“Nick, this is truly amazing. Almost mesmerizing. I’ve seen a lot of gold in my day, but the finish on this is unbelievably fine.”
Bo gently rolled the ball so he could look at the entire surface.
“A real craftsman did this,” he said putting on a pair of magnifying glasses and continuing to nudge the ball with a finger. “Look at that,” he muttered to himself. We had no idea what “that” meant, but it clearly intrigued Bo who opened a drawer under the counter, pulled out a fabric face mask like those used by doctors and slipped it over his head, covering his nose and mouth. “Don’t want to get spittle on this.” Again the words were uttered more to himself than Sal or me.
The ball glistened under the tensor’s pure white beam, shafts of light like an aura reflected across the room causing flairs on the walls and ceiling.
Gently lifting the display tray, Bo rolled his chair slowly to the center table. He mounted a smaller tray on top of an electronic scale, zeroed out the weight and carefully placed the ball into the tray. The meter’s digital display settled on 1133.9809.
Bo whistled. “That’s quite a chunk of metal,” he said. Just about 1,134 grams or 40 Avoirdupois ounces.”
“Avoid-what?”
“Oh, sorry. There are many different definitions for ounces. Not to be too technical, Troy ounces are used mostly in precious metals. Even gun powder. That’s where you get the number of ‘grains’ of gunpowder in a bullet. I just turned all of the mumbo jumbo into English ounces, the kind you find on a coffee can. Avoirdupois is the proper name. Invented by the English in the 1300s.”
“About 2 and a half pounds, then,” I calculated.
“Exactly.”
Sal made the calculation in his head. “At today’s gold prices, about $65,000.”
“Give or take if it’s solid, pure gold which we don’t know yet. Could have a lead core. We’ll see.”
He dismounted the tray and moved it to a complicated appearing machine with a five by five inch screen, small boxed enclosure of glass with a hinged door and a keypad.
“Latest in technology,” Bo said. “Sonic and X-ray scan followed by a spectroanalysis,” He lifted the ball from the tray and placed it in the center of the glass enclosure. After checking the alignment, he slid black plastic screens across all of the glass, did some magic with the dials and pressed a small red button. It sounded like a microwave oven.
We stood in absolute silence for three or four minutes. Then the display screen lit up into a series of peaks and valleys with small symbols under each, some of which I recognized as abbreviations for metals and minerals. The spike above Au reached the top of the graph. The others barely registering above flat line. In the bottom right, a digital “99.131” glowed in green.
“Holy moly, rock and roll,” Bo said. “Guys, you’ve got yourself a solid ball of gold. On the streets of Macau and Hong Kong, this is Chuk Kam. Exact gold. 24 karats.” Pushing his glasses back on his head, he looked at the two of us, “Okay, now spill it. Where’d it come from?” He wrapped the ball in a piece of cotton cloth, hefted it and kept his eyes focused on the sphere as he handed it to me.
For the past half hour, Bo had been unlike himself. Or at least his public self. Professional, quiet, analytical, focused and sane. Sal and I exchanged glances.
“Who are you, really?” Sal asked. “And what did you do with Bo?”
The small man laughed. “This is who I am. The guy you see on the street is the one that keeps people away from this place. In all the years I’ve been here, have either of you ever dropped in for a cup of coffee?”
We shook our heads.
“See? And that’s what I want. I have some pretty high profile clients who need confidential analysis of their property, especially newly acquired precious metals. I’m the best there is and don’t mind saying so.”
He swept an arm around the tidy room. “There’s maybe a couple of million bucks worth of equipment in here. Latest and greatest. It gets replaced as soon as something better comes along. I can’t afford to wait for something to wear out before replacing it. And I know how to use every piece, sometimes more efficiently and better than the manufacturers themselves.”
“So if someone came in here with, say, a gold artifact from some Egyptian temple, you’d be able to…”
“Been there. Done that. Look, I’m not about ready to break any confidences. Not about them and certainly not about what you’ve got in your hand. So tell me. Where’d it come from? The Tree Man?”
“Yes. It was contained in a clay egg that must have been hanging around the guy’s neck or wrist.”
“That’s an amazingly well done piece. The smelting and refining is top notch especially for a hundred or so years ago. And the polished finish is flawless. I couldn’t find a single remnant of the polishing process. Not even the most miniscule scratch or mark. Phenomenal.” He lowered his glassed so they rested on his nose again. “As gold, it’s worth a fair piece. What Sal figured, around $65,000. To a gold antiquities collector, someone who enjoys fine jewelry and artifacts, it’s priceless.”
Bo stood up and walked toward the door. Session over. We entered his front office, a plain-jane reception area with nice, but unexceptional furnishing and light gray berber carpet. He twisted the handle on the office door and opened it to let us out.
“What do we owe you, Bo?” I asked.
“On the house, Nick. Consider it repayment for finding the ‘bird.” He extended his hand which I gladly took. And then the other Bo was back, voice rising in intensity, becoming loud and rapid fire. “I don’t know, Nick! I don’t know! I think in a fair fight, you’d beat that Reacher guy. Really do!” looking down and shaking his head.
I laughed, “Yeah, but…”
“But Reacher, hey, he don’t fight fair, Nick. You’d have to watch your back! Mean right hook, Nick. Really mean!”
Bo winked and closed the door.
Settling into the Vic, “What do we do with this thing, Nick?”
“Safe deposit box would be my guess.”
Turning the key, the Vic rumbled awake. We headed toward city center. Never got there.
A white Honda tailed us out of town, onto 101. Learned a long time ago to watch the rear view mirror and something sparked in my brain. Gray hair and a hoodie behind the wheel of the Civic. A little tickle in the pit of my stomach.
“Sal, I think we got company.”
The big man turned in his seat, peered out the rear window. “Lose him or confront him? Whatcha think?”
“Let’s see how serious he is, first.” I pressed the accelerator and the Vic lurched forward, side exhaust grumbling in pleasure. The Honda was hard pressed to keep up, but the driver tried, his grille maybe 40 feet off my rear bumper.
Through the light where the four-lane turned to two and a couple of miscellaneous cars in front. No sweat. I pressed down harder and the Vic kicked down two gears. I crossed the yellow line to pass the first car ahead and stayed in the oncoming lane til I’d passed the second. No oncoming traffic so the Honda followed, even though it was falling behind.
“Get a license number.”
Sal turned, squinted and twisted back to forward muttering letters and numbers to himself.
“Glove box,” I said.
Sal popped it open, pulled out a pen and wrote the license designation on his hand. The Honda continued to fall behind. The Vic hit 90. Easy as pie.
“Got