Mr. X (60 page)

A telephone number was printed on the lower left corner, and on the lower right,
Available at All Times
.

“Get into any kind of trouble around here, you call this guy first. Promise me?”

“Greatest lawyer that ever lived.”

“You have no idea.”

“On the day you die, he’s going to read your will? What’s the rush?”

“You let things slide, funny shit can happen. Know the basic principle?”

I shook my head.

“Take ’em by surprise,” he said. I laughed out loud. “Listen, why not start working for me now? You got nothing else to do, and I can explain the whole job in fifteen minutes. The hours are eight
A.M.
to five-thirty
P.M.
A little time off for lunch. Ready?”

“Take ’em by surprise,” I said. “I guess so, sure, but it can only be for a couple of days. Let me call Nettie first.”

“Be my guest,” Toby said.

Nettie wasted no time on an exchange of greetings. “I thought we were going to be seeing you, but all you do is call on the telephone.”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I heard your ring. Come over for dinner around six. And if you still don’t have a piece, the best thing is, get one from old Toby Kraft. You want a piece with no registration on it. The time comes when you have to use it, wipe it off, drop it, and walk away. You’ll be cleaner than the Board of Health. May will be here, too, so show up on time.”

Toby tilted back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “The old warhorse had some words of advice?”

“You know what she’s like,” I said. “How about giving me a lesson in pawnbroking?”

“You’re gonna be great at this. It’s in your blood.” He pushed himself away from the desk.

He explained the procedure for writing out the tickets and storing the goods. Cameras went on one set of shelves, watches on another, musical instruments in a display case, arranged in the order of the numbers on the ticket stubs. He put flatware in wrapped bundles lined up in drawers, stemware and china in cabinets, paintings against the wall, rugs and furniture at the side of the back room. Pledges were charged at 3 percent interest, weekly. I asked him about the money given for the pledges.

“Generally, you know by looking at the customer. It’s in their eyes. You’ll see. When you know what they hope they’re gonna get, offer half, and they go away happy. Anything suspicious, like a guy with a shopping cart full of computer monitors, pick up the phone and tell him you’re calling the cops. That shit catches up with you.”

“What about guns?”

“Paperwork up the keester. The firearms are in a locked cabinet on the other side of the shelves. A guy wants a handgun, go to the cabinet, slide out a tray, put it in front of him. Prices are all tagged. When he makes his choice, he signs the forms here in the drawer. We send copies to the State Police, and he comes back in five days. Rifles, shotguns, no problem, he gets it that day. No assault weapons, on account of I’m not running an armory.”

“Nettie thinks I should carry an unregistered gun,” I said.

“She wants you to get into the stickup business?”

After I had explained my history with Joe Staggers and his friends, he gave me a long, careful look. “I got a couple pieces here for use in emergencies. Don’t let anyone see it unless you have to, and never say where you got it.”

Toby disappeared into the rear of the shop and came back with a small, black pistol and a holster that looked like a glove. “This here’s a twenty-five-caliber Beretta automatic. I put a clip in for you. To chamber a round, pull back this slide. This is the safety—see the red dot? That means the safety is on, and you can’t pull the trigger. Push it down with your thumb, you’re ready to fire.” He put the pistol in the holster. “Clip it to your belt in the small of your back, no one’ll know it’s there. Give it back the day you leave.”

“This probably won’t happen, but what if I have to use it?”

“Throw it in the river. A gun with no paper on it, you only use once.” He watched me clip the holster to my belt and asked me to turn around. “Now forget you’re carrying it. Don’t keep on reaching around to fiddle with the thing.”

We went into his office. “Your job is to stick behind the counter. If I’m out or in here by myself, bring in copies of the slips every couple of hours and record the transactions in the journal on my desk. You’ll see how—put down the number, the customer’s name, a description, and the amount. When you get to the amount, record it at half value. Then take the other journal out of my bottom left-hand drawer and write down everything all over again, but with the right numbers. At the end of the day, that one goes in the safe.”

I laughed.

“You want to keep your head above water, you need an edge. Is this concept new to you?”

“Toby,” I said, “I’m a Dunstan.”

He stuck out his furry paw, and in the light of a sudden recognition I surrendered my hand to be tenderized. Toby Kraft’s loyalty to my aunts, by extension to me, would forever overlook the petty cruelties they wished upon him, because Nettie and May represented his only surviving connection to the wife whose extraordinary talents had delighted him beyond measure.

84

I spent the rest of the day in the doze of the pawnshop. Separately, two men who looked as though they had never pawned anything in their lives came in and proceeded to the office. On his way to lunch, Toby introduced me to the second of these visitors, “Mr. Profitt,” who brushed his manicured hand against mine and said, all in one word, “Goodameetchakiddonledimdownawright?”

“I hear you,” I said.

Toby came back alone and handed me a brown bag containing
a tuna-fish sandwich, a packet of potato chips, and a Coca-Cola. He apologized for not giving me a lunch break and said I was doing a great job. To my surprise, the customers I dealt with during the day bore out his promise that I would know how much to offer for a pledge: by a flick of the eyes, a hesitation of speech, a wayward gesture, each had communicated the hoped-for amount. When I named half of the sum, they accepted on the spot.

At 5:00
P.M.,
Toby patted me on the back and told me I could get “spruced up” for the aunts. He gave me a set of keys. “Let yourself in a half hour early tomorrow, okay? We’re going to rearrange the storage room. When you leave, lock up in front and show the
CLOSED
sign. I don’t want no more customers today.”

After I locked the gates, I went to an agency on Commercial Avenue, checked the boxes for all the insurance I could get, and rented a Ford Taurus painted the saturated green of a Spanish olive.

85

The map in Hugh Coventry’s old journal put the entrance to Buxton Place, where Edward Rinehart had occupied two cottages purchased under the names of characters from H. P. Lovecraft, near the top of Fairground Road, not far from the campus. I pulled into a parking space in front of a coffee shop. Two blocks ahead, Fairground Road came to an end at a deep swath of green intersected by paths leading to red brick, neo-Georgian buildings. I glanced backward and saw the bus stop where I had gotten off to visit Suki Teeter. Buxton Place lay ahead and on the other side of Fairground Road. I walked past the gilded window of an Irish bar called Brennan’s, then stepped between the parked cars and jogged across the street.

Storefronts lined the sidewalk all the way to the intersection. Buxton Place had to be in the last block before the university. I went past an unbroken row of comic-book stores, clothing outlets, student restaurants, and candy shops. My memory had tricked
me, and the cul-de-sac came into Fairground Road further south, maybe a block past Suki’s corner.

I walked past the same storefronts I had seen on the way up. When I came parallel to Brennan’s, I glanced through the window at an aproned bartender aiming a remote control at a television set I could not see. I glanced to my right and between a Canadian pancake house and a Middle Eastern restaurant saw a cobbled alley no wider than my rented car. If the alley had a name, the City of Edgerton had seen no reason to put up a sign. I stepped down onto the cobbles and peered into the gloom. Past the rear of the shops on either side, the alley widened out. I made out the double doors of old stables and, at the far end, two small cottages.

Thick padlocks hung from the doors of the old stables. Beneath their dusty windows, stenciled letters spelled out
ALBERTUS UNIVERSITY STORAGE FACILITY
. Edward Rinehart’s houses stood side by side, separated by a common wall. Each had two windows up and down and a fanlight over an arched doorway. Narrow chimneys pierced the slanting tiled roofs, and iron crestings ran along the gutters. They looked distorted, diminished, as if squeezed down from some larger, original size. The windows reflected my cupped hands and the dark, indistinct oval of my face. I hurried back into the sunlight.

With eight minutes in which to accomplish a fifteen-minute drive, I whirled into an illegal U-turn and sped south on Fairground Road. A traffic light flashed yellow, and I bumped the accelerator and shot through the intersection a moment before it turned red. Robert, who had abruptly appeared next to me in the passenger seat, applauded. “Dash! Verve!”