William Lashner - Past Due

“All right. Here, sweetie, my card. Give me a call and we’ll have that coffee.”

“Sure thing, Phil.”

As we walked off to the end of the pier, Skink was rubbing his hands. “She’s got a sweet smile, she does.”

“You’re impossible,” I said.

“Just trying to be of assistance to the local constabulary, I am. You clear everything up in there?”

“It was Colfax.”

“Never did like him.”

“How’d it go out here?”

“Like pie. As soon as I ran into Kimberly and had a little heart to heart with her it wasn’t nothing finding our girl. She wasn’t even guarded, just tied up with rope and duct tape, and put belowdecks.”

“She was okay?”

“She’s tougher than both of us. How did our Kimberly do up there?”

“Amazing.”

“It was she who insisted on going up, delaying everything to give me time to find Beth and make the call. Quite a girl, that. See I told you, I had a feeling about her from the start.”

“Yes, you did.”

He led me around the long warehouse on the pier to the rear of the great rusting boat sitting in the harbor. At the end of the pier stood a shadow, staring out into the water. Beth.

“You did well, Phil.”

“I know it. Go on, now. She’s been asking for you.”

I gave him a glance and then walked slowly toward her. She didn’t turn around to look at me when she said, “It was here, the boat he put me on. It was right here.”

“I guess Eddie Dean sailed it away.”

“You let him go.”

“Kimberly let him go. But it was Colfax who took you on his own, without Dean knowing or approving. How are you?”

“Fine. Shaken but fine.”

She turned and gave me a hug, a strong hug, stronger I think than she had ever given me before.

“I knew you’d come for me,” she said.

“It wasn’t me. It was Phil.”

“I know.”

“And Kimberly told him enough so he could guess where you were.”

“I know, but it was you who came for me. When Colfax pointed that gun in my face and took me away I realized I wasn’t as scared as I should have been. And it was because I knew you’d come for me.”

“That’s what partners do.”

“I’m so glad you’re my partner. We’ll make it work, Victor.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t care about the money. We’ll sell cookies door to door if we have to.”

“Okay, but we won’t have to. Selling cookies, I mean. I took the last bit of money still left in Tommy Greeley’s suitcase. Thirty thousand dollars.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I thought you and I would pay a visit to Joey’s mom and give it to her. She won’t see a penny from the man who killed him, he’ll be judgment proof. But I’d still like to give her something.”

“Okay.”

“Excluding our one-third contingency, of course.”

Beth laughed. “Of course.”

“Should last a few months. And then something will come in, I know it. Before we go to Mrs. Parma’s, make sure you haven’t eaten for a few days. Her veal is amazing.”

“I won’t. So when?”

“Soon, but not tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” I said. “First I’m getting Rashard Porter out of jail. Then I’m saying good-bye to my dad.”

I WAS LATEfor the hospital, but I had one quick errand to run.

The bell tinkled with silvery merriment when I opened the door. The shop was small, bare, dusty. Its entrance was in an alleyway, you had to go down four steps to reach the door, the sign was too small to read from the street. You didn’t just happen to wander into Bullfinch’s Stamps and Coins, you came looking for something specific, and so I had.

Inside, the few shelves were stocked with old reference books, the counter was unmanned, with only a banker’s lamp on its surface. A table to the side of the bookshelves had a pile of scrap paper and a ballpoint attached to a chain. I walked over to the table, examined the pen. A good thing the chain was there, wouldn’t want anyone to walk off with the Bic.

“Yes, yes, what do you need?” said a man who appeared behind the counter, wiping his hands on a filthy towel. He was tall and stooped, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, his glasses were round, his mustache gray. He would have been the telegraph operator in a frontier town except the frontier was gone and everyone now had cell phones. “Are you here to buy or to sell?”

“Neither really,” I said. “I’d just like some information.”

“Public library has a very fine reference section. Eighteenth and the Parkway. Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re very busy.”

I looked around at the empty store. “This won’t take long.”

“Why don’t you come back when we’re under less of a rush?”

“When will that be?”

He glanced at his watch. “February,” he said.

“Are you Mr. Bullfinch?”

“No,” he said. “That was my father. Good day.”

“It is, isn’t it?” I said. “Twenty-dollar Saint Gaudens gold piece.”

He cocked his head. “What about it?”

“Worth much?”

“How can a question like that be answered, Mr…”

“Carl.”

“What year? What condition? Motto or no motto? Regular strike or proof? Please, Mr. Carl. The twenty-dollar Saint Gaudens is generally considered to be the most beautiful American coin ever minted. Let’s say a regular strike in decent condition, you could sell it for three hundred or so, buy it for four-fifty or so, prices varying depending on the year, the mint, and, of course, condition.”

“Three hundred thousand?”

He laughed. “No, Mr. Carl. There were seventy million issued between 1907 and 1933. They are beautiful but not rare. You seem disappointed.”

“Is there a higher end market for the coins. Are some vastly more valuable than others?”

“As with everything. Recently a Saint Gaudens, once the possession of King Farouk of Egypt, sold for over seven million dollars, but that was truly one of a kind. It had historical value. But there is a more accessible higher end, if you’re interested.

“Very,” I said.

Bullfinch opened the gate of the counter, walked to the door, opened it, peered outside, then closed it, locked it, pulled down the shade. “One moment, please.”

He disappeared into the room behind the counter and returned a few moments later with a flat black box. He placed it beneath the banker’s lamp, switched on the light, lifted open the box’s lid to reveal a surface of fine black velvet with a single coin atop it.

The coin shone in the light with the sweet glister of gold. About an inch and a third wide, it had a deeply sculpted figure of Lady Liberty striding forward amidst the brilliant rays of a radiant sun.

“May I touch it?” I said.

“No, you may not. Fabulous, no? This is a high-relief Saint Gaudens in excellent condition, rated at MS65. There were only eleven thousand of these issued, before the design was flattened for convenience. They didn’t stack well, you see, and the banks complained.”

“What’s it worth?”

“If you had one like it, Mr. Carl, I would buy it from you for, let’s say, thirty thousand dollars.”

“And how much would you sell this one for?”

“More.”

“I see.”

“This is a business.”

“It’s quite beautiful.”

“Yes it is. It is the finest coin in my stock.”

“So, this is what is referred to as ultra-high.”

Bullfinch snapped shut his black box, pulled it close to him, switched off the lamp. “That is not what I said. Good day, Mr. Carl, we are quite busy.”

“So what is an ultra-high?”

“It is something not worth considering.”