"And if you can?"
"Then he says he'll come by to collect the money himself."
"Did he?"
"That's the funny part. When I told Sloops I bought the beans, he just about wet his pants, he was so mad, but what could I do, I says. The deal was too good to pass up. I says, 'Okay, Sloops. If you don't want the beans, you don't have to pay for them. The next time this Brown fella shows up, you just give the beans back to him.' Only Brown never showed up again. Just more beans."
"What do you mean, more beans?"
"I mean shipments of beans started coming in to beat the band. Beans out the gazoo. No bills, nothing, just beans. Sloops just about had a heart attack, what with all the beans coming in, and no invoices or anything to go with them. We were going wild just trying to keep track of them. And then Thursday."
"What happened on Thursday?"
"That's when the orders started coming in. Orders from all over the country. It's like the coffee business went through the roof overnight. Suddenly everybody wanted coffee. Me, I don't drink the stuff personally. It's bad for your kidneys. Look at Sloops. He can't touch the stuff anymore. But the public suddenly got crazy for coffee, you know what I mean?"
Remo nodded as he loaded the last bag onto the skid and motioned for a man on a forklift to pick it up.
"At first Sloops wasn't going to use the new beans," Ty said, starting on another skid. "He said he didn't like the whole setup, what with no bills and all these beans. It was almost as if this George Brown was forcing them on us. But the orders kept coming in so fast that we ran out of our regular stock in two days. Sloops called the next closest warehouse— that's in Washington, D.C. There are only a handful of coffee warehouses in the whole country, you know. It's a limited field. Lots of chances for advancement, if you know what you're doing. It's like the Romans said. You know who the Romans were?"
"Forget the Romans," Remo said testily. "What did Sloops call the Washington warehouse for?"
"To see if they'd sell us some beans. Like I said, Sloops didn't want to use the new beans, on account of he thought they was hot."
"So did you get more beans from Washington?"
"Hell, no. They were in the same situation as us. More orders than they knew how to fill. But they were filling them. You know what with?"
"George Brown's beans from Indiana," Remo said.
"You got it, buddy."
Remo loaded the bags in silence, grateful that the loquacious Ty had finally run out of conversation.
"What'd Sloops do?" Remo asked finally, throwing a bag onto a high pile.
Ty grinned. "He admitted I did right in making the deal on the new beans. That's all we're shipping out now."
Startled, Remo snatched back the bag he had just loaded. "These are the beans?"
"All of them. And more coming in every day."
A thin line formed across Ty's brow as his eyes fixed on the 150-pound bag suspended between Remo's thumb and forefinger. "How are you doing that?" he asked suspiciously.
Remo wasn't paying attention. With his left thumb nail, he sliced open the heavy burlap. A cascade of fragrant coffee beans spilled out.
"With your thumb," Ty gasped. "Man, how'd you ever get hands like that? You squeeze tennis balls or something?"
Remo tasted one of the beans and quickly spat it out. It was exactly what he was looking for. "Where do these come from?"
"Colombia, I told you. I knew all along, even before I seen the proof. See, I can spot beans—"
"Where in Colombia?" Remo yelled.
Ty walked over to the rows of bags stacked eight deep across the length of the block-long warehouse. "Lemme see," he said. "There's a stamp on the first bag of every shipment. Colombian government stamp. It gives the location."
He pushed at the stacks. "Sorry, buddy. There can't be more than six or seven stamped bags in the whole place. We'd never find... What the hell are you doing?" he whispered, rubbing his eyes.
Remo was going through the stacks like a crazed ferret. He lifted them two at a time, scanning their fronts and backs, then tossed them over his shoulders with exactly enough force so that they rapped lightly against the opposite wall and slid into place in high piles.
"Here's one," Remo said, throwing the other bag in his hand casually onto the skid.
Ty walked over to him, his gaze still riveted on the far wall as he counted the bags. "Thirty-eight, thirty-nine... Mister, you just moved six thousand pounds in fifteen seconds," he said, astonished.
"Peruvina," Remo read, pointing to the blurry green stamp on the bag. "Is that the place?"
"Yeah," Ty said, poking a tentative finger into Remo's unspectacular-looking forearm. "I looked it up. It's about a hundred miles north of Bogota. Good coffee country. Must be a private plantation."
Sloops's voice called from near the office at the end of the warehouse. "Hey, Remo." His footsteps clacked slowly across the concrete floor. "I got some bad news. There's been a nationwide recall of all the coffee on the market. Some tampering scare. Everybody except me and Ty's laid off until further notice. You want me to send your wages to the Happy Rest Motel?"
"Keep them," Remo said, heading toward the door.
"Hey, wait a minute," Ty called, running after him. "I got to ask you something."
"About how I moved the bags so fast?" Remo never missed a step.
"Yeah. How'd you do it? I mean, you're not even built. You got no delts to speak of. You work out with isometrics or something?"
"Pins," Remo said.
"Pins?"
"Every night I stick a hundred pins all over my head."
"Ouch." Ty swallowed. "Any special kind?"
"Long. With blue tops. They've got to be blue. And eat a lot of rotten cabbage. Keeps your skull hard."
"Sounds like a weird workout," Ty said, testing his skull for tenderness.
"It was used by the ancient Glods. Ever heard about the Glods?"
"Uh, they make statues or something?"
"That's the Glods, all right."
"Guess they knew what they were doing."