The Green Manalishi (with the Two-Prong Crown)

first published in Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block, from Subterranean Press

The Green Manalishi with the Two-Pronged Crown

by Thomas Pluck

When Joey Cucuzza stared at the ruby copper profile of Abraham Lincoln, he clenched the abalone-handled stiletto in his pocket and imagined thrusting it into his old man’s heart.

You never knew what you were going to find at a coin show. He’d learned that as a teenager, working a much smaller show on Sundays at the Nutley VFW. Wandering the Coin Expo at the convention center, he didn’t expect to find the twin of the 1931-S wheatback penny that he’d bought with six weeks of summer labor from the walrus-mustached Vietnam veteran who owned Gadzooks Rare Coins, the very cent that Joey’s father hocked for Yankees tickets barely a year later.

Stately, tanned Joe Cucuzza plucked the coin from the table in its lucite case. At forty-nine, his eyes couldn’t discern the fine lines in the grains of wheat like they could at thirteen. He asked the coin seller—a spectacled goof in cargo shorts with hair like Larry from the Three Stooges—for a jeweler’s loupe and inspected the details.

MS-67 was the certified Sheldon rating, and the rich luster of the blood-red copper was what drew his eye all those years ago, and also drew it now. Minted in San Francisco, it had cost sixty dollars in 1983, paid in ten-dollar increments for minding Mr Chundak’s table while he shot Dewar’s and chewed the fat at the bar, or stalked the floor in search of a deal. Mr Chundak always wore a suit. Maybe a dull herringbone or ugly plaid, but always a suit, and that had rubbed off on young Joey; his current summer suit was tailored but discreet, not showy. It hid the eight-inch Italian stiletto in his pocket and the nickel and pearl Baby Beretta in the pancake holster under his silk shirt.

The coin was priced at three hundred and fifty dollars. Inflation. Joey took four bills off his money clip and held them out to the geek, who percolated to life and flustered through giving him change, hand-writing a receipt, and folding it up in a paper bag.

“Superb Gem Uncirculated,” Aldo said at Joey’s left shoulder, reading the coin’s rating. His breath was rank from the sausage and peppers sub he’d bought from the truck in the parking lot. “You are a gem, but you look like you been circulated.”

Aldo was his boss and partner, the red-faced capo of the Quattrocchi crime family, which ran most of northern New Jersey, and got a piece of the action at the Secaucus convention center where the coin show was held.

“I’m MS-55, Choice About Uncirculated,” Joey said. “You, you’re Extremely Fine. A little rough around the edges. It comes from being in so many pockets.”

After a beat, Aldo chuckled. “C’mon, lemme show you something.”

The table announced its presence with a large Nazi flag. It catered entirely to the losing side of wars fought by Americans from 1861 to 1945. Hitler youth daggers, Japanese swords, Kaiser helmets, Confederate currency.

“Look at this shit,” Joey said. “The vets never allowed that at the VFW. Said they saw enough of it overseas.”

Aldo shrugged. “Money is money, Joseph.”

Joey noted that his Italian forebears rarely kept any mementos from the shameful Mussolini era. Even the ones who supported him shut up about it after he was strung up by his balls in the public square. In Germany it was illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia, but in the States, it was romanticized and fetishized by a certain kind of person.

Dry-balls, is what Joey’s old man called them, among other things. Like “half a fag,” which to his homophobic, hyper-masculine father—a quarry truck driver who looked like The Thing from the Fantastic Four comic books, only hairier—said was worse than being a whole queer, because at least they “had the balls to be what they were.”

Joey had realized he was of the whole cloth when he was 12 years old, watching The Beastmaster on their stolen HBO, and found himself more enthused with the oiled and muscled Marc Singer than the equally ripe Tanya Roberts as the duo led their menagerie against Rip Torn’s tyrannical overlord. The bullies discovered it soon after. Joey was slender and fit, but had full lips that they called “dick suckers” as they cornered and beat him.

Joey’s father had at least taught him to fight. He absorbed it by dodging his fast big hands, which were later fed to the crabs in a polluted lagoon in the Meadowlands. A bonding experience between a younger Joey and Aldo.

The Nazi table was run by two men—one big and heavy, the other short and muscled—and their cold little eyes excited Joey at the prospect of a new bonding experience to be had.

Aldo ignored the stack of literature that involved neither coins or militaria, but instead shouted conspiracies and denial of history. He pointed to a Japanese samurai helmet on display next to the swastika flag.

“The Green Manalishi with the Two Prong Crown,” Aldo said, then air-guitared a heavy metal riff. “Judas Priest. We saw them at Garden State Arts Center, remember?”

The original was by Fleetwood Mac, but Joey didn’t correct him. Aldo was more affected by ‘80s nostalgia than he was. He also played football for Queen of Peace and was homecoming king, and even the gay priests were none the wiser. Aldo had learned to fight out of desire, not need.

The helmet was certainly not an antique. It looked more Darth Vader than Shogun, and was airbrushed in metallic green like an insect. Or Aldo’s garish custom IROC Camaro. Joey loved him, but his boss and partner was pure New Jersey guido, down to the gold chains and Fila tracksuits. His current number was a throwback design modeled by Tony Soprano, which Aldo thought was hilariously ironic now that he controlled the turf the fictional mob boss once lived in.

Joey tolerated it. He was the jealous type, and though Aldo had jangled in more pockets and purses than he cared to think about, he kept fit, and a baggy tracksuit meant fewer old goomars grabbing his biceps and throwing themselves at him. A boss had to take a taste now and then, or people talked. And when people talked, they had to be killed.

That didn’t bother Joey, but as the boss’s fixer, the clean-up was his duty. Why make more work?

“Tell me that helmet wouldn’t look awesome in the garage next to The Green Machine.”

Joey relaxed. Better in the garage than the parlor.

“You like that, Antnee?” Little Shitler’s acne-scarred face broke into a smile, and he nudged his buddy, Der Super Schwein. “Two hundred. All custom work.”

Joey squeezed Aldo’s forearm. He knew he was carrying the mate to his abalone-handled stiletto, and was hungering to gut the little scumbag like a bluefish after the “Antnee” crack.

“Just looking.”

Der Super Schwein huffed. “Then go to a museum.”