Todd Rutz: The kid with the sock, he's chewing at the knot with his teeth, and inside the toe you can hear coins clinking together. My point being, that sound makes me glad I buzzed the kid inside. I can tell the sound of silver from copper and nickel. Running my shop so long, I can hear coins rattle and tell you if they're twenty-two-or twenty-four-karat gold. Just from the sound I hear, I'd chew on that stinking, dirty sock with my own teeth.

Jeff Pleat (Human Resources Director): According to our records, we engaged Buster Casey for two weeks in the capacity of dishwasher. By apparent coincidence, during the brief span of his employment with us, some sixteen dinner guests encountered foreign objects in their food. These ranged from steel paper clips to a buffalo nickel dated 1923.

Todd Rutz: The kid slides an arm inside the sock, all the way up to his skinny elbow, and he drags out a fistful of…we're talking impossible coins. It wouldn't matter how bad they smell. A 1933 gold twenty-dollar in gem condition. A 1933 gold ten-dollar, uncirculated. An 1879 four-dollar piece, the Liberty with the coiled hair, near-gem condition.

Jarrell Moore (Private Investigator): My statement for the record is, Buster Landru Casey, aka «Rant» Casey, did contact me via the telephone and did arrange an appointment to discuss my services toward locating a missing biological father. At that time, I informed the potential client that my base fee was one thousand dollars per week, plus expenses. Said potential client assured me the expense would not be an issue.

Brenda Jordan (Childhood Friend): If you promise not to tell, another thing Rant Casey told me was that the old man who showed him about the coins, the stranger who drove up the road from nowheres, said he was Rant's long-lost, for-real pa from the city.

Todd Rutz: Dealing with a kid like that, believe me, I looked for obvious counterfeits: any 1928-D Liberty Walking silver dollars. Any 1905-S gold Quarter Eagles. Blatant fakes. An 1804 silver dollar or Lafayette dollar. I put a Confederate 1861-O half-dollar under a lens and look for coralline structures and saltwater etching, "shipwreck effects" that might tell me more than the kid's letting on. I check for microscopic granularity that might come from sea-bottom sand.

We're talking coins that haven't been whizzed and slabbed. Raw coins. Some with nothing except bag marks.

Allfred Lynch (Exterminator): Vermin control is not your chosen field for most, but Rant Casey took to it like a roach to cat food. The kid would crawl under houses, into attics, didn't matter if the job was vampire bats. Snakes, bats, rats, cockroaches, poison spiders—none of it made Rant Casey break a sweat.

Funny thing, but his physical exam came back positive for rabies. No drugs or nothing, but he had rabies. The clinic took care of it and updated his tetanus booster.

Todd Rutz: Believe me, I was only pretending to check the blue-book values. I tell him, the Barber Liberty Head half-dollar he's got, the 1892-O, when Charles E. Barber first minted it, newspaper editors wrote that the eagle looked starved to death. The head of Liberty looked like "the ignoble Emperor Vitellius with a goiter." While I'm feeding the kid my line, really I'm going over the stolen-property bulletins for the past year.

The kid's looking out my front window. He's shaking the sock to jiggle the coins still inside. He says his grandmother died and left these to him. Offers that as the only pedigree for his collection.

Allfred Lynch: Only single problem I ever had with Rant Casey was, every month or so we do random lunchbox checks. As the guys are headed home, we ask to look inside their lunchboxes. Our guys are alone in people's homes, sometimes with jewelry and valuables sitting around. A random check keeps everybody in line.

Never found Rant stealing diamonds, but once we popped open his lunchbox and the insides was crawling with spiders. Black widow spiders he's supposed to been killing that day. Rant says it's by accident, and I trust him.

I mean, who'd smuggle home a nest of poison spiders?

Todd Rutz: The deal ended up, I paid the kid fifteen thousand out of petty cash. Gave him every bill I kept in the safe. Fifteen grand for the 1933 gold twenty, the 1933 gold ten, and the 1879 four-dollar piece.

When I ask his name, the kid has to think, look around at the floor and ceiling, before he tells me, "I ain't decided yet."

Believe me, it didn't matter if he lied. Didn't matter that he refused anything except cash payment. Or that the kid's teeth he used to untie the sock, his teeth are stained black. Jet-black teeth.

My point being, just that 1933 gold Saint Gaudens Double Eagle, that's an eight-million-dollar coin.

19–Student Driver

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): One Student Driver Night, Rant asked Green Taylor Simms to take a picture, a photo of Rant standing next to me. Rant handed Green one of those throwaway paper cameras, and, holding one hand stiff, chopping at his own knees, he goes to Green, "From here up."

Green drove his car that night, his big Daimler, and we'd pit-stopped at a drive-in for something to eat. Rant stands next to me, reaches an arm around my shoulder. He fingers the knob of my port, where it comes out between the Atlas and the Axial at the back of my skull, and Rant goes, "What's this like?"

He tells me how, because of rabies, his port won't boost. His fingers still pushing, rubbing the skin around mine. His fingers warm, as if he's been holding a cup of coffee. Fever-warm. Hot.

A port is like having an extra nose, I tell him, only on the back of your neck. Only not just a nose, but eyes and a tongue and ears, five extra ways to see. Sometimes, I say, it's bullshit. You're supposed to control a port, but sometimes you get a whole-body hunger for a Coke or potato chips, stuff you'd never eat, so you know the corporate world must broadcast peaks or effects that enter the port even when it's unplugged.

Green's standing, leaning against the driver's door of his car, holding the camera to his face, going, "Tell me when." Cars drive past, behind him, some cars with "Student Driver" signs. Some Party Crash teams, slowing to see if we're flying a flag.

Rant cups the back of my neck in his hand, going, "Now."

For example, tonight, I wasn't hungry until we drove past this fast-food place. My drool, it's real. But the bacon-cheeseburger taste in my mouth is a boosted effect.

Green Taylor Simms goes, "Say ‘cheeseburger. "

And, Rant's hand gripping my neck, he twists my face toward him and plants his mouth over mine. When the camera flashes, Rant's other hand is dug between my legs, spread and thumbing between the buttons of my fly.

The crazy asshole. His tongue hot in my mouth, his saliva on my lips, fast as spit can transfer rabies. The camera flash comes twice before I push Rant Casey away, and he goes, "Thanks, man." He takes the paper camera from Green and says, "My dad won't believe I bagged me such a good-looking boyfriend."

How bullshit is that?

And me, I'm just spitting and spitting. The hot taste of cheese and bacon and rabies. Spitting and spitting.

From DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic Reports: Bad news for those of you westbound on the 213 Freeway: A four-door hardtop has sideswiped the inside divider and flipped, trapping the driver and one passenger inside. The ambulance boys say the driver is a thirty-five-year-old male, losing blood from a compound fracture of his femur; his pulse is weak, and his blood pressure is falling rapidly. His current prognosis is cardiac arrest due to exsanguination, with another update on the quarter-hour. This is the DRVR Graphic Traffic Report: We Know Why You Rubberneck…