Death on a High Floor (20 page)

“Yes.”

“Really. It must be National
Ides
Month, and it isn’t even March,” she said. “All right, come in. I’ll ask him if he wants to see you.”

She opened the door fully. I walked in and looked around the small reception area. It had not changed since the last time I’d been there. The only furniture was a government-issue steel desk, a metal-framed, office-style swivel chair with a green cloth seat, plus a faded red couch. There was no art on the walls. The desk was piled high with magazines. The top one on the pile was entitled
Render,
which appeared to be the national publication of the fat rendering industry.

Two doors led out of the reception area. One was wood, and I recalled that it led to the living quarters, where Serappo had entertained me the last time I’d been there. The other was steel and looked like the entry to a vault, except that it had no visible combination lock. I’d never seen what was behind that door.

Smirna walked behind the desk and stabbed at a small black button on the desktop. I heard a buzz in the next room. Then a voice I recognized as Serappo’s came through a scratchy speaker, in a rather peevish tone. “What is it? I asked not to be disturbed tonight.”

“Robert Tarza is here to see you.”

There was no immediate response. Serappo was apparently considering whether to be disturbed.

“Send him in,” the voice said. “You don’t need to search him.”

I looked at her. “You search people? What a nice professional touch.”

“We’ve had some problems,” she said.

“You do the search yourself?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not my type.” She reached under the desk again and pushed something. I heard the pop of an electric lock unlatching and watched the door to Serappo’s office swing open.

When I walked in, Serappo was sitting behind a steel desk like the one in the reception area. The only other furniture in the room was a single bucket-style guest chair, in yellow plastic. The kind you find in a library’s public function room. Serappo himself was impeccably dressed amidst the shabby surroundings. He was wearing a bespoke pinstripe suit—you could tell by the hand-stitched button holes on the cuffs and the way the soft gray fabric draped so nicely on his shoulders—a white-on-white
Turnbull & Asser
shirt and a maroon tie, probably
Georgio Armani.

“Mr. Tarza,” he said. “What a surprise. And here I thought you had declined my invitation. Please sit down.”

I eased myself into the low-slung chair. So low that I had to look up at Serappo, the more so because both his desk and his chair rested on a platform raised several inches above the floor. I waited. Serappo, I knew, had a fetish of not speaking immediately at the outset of a meeting—and a desire that you also remain silent. He had once told me that it was a tradition inherited from his Tibetan mother.

Somehow, I had always doubted that. He didn’t look the least bit Tibetan. He looked like a gaunt Caucasian of uncertain ethnicity. His olive skin suggested that he could be Italian or Greek, or maybe even something more exotic. His most arresting feature had always been his vivid green eyes. So unusual in color that his mother could well have been a cat.

I first met Serappo when I was fifteen. Back then, he had wavy black hair. Now, at the age of eighty-something, his hair had migrated to gray and wispy. But the eyes were, if anything, even more intense, and he was staring at me, his hands steepled in front of him, finger to finger.

After what seemed like an eternity, he spoke.

“So, Robert, do you still like the
Cubs
?”

“I suppose. I’m not really much of a sports fan.”

“Do you recall when I took you to that
Cubs
game?”

I squinted my eyes in memory. “Yes, I do. It was when I was a first-year at U of C. It was the second time you tried to buy the
Ides
from me.”

“I do not recall that part,” he said, “although I do recall the score. It was a game the
Cubs
won one-to-nothing in the bottom of the twelfth.”

“I don’t recall that.”

“It was a cold day in the fall. You were very cold. I recall that. In fact, you look a bit cold now. May we offer you a hot drink?”

“No thank you,” I said. “I want to get down to business.”

“You mean you didn’t come to discuss baseball?”

“No.”

“That is too bad. You know, I’ve been to over a thousand games.”

I considered briefly whether Serappo was losing his mind.

“What are you thinking, Robert? That I have lost it?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” I said.

“You are such an American, Robert. Despite your European background.”

“I don’t have a European background.”

“Your grandfather was Spanish.”

“Basque,” I said.

“All right, Basque, if you wish. But still, a European.”

“Your point is?”

“A European would be pleased to talk about nothing in particular for an hour or so before getting down to business.”

“What is the business you think we will eventually be getting down to, Serappo?”

“I assume, Robert, that you came to sell me the
Ides
. . .
finally, after all these years.”

“I don’t have the
Ides
. I have only this.” I reached into my left-hand jacket pocket and pulled out the transparent coin flip—the one that contained the coin Jenna had taken from Simon’s kitchen. I removed the coin from the flip and held it up, trophy-like.

“You keep it in your pocket,” he said. “How quaint.”

“I’m told it’s a fake,” I said.

“Let me see it.”

I got up and put it on the desk. Serappo picked it up, hefted it briefly in his hand as if to feel its weight and then held it up between thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly. Then he took a loupe from his desk drawer and examined both sides again. Finally, he removed a tiny, sharply pointed rubber mallet from the drawer, held the coin up next to his ear and tapped the coin gently with the point.

“Yes, it is a fake,” he said. “But a terrifically good one. Everything is perfect except the sound, and even it is quite close. They probably used some kind of laser technology to make it.”

“Are you certain it’s a fake?” I asked.

“Yes, I am. And speaking of inquiries about fake coins, Harry Marfan was here not long ago asking about the
Ides
.”

“Oh? What was he asking about it?” I tried to make my question sound nonchalant.

“He assumed I had the real
Ides
, and he wanted it back.”

“Because they sent it to you for appraisal?”

“Yes. He accused me of swapping it and returning a fake.”

“Maybe it’s always been a fake,” I said. “Maybe the coin my grandfather gave me was this very fake.”

He looked at me steadily with his green eyes. “Oh no. It was not. I assure you it was not. I held the coin your grandfather gave you in my own hands more than forty years ago, and it was the real thing.”

“When you visited me and my mother in Los Angeles? When I was eleven?”

“Yes.”

“Well, coming back to the present, what did you tell Harry about the coin you just appraised?” I asked.

“I told him what I just told you, my friend. That the coin they sent me to appraise was a fake.”

“Was it this very fake?” I pointed to the coin, which was now resting on the desk in front of Serappo.

He shrugged. “Maybe. But I can’t be sure. Perhaps there are two such fakes. Perhaps there are a hundred. There are a lot of collectors who have wealth but no sense of discernment, and they would be easy marks for this coin.”

“So you don’t think this is an imitation made for tourists?” I asked.

“No. As you well know, legitimate makers of tourist fakes put some mark on those to show that they’re copies. This is designed to deceive. Nor was it cheap to make.”

Then he fixed me again with his eyes. I waited.

“Robert, I have a proposition for you.”

“What is it?”

“I believe I have learned some things that might be of use to you in your, what should I call it, predicament?”

“I’d be delighted to learn them,” I said.

“I’m sure you would. But I want to trade you for the information.”

First the
E
nquirer
guy and now Serappo. Bartering information seemed to have become a regular part of my life.

“What do you want to trade for it?”

“If the true coin is ever found, I want you to agree that you will sell it to me.”

“I don’t own it anymore, Serappo. I sold it to Simon.” I suddenly realized that I had just abandoned the fiction that I had already bought it back from Simon. “He paid,” I continued, “much more than I thought it worth, but he offered the price, so I took it.”

 
“So I have heard,” Serappo responded. “But I have a feeling you will, eventually, find it again in your hands. So do we have a deal?”

“Sure.” The truth is, having already gone through the wrenching decision to part with it when I sold it to Simon, deciding to sell it again to Serappo—if I ever did get it back—was not all that difficult. Even though I had sworn to myself, years before, that Serappo was the last person on earth I would sell it to.

“Good.” He pushed a button and spoke. “Smirna, please bring that document in.”

A few seconds later, Smirna walked in and placed a document in front of him. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “You do not need to wait.” Smirna left.

Serappo picked up the document, got up from his chair, and brought it over to me. He walked slowly, and it was clear to me that, in the ten years since I had last seen him, he had become frail. As he handed me the document, his hand shook.

I took it from him and glanced at it. It was a contract, clearly prepared in the expectation that I would show up. It specified that in exchange for certain information, I agreed, “irrevocably,” to sell him the
Ides
should I currently have or come into ownership of it.

“Is that contract enforceable, Robert?” He was standing beside my chair.

I thought about it for a second. “Candidly,” I said, “I can immediately think of several good defenses I’d have to your action for breach if I refused to sell the
Ides
to you. They might not win, but they’d be formidable defenses.”

“But you are a man of honor, are you not? Despite no longer being a
Cubs
fan?”

“Yes.”

“So if you sign it, you will honor it?”

“Yes.”

He pulled an elegant fountain pen from his suit coat pocket, uncapped it, and handed it to me.

I took the pen and said, “I’ll sign, but why is having that coin so important to you, Serappo?”

“I have been collecting ancient coins for more than sixty years. The
Ides
is the most famous of them all. The
Ides
your grandfather gave to you is the only one I have ever touched, that one time when you and your mother permitted it. The others are all in museums or in the collections of the unduly rich. I want to own it and touch it again before I die. Precisely because I know that I will not be the last person to own that coin. Dozens who came before us have owned it and dozens more, yet unborn, will own it after you and I are gone. I want to be a link in that chain.”

It would be fair to say that, romantic as that all sounded, I did not believe him. I assumed he wanted to own the coin so he could sell it to one of the unduly rich and pocket a profit. I briefly considered asking him if he had some premonition that he was going to be unlinked soon. But I thought it might be misinterpreted, so I simply took the pen from him, put the contract on my knee, and signed. “Will you give me a copy before I leave?”

“I will,” he said.

“Now tell me what you know,” I said.

“First, I think we should celebrate our deal, don’t you think?”

I thought no such thing. But it was inevitable that we were going to do so. I sighed inwardly.

“Sure, let’s celebrate.”

“Do you enjoy peach schnapps?”

“It’s okay.”

“Good, I’m glad you like it.” He pressed a button on the speakerphone and spoke into it. “Two peach schnapps,
meine kleine
.”

Smirna didn’t strike me as anyone’s little one, and I had no idea why Serappo had chosen German as his language of affection. But Smirna did promptly bring us two shot glasses of Schnapps.

Serappo raised his glass. “To coins.”

I raised mine. “To coins and information.”

I tossed it down in one gulp. In the hope that I might finally end the European part of the conversation and move on to strictly business.