GOLDEN REICH

by Mark Donahue

  “Well,” Lester drawled pulling the dirty handkerchief from his pocket and opening it on the counter, “I was out in the desert last week and found this stuff on the ground. Thought it might be gold. If so, I want to sell it. That’s pretty much it.”

  Scooting over to the counter on a chair with wheels, Max took a jeweler’s loupe and began examining the six small pieces of gold, the largest the size of a man’s little fingernail. “Found this in the desert, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just lyin’ there?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, this is processed gold not gold ore, and it’s pure gold, I think.”

  “So it’s worth something then?”

  “Sure.”

  “How much?”

  “You say you found this just layin’ in the dirt, huh?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I know what you said, but most gold found in the desert is…”

  “Look fella, I’m hungry, tired, and need a bed. I found this gold and might find some more. If you want to buy it, say so; if not, quit wastin’ my time.”

  “Easy, Slim.” Max got off his chair and stretched out to his full five foot five frame. I’ll weigh what you got here and let you know.”

  After weighing it, Max offered Lester thirty-five dollars for the six crumbs of gold.

  Before giving Lester the cash, he said, “I just want you to know that I’ll throw these pieces into a can with some old gold we get from time to time. When I get enough to make the trip worthwhile, I’ll take it to the smelter who will give me about 30% more than I just paid you. In other words, I’m just a middleman here.”

  “What’s the name of that smelter?”

  After buying breakfast for some friends of his who needed a good meal, Lester took a ten-block walk into an even seedier section of Phoenix. It even smelled seedier, no doubt in part because of Taylor Smelting, which was housed between a pipe-fitting business and a welding shop. All three businesses emitted black smoke from their chimneys, but the smoke from Taylor Smelting smelled the worst. The sign on the front door read Jackson Taylor, Proprietor.

  When Lester entered the shop, he was met with a chain-link fence. Behind the fence was a very large, very bald, very black man, with huge arms, sitting behind a counter eating fried chicken. The black man wore a white short-sleeve dress shirt and sported a large gold pinkie ring and several thick gold chains around his neck. The black man was Jackson Taylor just as the sign said, but he was known as J.T. to his few friends.

  Calling through the fence, Lester asked, “You the man who does the smeltin’?”

  “Not when I’m havin’ lunch.”

  “Kind of early for lunch, ain’t it?”

  “Not when you start work at six in the morning.”

  “You the one who does the smeltin’ when you ain’t eatin’ chicken?”

  “Yep.”

  “I got stuff that needs smeltin.’”

  J.T. pulled on a rope under the counter, and the chain-link fence opened. Lester walked up to the counter.

  “I do all my own work. Want a drumstick?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Lester lifted the leg from a bowl and took a bite of home-made fried chicken specially prepared by J.T. himself. “This is a pretty damn good chicken leg.”

  “Wait till ya taste the wings. Hey, grab us a couple beers out that fridge over yonder, will ya?” J.T. pointed to a beat-up ice box in the corner of the dingy office.

  Retrieving two longneck Miller High Life bottles, Lester handed them to J.T., who opened both with a silver bottle opener in the shape of a rattlesnake head.

  “What ya’ needed smelted?”

  Lester placed some gold pieces on the counter. Looking at the gold while shoving some chicken skin in his mouth, J.T. said, “You don’t need me for that. That’s already refined gold.”

  “I just want to sell it.”

  “Don’t need me for that neither. There’s places all over town who’ll buy that kind of stuff.”

  “They won’t buy it from someone like me without lots of questions.”

  “So, you’re lookin’ for a fence?”

  “I’m lookin’ for someone who can move a lot of gold and won’t ask lots of questions.”

  “Then you lookin’ for a fence. You steal it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You got lots of it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Here’s how it’ll work; you bring stuff in on Monday mornin’, and I’ll have cash for you by Thursday. I’ll charge you a 15% service fee, but there can’t be no paperwork.”

  “What’s this stuff worth?” Lester pointed to the pieces on the counter.

  J.T. weighed the gold on a new Toledo scale. “You got a little over three ounces. That’s worth $120 minus my 15%. I can give you cash for this amount now if you like.”

  “Thanks, been awhile since I had that much foldin’ money.”

  J.T. reached under the counter, pulled out the cash and another scale, which he handed to Lester.

  “If we’re gonna be doin’ business, you might as well take this with you. Look in the papers for gold prices, subtract 15%, and you’ll know what you got comin’. Make sure you test out the scale, so you know I won’t be cheatin’ ya.”

  “Thanks. Kinda young to have you own business, ain’t ya’?”

  “Worked here as a kid. Man who owned it died when I was overseas. Came back and his widow asked me to buy it, so I did. It’s a livin.”

  “Thanks again for the scale. By the way, saw your tattoos, you in the war?”

  “Navy. Got my leg shot off at Pearl. Been back a couple years.”

  “I was in France in WWI, infantry.”

  “I was a cook durin’ the war. Ain’t cooked nothing, but fried chicken and apple pie ever since.”

  “How the hell did a cook lose a damn leg?”

  “Jap torpedo hit us right at breakfast time. Found out it was damn tough for a black man to swim with one leg.”

  “Thanks for the chicken, J.T. Maybe you could bring some of that apple pie on Monday. See ya later.” Lester picked up the scale and walked out the door.

  After leaving J.T.’s, Lester went to Sears and bought four pair of Levi’s, four flannel shirts, six pairs of white cotton socks, one belt, six pairs of cotton underwear, a pair of boots and a wool sweater. Later he stopped at a Rexall and got some toothpaste, toothbrush, a Gillette razor, pencils, and a thick notebook with lined paper.

  Finally, he went to the Majestic Hotel, got a room with a bathtub, and paid the thirty-five dollar weekly rental in advance with cash. Later, standing in the shower, he tried to remember the last time he had slept in the same bed more than two nights in a row. He couldn’t.

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  Lester got to know J.T. pretty well over the years, including the fact that he had been framed for tax evasion for not reporting income he’d received from working part-time in a bar owned by a very white, very jealous Dallas businessman, whose equally very white wife was fucking J.T.’s brains out.

  Before beginning a four-year sentence in the Texas State Prison, J.T. skipped bail in Dallas and made it out to Phoenix where he got a job in a dirty smelting plant. In the fall of 1941, after he got tired of the smell and heat, he enlisted in the Navy under a fake name where a few months later he encountered more smell and heat on a destroyer that the Japs torpedoed at Pearl Harbor. By March 1942, he was back in Phoenix minus a leg and nothing to do but go back to work in the damn smelting plant, which he ended up buying. He wanted to go back to Texas, but he knew he’d have to do time if he did. While he realized the white woman with the rich husband had not been worth all the troubles she had caused him, he also conceded she was almost worth it.

  Over the years, J.T. had grown the business steadily by working hard
and keeping his mouth shut. When small-time miners came to him with gold or silver ore, he used creative accounting to make sure they paid as little income tax on their precious metal findings as possible. After being charged with a crime he had not committed in Texas, J.T. felt the strong desire and obligation to fuck the government in general and the IRS in particular any way he could if it was possible. It was possible, and when it happened, it made J.T.’s day. He also worked with jewelers, dentists, and other small manufacturing firms that used gold in their processes. He bought and sold gold and silver on a daily basis, and business was good.

  Given his work with gold, silver, and cash and the fact that his business was in a crummy part of town that the cops avoided as much as possible, J.T. got permission from the local authorities to wear a .38 caliber white pearl-handled Colt six-shooter on his hip. He silver-plated the pistol so everyone entering his shop could see it. He was also known to use the gun. Once, two young punks, seeing him all alone in the shop, tried to take back the gold they had just sold him and keep the cash. They soon found the gun was real, and J.T. was a good shot. One got a bullet in the ass trying to run away, while the other took a hit in the leg. J.T. could have killed them both but figured it would be bad for business. Word of that incident spread, and soon J.T. and his gun became famous, which helped avert further trouble.

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  Lester was someone J.T. trusted immediately. He couldn’t say why exactly, but he just knew Lester was a white man he could believe. When Lester told him the gold wasn’t stolen, he believed him. Not that it would have mattered all that much, but he believed him anyway.

  Lester started his business relationship with J.T. slowly. After busting up the two large chunks of gold hidden in the toilet into smaller pieces, Lester brought them into J.T’s shop one piece at a time, but each time the piece was bigger. J.T. never questioned Lester or his seemingly endless amount of gold, except once after Lester’s eighth or ninth trip when he said, “Hey man, if I’m gonna be movin’ a lot of this stuff, I’ll need to get my friend Juan from Juarez to help me unless you want the taxman snoopin’ round.”

  “I wouldn’t lose Juan’s number if I was you.”

  With war time prices of gold hovering around thirty-six dollars per ounce, the single bar of gold Lester had hidden in the toilet created an income stream of over $11,000, not including a 15% fee to J.T. for “processing and handling.” Doing some quick arithmetic, Lester figured that the approximately seventeen hundred bars of gold that he buried in the sand was worth nearly twenty million dollars. He realized he would not be able to bring in large amounts of gold at any one time for fear of raising some unwanted attention. He was also aware that given the fluctuations of gold prices, it would be wise to pick the times when he could get the most for the gold. Eventually he and J.T. entered into an unwritten business relationship that lasted thirty-five years. It made them both wealthy men and best friends.

  Between 1943 and 1980, Lester made nearly 400 trips to the desert, and J.T. always paid him a fair price for the gold. Sometimes J.T. would buy the gold himself depending on market conditions, or he would get help from Juan in Juarez or other friends around the country in the business if Phoenix was awash in gold.

  But some things about Lester did puzzle J.T., “Man with all the money you got, why don’t get your ass a nice place to live and a damn Cadillac? That dirty old van of yours is nasty. And for Lord’s sake get yourself some clothes. I’m sick of seeing you in those old jeans and boots. And that damn shirt got holes in the elbows. C’mon man, that ain’t right.”

  Lester would just smile and help himself to more fried chicken and apple pie.

  Chapter 45

  Jasper Mine—2014

  The four person/one dog team did not sleep well in the tool bin. Every sound made them jump, and the Jasper had plenty of sounds. After a quick bite to eat, they said little to each other, the usual morning banter and teasing noticeably absent.

  Moving slowly out of the tool bin, they realized how vulnerable they were in the vastness of the Jasper. An entire army could be hiding in the shadows and would never be seen or heard. A single sniper could easily pick off the team, dispose of their bodies in the pit, and have breakfast at Elsa’s, all in thirty minutes.

  “Jon, I think you should take the shotgun and Pax, and stand guard near those old offices. Keep out of sight and don’t try to be John Wayne if you see anyone. Just fire the shotgun once to warn us and then make your way to the shaft near the tool bin, and we’ll meet you there and decide what to do next. Tom, Sam, and I will investigate the pit, and we’ll all get the hell out of here by noon,” Ben said.

  Nodding without comment, Jon jogged toward the front of the cavern, shotgun in hand, with a willing Pax by his side.

  Tom picked up the rope, lights, and batteries while Ben carried the video camera and Sam toted the computer. As they walked away from the natural light that poured into the front of the cave into darkness leading to the pit, the wind enveloped them and caused a precipitous drop in temperature they had not experienced before.

  When they were thirty feet from the pit, Ben sat on the floor and tied the end of one of the thin nylon ropes to the video camera. Without being told to, Tom began a similar process with three of the lights he had brought with him. Tying the battery-powered halogens back to back to back, he created a 360-degree light pattern that, when attached to the video camera, would give them a look inside the gaping hole that seemed to be even louder than usual that morning. While the men worked with the ropes, Sam set up her computer and tested the images and sound after she synced it with the video camera.

  While Sam waited for the men to complete their jobs, she looked up at the Jasper’s high ceiling, saw its smoothness, and tried to comprehend the eons of time required to carve out such a cavern and the trillions of gallons of sea water that had poured through the mine that created the Jasper from sheer rock.

  For the next thirty minutes, Ben and Tom connected the camera and lights, while Sam knotted together the five 100-foot thin nylon ropes Tom had purchased. She used black electrical tape at twenty-five-foot intervals to mark the descent of their equipment.

  After a final check of the camera and lights, they slid a twenty-foot long two-by-four they had found over the right corner of the pit and laid the other end of the wood on a ledge that stuck out eighteen inches at the bottom of the rock wall behind the opening. That positioning allowed the camera to be lowered into the pit without banging against the side walls and being smashed to bits. Tom used a metal chair he had found in the cavern as both a seat and a base. He used his 250 pounds as an anchor and slid a 200-pound boulder in front for him to use as a foot brace.

  “You look like your fishing for marlin,” Ben said.

  “Let’s hope we catch something with that camera.”

  As Tom slowly let out the rope, Ben noticed that the camera and the blue-white glow from the three halogen bulbs lit up the area above the pit like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The roof of the cavern came alive with phosphorescent sparkles as the bright light bounced off the stone as the camera slowly descended into the pit.

  “Looks like one of the mirrored glass balls they used to have at discos in Philly years ago,” Tom said.

  “Wouldn’t know. I was about three then,” Sam said casually.

  Tom tried not to smile, fearing it would encourage her.

  Against the flat black wall directly behind the pit, the lights created an eerie show that slowly faded as the camera and lights were swallowed by the void. Wanting to be able to see everything they could on its descent, Ben reminded Tom to let the rope out slowly. As he did, Sam and Ben saw crystal-clear images coming from the pit.

  “That’s about twenty-five feet. See anything?” Tom asked.

  Peering into the computer screen, Sam said, “Lots of beer cans and trash.”

  “Fifty feet.”<
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  “Looks like the hole’s narrowing a bit. There’s another ledge with some pipes and wood and fencing…Oh my God, it looks like a person…it’s a young man…he’s impaled on a piece of wood!”

  Ben looked over Sam’s shoulder and saw the young man in jeans and a work shirt.

  “Wait, there’s a man on the other side…Daddy, it looks like they fell yesterday.”

  “The lack of humidity helps preserve the bodies. Go on, Tom.”

  Tom let the rope slide further. “That’s one hundred feet.”

  “Tom, move the rope to the left about ten feet.”

  “What do you guys see?”

  “Looks like a bar of gold stuck in some trash,” Ben said.

  In the now swaying light, Sam and Ben saw a twenty-pound ingot with the words “Property of the United States Treasury” clearly stamped on one side.

  “I’ll be damned.” Tom whispered.

  For the next twenty minutes, Tom let the camera and light descend into the darkness. At regular intervals, Sam and Ben saw the history of the Jasper unfold before their eyes. They saw nine complete bodies, body parts that had snagged on ledges, and tons of mining equipment littering the now narrowing hole. They saw hundreds of beer cans, cigarette butts, newspapers, furniture, an old pickup truck, building materials, and the hood of a Chevy pickup. They also saw a second bar of gold and a piece of a third.

  At three hundred feet, the camera and lights began to spin, slowly at first then wildly, creating a dizzying spectacle on Sam’s computer screen of more flotsam that had fallen into the pit and been hooked by other trash or outcroppings. “The wind’s picked up and the opening is widening,” Ben said.

  With camera and lights still pointing down and the rope at 450 feet, the bottom of the pit was still not visible.

  “We’re almost out of rope. Any sign of bottom?” Tom asked.

  “No, and we’re losing our signal. Let go of the rope, Tom.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t be able to pull up the camera and lights anyway, not with all those obstructions. Just let it go and maybe we can see where it lands.”