“Heavy.”
“Gold usually is.”
“It’s more yellow than gold.”
“It’s raw, Don.”
“My less-than-educated guess is that this is like ten karats goods.”
Don held it between his fingers and squinted at it like he knew what he was looking at.
“I know better than to ask where it came from. Can I keep this a while? I need to have it looked at.”
“It’s yours to keep. Test it. Grade it. Tell me what it’s worth, troy ounce.”
“This is near a pound of gold, son. How much of this shit do you have?”
“Around sixteen hundred kilograms.”
Big Don set the lumpy little stone on the desktop and tapped his fingers on it.
“That’s like a ton and a half.”
“Closer to a ton-seven. And that’s what brings me here,” Lee said.
Big Don’s bullshit salesman bonhomie melted away to be replaced by the hard lines of pure avarice. Without a word, he pulled open a drawer and retrieved a calculator that he planted on the desk and began tapping on it furiously with one hand. Lee sipped his ice-cold Bud and waited.
The tapping came to an end, and Big Don sat back and rubbed his fingers over his lips.
“So, how many millions, we talking about?” Lee said.
“More zeroes, son. Add about three more zeroes.”
Big Don walked Lee out to his rental parked in the Florida heat. They talked as they crossed the broad lot lined with ranks of shiny recent model cars under colorful pennants hanging still in the motionless air. Seminole Motors. Big Don was no more a Seminole Indian than Lee was Chinese.
“I can’t manage this alone. Not all at once,” Big Don said.
“And I don’t like the idea of bringing in any more players,” Lee said.
“I understand that. I do. I can act as a cut-out. A middleman. I take a percentage for setting the deal up, and no one hears your name.”
“Do I want to know who you’d go to, Don?”
“I’d be providing them the same service.”
“For a cut off their end.”
“There’s enough to go around, son.”
They reached Lee’s rental, a squatty Toyota in only-in-rental blue.
“So, what’s the plan?” Lee said and leaned back on the hood.
“Stay in the area for a few days. Don’t even tell me where. I have your cell. I assume it’s a throwaway. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you the test results. Just a number. That’ll be karats. Give me another day, and I’ll call you with a figure. The cash. Your total. Again, just a number.”
“Then?”
“We arrange delivery.”
“Good to see you again, Don.”
“You too, son.”
Lee checked the rearview on the way off the lot. Don stood in the wavery haze and watched until the little blue car was out of sight.
Lee was napping in a hot tub at the Flamingo Inn when the first call came on his burner.
Big Don’s voice. One word, then disconnect. “Eight.”
Eight karats. The prehistoric gold was raw shit indeed.
The following day the burner buzzed while Lee was on a pre-dawn ten-mile run.
“Ninety-eight.”
That was millions. Like Don said, there was a lot to go around.
The exchange was slickly made a week later. The gold was divided into four loads and concealed inside four new Chevy Avalanche pick-ups at a dealership in Chandler, Arizona. The dealership was owned by Big Don through a holding company that was a division of a shell corporation. The trucks were loaded onto a Nu-Car carrier and driven to Gainesville, Florida.
The cars were off-loaded there, given new paperwork, and shipped back to Arizona on the same carrier. Before the return trip, the gold was removed from the trucks, and plastic-wrapped pallets of bundles of non-sequential hundreds and fifties loaded into the beds and tied down. Two hundred million in cash. Almost two tons of money.
No one can trust anyone in a deal like that. Lee insisted to Don that each individual truck have Lo-jack installed and that he be given sole access to the codes. Lee and Jimbo rode shotgun at a discreet distance. They shared driving and made the marathon round trip across the country well behind the semi loaded with the multi-million-dollar trucks. They were all gunned up and prepared to intervene if there was a double-cross or ambush.
It all went down slicker than snot. Four men came into Sunshine Chevy Cadillac on the day the trucks arrived back in Chandler and bought four new pickups fresh from a Gainesville dealership. The deals were cash and all open and legal and registered, and that was that.
A week later, Big Don was unlocking the office at Seminole Motors but found someone had unlocked it before him.
“Estelle?” he called, entering.
A man who looked like a linebacker dressed for a court appearance was standing in the waiting room. A second guy dressed the same was behind the reception glass, pressing the buzzer to allow Don in. Big Don sensed that neither man was open to questions and made his way through the door for his own office.
A slim man in a bad hairpiece sat behind the battered steel desk regarding Big Don with lifeless eyes. He was toying with a nickel-plated Sig Sauer. It was one of the loaded pieces Big Don kept in his desk drawers.
“Leonid, this is a surprise,” Big Don said, hiding his surprise behind a fixed smile. “Problem with the gold?”
“What could be the problem with gold?” Leonid said. His voice was lightly accented, the vowels sliding into one another in oily succession.
Big Don, for once, was left without an answer.
“Someone wants to talk to you,” Leonid said.
“Friend of yours?”
“No friend,” Leonid said. He set the handgun down on the blotter and hit send on a cell phone. He held it up, making Big Don reach across the desk for it.
“Mr. Brinkley, I hope this is a good time to talk.” The voice sounded like one of those guys in the TV shows his wife liked to watch; the ones with high-class British
