The Last Coin (29 page)

Pennyman slid the drawer shut and carried the silver box back over to the dresser, where he examined himself in the mirror again. He stepped back, admiring the sharp thrust of his bearded chin. He would put the coins in a safe-deposit box. That would do nicely until the day of Andrew’s treasure hunt. He’d better have them out by then or else there’d be an astonishing whirlwind of silver in the bank when the two earth-bound coins neared the surface. He didn’t know whether there’d be enough attraction to yank out silver fillings or tear silver rings off fingers, but it was possible, especially if the last of the coins
was
in the vicinity. Then all thirty of them would be in close enough proximity so that their power might provoke anything at all. And he, possessing the coins, would wield that power.

Smiling, feeling better just thinking about it, he examined his teeth in the mirror, then opened the lid of the box. He heard a high-pitched keening, the sound of manufactured wind swirling the dust outside, and he heard the snapping of old paint buckling off the clapboards of the house and the strain of old nails yanking loose. Would the coins simply dismantle the house, turn it to rubble? Bring it down on the head of that idiot Vanbergen who painted stupidly below? He was half-tempted to see. But that, of course, would needlessly complicate things, just for a few moment’s pleasure. And it might mean his own death, too. He shut the box lid, picked up his walking stick, and went out, startled despite his half expecting it when a dead sparrow plummeted out of the sky onto the lawn. He regarded it for a second with a smile and then went on.

Out on the pier, two days after Pickett’s return, Andrew pushed a hook through a piece of frozen anchovy, then cut a chunk of shrimp with his slimy fishing knife and baited a second hook with it. On the third hook he hung an orange-brown remnant of mussel, then tipped the baited hooks over the iron railing and let them whiz down into the gray ocean. It was just sunrise, and he and Pickett had the pier pretty much to themselves. “Have another Mounds bar?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at his friend.

Pickett shook his head. “Another cup of coffee, actually. I slept till three in the afternoon yesterday. I must have been beat.”

“And no wonder,” said Andrew. “There’s nothing easy about battling the forces of evil. It takes it out of you in spades. I slept late myself.”

“We’ve got to go back in. Soon, I’d say.”

Andrew nodded. He felt the same way about it. He hadn’t learned half enough in Pennyman’s room. There were answers there somewhere, but they wouldn’t reveal themselves to timid men. He and Pickett would have to wade in. “What’s wrong with today? Mrs. Gummidge said something about going out. Rose is driving Aunt Naomi over to Leisure World later on. Pennyman’s bound to be out most of the day doing whatever it is he does. Let’s slide in as soon as he leaves.”

Pickett nodded, staring over the railing at the sea. Andrew reeled in his line. The anchovy was gone—nibbled off by perch. He broke off a piece of Mounds bar and pressed the sticky coconut and chocolate around the hook, dropping it back into the water and letting line reel out until the lead weight whumped onto the bottom. He gave Pickett a studied look and said, “But
why
was she in his room? Why was she sneaking around when they’re in league together?”

“Maybe she
wasn’t
sneaking around. If they’re in league together then maybe she can come and go as she likes. Maybe he doesn’t care if she’s in his room.”

“I don’t buy that. They’re not equal partners, that’s for sure. He’s the general. She’s not even a lieutenant, if you ask me. She’s a private with aspirations. There’s no way he’d be happy to know she was in the room.”

“Then she was after the elixir,” said Pickett. “Just like you were. She heard you sneeze on the stair and hid behind the curtain, just like in a movie. When you yanked the curtain back, she pretended to be asleep. And you’re right about his not wanting her to be there. If she weren’t worried about being discovered, then she’d confront you with
your
being there. She couldn’t do that, though, because
neither
of you was supposed to be there, lucky for you.”

They fished in silence for a moment. Then Pickett tossed the dregs of his coffee onto the pier and said, “It’s clear, of course, what happened to Pfennig.”

“Is it?” asked Andrew.

“As a bell. He was sawed in half because there was something in him that had to be fetched out.”

“Like the squid on the beach,” said Andrew.

“Almost exactly like the squid on the beach. I don’t suppose Pfennig had swallowed the coin, though. I think it had been surgically implanted.”

“Why on earth …” began Andrew, but Pickett interrupted him impatiently.

“To keep it out of someone’s hands—out of Pennyman’s hands, to be precise. All the evidence points to it. The newspaper clipping of Jack Ruby dead. The phone call from Pfennig. Pennyman slouching around town trying out the quarter trick on every eccentric he runs into. He sawed Pfennig in half is what he did, and retrieved a monumentally important coin.”

“Rose’s cousin has a coin collection,” said Andrew. “Some of them can be valuable as hell. He needs a curly quarter, apparently, but you can’t get one for love nor money—or at least not for love. He’d need half a million to buy a good one, I understand.”

“This is not that kind of coin. You know that as well as I do. Nobody beats that sort of coin into a spoon. It wouldn’t make sense. They’d beat a coin into a spoon to alter it, to disguise it. Pennyman isn’t a coin collector in
that
sense. Offer him a curly quarter and he won’t react; take my word for it. How about all that nonsense in Puget Sound about the fish with the coin in its belly? That was no curly quarter either.” Pickett shook his head, remembering his hurried trip down from Vancouver. “The man at the gas station there said I needed new rings. They’ll always try to take you for something. He made fun of my name, too. Damned rustics.”

“What is it then?”

“What? The coin? I don’t know. I think … I’m not sure. But I’d bet my bottom dollar that it’s ancient as hell. Coins, originally, were magical totems. You know that, of course.”

“Of course,” said Andrew. “Common knowledge, isn’t it? Were they?”

“For a fact. Moon disks is what they were. Playing cards are the same sort of thing, distilled down from the tarot deck, which itself was a distillation of an even more ancient deck. I wouldn’t at all wonder if the most commonplace coins were tainted with some little bit of magic which has strayed down out of antiquity. This spoon of yours, take my word for it, was fashioned out of a coin that’s incredibly old. Older than either one of us would guess. The same with carp.”

“What?” asked Andrew, puzzled. The mention of carp reminded him that he was fishing, and he reeled up his line to find a starfish eating the candy. He plucked it off and threw it back.

“Carp. You’ve seen pictures of two carp curled around each other like a yin and yang. That’s part and parcel the same as the fish or the serpent swallowing its own tail. Like on top of Pennyman’s stick and Moneywort’s hat. And guess what—they were carved into a wooden sign over Pfennig’s door in Gastown. Now you might think I’m nuts, but I’ll tell you that all this magical talk isn’t just symbolic: carp curled around into circles, like moon disks, like coins, like the buttons on your shirt, like bus tokens and the pattern of seeds in a flower and the cycle of the seasons and the planets going round and round in the sky. Read Jung. It’s all the same thing. We’re awash in magical totems. Surrounded by little portholes looking out into infinity, at glimpses of immortality, if you bring it down to earth. The most trivial flotsam and jetsam scattered on the beach and cluttering shelves of junk stores
means
something, if you look at it from the right angle, through the right sort of spectacles.”

“But
what
does it mean?” asked Andrew, reeling in his line again. He had no real patience. That was his problem when it came to fishing. The Mounds bar hadn’t accomplished anything. The mussel was gone and the shrimp was half-eaten. He hacked another anchovy into bits, baited all three hooks with it, and swept the head and tail off into the ocean as chum.“ I have these nagging doubts,” he said as he released the catch on the reel. “Let’s say it’s all true, all this business you’ve been talking about. Let’s say my shirt buttons
mean
something besides just being buttons. So what? I mean, what about the man who’s ignorant of it? What about the man who doesn’t see—how does it go?—‘infinity in a grain of sand’? He just buttons up his shirt and heads down to the cafe for a hamburger.
You
look at a hamburger and think about circles and then about moon disks and about curled serpents and about planets swinging through space. This other man looks at a hamburger and sees ground beef. Do you know what I mean? If you were both struck dead coming out of the cafe, you’d go to your grave with a head full of puzzles; he’d go to his with a full stomach. So what does it all
mean—really
?”

“I haven’t any idea on earth,” said Pickett. “But I mean to find out.”

S. Baring-Gould, M.A.
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages

T
HE
M
ETROPOLITAN PUTTED
along up Seal Beach Boulevard toward Rossmoor Leisure World. Andrew and Pickett still smelled of fish, because of cutting up anchovies, but Uncle Arthur wouldn’t much care. There was no way at all to anticipate how he’d react to anything, given that he was ninety-two years old, maybe older—probably older—and that he grinned and winked and looked vastly surprised at what seemed to be randomly chosen moments. So the fishy smell and the tarry, scale-smeared jeans wouldn’t matter a bit. Their wearing ape masks or space helmets wouldn’t have mattered. Uncle Arthur would be every bit as likely to leap in startled surprise at the sight of them in a coat and tie, fresh from the barber.

They turned in past the enormous, skeletal, revolving globe that marked the Leisure World gate and were grilled by an octogenarian guard, who rang up Uncle Arthur’s townhouse on a wall-hung telephone and then entered into a baffling conversation. He put his hand over the mouthpiece, turned to Andrew, and said, “He wants to know if you’re the man with the sheep.”

“Indeed we are,” said Andrew.

The guard peered uncertainly into the back seat, suspicious, perhaps, that there weren’t any sheep riding along.

“In the trunk,” said Andrew. “Stuffed toys, for the grand-niece. Christmas.” He winked at the guard, who nodded, as if he understood Christmas despite its being eight months away, and then he muttered into the phone again before hanging up. Suddenly cordial, he waved them through and watched as they headed west, toward the townhouses and apartments that skirted the oilfields. The air was heavy with the smell of oil-saturated earth mingling with the salt air in the onshore ocean breeze.

“Stinks, doesn’t it?” said Pickett, rolling up his window.

“I love it,” said Andrew. “It’s a gift, is what it is—our ability to smell the world as well as see it and hear it.”

“I say it stinks. What was that nonsense about sheep? We haven’t got any sheep.”

“Always agree with everyone. That’s my motto. If they were expecting sheep, and we say we’ve got them in the trunk, then it’s suddenly
us
they were expecting.
Ipso facto
, as the logician would say.”

Pickett nodded. It made sense. “Isn’t that Uncle Arthur over there in the rose bushes?”

Andrew angled in toward the curb, parked the Metropolitan in a visitor’s space, and set the brake. “Ho!” he shouted, thinking to make themselves known. It wouldn’t do to slip up on Uncle Arthur unawares. The old man turned and gave them a baffled look, as if he were expecting the men with the sheep, and this wasn’t them. Then, squinting and shading his eyes with his hand, he seemed to recognize them, and he waved and motioned them over.

“Help me get this fellow out of here,” he said.

Pickett peered past him, a look of intense interest on his face.

“What fellow?”

“Turtle. Big one. There he is. See him there? His shell is almost the color of the stucco. Here, help me haul him out. Fellow wants to hibernate some more, I guess, and tried to disappear under the ivy.”

There it was—the light brown shell of a desert tortoise. Its feet were drawn in and its little pointy tail bent sideways, as if the creature meant to weather a storm. Pickett bent in and pulled it out, grunting in surprise at the weight of it. It was as big around as a hubcap. “Where do you want him?” asked Pickett.

Uncle Arthur started away toward the garages. “In the car,” he said. Pickett gave Andrew a look, and Andrew shrugged as both of them followed along.

The red electronic car sat in its stall like something landed from the stars. Andrew had always admired it, with its immense fins and tiny cab. It was what cars were meant to look like in an alternate universe. A cut-down cardboard box lay on the floor, wedged up against the steering bar. Pickett fitted the turtle into the too-small box, in among lettuce leaves, which it had to sit on.