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“No can do.”
“What do you mean byno can do?” Lula said. “Are you telling us you aren’t going to cooperate with the police?”
“Are you the police?” Benji asked.
“We’re almost the police,” Lula said. “We’re technically law enforcement. Especially me since I’m a temporary replacement office manager.”
“Well, I sell comic books and collectibles and I’ve got a code of conduct to uphold. Customer confidentiality is paramount here,” Benji said.
Lula leaned in so that their noses were almost touching. “Comic books don’t require confidentiality. Nobody cares who buys Donald Duck or who buys Spider-Man. And anyway, we aren’t even talking about a comic book. We’re talking about a stolen coin that you fenced.”
“I didn’t know it was stolen,” Benji said.
“Don’t matter,” Lula said. “You did it all the same. Seems to me you should cooperate with us law enforcers so we can return it to its rightful owner.”
Benji looked over at Beedle, and Beedle shrugged.
“The dude’s name is Melvin Sparks,” Benji said. “I don’t have an address or anything. He pays in cash.”
“Do you know why someone would really, really want this coin?” I asked him. “What’s special about it?”
“Not a lot’s special about it except that they aren’t makingany more of them,” Benji said. “Sparks wants it because he’s a collector. That’s what collectors do. They collect things.”
“Okay, I get that,” I said. “Can you give me a description of the coin?”
Benji went to a small office in the back corner of the store and located the coin on the internet. He printed a picture of it and gave it to me.
“There’s a knight Templar on one side in classic pose with his sword,” Benji said. “There’s a cross and some writing on the other side. If you look close you can see the writing says ‘The Treasure of Gowa. Made in Hoboken.’?”
“Good enough,” I said to Benji. “Appreciate the help.”
We returned to my car, and I typed “Melvin Sparks, Trenton, New Jersey” into my smartphone. We had search engines on the office computer that would tell me if Sparks aced math class in seventh grade. I couldn’t get that kind of detail on my smartphone, but I could get his address and some other basic information.
“He’s at 1207 Kerry Street, apartment 5B,” I said.
“I know where that is,” Lula said. “That’s a mediocre neighborhood. It’s not horrible and it’s not great. You see what I’m saying? It’s mostly safe because the cars aren’t interesting enough to steal.”
I took State Street to South Central, drove one block on South Central, and turned onto Kerry. Sparks’s building was on the corner. It was six floors of unadorned masonry and double-hung windows.THE IVYhad been chiseled in big block letters over the front door.
“That’s a nice name for a building,” Lula said, “except there’s no ivy anywhere around.”
I parked at the curb, and we entered the small foyer. Therewere rows of mailboxes on one wall and two elevators on the opposite wall. We took the elevator to the fifth floor, and I rang the bell at 5B. A man answered and squinted out at us. He was about five feet ten inches, in his forties, had thinning sandy blond hair and a soft, squishy-looking body.
Lula elbowed me and mouthed,mediocre.
“Melvin Sparks?” I asked.
I introduced myself and explained that I needed to reclaim the coin.
“No way,” Sparks said. “Never gonna happen. Finders keepers.” And he slammed the door shut and locked it.
“You’re supposed to put your foot in the door before he gets to close it and lock it,” Lula said to me.
“He caught me by surprise,” I said.
“That’s lame. You’re lucky you don’t get your fake bounty hunter badge revoked.”
“What about you? Why didn’t you put your foot in the door?”
