Warren Murphy: Last Drop

"When did the boom start?"

"Oh, I dunno, not too long ago." Sloops stood and smoked for a few minutes, ruminating. Then he spoke softly, as if to himself. "Last Thursday."

"What happened last Thursday?"

The smoke from his cigar rose in thick curls. "I just remembered, Thursday was the first crazy day we had here. It started right after the new beans came."

"What new beans?"

Sloops puffed in silence for a few more moments, then turned irritably toward Remo. "What's it to you, what beans? You want work or not?"

"Sure," Remo said. "I was only—"

"Then quit jawing so much. That thing filled out?" He snatched the form away and scanned it. "What's this crap? Under 'address' you have the Happy Rest Motel."

Remo shrugged. "I've got to live someplace."

With a grunt the man tossed the card onto his desk and opened the door. "Don't make no difference to me, long as you can do the work." He appraised Remo's thin body as they walked toward the far end of the warehouse. "No offense, but you don't look that strong, kid. You got to be able to lift those hundred and fifty-pound bags."

"I'll do my best, sir."

He was put to work beside a handsome young man with bulging biceps. The young man looked Remo over condescendingly as he hoisted up one of the big bags of coffee beans. The effort made his muscles stand out ostentatiously beneath the thin straps of his wet-look tank shirt. He hesitated as the bag was at its zenith, admiring the contours of his own physique.

"Ty," he said, sounding for all the world as if he'd spent his teen years watching Nelson Eddy movies.

"Tie what?" Remo asked.

The young man tossed the bag onto the skid they were loading and smiled. "That's me. Ty. Stands for Tyrone."

Good, Remo thought. A talker. It always saved time when people were willing to talk, even if they were as dumb as Ty seemed to be.

"Remo," he said, extending his hand.

Ty declined the handshake with a modest wave. "Nah. I might hurt you. Sometimes I don't know my own strength."

"Oh. Thanks for warning me," Remo said.

"I lift."

"So I noticed."

"Nah, not this crap. This is nothing. I lift weights, real weights. It's the only way to build up your delts."

"I'll keep that in mind," Remo said, controlling his movements to look as if the coffee bags required more than one finger to move.

"You know, you could do something with yourself with a little work. You got good wrists. Put on some weight, work out for maybe a year at a good gym, you could have potential." He winked patronizingly at Remo between displays of musculature.

"Gee, thanks," Remo said.

"Nothing great, of course. But you could be okay."

Remo nodded. "Have you been working here long?"

"Yeah. A while. They're grooming me for management here," he said proudly.

"Then you must know a lot about coffee."

"Everything," Ty agreed. "Believe me, there's nobody here knows more than I do about this place. You know why? 'Cause I make it my business to know. Perfection of the body and the mind, too, that's what the Greeks said. You know about the Greeks?"

"Any particular Greeks?"

"The old Greeks. They believed in body building and thinking. All at the same time. Not the new Greeks, though. The old ones. Most of them are dead now. They built a lot of statues."

"What happened last Thursday?" Remo asked.

"Huh? Oh, Thursday. Yeah, it got real wild here. Busy. Ten new guys got hired since then. Overtime six nights a week. We've been making out good. What's good for business is good for me, you know?"

"Did the Greeks say that, too?" Remo muttered, thudding one of the bags onto a flat wooden square.

"The Greeks? Nah. They didn't speak English. They were only into foreign stuff. Hey, did I tell you they're grooming me for management here? I fill in for Sloops when he can't make it in."

"Yeah, yeah," Remo said. "Sloops said something about some new beans."

"Damn good thing we had them, too," Ty said belligerently. "Sloops almost chewed my ear off when I bought them, but he's glad now."

"You bought them?"

"Yeah. Well, I'm not supposed to buy anything, really, just kind of mind the store when Sloops is sick. He's got this kidney problem or something—"

"Where'd the beans come from?"

"Colombia. Good beans. The best beans come from Colombia. That's why most American blends are mostly Colombian beans. Now, you have your African beans, they're kind of small and bitter," he rambled pedantically. "Then there's your Jamaican bean—"

"Who sold them to you?" Remo interrupted.

"A guy named Brown."

"American?"

"Yeah. Said he represented a new company, and he'd sell me the beans cheap. Sort of a get-acquainted discount."

"Did this Brown give you a card?"

"Sure. 'George Brown,' it said. 'North American Coffee Company,' or something like that. Which is funny, since coffee don't grow in North America. Anybody who knows beans from bongos could see those beans came from Colombia."

"Where was the company located?"

Ty searched his pockets. "I still got the card here someplace." He extracted a fat wallet and leafed leisurely through dozens of photographs. "Now this," he said, pointing to a picture of himself oiled and straining, "is from the regionals. I took second. There's one that shows my lats real good."

"Skip the lats," Remo said. "Where's the card?"

"Oh that, yeah," Ty said, remembering. He pulled out an embossed business card.

George Brown

North American Coffee Company

Saxonburg, Indiana

"Indiana?" Remo mused. "There's no phone number here. No post office box, no street address."

"That's what I mean," Ty said, chortling. "I figured it was a scam. Hot beans. You know, stolen from some other warehouse. It happens all the time in this business. But I figure, who cares? Satisfaction guaranteed, the man says. We don't pay a cent if we can't move the beans."

"And if you can?"

"Then he says he'll come by to collect the money himself."

"Did he?"

"That's the funny part. When I told Sloops I bought the beans, he just about wet his pants, he was so mad, but what could I do, I says. The deal was too good to pass up. I says, 'Okay, Sloops. If you don't want the beans, you don't have to pay for them. The next time this Brown fella shows up, you just give the beans back to him.' Only Brown never showed up again. Just more beans."

"What do you mean, more beans?"

"I mean shipments of beans started coming in to beat the band. Beans out the gazoo. No bills, nothing, just beans. Sloops just about had a heart attack, what with all the beans coming in, and no invoices or anything to go with them. We were going wild just trying to keep track of them. And then Thursday."

"What happened on Thursday?"

"That's when the orders started coming in. Orders from all over the country. It's like the coffee business went through the roof overnight. Suddenly everybody wanted coffee. Me, I don't drink the stuff personally. It's bad for your kidneys. Look at Sloops. He can't touch the stuff anymore. But the public suddenly got crazy for coffee, you know what I mean?"

Remo nodded as he loaded the last bag onto the skid and motioned for a man on a forklift to pick it up.

"At first Sloops wasn't going to use the new beans," Ty said, starting on another skid. "He said he didn't like the whole setup, what with no bills and all these beans. It was almost as if this George Brown was forcing them on us. But the orders kept coming in so fast that we ran out of our regular stock in two days. Sloops called the next closest warehouse— that's in Washington, D.C. There are only a handful of coffee warehouses in the whole country, you know. It's a limited field. Lots of chances for advancement, if you know what you're doing. It's like the Romans said. You know who the Romans were?"