In 1982 I
answered a classified advertisement from someone looking for a ghost
writer. My friend, Billy Egli (Werner J.
Egli)
was the one who pointed it out to me. I
used his phone and called the guy who’d posted the ad. The guy told me he
wouldn’t discuss the job over the phone – only in person. He did say that I
would make more money that I ever believed possible.
So, Billy
and I climbed into my pick-up and drove to this guy’s address. He was located in a senior mobile home park
near South Tucson. It was a ratty
looking single-wide mobile home. The guy
was about seventy years old. He seemed
to function okay… not crippled or anything.
He invited us to sit around an old chrome and Formica kitchen table in
his dining area. He sat in a recliner
and began by asking us how many books we had ghost written. Billy explained that we were both young
authors and were getting our work published.
(Billy more than me) I spoke
about OIL SPILL, my first novel, and about the current work, (PARTNERS). I also spoke of my journalism
background. Billy explained that he
wasn’t applying for the job because all his writing was in German since he was
Swiss.
To shorten
the story, this guy pulled out a bunch of maps, photos and other evidence that
he had discovered the lost 7 cities of gold.
He’d discovered it back when his wife was alive and they had taken an
enormous amount of wealth out of the cave and lived high until she died. He wanted me to write the story and if the
book was published he would provide us the exact location and we could have
half the treasure.
I told him
I wanted twenty dollars for each page; a page representing approximately
two-hundred-fifty words. I explained how I would write the story, bring him ten
pages to review and edit, and then he would pay me $200.00.
This pissed
him off. He reached into the side of the
chair, pulled out a pistol and told us if we were going to hold him up we
should use a gun. I looked at Billy and
he gave me the ‘let’s get the hell out of here look’.
So, to
extract ourselves from this nut case, I just mentioned that if he didn’t have
the money we could work out some kind of payment program or trade for the
jewelry he made.
Well, that
pissed him off, too. He jumped out of
that chair and went into the kitchen. He
opened the freezer and took out two foil wrapped bricks and tossed them on the
table. “I have money!” he shouted.
Some of the
frost and foil came off one of the bricks and by fingering through the stack I
could tell it was not just cash, it was a hell of A LOT OF CASH. Grover Cleveland on the face of some of the
bills. Others in five hundred denominations.
There looked to be a quarter of a million dollars lying in the
middle of that old table.
I glanced at
Billy. His eyes were the size of
goose-eggs. I gave him a questioningly
look and he shrugged. “Okay, you have
our attention.”
The old
bugger pulled out his pistol again and waved it for effect. “Don’t even think
about robbing me. I will kill you both!”
We were
there about an hour longer and looked more closely at his notes, photos and
maps. The site was located at Elephant
butte near Tubac, AZ. Just a short drive
from Tucson.
I believe
it was Billy that came up with the excuse that we had to leave to pick up his
daughter at soccer practice. That was a
lie; he had no daughter but was getting worried about this crazy old man. I
told the guy I’d work up an outline and come back in a couple of days.
Neither of
us ever went back. I often wondered
about all that money. Egli speculated
that it may have come from his diseased wife’s insurance policy. I kinda agreed but often though the math
didn’t work. His wife had died only a
couple of years before but the 500 and 1000 denomination bills had been out of
circulation for a few years. Of course,
the bricks may have been ‘hustler’ props; a couple genuine bills of large
denominations wrapped around a bunch of fakes.
We’ll never know because we went on with our lives. Billy Egli went back to Switzerland to
promote his books. I went back to
running my ranch and raising my son. I
drove out to Elephant Head butte two years later and poked around. I hiked in a few miles and was able to reach
the summit on a well worn trail. I
recalled all the research data the old guy showed us and it didn’t resemble
anything I was witnessing from where I stood.
I looked at the clouds rolling in from the East and then saw another
butte the resembled an Elephant’s head.
The butte off in the distance actually had more definition than the one
on which I was standing. I charted the location in my mind for further
research. I decided to go back and see the crazy old man again. That didn’t happen until a year later. Billy came back into town, we talked about
the old coot. His prognosis was that we would probably get shot if we arrived
unannounced. He was probably right so we
dropped it. My friend, Rick Daily had
been advised of the original meeting and one day we were in the general
neighborhood. We drove by the mobile home park and inquired about the crazy old
man. The owner said the old guy had
moved away and didn’t know if the guy was still alive. (This happened 5-6 years
after the first meeting)
Years
later, I wrote a pilot for a TV series that depicted the discovery of seven
cities of gold being stored in a limestone cave in the second Elephant Butte
near Tubac. It had four layers of
flashback scenes; starting with present time and going back to the Spanish
enslaving the Indians in this particular mine.
I’m reviving that story that was shot down by the TV network executive
as “too complicated”. I’ll write it as a
novel and see where it takes me.
