The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned (Coinworld: Book Two) Read online

  The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned

  Coinworld: Book Two

  Benjamin Laskin

  Aretê Books

  Copyright © 2017 by Benjamin Laskin

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Aretê Books

  Cover design by Domi at Inspired Cover Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-5405-5274-7

  Created with Vellum

  For my loving family.

  Contents

  Coinworld: Book Two

  Map of Coin Island

  1. ned’s raiders

  2. stryker

  3. the pugilists

  4. vision quests

  5. mission improbable

  6. kicks on route 66

  7. cash flows

  8. tarred and feathered

  9. rock star

  10. double trouble

  11. memphis belle

  12. rescuing franny

  13. poetry in commotion

  14. operation cash flow

  15. nickel news

  16. coin coast

  17. iron tail’s tale

  18. six sense

  19. wheaties

  Message from the Author

  Other Novels by Benjamin Laskin

  Special Offer

  Special Thanks

  About the Author

  Coinworld: Book Two

  All money is a matter of belief.

  —Adam Smith

  A penny is a lot of money, if you haven’t got a penny.

  —Yiddish proverb

  1

  ned’s raiders

  April 1958 — Los Angeles, California

  “Four, do you read me?”

  “I read you, Deirdre, but barely.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Living room. On a stand next to a stuffed chair.”

  “Are you transacting on a coffee spill or something? I can’t see you.”

  “The dregs of a wineglass. Merlot, I think. It was the only liquid I could find.”

  “But how will you get out of the glass?”

  “I’m okay. I’m balancing on the rim.”

  “Did you locate the cache?”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got a problem. The numismatist keeps his collection in a safe in his bedroom. We need Hannah. Has she checked in yet?”

  “Two hours ago. She contacted me from a water fountain at Disneyland. The half dollar should be there any minute.”

  “Pete?”

  “Forget about him, Four. A year is a long time.”

  “Not to a coin it isn’t,” Ned said.

  The Mercury dime sighed into her sacred reflecting bowl at Coin Intelligence Agency headquarters. “Now is not the time, Ned. Are you guys alone?”

  “Yes and no. The collector went to the store. We have less than an hour. But Gigi is here.”

  “His wife?”

  “A Persian cat who’s having the time of her life. She’s torn up half the house looking for us. Cody and Harper are keeping her busy in the kitchen.”

  Crash!

  “Four? Are you there?”

  “I’m here. Gigi is going to have some explaining to do when papa gets home.”

  “Careful, Four. We don’t want another Dallas on our hands. You barely made it out of that mess alive.”

  “Roger that. Gotta go. Gigi’s spotted me.”

  “Redeem who you can and get out of there. You’re short-handed, so stick to the eagles.”

  “Wilco. Over and—”

  Gigi sprang.

  Ned somersaulted out of her way and onto the broad arm of the stuffed chair. Cat and coffee stand toppled over, and the wineglass shattered onto the hardwood floor. Gigi bounded onto the armrest and swatted at the shiny coin, but Ned evaded with a series of hops and flips as the two engaged in a game of whack-a-mole.

  The nickel leapt from the chair’s arm and onto the cushion. Gigi screeched and pounced. Ned scrambled to the rift between the chair’s arm and seat, and then dropped out of sight. The cat clawed maniacally at the floral velvet cushion and stabbed a paw into the crevice.

  Ned waggled deep into the fissure until he hit bottom. He made his way along the pillow’s crumb-laden perimeter, where he came upon a black pocket comb, a teaspoon, and two coins.

  “Yo, Duane. Looks like we got company,” said a ’48 penny to his friend, a 1949 Roosevelt Dime.

  “Tell him to get lost,” joked Duane.

  “Welcome to Crumbsville,” the penny said. I think the owner lives on toast and crackers.”

  “You guys been stuck here long?” Ned asked.

  “Since Truman. Is he still president?”

  “No, Eisenhower is.”

  “Ike?” Duane said. “I like Ike. Did he run as a Democrat or a Republican?”

  “Republican.”

  “Aw, darn it,” Duane grumbled. “I don’t like Ike.”

  Ned chuckled. “In any case, you’ve been here a long time.”

  “Yeah,” the penny said, “but not as long as the spoon. The comb slid in about a month ago. Not much in the way of company, as you know. What’s your name, stranger?”

  “Ned Nickel.”

  “Percival Penny. Call me Percy. Behind me is Duane Dime. Catch us up, Ned. We’re starving for outside news. Duane’s been telling me the same lousy stories for the past five years.”

  “Yeah?” Duane said. “Well, yours aren’t even worth remembering.”

  “Sorry, fellas, but I can’t stay. I have a mission to complete.”

  “Ho, ho,” Percy chortled. “Hear that, Duane? The nickel has to be going!”

  “Yeah? Then pick me up a pack of smokes on your way back, would ya nickel?”

  The two coins bust out laughing.

  Ned smiled. “Well, don’t worry, guys. I have a feeling you’ll both be circulating again soon.”

  “Not just a comedian,” Percy said, “but a soothsayer to boot!”

  “Hear that muffled sound above?” Ned said.

  “What of it?” Duane said. “Probably the old man farting again.”

  “Not this time. Gigi the cat. She’s ripping the cushion to shreds. When the owner gets home he’ll see it and have to get the chair reupholstered. I suspect you boys will be free within twenty-four hours.”

  “Whoa. Really? Did you hear that, Duane?”

  “You wouldn’t lie to us, would you, nickel?” Duane said.

  “Start packing your bags,” Ned answered. “Now, sorry, but I have to be going.”

  “Duane,” Percy said pitifully, “looks like we’re stuck with a lunatic.”

  “Another one, you mean,” Duane cracked.

  Ned didn’t reply. Instead, he burrowed under the pillow and squirmed off towards the front of the chair.

  “Holy smoke, Duane! The nickel’s done vanished!”

  “Wow,” Duane said. “I guess a lot has changed in the world since we’ve been here. Maybe Ike ain’t so bad after all.”

  Ned humped along beneath the pillow through crumbs, lint, and cat fur, and past a button, two Jujubes, and a paperclip. At last he rea
ched the end. The scratching above had ceased, and Ned stuck his head out to see if the coast was clear. Gigi the cat was gone, but so were Cody Quarter and Harper Half Dollar. Ned whistled.

  “Ned, up here!”

  “Hannah, where’s Cody and Harper?”

  Hannah Half Dollar flitted down, and her eagle wings flapping, she hovered in front of Ned. “In the bedroom waiting for you.”

  “What about the cat?”

  “Wicker clothes hamper. Harper tricked the dummy, but no telling how long before she figures her way out, so let’s go.”

  Hannah’s eagle, Emma, grabbed Ned with one of her talons and flew him upstairs to the bedroom. She set him down on top of a two-foot-tall safe beside Harper. Hovering in front of the safe’s dial flapped Cody, a ’51 George Washington quarter. Hannah flew down and joined him.

  Cody Quarter and Harper Half Dollar were the two coins that Hugh Stewards tossed onto Coin Island four years earlier. When a beat penny and a shiny four-cent nickel bucked over to welcome them, Cody and Harper couldn’t believe their bugging eyes. They soon learned that the island was home to a tribe of self-propelled coins, the first of many surprises in store for them.

  Cody was a proud 1951 George Washington quarter. The Washington quarters were struck in 1932 to celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of America’s first, and many believed, greatest president. The coin weighed in at 90% silver and 10% copper, and depicted Washington’s face on the obverse side and a large bald eagle with spread wings on the reverse.

  At first, Camille, a Standing Liberty quarter, was furious to learn that she had been replaced, but that it was with someone of Washington’s eminence dispelled some of her indignation. Camille and Cody’s bald eagles got along well, and that helped too. In time it was Camille who taught Cody how to buck ‘n’ roll, fly, and to employ mental transaction, coin telepathy.

  Harper was a brilliant Ben Franklin half dollar who had spent several years looking over the shoulder, so to speak, of a top scientist from Bell Laboratories. The half dollar’s obverse pictured a wise and serene-looking bust of scientist, writer, statesman, and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. His reverse held the Liberty Bell. Beside the bell stood a tiny eagle, placed there because of the requirement that any half dollar must have an eagle. Like Cody Quarter, Harper had a reeded edge, contained 90% silver, and proclaimed LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST, and E PLURIBUS UNUM.

  Hannah Half Dollar didn’t appreciate learning that she had been replaced either, especially by an unattractive bald man. All coins, however, revered America’s Founding Fathers, so when Harper educated Hannah about the large part Benjamin Franklin played in America’s founding, her temper cooled. It wasn’t long after that Harper’s genial, often wry wit won her over. Like her little sis, Camille, who had taken Cody under her eagle’s wing, Hannah instructed Harper in all things animation and communication.

  Because a coin’s hearing was as exceptional as its eyesight, especially in the detecting of metallic noises, it made safecracking relatively easy once coins understood how the mechanism worked. Deirdre Dime, who headed Coin Island’s CIA (Coin Intelligence Agency), saw to it that all of her top operatives in the field had been instructed in the art, one of many programs the dedicated dime had devised.

  The safe before Hannah and Cody was the standard of the day and presented no problem. Cody pressed his ear to the safe and listened to the tumblers as Hannah, who had the strength of fifty pennies, worked the dial with her little hands. It took them ten minutes to crack the safe, the door releasing with a soft click.

  “Heave-ho,” Cody said, and together he and Hannah opened the door, Hannah pulling and Cody pushing.

  “Voila!” Hannah said. “We’re rich.”

  She flew to the top of the safe, retrieved Ned and Harper, and set them down inside.

  Ned called out, “Franny? Franny, are you here?”

  “No Franny here,” came a reply. “Who the heck are you?”

  Ned didn’t answer. Instead, he searched from one cellophane-wrapped coin to the next.

  “Hurry, 004,” Hannah said. “There’s no telling when that cat will free herself.”

  Ned located a Peace Dollar, but it wasn’t Franny. “She’s not here,” he said with a sigh. “Darn it, I thought this time we had the right place.”

  Harper Half Dollar called out, “Who here has an eagle on his backside?”

  “Who’s asking?” returned a grouchy voice.

  “Special Agent Harper Half Dollar, that’s who. Speak up now if you choose liberty!”

  Harper’s words were followed by stunned silence and looks of mystification. The safe’s money did not know what to make of the amazing coins that had barged in on them.

  Finally, one coin called, “I have an eagle.” Then one by one more coins joined: 1916 mint-condition Standing Liberty quarters like Camille, and Walking Liberty half dollars like Hannah.

  Ned and Harper crawled around the stacks and separated the coins from the others, knocking and nudging them to the front of the safe. Cody and Hannah’s eagles grabbed them up with their talons and flew them out the bedroom window to a vacant lot across the street.

  “Good heavens,” exclaimed an 1881 Morgan silver dollar. “How? … Who? … Where…? I think I’m going to faint!”

  “Relax, ma’am,” Ned said. “Don’t worry your pretty head. Everything is okay. We’ll be gone before you can say Bill Haley and the Comets.”

  “Who?”

  “Hey,” cried a chorus of silver and gold coins, “what about us?”

  “Sorry,” Ned said, “but we don’t have the time or coinpower to get all of you out.”

  “Where are you taking them?” asked an 1849 gold piece.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Ned answered, “but one day they will be back to free the rest of you.”

  A mint condition 1838 Seated Liberty dime spoke up, “Did you say Franny?”

  “Yes! Have you seen her?”

  “I didn’t see her, but I heard about her.”

  The dime’s obverse featured an image of Liberty in a dress sitting on a rock. She held a staff with a liberty cap in one hand, and with her right hand she balanced a shield with the inscription LIBERTY. Above her head ran thirteen stars.

  “What did you hear?” Harper asked, suspicious.

  “I’ll tell you if you take me with you, otherwise good luck and goodbye.”

  “How do I know you’re not bonging my Liberty Bell?”

  “I wouldn’t lie, sir.”

  “Don’t believe her,” said a golden Spanish doubloon near the back of the safe. “She lies all the time!”

  “Hush yourself, Domingo, you brassy gold piece you. Nickel, do you want to find this Franny or don’t you?”

  “My friend is right, ma’am,” Ned said. “Nothing personal, but all coins are tellers of tales, you know that.”

  “Very well,” the dime said, not bothering to hide the snit in her voice. “It was at a coin show just two weeks back in Charleston, Virginia. The silver dollar and the three-center behind me can back up my story. They were there too. A precious Peace Dollar was at the table next to mine. I heard the collectors discussing her.”

  Ned glanced at the two witnesses, who nodded in affirmation. “How do you know it was Franny the Peace Dollar?”

  “Was she a 1922 Peace Dollar? The only one of a batch of high-relief pieces to survive melting?”

  “Yes! Who has her? Where did they take her?”

  “I told you,” the dime said, “not until you get me out of here.”

  Just then Cody returned from his drop. “The cat’s out of the hamper, 004. She’ll be charging up the stairs any second. We’ve got to make like a skinflint and sprint.”

  Ned said, “Roger that, but can we take one more?”

  “We’ve got more than we can handle as is.”

  “The dime knows where they’re holding Franny. We’ll have to manage.”

  Cody squinted at the dime. “I don’t trust her.”

/>   “How dare you,” the dime huffed. “Why not?”

  “I just don’t.”

  Ned said, “She’s our only lead, Cody. We have no choice.”

  “Fine, but if we find out she’s lying to us, I’ll personally see that she’s catnip for the catfish.”

  “What are you talking about?” the dime said.

  “You’ll find out,” Cody said menacingly. His eagle, Ellsworth, snatched her up in one of his talons and flew her out the window, her screams trailing behind her.

  “Uh-oh,” Harper said. “Here comes the Persian pussy.”

  Gigi peeked through the crack in the open door and bared her fangs. The white fluff ball sprang and blurred across the room. She vaulted into the safe and attacked the coin collection like it was a bowl of goldfish. Ned and Harper bounded to the floor and hightailed it into a bedroom slipper and took cover.

  The two coins heard the slamming of the safe door, followed by a muffled screech.

  “Ned? Harper?” Hannah called out.

  “Careful, Hannah,” Ned returned. “Gigi’s on the loose!”

  Hannah hovered over the heel of the slipper. “Not anymore. Let’s go!”

  Ned and Harper emerged from the shoe and Emma Eagle snatched them up, one to a talon. She made a pass around the room and headed for the window.

  Harper nodded to the closed safe and snickered. “Stupid cat. Maybe she’ll think twice the next time she encounters Ned’s Raiders.”

  Ned laughed. “I wonder how the police are going to explain this one!”

  2

  stryker