“Truly, All The Way Down” by Clancy Martin
--page 2

        “Here you are,” he said, and put the golden drink down on the desk in front of me. “Try that on for size. Now drink it slowly. You don’t want to hurry through a liquor like that one.”
        I took a sip. It was strong. But like warm caramel and honey.
        “Billy, some of us got a gift. I have it. Your brother has it. And watching you on that Alexandrite deal,” he laughed, “that was some kind of deal, wasn’t it? I thought we were never getting rid of that sunuvabitch. The things my wife will buy. Anyway, watching you, I got a feeling you have it too. It’s not something you can teach a man. It’s an instinct. An instinct for what the other fella needs to hear. What will clarify his own decision-making process for him.”
        I nodded. I knew he didn’t expect me to say anything. I didn’t think I had done anything on the Alexandrite sale except pour the drinks. But I was happy to accept credit for whatever Mr. Popper thought I had done.
        “But you know that old saw. With great power comes great responsibility. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Look here, Billy. I’d like to show you something. Something special to me. You might find it interesting. Take a look at this. This is a little book I keep.”
        He took a very large, red-leather-bound and gilt book from his desk drawer. It was the size of a book you expected an old-fashioned Bible to be. It was heavy and he carried it in both of his arms around the desk and laid it open in front of me. He turned through the thick, cream-colored pages. Inside were glued copies of newspaper columns, pictures cut out from other books, newspaper ads featuring items from our store. Everything was jewelry.
        “This is a scrapbook I keep. One of my hobbies. I collect jewelry advertisements and other things. Gives me ideas for my promotions. And reminds me of what works and what doesn t. It’s a tool my own mentor in the business showed me to use. He was a coin man, not a jewelry man. But they are more or less the same business. The stamp business too. Here, look at this here. This is one I always get a chuckle out of.”
        It was a headline from the L.A. Times, dated May 7, 1953. It read: “Five Million Dollar Fake Gem Plot Uncovered!”
        “That’s the so-called Szirak Treasure. That’s a famous deal, there. Some ole boys claimed they had found a collection of five hundred year old crown jewels, orbs and tiaras and what have you, and sold the whole lot to a collector. Five million back then is like fifty million today. They got busted, but just through ineptitude. Got greedy and in a hurry, I imagine. Oh, here’s another one I like.”
        He turned the pages. It was from a paper in San Antonio. “Ten Million Dollar Coin Collection Revealed as Fake!”
        “I knew that fella. I knew him rather well,” he said. He laughed again. He reached across the desk and picked up his own glass of scotch, took a sip, and put it down next to mine. He patted me on the shoulder. “What he used to do was, you took a new coin, changed the date with a little drill-and-stamp apparatus we would use, and then to get the look of age you blew cigar smoke over them in a paper bag. It was no more complicated than that. Seal them up in cardboard and plastic and there’s no questions asked. How that fellow wound up on the run had nothing to do with the counterfeiting. If he had stuck to that he could still be the most famous coin dealer in the Southwest. But he fell in with an insurance man and a safe salesman and they conjured up this deal where they’d sell the coins, insure them, sell the security system, then wait a few months and steal the whole thing back. They got caught stealing their own coins—from some big gear and sprocket manufacturer, as I recall—and when the FBI brought in their experts they discovered all the coins were fake, to boot. Boy that caused a commotion down in San Antone.”

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