Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

18–The City

Todd Rutz (Coin Dealer): The kid who died. The kid comes in with a sweat sock tied in a knot, starts undoing the knot with his teeth. Nothing inside that old yellow sock should be worth my time to look. My permit says I can stay open four hours past the night curfew, long as I don't leave the shop. Past curfew, I lock the door, and anybody comes I buzz them inside. This kid with the dirty sock, I almost didn't buzz him. You can never tell with Nighttimers.

But even I can tell, this kid's a convert. His suntan he hasn't even lost yet. So I took a chance I'd make some money. Look at New Orleans, 1982, some bulldozer doing construction work downtown at lunchtime, businesspeople walking around dressed in three-piece suits. The dozer scrapes the dirt and busts open three wood cases of buried 1840-O Liberty Seated quarters. Not gold, mind you, but coins worth in the range of two to four grand apiece. Those bankers and lawyers wearing suits and dresses, they jumped into the mud and wrestled each other. Biting and kicking each other for a handful of those Gobrecht quarter-dollars.

My point being, you just never know where a hoard of treasure will surface.

Edith Steele (Human Resources Director): We interviewed Mr. Casey for a position as a nighttime landscape-maintenance specialist. He was referred to our firm through the I-SEE-U labor help line. On the occasion of his third failure to arrive for work, claiming his fifth injury due to a non-work-related traffic accident, Mr. Casey was removed from our payroll.

Todd Rutz: The Baltimore Find of 1934, two little boys were goofing around in the basement of a rented house and they discover a hole in the wall. On August 31, 1934, they pulled 3,558 gold coins out of that hole, all of them pre-1857. At 132 South Eden Street in Baltimore, Maryland. A fair number of those coins, we're talking "gem condition." At the very least, perfect uncirculated or choice uncirculated.

Lew Terry (Property Manager): If it was up to me, I'd never even rent to Nighttrippers—those Daytimer kids who switch over. It's just to irk their parents, they convert. Those delinquents feel compelled to live into every negative stereotype they have about Nighttime culture—loud music and boosting drug highs—but the housing statute says a minimum of 10 percent of your units you have to make available to converts. Casey moved in with nothing, maybe one suitcase, into Unit 3-E. You could go look, only the door's still sealed with police tape.

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.