Wu said.

“Around six.”

Wu looked at Durant, who after not quite a second of hesitation said, “Sure, I think we can make it. You live down the beach?”

Piers gave Durant a quick, careful look, but there was nothing in the lean man’s face other than the desire for an address.

“My house is the one where the white steps lead down to the beach from the top of the bluff,” he said. “You know it?”

Durant nodded. “Those steps. They’re real marble, aren’t they?”

“That’s right,” Piers said. “Real marble.”

Durant watched from the deck as the man with the six greyhounds made his way down the beach toward the glistening white steps. When Piers started up the steps, Durant turned and went back into the living room.

“Well?” Artie Wu said.

“I think,” Durant said, “that we just got our nibble.”

Wu nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s what I think too.”

The 182 steps that led to the top of the seventy-foot-high bluff where Randall Piers had built his house three years before were fashioned out of an Italian marble that came from a quarry in Carrara — the same quarry, Piers sometimes told people, that Michelangelo had liked to do business with. Piers wasn’t at all sure that this was true, but it made a good story.

The steps were eighteen inches deep and six feet wide, with gentle six-inch risers that made for easy ascent because of the way they zigzagged back and forth across the face of the bluff. The marble was a lustrous white with a faint pinkish tinge to it that sometimes, when the sunset was just right, made the steps look like a jagged, blood red scar running down the pale gold of the sandy bluff.

Piers usually made the journey up and down the steps with the six greyhounds twice each day, just after dawn and just before dusk. He walked and ran the dogs along the beach for almost three-quarters of a mile in the direction of Point Dume and back. That was three miles a day, and he counted going up and down the steps as another two miles in effort, if not in distance, and that was all the exercise he got except for an occasional set of tennis on one of his two courts. For those who didn’t like to walk up and down the steps there was an electric boxlike affair, something like a ski lift, which had seats in it for those who were too weary to stand. Piers had ridden in it only once, just to make sure that it worked.