“Hell, if we’re going to talk about why the government does or doesn’t do what they say they’re going to, we’re in for a long, sad conversation,” he chuffed, stirring the whiskey and coffee around with the tip of his finger.
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Rock agreed, raising his warm mug and taking a sip from it.
“My notion, Honest Abe and his gang couldn’t stand the thought that a commercial business was conducting banking and striking coins without getting their greasy noses stuck into the mix.” He raised his cigar with his thick fingers and stuck it into his mouth. “That’s usually what happens, right?”
Rochenbach saw Grolin stare at him, searchingly, for a reply. But he wasn’t going to give one. There was such a thing as him knowing too much.
“If you say so,” he said. “I don’t keep up much on banking practices—government either, for that matter.”
“Yeah?” Grolin looked at him closely. “I figured in your time as a detective, you had the chance to learn quite a lot about both.”
“Maybe I should have,” said Rock. “I spent most my time figuring the best way to get bank money to follow me out the door.” He sipped the last of his whiskey-laced coffee.
Grolin gave a short laugh. He puffed his cigar and considered it for a moment.
“The reason I asked how long ago since you’d ridden past there,” he said, “is that the past eight months, there’s been smoke seen rising from the smelt furnace in that basement.” He paused, then added, “Always, it’s been seen late at night.”
Rochenbach gave him a curious look. “But you just said they’ve yet to strike the first coin—?”
“That’s right, I did,” said Grolin, cutting him off. “And they still haven’t. But they do melt down gold and ship it back East, all the way to Philadelphia. They don’t do it all the time, and they try to keep it under their hats when they do.” He gave him an oily, crooked grin, the black cigar still in his mouth. “But I’ve got eyes in Denver City. Nothing gets past me.”
“Smelting gold, huh?” Rochenbach straightened a little against the bar, looking even more attentive. He set the mug on the bar in front of him.
Noting the empty mug, Grolin started to reach out and fill it with more whiskey, but Rochenbach put his hand between the bottle and the coffee mug, stopping him.
“Thanks, but I’m good for now,” he said. “We’re starting to talk about money.”
Grolin nodded and set the bottle down. He liked that, he told himself—Rochenbach, cool and even, facing up to Spiller and Casings, knocking back a little whiskey before breakfast, but turning strictly business, now that business was at hand.
“Yes, we are, and big money at that,” he said, still watching Rochenbach’s eyes closely. “Only, this is not cash money.”
Rochenbach kept quiet, listening.
“This is all in bullion, three-and-a-half-inch gold ingots,” said Grolin, another oily grin around his black cigar. “Got anything against taking your pay in gold, Rock? My extra men I pay off in cash, out of my pocket. But my regular men get paid more, so they’ll take their pay in gold, convert it to cash themselves, if they know somebody who’ll convert it.”
“Nothing against gold, unless I have to dig it up first,” Rochenbach replied. “I know plenty of folks who can touch bullion gold and turn it into cash. They don’t care what stamping is on it.”
Grolin grinned and bit down on his cigar.
“I like those kinds of folks. I know some myself,” he said. “But these are shipping ingots. They have no stamping on them.”
“Even better,” said Rochenbach. “You mentioned a big safe built inside a rail car?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” said Grolin, and he offered nothing more. Instead he gazed steadily at Rochenbach, seeing what he had to offer on the matter.
“I take it we’re talking about the freight car specially made by Lomack Car and Foundry,” said Rochenbach, “the one Kennedy’s Detective Agency had made for the U.S. Treasury Department.”
“You’re right,” said Grolin. He cocked his head and gave Rock a bemused look. “How’d you come by that? It’s not something widely known.”
“No, it’s not,” Rochenbach said. “But Allen Pinkerton had his men keep a close eye on anything the Kennedy detectives were up to. Kennedy started out working for Pinkerton. He went home to Ohio and started Kennedy’s Secret Service. Allen Pinkerton has never forgiven him for it. When he heard about the special Treasury car being built, he offered a bonus to any agent who could get his hands on the design drawings. Guess who that agent turned out to be?” he added with a level gaze.
“Well, well,” said Grolin, pouring himself more whiskey. “I’m impressed all to hell by this. So you know all about this rail car we’re discussing?”
“All about it, no,” said Rock. “But I know more about it than most people would.” Now it was his turn to give Grolin a curious look. “Why is it I think you already knew this? Maybe this is why Arnold the Swede looked me up.”
Grolin didn’t reply. Instead his sipped his whiskey and puffed his cigar.
“So, you have held the design to this Treasury car in your hands?” he asked.
Rock only nodded.
“Tell me how it’s built,” said Grolin.
Rochenbach decided this cagey thief leader already knew how the big freight car was built. One more little test…, Rock told himself. So he would lay it all out for him just the same.
“When you look at it, you can’t tell it from any other freight car,” he said. “When they finished building it, they weathered it and beat it up, made it look years older than it really is.”
“Go on,” Grolin said, seeming mildly interested so far.
“The entire car itself is heavily armored,” said Rock. “It’s been fabricated four inches thick—three and a half inches of diagonal cross layers of wood and a half inch of boilerplate steel. Getting into the car alone is like getting into a safe. So there’s no way into the actual safe from outside the car, unless you have a field cannon and all day to keep loading and firing it. If we did, we really would be digging what’s left of the bars and ingots out of the hillsides.” He looked at Grolin expectantly.
“I’m listening,” Grolin said, smoke curling up from the cigar in his mouth. “Tell me how we rob it.”
Rochenbach knew Grolin had it all worked out. He was still testing him, seeing if he knew enough to be worth cutting in on a robbery this size.
Rochenbach continued, saying, “Being an Ohioan, Kennedy turned the actual construction over to the Diebold Bahmann Company—safe builders out of Cincinnati. They’re the ones who turned one end of the freight car into a rolling safe.”
Grolin sipped his whiskey and grinned knowingly.
“Pretty smart for the Yankee government,” he said. “Most thieves don’t even know about the car. Them that do know about it wouldn’t recognize it if it was staring at them.”
“And then there’s some of us who wouldn’t touch it if it was sitting in front of us,” Rochenbach continued. “Without the right information, how would anybody know when to hit it, or where?” He shook his head. “Only a fool would risk getting himself killed over opening a safe that just might be sitting empty.”
“That’s my part,” said Grolin. “I’ll know when to hit it, where to hit it and how much gold it’s going to be holding. Otherwise I’d put the whole thing out of my mind.”
“I hope this information of yours is as reliable as the morning sun,” Rochenbach said, not about to ask where it came from right then.
“Don’t concern yourself with that,” Grolin said. “If I put you inside the rail car, will you put me inside the safe, without blowing it to hell and gone?”