The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon (25 page)

"What? You don't mean— "

"That's what I said. It's a silver stater, the
common currency of the Greek city-states. Probably one of the oldest
Greek coins extant, and in wonderful condition. It can't have
circulated much— those early coins wore down very rapidly, you
know, not being milled— and not so much alloy, either. All made by
hand— you can see it never was a true circle— and stamped with
handmade dies. The eagle with the hare in its talons, here on the
obverse, that's a device you find rather often on Greek pieces of the
period— never seen one before, just photographs— really marvelous
detail, considering— and this thing on the reverse is Zeus's
thunderbolt, stylized of course, but beautiful— beautiful work. I
can't imagine where this came from, such condition— just dropped in
a car?— but— " Suddenly O'Brien fell silent, mouth open,
bounced straighter in his chair, stared excitedly from the coin to
Hackett, and finally said again, "Jesus H. Christ. Listen,
Sergeant— I wonder— listen, there was a big collection of Greek
coins stolen just about a month ago, the most important collection,
and the biggest, in existence— the Lexourion collection— and one
of the things makes it so valuable, all the pieces are— were— in
wonderful condition, not mint, you couldn't expect it, but very good.
The County Museum was angling to buy it, I remember reading about it
in the
Times
."

"I'll be damned," said Hackett, and now he
felt almost as excited as O'Brien looked, "I wonder— this
could be a big piece of the story! Thanks, we'll check that— thanks
very much, O'Brien," and he reached for the coin.

"No, you don't, you Goth," said O'Brien.
"Wait just a minute, now."

He rummaged in the drawer. "Whether this is part
of the Lexourion collection or not, it's worth the hell of a lot of
money and a lot more than that in historical importance— you're not
going to ruin its condition. Have the owner suing you for damages,
you don't want that, do you? Here," and he stowed it away,
carefully wrapped in Kleenex, in the little paper-clip box.
 

EIGHTEEN

When Hackett came into the office he found Mendoza
there, standing at his desk, hat still on, which meant he was
slightly excited about something, talking on the inside phone.

“
¡Válgame Dios!
What
use are your files to me? I want to talk to the man who worked the
case, I want Goldberg! . . . Where?
¡Fuegos
del infierno!
What the hell is he doing in
San Francisco? Isn't he working here any longer? . . . You send a
full-fledged lieutenant to ride herd on a two-bit mugger? . . . Yes,
Sergeant Gomez, I am annoyed.

Doubtless Burglary knows its own business, but . . .
Well, what time does the plane get in? Four-fifteen,
muy
bien
. I'll be here to catch him— I presume
he'll be bringing this desperate criminal to headquarters
pronto
—
when he's delivered the goods. I might even buy him a drink if he can
tell me some things I want to know. About four forty-five? . . .

What?
¡Vaya por Dios!
All right, all right, if it's midnight I'll be here, I want to see
him.
Gracias
very much
for nothing." He put down the phone, swept off his hat, and
flung himself into his chair. "Fates conspiring! They must send
Goldberg off to escort this mugger home for indictment, just when I
want him. And of course some special Air Force maneuvers or something
have routed the San Francisco flights to land at Municipal instead of
Burbank— another hour's drive in traffic, he won't be here until
after six at a guess .... You've missed some excitement, by the way,"
and he told Hackett about Katya Roslev.

Hackett scarcely paid attention, full of his own
news. "Listen, Luis, I've got something— it might be a lot—
I got O'Brien to look at this coin, and he says— "

"I can guess," said Mendoza. "Maybe
part of the famous Lexourion collection. I've heard about it from
Driscoll. Why do you think I want to talk to Goldberg?"

"Oh, hell, and I thought I'd got ahead of you
for once. So what did Driscoll part with?"

"A lot of the story." Mendoza lit a
cigarette and shouted to Sergeant Lake to bring in some coffee. "The
Lexourion collection, it seems, is one of the largest and most
valuable collections of ancient Greek coins in existence. It was
amassed over a period of many years by one Alexander Lexourion, whom
I somehow see as one of those amiable fuzzy-minded professors, but
actually I believe he was a hard-headed businessman. About two months
ago Lexourion came here, with his collection, to negotiate with the
L.A. County Museum, which was thinking of buying it. And he'd no
sooner got here than it was stolen, under funny circumstances too,
which I trust Goldberg can tell me more about. And Lexourion gets
such a shock hearing about it that he has a stroke and passes out.
Now, the collection is insured for two hundred thousand bucks, and
naturally the insurance company sits up and takes notice— "

"And wouldn't they," agreed Hackett. "But
what in God's name could a burglar do with a thing like that? I mean,
it'd be like stealing the Mona Lisa or— "

"And I hear even that's been done once. Yes, of
course, that was the first thing in the insurance company's
collective mind. Nobody could sell such a thing to a fence. There
are, I understand, about seven hundred-odd coins altogether, and
separately they'd be worth something but not nearly so much as in a
collection. And also, a thing like that, there's what you might call
a pedigree attached, you know— anybody who'd be interested in
buying it would want to be assured that it is the Lexourion
collection. Well, the same thing leaped into my mind as the insurance
company thought of, both of us having some experience of human
nature— "

"Fraud," said Hackett. "But Lexourion
didn't know, if he died of the shock."

"Ransom," said Mendoza. "Steal it and
sell it back to the original owner. And the owner just might try—
being understandably annoyed at having to pay for his own property—
to figure out a way to hang onto some of the insurance money. Sure, a
little awkward, but I suppose even today you'd have a few private
collectors who might buy the thing secretly, if they were assured of
the pedigree, and very possibly— if it was smuggled out of the
country— the insurance company'd find it hard to follow the
transaction or do anything about it. Now!" He regarded with
pleasure the coffee Sergeant Lake had just brought in, and drank
some. "This may be years getting settled legally— not our
business— probate and so on. Lexourion died intestate, and
therefore his legal next of kin comes in for whatever he had to
leave. And who, Mr. Bones, do you suppose is his legal next of kin?
One Madame Lydia Bouvardier, his only child. Lydia Bouvardier. Such a
romantic— sounding name, isn't it?"

"And isn't that nice to know," said
Hackett. "But what's it got to do with Stevan Domokous dead of
heroin in a Carson Street alley?"

"
Tengo paciencia, allá
veremos
— with time all will be clear. I
hope. A little something I've tied up, at least. Driscoll, damn him,
delayed us on this thing nearly a week— longer— he should have
come in and laid the facts on the line the minute he landed here, and
I'd take a small bet Goldberg will want his hide nailed to the door
of his office for keeping it secret. Though you can also say the
director of the museum was lax but I'd take another little bet that
Driscoll let him think he was in touch with the police, so the
director didn't do  anything about it himself. These glory boys,
out to play to the grandstand . . . About three weeks after the
collection was stolen— in fact, Arturo, on the same Sunday
afternoon that Alison attended that exhibition at the County Museum—
the museum director had a very odd and mysterious visitor. About this
I'd like to know more than Driscoll passed on secondhand, but I
expect Lieutenant Goldberg will be even more passionately interested,
and do the direct investigating. Now my curiosity's beginning to be
satisfied, I'm rather liking this case, you know— it encroaches on
other peoples' jobs, and they're doing so much of the work .... This
visitor asked the director if he'd be interested in buying a
collection of Greek coins, and even hinted at the Lexourion
collection. The price mentioned was fifteen thousand dollars, which—
not surprisingly— struck the director as a little suspicious,
considering that if it was the Lexourion stuff, that was insured for
two hundred thousand. By the sample the visitor produced to show him,
he said, it might have been the Lexourion stuff. Naturally, since the
museum had been interested, he was tolerably familiar with it. And
from what he said to Driscoll, gather that the visitor didn't seem
exactly the type to go in for collecting ancient Greek coins, and the
director instantly put two and two together and wondered if he was,
so to speak, being offered hot goods."

"A sample," said Hackett. He got out the
little box and looked at the silver stater O'Brien said was
twenty·three hundred years old. The thunderbolt of Zeus . . . "Could
be, just possibly, this little thing?"

"Could be, very possibly," said Mendoza in
dreamy satisfaction. "I can't say why he might have hopped
Alison's car. Ridiculous sort of thing to do— but there it is. I
think he did. After he left the director. The director thought it
over, and then he made a little mistake. Instead of calling us, he
called the insurance company. I deduce he was thinking of avoiding
publicity. Handle the thing nice and quiet, just in case he was wrong
and the visitor was a bona fide collector. Anyway, the insurance
people shot Driscoll out pronto, of course— because why? Because
Lexourion's daughter had come over from Paris— legal business, I
suppose there's miles of red tape to untangle about the estate even
though he wasn't a citizen— and this looked as if the thief was
maybe getting bids on the collection."

"Now wait a minute," said Hackett. "You're
not telling me that anybody— even the dumbest pro in business—
would think he could sell it under the counter to the County Museum?"

"Just look back over your career,
chico
.
Only nine years you've been in, compared to my seventeen, but you've
met them— you know them. One of the reasons the paperback detective
thrillers are so damn fantastic, to anybody who's had a little
contact with the real thing. How often have you said to yourself,
Nobody can be that stupid! Nobody but a pro— never mind what lay
he's on, never mind whether he's a juvenile just starting out hopping
shorts, swiping little stuff oif dime store counters, or a very much
ex-con just out from a twenty-year stretch for armed robbery and
assault. They don't come any dumber, when it comes to— mmh— both
the ordinary sort of knowledge almost anybody in any crowd has, or
what you might call the nuances of ordinary human give-and-take. One
of the reasons they're pros, Art— you know as well as I do— they
haven't got even the rudimentary empathy, the little imagination
about other people, that most people have .... The simplest things,
the smallest things, they just don't know."

"That's so, God knows. But you'd think anybody—
still, of course, that is so."

"Most of the reason we're kept busy," said
Mendoza. "Well, as I say, Driscoll's sent out but quick to look
into this. It would be Driscoll, of course. Water under the bridge—
let it go— we know now, anyway. Driscoll pokes around, asking
questions of the director, of our Lydia, and he reads what the papers
had to say at the time about the robbery— damn fool way to
investigate, half the time they get details wrong or some officious
editor cuts out the relevant facts— and he comes to some
conclusions. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether the
conclusions were born of whiskey or solid deduction. One of his
methods seems to be trying to make any female involved in a case,
possibly on the theory that women always speak the truth in bed—
which,
de paso
,
graphically illustrates his appalling lack of experience?

"And what conclusions did he come to?"

"He thinks that our Lydia is up to something. I
agree. She is," said Mendoza, "a widow. A romantic, young,
beautiful widow. Her late husband was upwards of sixty when she
married him, and an extremely wealthy man— land-rich and
munitions-rich— and she was a tender innocent young thing of
seventeen. I don't think. A young lady with her head screwed on very
tight— take the cash and let the romance go.

Very sensible,
¿no es
verdad?"

"Oh,
absolutamente
,"
said Hackett with a grin.

"He also thinks— and again I agree— that Mr.
Andreas Skyros is not merely a social acquaintance of our Lydia. He
doesn't know whether or not she's been approached about buying back
the collection, but he thinks she will be if she hasn't been, and
that she would probably be willing to dicker about the— mmh—
ransom. One thing that emerges, by the information he has from his
company, is that our Lydia disapproved of the intention to sell the
collection in the United States, would prefer to see it, say, in the
Louvre or somewhere like that, if they'd be interested. At any rate,
Driscoll says, and quite reasonably too, that if Mr. Skyros was a
purely social acquaintance— maybe someone she had a letter of
introduction to— she'd be going to his house, entertained by his
wife, whereas it looks rather like a business relationship."