Page 48 of Fade Out
“I see. And what about his niece, Ruby? Did you ever meet her?”
She shook her head.
The little boy looked up at me and asked, “Can I have your pennies?”
“Leo, we’ve talked about this. You don’t ask strangers for their pennies.” She looked at me and said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, digging into my pocket for change. “What about a young woman, not too tall, dirty blonde hair, not very chesty. You see anyone like that around?”
“No. When I’m home this one keeps me busy, so I don’t have a lot of time to notice my neighbors.”
I nodded, then said to Leo, “I’ve only got two pennies. How about a nickel and a dime?”
The boy shook his head violently.
“He collects pennies,” his mother said. “He’s looking for ones from the war—42, 43. They were steel rather than copper. They’re collectible.”
“I see. The war was a really long time ago,” I said as I handed Leo my two pennies. And as I did, it hit me. Coins. Collecting coins. I’d been in Happ’s house the week before. I remembered looking at his bookcase. He had a collector’s guide to U.S. coins and big empty space next to it. Rita had taken the man’s coin collection.
“Nineteen sixty-five, nineteen seventy-two,” he said, disappointment in his voice.
“You know, Mr. Happ collected coins.”
“Really? Small world.”
“Do you have a phone book?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, a bit confused. “You want to look at the phone book?”
“Yellow pages.”
“All right.” She stepped away from the door, pulling the boy with her. A minute or so later she was back, this time without the boy. Chicago was big enough that we had white pages and yellow pages in two different directories. I took the yellow pages out of her hands and flipped it open, turning the pages until I found what I wanted. RARE COIN DEALERS. I ripped the page out of the book and handed it back to her.
“Um, what—”
“Thanks,” I said, heading down the stoop to the sidewalk. I walked the three blocks over to Clark and found a bus stop. The bus arrived about four minutes later. I got on, found a seat in the back, and began to study my list. I put them in a kind of order, figuring out what would be the most efficient way to approach this.
Yes, I could have gone to my office and simply called all the places, but I like to see people when I talk to them. It’s easier to figure out if they’re lying or holding something back. Plus, my office was a disaster I never wanted to look at again.
I jumped off the bus at Belmont and walked around until I found my car on Elaine Place. It was after eleven. Time flies when your freedom’s on the line. I spent the next three hours going from coin dealer to coin dealer. I went to six of them and finally got lucky with number seven.
The place was called Willoughby Coins & Stamps. It was up in Edgewater on Ridge. A little white brick building with tiny windows that suggested they didn’t want anyone to know too much about what was going on inside. When I walked in I saw that it was a very small space, smaller than the building suggested. There were a couple of glass cases displaying the stamps and coins for sale. For some reason I had the feeling Willoughby bought more coins than he sold. Which made me wonder what might be happening to them.
An older gentleman sat behind one of the glass cases readingThe Reader. His hair was gray and his skin chalky. He glanced at me when I walked in. Since I wasn’t holding anything to sell, he said, “Go ahead, look around. You want something particular you just say so. I might got it in the back or maybe can get it for you.”
I introduced myself and gave him my card. Which reminded me, maybe I ought to check my messages once in a while. I worried about that while he studied the card. Then he said, “Okay, what do you want? Everything I do is legit. I don’t fence. Never”
“I’m looking for a woman, early thirties, red-hair, a chest you’d remember. Might have been with a guy, six-four, blond hair, blue eyes, no chin, nickname Possum. Looks like his nickname. They’d have been selling several random collections of U.S. coins.”
He was silent for a bit, like he wasn’t going to answer me, but then he did. “Yeah, they was in here. Last Tuesday, maybe. I offered her a price for all of it and she got mad as a hornet. Least-wise she tried to. I got the impression I weren’t their first stop.”
“Did you buy the coins?”
“Most of it was crap. But there was a couple steel pennies, a Buffalo head nickel in bad shape, a few liberty dollars. Most people don’t understand. You don’t just put a coin in a drawer, wait twenty years and then, bam, it’s worth something. Usually, there has to be something wrong with it. Something what makes it unique.”
As he talked, something clicked for me. Rita had expected to get a lot more for the coins. She thought they’d be able to get by on whatever she got for them. When that proved wrong, she had Possum go in and get some money from Winslow Porter’s account.
“Did she sell the coins to you?”
