Chapter 2

I just stared at that attaché case for a few minutes, then decided the guy probably wasn’t coming back that day, which meant I had to move it. There was even an extremely slim chance that someone might drop by and it wouldn’t be polite to have that sort of temptation staring any visitors in the face. There was no way I was going to pick that case up though, not with my bad back I wasn’t, especially since it had to weigh close to two hundred pounds. Instead I headed for the basement to find a moving dolly. First though, I carefully closed the lid of the case – no sense in leaving that sort of temptation open to the local ravens or jays who collect any sort of bright object.

After I’d come back with a moving dolly I heaved and grunted until I’d managed to tip the case up on its narrow side. Next I skidded first one end, then the other onto the little plate at the bottom of the dolly. Finally I tipped the dolly back, wheeled it inside the house and straight into my office, where I could keep that case under lock and key. Even then I wasn’t happy about having that much gold in the house, but not in my safe. Only I knew the case was too big to fit in my little safe and I wasn’t about to move the individual coins out of that case. At least not until I had made up my mind about the deal, which was definitely going to take some thought. In fact, I decided that I needed some advice from some professionals.

First, I called my banker and lawyer cousins and asked them to drop out to see me that evening. Since they were involved in the ranch as minority owners – they held the final 33% of the title for the ranch between them – I felt they needed to have some input concerning the decision of what to do. Besides, Fred, my banker cousin, could check over those Krugerrands and tell me if they were real or counterfeit copies. At the same time, Bert, the lawyer cousin, could write up a rental contract for the weirdo to sign, which would limit his actions and cover our butts for any legal comeback he might have. I thought that between them, they could make sure I wasn’t stepping into a minefield if I did rent any property to the kook.

Next, I called down to the ranch house and talked to José Cabrera, my ranch foreman. I asked him if he, his wife, Maria, and my range boss, Diego Diaz, could come up to my house for a short business meeting at the same time as my cousins would be there that evening. I felt that the ranch was their home too, and I didn’t want them to be taken by surprise if that oddball suddenly showed up and started to do something weird. Joe agreed at once, but he suggested that he and Maria should come early and bring up the fixings for a barbecue, suggesting that we could make an evening of it. When I mentioned why I was having the meeting and that my two cousins were coming out later, he suggested that we include them, so I called Fred again and extended the invitation to come out earlier. He called back shortly and agreed that he and Bert would come out right after work, so they’d be there by about six in the evening.

I didn’t go far from the house for the rest of the day, since I just didn’t want that dang attaché case left unattended for long. In fact, I even laid the dang thing down flat, opened it up, and made a more accurate count of how many Krugerrands were there, and my earlier estimate had been wrong. First off, the coins were stacked in an offset pattern on a diagonal – one row against the edge of the case, and the second row stacked so the curve of that stack fit into the space left by the curves of the first set. That meant there were 9 rows of stacked coins, not 8, but each row was still 13 stacks long, which meant that instead of 104 stacks of coins, there were 117. I wasn’t about to try lifting a stack to count them, but I did take a ruler and measured the height of each stack, and I had been almost exactly right with that estimate. The ruler measured the inside height at just over 3 inches, so allowing some space for the little lid which flipped down to cover the coins, the depth of the space was 3 inches - right on the money. If I was right in my estimation that there were 25 coins in each stack, then that little case held more than my original estimation, though. Actually, when I grabbed a calculator and worked it out, I came up with a figure of $4,387,500.00. No damn wonder it was heavy.

It was about then that I realized that the case had probably been purposely made to hold those coins because the stacks resting against each other prevented the coins from shifting around. I looked over that case closely and saw it was welded up out of quarter-inch aluminum sheet, so it was certainly strong enough to carry the weight of the gold. Only there was one small mystery left that I didn’t understand: the upper part of the lid seemed to be about an inch thick and looked like a solid piece. That didn’t make much sense until I thought about it a bit and considered how the attaché case I owned was laid out. Mine had a little pocket in the lid which I used for loose papers, pens, pencils, and things of that sort, but that space on the oddball’s attaché case seemed to be tightly enclosed, and I couldn’t open it, at least not easily.

The idea that there might be papers in there stirred my curiosity though, and the guy had just walked away and left the case standing wide open, as if it wasn’t important that he’d left it behind. So I looked that lid over closely, and I noticed that there were two slightly polished spots in the inside upper corners of the lid and a couple of slightly polished spots opposite those on the outside of the lid. I’d seen kitchen cabinet locks that worked by pressing inward, then releasing the pressure, and I wondered if the case lid might be similar. Just in case it was, I didn’t want to leave any marks or fingerprints behind, so I went to the kitchen and got the rubber gloves I used for washing the dishes.

Yeah, you could probably say I was ‘cheating’ – so what? I was dealing with an associate of Charlie Mullins – one of the biggest cheaters in all of North America. I could explain away my fingerprints on the outside of that case and even on the top few Krugerrands, but I didn’t want to leave fingerprints on anything that had been ‘hidden’ from a casual observer. You could call me overly cautious, or perhaps even slightly paranoid, if you want to, but I prefer to think that I’m ‘once bitten – twice shy.’ I simply insist on being extremely cautious of anyone who associates with Charlie or any of the Mullins clan. Right then I intended to take advantage of any slight edge that might put me in the driver’s seat concerning that clan of reprobates.

My suspicions were correct and by squeezing those two spots, then instantly releasing them, the cover of the upper lid area popped open and I could see that there were some papers inside. Still wearing my rubber gloves I carefully pulled those papers out and glanced through them, then as I read the fine print on the bottom of those contracts I began to grow angry. Although I was soon seething with rage, I carefully held my temper under control and dialled my cousin Bert, the lawyer.

“Bert, you know the big hill we call ‘The Dome?’” I growled.

“Yeah, what about it?”