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"We didn't take no nickel!" Heads swiveled and eyes stared at Rabbit Margate. "We never took no nickel," he said again, "and we never opened no safe. We found the safe, sure, but we couldn't punch it or peel it or nothing. I don't know shit about no nickel."
"No."
"And we didn't kill nobody. We didn't hurt nothing. Wasn't nobody home when we went in, and we went out again before nobody came home. I don't know shit about no murders and no nickels."
He slumped in his seat. Ray Kirschma
"That's true," I said. "The first burglars. Rabbit Margate and Harlan Reese"-and didn't Harlan look startled to hear his name spoken aloud-"contented themselves with burglary and vandalism. Not long after they left, a second burglary took place. This burglar, a considerably more sophisticated and accomplished individual than Margate and Reese, went directly to the wall safe, opened it, and removed a pair of earrings, a valuable wristwatch, and the 1913 nickel. He took them directly to Abel's apartment, where he left them on consignment."
No point, really, in mentioning we'd obtained some cash for the watch and earrings. No need to tell these people every last detail.
"While the second burglar was delivering the safe's contents to Abel Crowe, the nickel's owner and his wife were returning to their home. They'd had a change of plans that none of the burglars had any reason to be aware of, and so they walked in on a house that looked like Rome after the Goths sacked it. They also walked in on another burglary in progress, and this third burglary was the charm. The man and woman were knocked out and tied up, and when the man regained consciousness and worked free of his bonds he discovered that his wife was dead."
I looked at Colca
"The nickel's owner called the police, of course. He was given the opportunity to look at the perpetrator of the second burglary but couldn't identify him. Subsequently he did make a positive identification of one of the participants in the first burglary."
"That was a frame," Rabbit Margate called out. "He never saw me. That was a setup."
"Let's just call it a mistake," I suggested. "The gentleman was under a lot of stress. He'd lost his wife, his house had been cruelly looted, and a coin worth a fortune was missing.
"And here's something interesting," I said, glancing again at Colca
"This has gone far enough." It was Colca
"I almost believed that for a while myself," I admitted. "Oh, I knew you had one, but I thought it might be a counterfeit. I ran a check on the five V-Nickels to find out which one you bought, and it turned out that they were all accounted for. Four were in museum collections and the fifth was privately owned, and the private specimen was lightly circulated and easily distinguishable from the others, and certainly not the specimen I took from your safe."
Another collective gasp-I'd gone and blown my anonymity, and now all and sundry knew who the perpetrator of the Second Burglary was. Ah, well. These things happen.
"But I had a good close look at that coin," I went on, "and I couldn't believe it was a counterfeit. So I did a little more checking and I invited some museum people to take a close look at their coins, and three of the four told me their coins looked just fine, thank you.
"The fourth museum had a counterfeit in the case."
I looked at the three men in dark suits. The one seated on the aisle, the little button-nosed guy with the thick glasses, was Milo Hracec, and he recognized his cue. "It was not a bad counterfeit," he said. "It was made from a proof 1903 nickel. The zero was removed and a one soldered in place. It was good work, and no one glancing into our display case would be likely to think twice about it, but you could never sell it to anyone as genuine."
The white-haired man cleared his throat. "I'm Gordon Ruslander," he a
"What did you do after you'd seen the coin?"
"I went to my curator's home and confronted him," he said. The man on Ruslander's other side, the balding chap with the long nose, seemed to shrink in his seat. "I knew Howard Pitterman had been having his troubles," Ruslander went on. "He went through a difficult divorce and had some investment reverses. I didn't realize just how hard his circumstances had been or I would certainly have offered help." He frowned. "Instead he took matters into his own hands a couple of months ago. He substituted a counterfeit for the 1913 nickel, then sold off our most important rarity for a fraction of its value."
"I got twenty thousand dollars for it," Howard Pitterman said, his voice trembling. "I must have been insane."
"I don't know who that man is," Colca
"If that's the man who bought the coin," Pitterman said, "he didn't buy it from me. I sold it to a dealer in Philadelphia, a man with a shady reputation. Maybe he sold it to this Mr. Colca
"I'll say it again," Colca
"Then why did you call Samuel Wilkes yesterday?"
"I never heard of Samuel Wilkes."
"He has an office near Rittenhouse Square," I said, "and he deals in coins and medals, and shady's the word for him. You called him yesterday at his home and left your name, and you called his office, and you also put in a call to the Gallery of American and International Numismatics. You made those calls from your home telephone, and since they're long distance there'll be a record of them."