Sam Spade Goes To The Dogs

On the night Teddy's Kim ran in the final of the $50,000 Irish-American Stake, Dick Andrews, superstitiously clothed in a green Italian silk sport coat and the odor of Green Moss cologne, stood at the bar at the Biscayne Kennel Club in Miami and wondered if his hand would stop shaking long enough for him to lift a glass of Irish Harp beer to his mouth. "Oh, hell," he said to the bartender, who knew him, "the luck of the Irish got us this far, the luck of the Irish will take us all the way." The bartender shook his head. "Dick," he said, "with the luck you've had, I wouldn't be surprised to see Teddy's Kim win this race with ease and then turn into a statue of pure gold. And now would you want me to hold that glass of beer to your lips so you might sip a little?"

Although the owners of the other dogs probably were equally as nervous, they all had years of experience on Andrews and his partner, Phil Ceccarelli. By any yardstick, the two are novices, in the game more for pleasure than for profit, although they wouldn't mind matching in purses what they push through the sellers' windows.

Ceccarelli, a 54-year-old Italian American with a face the Irish Tourist Board could use on a travel poster, is the maitre d' at the Place For Steak in Miami. He is also the partnership's midwife. He and Andrews have one bitch, Lovely Solitaire, and Ceccarelli has delivered all four of her litters. He doesn't mind that most of the greyhound people think he's just a little wacky. "I know one veterinarian who shakes his head every time he sees me," says Ceccarelli. "What's so special about helping a dog deliver pups? Put an animal in the woods and she doesn't have anybody helping her. Big deal."

Andrews, 33, is an insurance adjuster working out of his own office, sort of a nonviolent Sam Spade specializing in major jewel thefts. Since 1966, armed only with nerve and an extraordinary set of underworld contacts, he has recovered more than $1 million in stolen property. In value alone his largest recovery was a $600,000 collection of Chinese jade stolen from the Norton Art Gallery in West Palm Beach. Andrews, acting on a tip and accompanied by federal agents, turned up the jade piled in a rented haul-it-yourself trailer in Hollywood, Fla.

"It was a real complicated deal," Andrews said. "I found out that the jade was stolen for a guy who planned on shipping it out of the country. But as soon as I heard about it I ran an ad in the paper offering a $10,000 reward. That scared the guy off. From what I can gather, when the thieves showed up with the jade the guy told them they had to hold it for a week. I don't think they were too happy. They found the guy floating in Biscayne Bay. Then I guess they just took it to Hollywood and dumped it. What else could they do with it?"

Large as it was, the jade recovery did not bring Andrews the notoriety that finding one small coin did. In May 1965 six hooded men crashed the seemingly impregnable Gothic walls of the Sterling Memorial Library on the Yale campus. After handcuffing the guard, Bill Riordan, to a radiator, they made off with more than $1 million worth of rare coins, including perhaps the most famous coin in the world, the Brasher Doubloon, once owned by George Washington and now worth at least $100,000. For 2� years law-enforcement agencies pursued the thieves and the coins, but with small success. They did arrest a man named Riesen in Chicago for possession of some lesser coins, but there the trail ended.

Then Andrews, working on another case in Miami, heard that the doubloon was nearby and the people in possession wanted to unload it. "You hear a lot of things in Miami," says Andrews. "After all, the best thieves in the world live here. Also, the guy with the doubloon couldn't sell it. It'd be like trying to sell the Mono Lisa."

Through his contacts, Andrews made an appointment for the transfer of the coin, and then he called the cops. One of the problems of an insurance adjuster is that the first question the cops ask is: "Who stole it?"—which is reasonable. But the adjuster walks a tight line between helping the law-enforcement agencies and destroying his contacts, many of whom are honest people with an ear in dishonest places. Andrews told the cops he'd make a full report after the recovery. He recovered the coin on a Friday night, and he wasn't scheduled to deliver it in New York City until Monday morning. "Now what the devil do I do with it?" he asked himself. Finally, he taped it high inside his right leg and-left it there for 60 hours. "After I got the coin, I went over to see Phil," said Andrews. "He collects coins, a real nut about them. And here I had the most famous coin in the world and I couldn't show it to him. When I told him later he almost flipped."

On Monday, Andrews turned the coin over to Yale's insurance company in New York. Then he flew back to Miami, sat down and wrote his report in verse, an art form in which he displays something short of mastery. He entitled it Ballad of the Brasher:

All that glitters is not gold,
And some that is cannot be sold.
Such then found its way to the Windy City,
Causing Mr. Riesen to be arrested—oh such a pity!
But the gold recovered was not of the stature
Of that lovely doubloon made by Mr. Brasher.
The Chicago coin fanciers then were afraid,
So they decided the doubloon should be sent to Dade.
The writer was called in the dead of night,
And awakened with a most terrible fright.
They spoke of the coin and of many dollars,
It was obvious they were numismatic scholars.
They bragged of how they took it from Yale,
And now it was being offered for sale.
Four months of discussions through Mother Bell,
Two of the six were very hard to sell.
We finally agreed on that certain price,
And you know how it is to deal with such lice.
But not to recover it would have been like treason,
And most of all that was my reason.