The Isle of Man. 2011. 8.53am
I had been wandering the streets for hours. There was something in the air. I could feel it.
Of course, I could be wrong; I have known to be in the past. But my nose is pretty good when it comes to this sort of thing.
The word on the street was that The Cat was due to arrive in town. And all of my senses told me the rumours were true. More importantly, I was going to make sure I was here to catch him.
The minutes slid by and I turned up my collar. There was a light rain starting to fall and I was getting tired of hanging around. I had been waiting for The Cat to show for most of the week.
Suddenly the doors to a nearby coin outlet opened. This was my chance to find him. Because I had done my homework I had a pretty good idea of what The Cat looked like.
According to my intel, the guy was Bi-metallic (hey, I don’t judge people okay?). He had a copper-nickel centre inside a nickel-brass ring. He weighed in at 12g (I have dealt with bigger guys, believe me). Word was that The Cat had a diameter of 28.4mm, a thickness of 2.5mm and that he was round. This made me feel a little more confident about squaring up to him as I happen to be in fairly good shape for an aging private eye. I also happened to know he was milled. But this didn’t worry me either as I am well-known for being kind of rough around the edges.
I made my way into the building, ready to reach into my inside coat pocket at the first sign of any trouble. I was packing plenty of dollar and my wallet was heavy against my chest. There was no way I wanted to miss the opportunity of getting hold of The Cat.
The building was crowded. Seemed like I wasn’t the only guy in town looking for this character. I eased myself through several groups of people and joined the end of a queue. I then waited patiently for my turn.
I heard the news before even making it to the counter. The guy in front of me was bleating so loud it was hard not to hear about what was going on. The Cat was gone. He had sold out. And I knew only too well what that meant. I turned away and headed back to the street and my beat-up old Cadilliac. I now had another job ahead of me; an even uglier one than this.
So now it would be eBay. This was about the only avenue I had left. Once I had a new lead on The Cat I would finally be able to track him down. But I knew this would come at a high price. The dirty rat was already selling for three figures.
I sighed, lit a Marlboro and started my car. There were times when I wished I had never started collecting coins at all.
(In homage to those wonderful old movies featuring the likes of Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, George Raft, Peter Lorre…… I did my best to make it feel black and white, to capture a little of that PROPER gangster magic:) )
© Article and images (except where stated) copyright Mik Smith 2022
MAIN IMAGE – created by Mik
1st image reblogged from theconversation
2nd image reblogged from lostinthemovies.com
