The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

by Lawrence Block

  “I just steal them,” I said. “I don’t authenticate them. I suppose I could have dropped in on Walter Breen or Don Taxay for a professional opinion, but I figured it was late.”

  His glance moved to Carolyn. “You know about this coin?”

  “He never tells me anything.”

  “A Liberty Head Nickel,” he said. “Nickel five-cent pieces were first issued in this country in 1866. The original design showed a shield. In 1883 the government switched to this design, although the initial run of coins lacked the word cents on the reverse. There was thus some confusion as to the coin’s denomination, and it was cleverly compounded by those who filed the edge of the coin to simulate the milling on a gold coin, then plated it lightly with gold and passed it as a five-dollar gold piece.”

  He paused and had himself a sip of coffee, used a napkin to blot a thin line of whipped cream from his upper lip. “The coin was issued without interruption through 1912,” he continued. “In 1913 it was replaced by the Buffalo Nickel. The Mint had problems with that issue, too, in the first year. Originally the mound on which the bison stands was in excessive relief and the coins would not stack properly. This was corrected, but the dates of these coins tended to wear off prematurely. It was a poor design.

  “But I am telling you more than you would care to know. The last Liberty Head Nickels, or V-Nickels, as they are sometimes called, were struck in Philadelphia and Denver and San Francisco in 1912.” He paused again, breathed in, breathed out. “The specimen you were so kind as to bring me tonight,” he said, “is dated 1913.”

  “That must make it special,” Carolyn said.

  “You might say that. Five specimens of the 1913 V-Nickel are known to exist. They are clearly a product of the U.S. Mint, although the Mint has always denied having produced them.

  “It is fairly clear what must have happened. Dies for a 1913 V-Nickel must have been prepared before the decision to switch to the buffalo design was finalized. Possibly a few pieces were struck as the trials; alternately, an enterprising employee may have produced these trial pieces on his own initiative. In any event, five specimens left the Mint by the back door.”

  He sighed, removed one of his slippers, massaged his arch. “I carry too much weight,” he said. “It is alleged to endanger the heart. My heart makes no objection but my feet protest incessantly.

  “But no matter. Let us return to the year 1913. At the time, a gentleman named Samuel Brown worked at the Mint in Philadelphia. He left shortly thereafter and next emerged in North Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo, where he placed advertisements seeking to buy 1913 Liberty Head Nickels—which of course no one had heard of at the time. He subsequently announced that he had managed to purchase five such nickels, and those are the only five which were ever to see the light of day. Perhaps you can guess how he happened to get them.”

  “He walked out of the Mint with them,” I said, “and the ads were his way of explaining his ownership of the coins.”

  Abel nodded. “And his way of publicizing them in the bargain. You are familiar with the name of E. H. R. Green? Colonel Edward Green? His mother was Hetty Green, the notorious witch of Wall Street, and when her son came into his money he was able to indulge his eccentricities, one of which was numismatics. He did not wish merely one specimen of a rarity; he wanted as many as he could lay hands on. Accordingly, he bought all five of Samuel Brown’s 1913 V-Nickels.

  “They remained in his possession until his death, and I trust he enjoyed owning them. When he died his holdings were dispersed, and a dealer named Johnson wound up with all five of the nickels. I believe he lived in the Midwest, St. Louis or perhaps Kansas City.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “In any event, Mr. Johnson sold them off one at a time to individual collectors. While he was doing this, a dealer in Fort Worth by the name of B. Max Mehl was busy making the 1913 V-Nickel the most famous rare coin of the century simply by offering to buy it. He placed advertisements everywhere offering fifty dollars for the coin, with the implication that one might come across it in one’s pocket change. He did so in order to attract customers for a rare coin catalog he was peddling, and I don’t doubt he sold a great many catalogs, but in the course of it he assured the future of the 1913 nickel. No American coin ever received so much publicity. Americans who knew nothing else about coins knew a 1913 V-Nickel was valuable. Virtually everyone knew this.”

  I did. I remembered the ads he was talking about. They were still running when I was a boy, and I was one of the guppies who sent for the book. None of us found 1913 V-Nickels in our pockets, since they weren’t there to be found, but many of us began collecting coins and grew up to swell the ranks of the numismatic fraternity. Others of us grew up to be thieves, seeking our fortunes in other men’s pocket change, as it were.

  “There’s no logical explanation for the coin’s value,” Abel went on. “At best it’s a trial piece, at worst an unauthorized fantasy item. As such it should be worth a few thousand dollars at most. The Mint struck pattern nickels in 1881 and 1882 in a variety of metals and with a variety of designs. Some are as rare or rarer than the 1913 nickel, yet you can buy them for a few hundred dollars. In 1882 a pattern coin was struck identical in design to the V-Nickel, and in the same metal, but with that year’s date. It’s quite rare, and if anything it ought to be more desirable than the 1913 coin, if only because its existence is legitimate. Yet a couple of thousand dollars will buy it, assuming you can locate an example for sale.”

  Carolyn’s face was showing a lot of excitement about now, and I could understand why. If another coin was worth a couple of thousand, and that made it strictly minor-league compared to what we’d come up with, then we were in good shape. But she still didn’t know just how good that shape was. She was waiting for him to tell her.

  He made her wait. He reached for his plate, finished his pastry, switched plate for cup, drank coffee. Carolyn got herself more Armagnac, drank some of it, watched him sip his coffee, drank the rest of the Armagnac, made her hands into fists, planted them on her hips, and said, “Aw, come on, Abel. What’s it worth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Huh?”

  “No one knows. Maybe you should put it in a parking meter. Bernard, why did you bring me this?”

  “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, Abel. If you want I’ll take it home with me.”

  “And do what with it?”

  “I don’t have a car so I won’t put it in a parking meter. Maybe I’ll punch a hole in it and Carolyn can wear it around her neck.”

  “I almost wish you would do that.”

  “Or maybe somebody else’ll buy it.”

  “Who? To whom would you offer it? No one will deal more equitably with you than I, Bernard.”

  “That’s why I brought it to you in the first place, Abel.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” He sighed, fished out a handkerchief, wiped his high forehead. “The verdammte coin has agitated me. What is it worth? Who knows what the thing is worth? Five specimens exist. As I recall, four are in museum collections, only one in private hands. I remember seeing a 1913 V-Nickel just once in my life. It was perhaps fifteen years ago. A gentleman named J. V. McDermott owned it and he liked to exhibit his treasure. He put it on display at coin shows whenever asked, and the rest of the time he was apt to carry it around in his pocket and show it to people. Few collectors get the pleasure out of their possession that Mr. McDermott derived from his nickel.

  “When the coin passed into another pair of hands it brought fifty thousand dollars, as I recall. There have been sales since. In 1976, I believe it was, a 1913 nickel changed hands for a hundred and thirty thousand. I don’t remember if it was the McDermott coin or not. It might have been. More recently there was a private sale reported with an announced figure of two hundred thousand.”

  Carolyn put her glass to her lips, tipped it up. She didn’t seem to notice that there was nothing in it.
Her eyes were on Abel, and they were as wide as I had ever seen them.

  He sighed. “What do you want for this coin, Bernard?”

  “Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.”

  “A felicitous phrase. Your own?”

  “Samuel Johnson said it first.”

  “I thought it had a classic ring to it. Spinoza called avarice ‘nothing but a species of madness, although not enumerated among diseases.’ Are you mad enough yourself to have a price in mind?”

  “No.”

  “It’s so difficult to put a value on the damned thing. When they sold the John Work Garrett collection, a Brasher doubloon brought seven hundred twenty-five thousand. What might this coin bring at auction? Half a million? It’s possible. It’s not sane, not by any means, but it’s possible nevertheless.”

  Carolyn, glassy-eyed, went for more Armagnac. “But you can’t consign this piece for auction sale,” he continued, “and neither can I. Where did it come from?”

  I hesitated, but only for a moment. “A man named Colcannon owned it,” I said, “until a couple of hours ago.”

  “H. R Colcannon? I know of him, of course, but I didn’t know he bought the 1913 nickel. When did he acquire it?”

  “No idea.”

  “What else did you get from him?”

  “Two earrings and a watch. There was nothing else in his safe except legal papers and stock certificates, and I left them as I found them.”

  “There were no other coins?”

  “None.”

  “But—” He frowned. “The V-Nickel,” he said. “Didn’t he have it in a frame or a custom lucite holder or something of the sort?”

  “It was just as I gave it to you. Tissue paper and a hinged box in a two-by-two coinvelope.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Simply remarkable. He must have just purchased it. You found it in a safe in his home? He must keep his holdings in a bank vault. Is this the McDermott coin, do you know? Or did one of the museums sell it? Museums don’t hold on to things forever, you know. They don’t just buy. They sell things off now and then, although they prefer to call it deaccessioning, which is a particularly choice example of newspeak, don’t you think? Where did Herbert Colcannon get this coin?”

  “Abel, I didn’t even know he had it until I found it in his safe.”

  “Yes, of course.” He reached for the coin, opened the envelope, unwrapped a half million dollars’ worth of nickel. With the loupe in one eye and the other squeezed shut in a squint, he said, “I don’t think it’s counterfeit. Counterfeits exist, you know. One takes a nickel from 1903, say, or 1910 or ’11 or ’12, grinds off the inappropriate digit and solders on a replacement removed from another coin. But there would be visible evidence of such tampering on a coin in proof condition, and I see no such evidence here. Besides, it would cost you several hundred dollars for a proof common-date V-Nickel to practice on. I’m almost certain it’s genuine. An X-ray would help, or the counsel of an expert numismatist.”

  He sighed gently. “At a more favorable hour I could establish the coin’s bona fides without leaving this building. But at this time of night let us merely assume the coin is genuine. To whom could I sell it? And for what price? It would have to go to a collector who would be willing to own it anonymously, one who could accept the fact that open resale would be forever impossible. Art collectors of this stripe abound; the pleasure they take in their paintings seems to be heightened by their illegitimate provenance. But coin collectors respond less to the aesthetic beauty of an object and more to the prestige and profit that accompany it. Who would buy this piece? Oh, there are collectors who’d be glad to have it, but which of them might I approach and what might I ask?”

  I got some more coffee. I started to pour a little Armagnac into it to give it a bit more authority, then told myself the Armagnac was entirely too good to be so dealt with. And then I reminded myself that I had just lifted a half-million-dollar coin, so why was I holding back on some thirty-bucks-a-bottle French brandy? I laced my coffee with it and took a sip, and it warmed me clear down to my toes.

  “You have three choices,” Abel said.

  “Oh?”

  “One: You can take the coin home with you and enjoy the secret ownership of an object more valuable than you are ever likely to own again. This coin is worth at least a quarter of a million, perhaps twice that, possibly even more. And I have been holding it in my hand. Extraordinary, is it not? For a few hours’ work, you can have the pleasure of holding it in your own hands whenever you want.”

  “What are my other choices?”

  “Two: You can sell it to me tonight. I’ll give you cash, unrecorded fifties and hundreds. You’ll leave here with the money in your pocket.”

  “How much, Abel?”

  “Fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “For a coin worth half a million.”

  He let that pass. “Three: You can leave the coin with me. I will sell it for what I can and I will give you half of whatever I receive. I’ll take my time, but I’ll certainly endeavor to move the coin as quickly as possible. Perhaps I’ll find a customer. Perhaps the verdammte thing’s insured by a carrier with a policy of repurchasing stolen goods. It’s a delicate business, dealing with those companies. You can’t always trust them. If it was a recent acquisition, Colcannon may not even have insured it yet. Perhaps he never insures his coins, perhaps he regards his safe-deposit box as insurance enough, and intended placing this coin there after he’d had an appropriate case made for it.”

  He spread his hands, sighed heavily. “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Dozens of perhapses. I’m an old man, Bernard. Take the coin with you tonight and save me a headache. What do I need with the aggravation? I have enough money.”

  “What will you try to sell it for?”

  “I already told you I don’t know. You want a rough estimate? I shall pluck a figure out of the air, then, and say a hundred thousand dollars. A nice round number. The final price might be a great deal more or a great deal less, depending on circumstances, but you ask me to come up with a figure and that is the figure that comes to mind.”

  “A hundred thousand.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And our half would be fifty thousand.”

  “And to think you made the calculation without pencil and paper, Bernard.”

  “And if we take the cash tonight?”

  “What sum did I offer? Fifteen thousand. Plus the twenty-five hundred I owe you for the earrings and the watch. That would total seventeen-five.” No pencil and paper for him, either. We were a couple of mathematical wizards. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s deal in round numbers tonight. Twenty thousand dollars for everything.”

  “Or twenty-five hundred now plus half of what you get for the coin.”

  “If I get anything for it. If it proves to be genuine, and if I find someone who wants it.”

  “You wouldn’t care to make it three thousand for the watch and earrings plus a split on the coin?”

  He thought a moment. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to do that, Bernard.”

  I looked at Carolyn. We could walk away with ten thou apiece for the night’s work or settle for a little over a tenth of that plus a shot at wealth beyond the etc. I asked her what she thought.

  “Up to you, Bern.”

  “I just wondered what—”

  “Uh-uh. Up to you.”

  Take the money and run, a voice whispered in my head. Take the cash and let the credit go. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The voice that whispers in my head isn’t terribly original, but it does tend to cut to the heart of the matter.

  But did I want to be known as the man who got a hot ten grand for the Colcannon V-Nickel? And how happy would I be with my ten thousand dollars when I thought of Abel Crowe getting a six-figure price for it?

  I could have topped his Spinoza quote. “Pride, Envy and Avarice are the three sparks that have set the hearts of all on fi
re.” From the Sixth Canto of Dante’s Inferno.

  My heart burned from all three, not to mention the eclair and the Armagnac. “We’ll take the twenty-five hundred,” I told him.

  “If you want more time to think about it—”

  “The last thing I want is more time to think about it.”

  He smiled. He looked like a benevolent grandfather again, honest as any man living. “I’ll be just a moment,” he said, getting to his feet. “There’s more food, more coffee, plenty to drink. Help yourselves.”

  While he was in the other room Carolyn and I had one short drink apiece to toast the night’s work. Then Abel returned and counted out a stack of twenty-five bills. He said he hoped we didn’t mind hundreds. Not at all, I assured him; I wished I had a million of them. He chuckled politely.

  “Take care of our nickel,” I urged. “There’s thieves everywhere.”

  “They could never get in here.”

  “Gordius thought nobody could untie that knot, remember? And the Trojans were suckers for a horse.”

  “And pride goeth before a fall, eh?” He laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “The doormen are very security-conscious here. The elevator is always attended. And you have seen the police locks on my doors.”

  “What about the fire escape?”

  “It is on the front of the building, where anyone using it could be seen from the street. The window that opens onto it is secured by steel gates. I can assure you no one could get in that way. I only hope I could get out if there were ever a fire.” He smiled. “In any event, Bernard, I shall conceal the nickel where no one will think to look for it. And no one will know I have it in the first place.”

  CHAPTER

  Five

  I’m not entirely sure why I wound up spending what was left of the night at Carolyn’s. All that sugar and caffeine and alcohol, plus enough tension and excitement for your average month, had left us a little wired and a little drunk. It’s as well neither of us had any life-or-death decisions to make just then. I wanted her to come up to my place so we could split the money, but she wanted to be downtown because she had a customer coming by early with a Giant Schnauzer, whatever the hell that is. We couldn’t get a cab on West End Avenue, walked to Broadway, and ultimately kept the cab clear to the Village, where the driver was unable either to find Arbor Court on his own or to follow Carolyn’s directions. We gave up finally and walked a couple of blocks. I hope he didn’t squander his tip. Seventy years from now it might be valuable.