Death on a High Floor (21 page)

“You drank it down in one swallow,” Serappo said. “Would you like another?”

“No thank you. But I would like to know what you know.”

“Of course. Let me begin at the beginning.”

“I would like that.”

“About two months ago, Simon called and said you had sold him the
Ides
. He wanted to send it to me to authenticate and appraise. He wanted me to issue a certificate of authenticity. We agreed on a fee for me to do that.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“And then?”

“About a week later, a courier brought the coin to me.”

“Who was it?”

“A young woman I did not know. In her late twenties or early thirties I would guess.”

“Did she tell you her name?” I asked.

“No. In fact, she was evasive about that. I asked her several times and never received an answer.”

“What did she look like?”

“Neither short nor tall. Slim. Dark hair. Good looking.”

“Did she say much?”

“Hardly anything at all. Just presented the coin, asked for a receipt, and left.”

I suddenly had a very bad feeling. But I pushed on.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“I evaluated the coin, using a variety of means, and determined it to be a very clever forgery. I called Simon and told him that. He was not very professional about it. He asserted that I must be wrong. I asserted that I was quite right. Then I sent it back.”

“By courier?”

“No. By Federal Express. There seemed little point in using a courier to return a fake.”

“Do you think the courier swapped it?”

“That is a possibility. One I mentioned to Simon. He said he knew her, and she would
never
do that. He called her an ‘intimate.’”

I asked the lawyerly question. “What happened next?”

“Well, earlier this week,” he said, “I read in the newspapers that Simon had been murdered. I called you the very next day. But you did not return my call.”

“I was busy,” I said.

“Yes, I think I understand that now.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing happened. Until about ten days ago, when Harry Marfan showed up here. Just like you did. No appointment.” Serappo smiled a small smile, as if to say ‘you are all so impolite, where you come from.’

“What did he want?” I asked.

“He said he had joint-ventured the purchase of the
Ides
from you. At first, he demanded that I give him the real
Ides
, because he thought I still had it. Eventually, I persuaded him that I did not. Then I suggested he sue you to get the money back.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said.

“Yes, but then the truth came out. The reason they wanted to get the real coin and not the money.”

“Which is what?” I asked.

“He and Simon had concluded that your
Ides
is the
Ides of Trajan
.”

“The what?” I thought that I knew a great deal about my grandfather’s gift, and I had never heard of the
Ides of Trajan
.

“Do you know your Roman history?”

“In general terms,” I said. “Trajan was an early Roman emperor.”

“Do you know where he was born, Robert?”

“No, of course not.”

“In Spain.”

The mystery of it all, whatever it was, was not exactly enthralling to me. It was just irritating. I wanted Serappo to tell me what he knew and skip the history lesson.

“So?” I said.

Serappo pushed a button under his desk, and the wall to his left, peeling paint and all, slid back to reveal a row of shelves, some filled with books, others with the small, red cardboard boxes that coin collectors use to house their treasures. I have to admit it. I was boggled.

He got up, walked unsteadily over to the shelves, and pulled a slim paper-bound volume from the highest shelf. He leaned against the bookcase and opened the book, which was well thumbed.

“Here, let me read you this passage,” he said. “It’s called “The 59th
Ides
”:

The emperor Trajan, who ruled Rome for almost twenty years, between AD 98 and 117, was born in Italica, in the Andalusian region of Spain. He was known as an avid coin collector and was reliably reported to own a superb specimen of the
Ides
d
enarius
of Brutus
. Shortly before his death, he gave his collection, including the
Ides
, to the imperator of the Roman legion then headquartered in Italica. The path of the Trajan
Ides
can then be traced through almost 1,800 years to the Abbey of Roncevaux in the Basque country of Spain, from whence it was either lost or stolen during the Spanish Civil War. The provenance and location of the other fifty-eight silver coins of this type are well known. Should the Trajan
Ides
ever be located, it will be the 59th such specimen, with a rare and storied history!

“Who knew?” That was all I could think of to say.

“No one knew,” Serappo said. “The whole thing is horseshit.”

“Who wrote that?” I asked.

“A guy from Leeds named Harris Caruthers. He was an amateur coin nut. Used to hang out at the British Museum coin cabinet and drive the curators crazy with his theories. That thing I just read to you came from his self-published book,
One Hundred Mystery Coins
.”

“And someone thinks my grandfather’s coin is the ‘Trajan Ides?’”

“Yes, Harry Marfan thinks it, and the late Simon Rafer thought it. Well, I don’t know if either one of them really believed that, but they were prepared to persuade someone else of it and sell the coin for a pretty sum. Many times what they paid you for it . . . however much that was.” He looked at me with something of a twinkle in his eyes. “How much did they pay you, if I might ask?”

“It was only Simon who paid me. The price was five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Though it’s in Very Fine condition, maybe even better than that, he vastly overpaid. But even at that price they were going to make a tidy profit,” he said.

“How much were they planning to sell it for?”

“Harry hinted at something like two million dollars.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Do you know who the buyer was?”
I asked.

“Not by name. Some sucker in Hawaii. Harry didn’t use the word sucker of course. But someone they persuaded that this preposterous story is true.”

“Do you think there’s any chance it is true?” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized I had said the wrong thing.

Serappo smiled a crooked smile. “It’s amazing.”

“What is?”

“Romantic stories cling to objects like gum to shoes. Even your shoes.”

“Maybe it actually happened,” I said.

“Listen, young man. There is no evidence Trajan ever owned an
Ides
.
There is no evidence he was even a coin collector. Nor, if he was, is there any evidence he gave a coin collection of any kind—his or anyone else’s—to anyone. Indeed, even if you could somehow prove that he did give an Ides to someone, there are no records that trace who kept, owned, and treasured that object for one thousand nine hundred years. Ninety-five generations.”

I was appropriately chastened. “So why would anyone find it plausible?”

“Because,” he said, “the provenance of every one of the other fifty-eight
Ides
is well known, at least for the last hundred years or so. And that is particularly so for those in Very Fine or Extremely Fine condition. Your grandfather’s coin popped up more or less out of nowhere. Since it has no provenance, anyone who wants to can make one up for it. The better the story, the better the price.”

“Did this Harris Caruthers guy know about my grandfather’s
Ides
?” I asked.

“Not so far as I know. He was just making up a good tale about the Roman world’s most famous coin. Something to spice up his book. Since he died in 1992, we can’t, alas, ask him.”

Serappo put the book back and closed the fake wall.

“I hope,” he said, “that that information is helpful to you.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Good, I knew you would want to know all of that.”

The tone of his voice said, in effect, “That’s all I have for you.” But I was not about to make a newbie lawyer’s mistake and assume that what he had just told me was all he knew. I asked the follow-up.

“Do you know anything else you think I would like to know, Serappo?”

“Yes, I do. You would like to know, I assume, that Harry insinuated that you were in a drug ring.”

“What?”

“Yes. He didn’t quite come out and say it, but he kept asking if I knew about your contacts in the drug world.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I knew nothing about it, and that I’d be shocked if you had anything to do with such things.”

“Is there more?”

He seemed thoughtful. “Normally, I do not share mere suspicions. But under these circumstances, yes, there is something else that you perhaps should know. Given your situation. But I want you to understand that it is based on a feeling, nothing more.”

“All right,” I said. “I’d be pleased to hear it.”

Serappo didn’t speak immediately. He still seemed to be considering whether he wanted to say whatever it was he was going to say. I have never been sure exactly what it means to wait with baited breath, but I must have been waiting with it.

Finally, he spoke. “Harry seemed . . . How should I put it . . . overly interested in the exact reasons I had appraised the coin as a fake.”

“That’s hardly surprising,” I said. “Harry’s always been detail-oriented. When he was our managing partner, he once spent an entire hour at an Executive Committee meeting grilling the office manager about the reasoning behind her decision to buy a new brand of paper clip.”

“Perhaps you are right. And I must say that he carefully disguised his intent by asking his questions as a challenge to my conclusion that the
Ides
was a fake. Yet the detail he sought was somehow more than that. He even wanted to learn the numerical details of the technical tests I had performed, which included some non-invasive metallurgical tests.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, I told him they were trade secrets developed during a lifetime of effort. But the truth is, my friend, that, in the end, I declined to share the intimate details with him because I had the distinct sense that he was trying to learn how to make a better fake.”

I reached into my right-hand pocket and took out the red-tinted flip—the one that contained the coin I had taken from Stewart’s office. I walked over to Serappo’s desk and handed it to him. “Do you think this one is a better fake?”

He took it from me, removed the coin from the flip, held it up to the light, and looked at it through his loupe. He didn’t bother with the pointed hammer.

“It looks and feels like an identical fake,” he said. “Are there only two?”

I thought about the ancient coins Larson had said were in the metal box in the garden. “There could be more.”

“If there are more, you might think about the Black Sea Hoard.”

The Black Sea Hoard contained more than a thousand ancient Greek coins—diobols—supposedly discovered more than twenty-five years ago near the Black Sea. The find had caused enormous excitement, and the coins had sold for high sums. In the end, after the exchange of much scholarly vitriol, most of the hoard was proved to consist of clever forgeries copied from an original, legitimate hoard of about one hundred fifty coins. “If you’re suggesting,” I said, “that someone might be planning to create a fake hoard of
Ides
, it seems far-fetched. The coins are too famous, and too rare.”