Linda Fairstein - The Kills

Another sharp turn and I followed him around the corner from Duane Street into the alleyway of Thimble Place. I was completely winded now, going too slowly to catch him. I had been a long-distance speed swimmer in high school, but had never sprinted well enough to make this effort worthwhile.

I caught my breath after I made the turn from Thimble onto Thomas Street. A black sedan pulled out of a parking space and stopped at an angle. I took a deep breath and rushed toward the car, as Strait-or whoever he really was-pulled at the door handle with his left hand. I heard him yell, "Unlock it, dammit!" at the driver.

I rushed toward him and he turned to face me, pointing a gun at me with his right hand. "Back up and get the hell out of here," he screamed.

He got into the passenger seat and the car sped off toward Broadway. I could have sworn Peter Robelon was driving.

"Of course he has a gun," Mike said. "He's an agent."

He, Mercer, and I were in the reception area of the Secret Service offices. "How the hell do you know he's an agent?" I asked. "We don't have a clue who he is. He pulled a gun on me a couple of hours ago and you're defending him already?"

"Yo, blondie. You saw him right here in this building, at high noon, where security's tighter than the inseam on your slacks. I assume he's legit. Maybe old Harry had a son. Maybe he's a junior-Little Mister Agent Strait the Second. He must have had some way to get in and out of this building without causing a stink. I truly doubt he pulled a gun on you. He must have had it drawn for a good reason."

"And I'm telling you that I was that very reason."

"Fine. So we made a report. You got a partial plate, and there'll be a make on the car by the end of the day. You're chasing the guy down the street like a banshee. Maybe he thought he had to defend himself."

"How do we figure out who he is? There must be photo IDs of everyone who works here in Federal Plaza."

"You weren't even able to describe him with any detail when the agents came to your office the other day. What are you gonna do now? Sit here and look at thousands of pictures of buzz-cut pasty-faced white men and hope for a match?"

"Yeah, I could do that. I didn't have any trouble picking him out of the crowd today."

It was going on two o'clock. My delay had taken us into the lunch hour, and the agent who had agreed to meet us had stepped away to keep another appointment.

A trim woman, younger than I, came through reception and directly over to the three of us. "Alvino. Lori Alvino. Sorry about your problem today. You ever get your man?" she asked, greeting me with a handshake.

"She never does, for very long. Don't you start worrying about that, too. I'm Mike Chapman. This is Mercer Wallace, and that's Alex Cooper."

She guided us into her suite, a good bit larger than most of the agent cubicles I had visited over the years, suggesting the importance of her position.

"You must have some juice, Lori," Mike said. "Big digs, glass partition, nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge."

"I show them the money," she said, grinning back at him. "That's why the feds love me. I'm the agent in charge of recovering all assets related to the National Mint, here and abroad. My boss says you need everything I can give you on the coin collection of King Farouk, is that right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Alvino established what we knew of the story from Bernard Stark and picked it up from there. "The U.S. government worked with Farouk's people on a regular basis back then. We're talking 1944 and thereabouts, during World War Two. He had already become the king then-just twenty-four years old and richer than Croesus."

"Had he started collecting coins by that time?"

"Absolutely. He had dealers all over the States. They tripped over themselves whenever they had something unusual to unload, trying to get it under the royal nose. The more expensive, the better."

"How did they get the coins to Egypt? Did you just ship things as valuable and as small as that?"

"No way. Farouk used his royal legation to make purchases, which were sent to him regularly by diplomatic pouch. Just about every week. And his staff knew all the rules, believe me."

"What rules?"

"After FDR's Gold Reserve Act became law, it was illegal to export gold, unless the Treasury specifically issued you a license."

"Even a single piece of gold?" I asked. "A single coin?"

"You bet," Lori Alvino answered. "To get that license, you had to be able to establish that the coin being sent abroad had special, collector's value before 1933, before we went off the gold standard."

"How'd they prove that?"

"The keepers of the Castle, that was their territory."

"What castle?" I asked.

"Sorry. The old Smithsonian Institution-our guys always referred to it as the Castle. Experts at the Smithsonian decided on the uniqueness of whatever coin was in question."

"This happened often?" I asked.

"Pretty infrequently, actually," Alvino answered. "There weren't a lot of people during the war who were terribly concerned about their coin collections while the world was turned upside down. The entire European market was virtually shut down. It left the field wide-open for Farouk."

Mercer leaned in to speak. "This stuff doesn't quite qualify as ancient history, but it's a bit remote from what you're handling today. How come you know so much about all this? You had a refresher course recently?"

Alvino blushed. "I had a chance to look over the files a couple of weeks back. I had to pull all this paperwork together for someone else who came in for a briefing," she said, gesturing to the several folders full of documents related to the Farouk collection.

Chapman gave her his best trust-me-and-you-won't-know-I'm-working-you-over grin. "Anyone I know, Lori?"

She returned the smile and shrugged. "Can't help you there. My boss gave me orders to arrange all this for a presentation he had to make to some government officials. But I wasn't invited to the actual meeting, so I don't know who was involved."

Now he ran his fingers through his thick mane of black hair, moving on to his most serious mode. Mike was about to try to bluff her out of some information. "I've got a homicide to solve. The lieutenant told me those guys were a real threat," he said, flashing Mercer a glance. "Now I'm wasting precious time trying to catch up with what they already know."

Lori caught his sense of urgency. She wanted to be helpful. "Are-are we talking about the same people, do you think?"

"They were here to talk to your boss about Farouk, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength. Which coins from his collection were you focusing on?" Mike asked, flipping through his notepad as though looking for specific names to match against things she said.

"I gave them a bunch of information-some silver pieces from the Civil War period, some gold ingots from San Francisco, circa 1849. The only kudos I got from my boss was for the research I came up with on the Double Eagle."

Mike slapped the pad against his knee. "Damn if I don't owe you for this one, Lori. I think we've already got all we need about his Civil War items. It's the other two we're after as well. Ever solve a murder before?"

"No, no, I haven't." She was grave as a stone now.

"Most satisfying thing you can ever be involved in. Give us what you got on the ingots and the big bird. I've always wanted a partner like you."

"Sure," Lori Alvino said. She spent the next ten minutes explaining the provenance and descriptions of some of the objects Farouk had purchased that had come out of the Gold Rush. Although handsome and somewhat unusual, they were far too plentiful-and probably too large-to have been part of McQueen Ransome's stash.