by Lou Berney
A guy in his early thirties entered the room, wrestling two roll-on suitcases behind him. When he saw Gina standing there topless in her undies, he stopped.
“Oh,” he said.
“I’m here for the threesome your wife arranged,” Gina said.
The guy blinked.
Gina looked at her watch. “Am I early? Fuck. Sorry.”
She hurried her clothes on, grabbed her shoes, the briefcase.
Coming down the hallway toward Gina was the guy’s wife. She was walking slowly and using both thumbs to type rapidly on her BlackBerry. At the same time talking into a Bluetooth headset.
“That’s ridiculous,” the wife was saying, exasperated. She barely glanced at Gina.
“Back in an hour!” Gina called over her shoulder as she blew past and ducked into the elevator.
GINA PULLED IN TO THE PARKING LOT. The strip mall was on the sketchy side, even as strip malls went. A Laundromat, an Asian-foods grocery store, a place (disturbingly adjacent to the Asian-foods grocery store) with a sign that said SNAKES, ETC.
The place she was looking for, next to the Laundromat, was on the sketchy side, too. Grimy windows and a big rip flapping through the plastic canopy above the front door. Across the canopy, beneath the rip, was printed MARVIN OATES FINE JEWELRY AND PAWN.
On the door, painted in smaller letters, it said PURVEYOR OF RARE COINS, STAMPS, AND OTHER FINE COLLECTIBLES.
Sketchy.
This was disappointing. Gina had been expecting … oh, she didn’t know, maybe a cozy book-lined shop with comfy leather chairs and a Dickensian vibe. A kindly old proprietor with pince-nez and a sweet-smelling pipe.
On the other hand, though, she admitted, the sketchiness of Marvin Oates Fine Jewelry and Pawn was also promising. At least when it came to the kind of quick, cash, no-questions-asked buyer she wanted Marvin Oates to hook her up with. Gina told herself not to jinx things by thinking of a number. Good luck with that. She hoped, fingers crossed, the stamps in the briefcase might bring fifty grand. That seemed reasonable, didn’t it?
Dubai, here I come. Dubai or wherever.
She took the briefcase and locked the car behind her. On the street in front of the strip mall, a few cars whizzed by without slowing; no one, she was sure, had followed her here.
The shop door was locked, but next to it was a red button that looked sticky. Gina pushed it with her elbow. After a second, a buzzer buzzed and the door clunked open a crack.
Gina stepped inside and squeezed past a pair of dusty glass cases filled with coins, watches, rings, what looked like a couple of old bullets. At the back of the shop, sitting behind another dusty glass case, was a chubby, bug-eyed guy in his fifties who looked sour with indigestion.
“We’re closed,” he said.
“Then why’d you buzz me in?” Gina said.
“I thought mistakenly you might be a serious collector.”
“Who’s to say I’m not a serious collector?”
He grunted and picked up the book he’d been reading. A fat paperback with a dragon on the cover, and a girl in a metal bra, a tiny guy with a huge sword.
Gina wasn’t being mean, just factual—the guy’s resemblance to a bug was astounding. His big, bulging eyes were so far apart on his head that it was like they were this close to dangling on stalks.
Other than that he looked fairly normal, if you called wearing a plum-colored sweater vest and khaki shorts normal.
“Are you Marvin Oates?” Gina said. “This is your place?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now go away.”
She sneezed. All the dust. She put the briefcase on the counter in front of him.
“How’s about you take one quick peek at what I’ve got in here,” she said, “and I’ll blow you afterward?”
He looked up from his book, startled.
“Really?” he said.
“No,” Gina said, “but I’ll give you permission to imagine it after I leave.”
She smiled sweetly at him. He scowled at her, but then snapped open the case and looked inside.
“Tell me how much these stamps are worth,” Gina said. “Don’t lie to me,’ cause I’ll know it.”
He didn’t answer. He sucked in his breath and stared down at the stamps. Gina waited for him to exhale, but he didn’t. Curious, she watched as the top of his bald head started to splotch with a pinkish archipelago.
“You okay?” she said. It would be just her luck if the guy had a cardiac event before she could find a buyer for the stamps.
He exhaled finally, then looked up at her again. His bug eyes seemed like they wanted to bulge with excitement, but they were already at maximum bulge and had nowhere to go.
“These aren’t stamps,” he whispered.
GINA FOLLOWED MARVIN OATES to the back of the shop, which was even dustier than the front and cluttered with books, boxes, bags. And a NordicTrack treadmill in the corner that, Gina guessed, hadn’t seen much action.
Marvin Oates put the briefcase on a table and bent over it with a jeweler’s loupe.
“Perfect condition,” he muttered. “Astounding. I’d read about relics like this, rumors and vague conjectures and whatnot, but of course—”
“A relic?”
“A historical object of great religious significance,” he said. He gave Gina a testy glance, then quickly turned his attention back to the … whatever it was under glass in the briefcase. “Collected, preserved, venerated. The remains of a saint, a nail from the true cross, cloth from a burial shroud.”
“Like The Da Vinci Code?”
He didn’t even bother with a testy glance this time. He just rolled his bug eyes, which was something to see once and then never, Gina hoped, again.
“Relics were important to the early Chris tians,” he said. “But then, during the Middle Ages, with the crusades, the acquisition and exhibition of relics turned into an all-out frenzy. They were the ultimate status symbol for the church’s elite, the bishops and cardinals and whatnot. Whose cathedral had the oldest relics? Which collection represented the most important religious figures? Who had the most fabulously bejeweled philatories?”
“Philatories?”
“A transparent reliquary.”
Gina sighed. She really didn’t have time for this. “So, excellent, they’re relics.”
She peered over his shoulder at the small squares of parchment lined up in ten neat rows of ten each. She guessed maybe they were pieces of paper torn from an old Bible or scroll. Or possibly some kind of ancient dried-out fabric sample. Whatevers. Gina’s interest in the question was close to total nada. The real question …
“What are the little fuckers worth?” she asked.
“Don’t you want to know what they are?”
She looked up from the briefcase to find Marvin Oates grinning at her.
Fine. If it would move things along.
“Okay.” She sighed again. “What are they?”
“Guess.”
She lifted her fist to punch him. He squeaked, cringed, and covered his face with his pudgy forearms.
“They’re foreskins!” he said.
Gina was too surprised to lower her fist. She must not have heard him correctly.
“Did you just say—”
“One hundred foreskins. Yes.”
“As in—”
“Have a look.” He angled the case toward her and handed her the loupe.
Gina debated. Mild curiosity triumphed over mild disgust. She took the loupe, wiped off any potential bug-eye juice, and pressed it to the top of the glass case.
Now that you mentioned it, the little stamp-size squares did kind of look like skin. Like the skin you peeled off your nose when you had a sunburn?
“Foreskins from babies?” she asked. “Like from a circumcision?”
“Oh, ho, ho, ho, no,” Marvin said. He seemed to be having the best time he’d had in a long time. “These foreskins are from full-grown men.”
“But—” she started to say.
“People were smaller back then,” Marvin said. “In every respect, if you know what I mean.”
Then he snickered. “I’m just kidding. I mean, people were smaller back then, yes, but these specimens are small of course because they’re only a part of the foreskin. You didn’t need to keep the entire thing, just enough for a trophy.”
“A trophy?” Gina didn’t like where this was going, but—intrigued despite herself—she reached out to unlatch the glass case and get a closer look.
“Don’t open that!” Marvin squawked. He batted at her hand until she withdrew it.
“Okay. Sheesh.”
“Do you have any idea how fragile these things are? They’re probably a thousand freaking years old! They should be in a museum!”
He paused to narrow his eyes at her. Which, in the case of bug eyes, was relative.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
She thought about constructing an elaborately delightful and convincing lie, then decided that this guy wasn’t worth the effort. So she just narrowed her eyes back at him and lit a cigarette. Marvin went into a big, fake coughing fit.
“You mind? I have asthma.”
“Deal with it.”
He started to say something, but she held up a finger.
“Shush,” she said, and listened hard.
There it was again, out back: a sound like a tire crunching very slowly, very gently through gravel, as if the car was tiptoeing.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“I just hear my chest constricting because of your smoking, my lungs shriveling and turning black with—”
She blew smoke in his direction, then crossed to the back of the back room and cracked the emergency exit door just a hair.
She peered out. The sun had gone down, and the deserted alley behind the shop was dark. Just a little weak, watery light from a single street lamp. The crunching-gravel sound had stopped.
An odd feeling crept over Gina. Like, maybe, the alley wasn’t really deserted after all.
“So these museum-quality foreskins,” Gina said. She peered out into the alley and wondered what was the point of a streetlight if it didn’t provide any light? “Just how much are they worth, exactly?”
“Five million,” Marvin said. “That’s what I’d guess.”
She glanced over her shoulder, saw that he had the loupe to his eye again.
“Five million?”
“Bad news is, you’ll never find a buyer for them.”
“Five million dollars?”
Gina’s skin prickled. She took a deep, calming drag from her Marlboro Red and hugged herself against the chill of the evening breeze blowing in off the desert. She wanted to go give Marvin a big kiss on the top of his pink, splotchy head. Theoretically, at least.
Five. Million. Dollars.
“Oh, I’ll find a buyer,” Gina said. Bet your ass she would.
“No reputable collector will touch these,” Marvin said, “no matter how bad they might want them.”
“So we just rustle up one lacking a little repute.”
“With five million to burn? Ha.”
He was quiet for a second.
“What?”
“There is one guy. The obvious candidate, of course. I hear he’s in Panama now.”
“Panama? What’s his name?”
Marvin didn’t answer for a long time.
“Nobody,” he said abruptly. “Nothing. Never mind. Forget it. Just a rumor. I doubt these are genuine anyway. Worthless, probably.”
Gina flicked her cigarette out into the alley. Orange sparks scattered on the asphalt, and she thought she saw something move by the Dumpster.
She tensed again. Probably just a shadow. Probably she was just being paranoid. Right?
Marvin let rip a big, explosive cough behind her, and Gina almost jumped out of her skin.
“Sheesh!”
She peered back into the alley. Still nothing. She quickly pulled the door shut and made sure it was locked. Marvin coughed again.
“You better not get your cooties all over my ancient foreskins,” she told Marvin.
He snapped the briefcase closed and brought it to her.
“This conversation is over. I want absolutely nothing to do with the contents of this briefcase, which I do not acknowledge having opened or examined.”
“You pussy.”
“I suggest you seek the counsel of an attorney or contact your local law-enforcement authorities.”
“How am I supposed to find a buyer?” she asked.
“Why don’t you ask the people you stole it from? Who were they planning to sell it to?” He took a hit from his asthma inhaler and snickered. “Might be awkward, I realize.”
Gina, pissed, yanked the briefcase away from him.
“Thanks for nada,” she said. “And that imaginary blow job I offered you? Forget about it.”
Chapter 17
Vader’s Road Runner could definitely do just that—run roads, and with panache. Shake couldn’t resist taking an extra lap around downtown, the perfectly tuned 426 Hemi growling sweet nothings back to him every time he goosed the gas. Around 10:00 P.M. he pulled up to the Clark County Bureau of Records. He parked, paused to admire the Road Runner from a couple of different angles, then went inside.
The lobby was crowded with applicants for marriage licenses. Several of the men wore cheap tuxedos, and many of the women were in full, flowing, white-trash bridal regalia. Acres of white polyester lace, rhinestone tiaras, six-foot trains the brides-to-be had to keep bunched under their arms so they wouldn’t get stepped on. Just about everyone looked drunk.
Shake got in line behind a cheap tuxedo and a rhinestone tiara. When the female clerk informed the couple that the Nevada legislature had recently instituted a proof-of-identity requirement for marriage licenses, they didn’t take the news well.
“That ain’t right!” the man said.
“Is bullshit!” the woman said. She held her bunched-up train in one hand and a yard-long plastic tube filled with beer in the other. She was drunker than her fiancé, though not by much.
“I wish it wasn’t the case,” the clerk behind the window said, sighing. She was cute—why he’d picked her window—but had the glazed look of a long-stretch CO.
“Whose bullshit is this?” the man demanded.
“The Nevada legislature,” the clerk said.
“Is bullshit!”
Shake took a step forward. “Excuse me,” he said to the man. “But there’s no proof-of-identity requirement in Reno.”
The man wheeled around, too far, wheeled part of the way back to face Shake.
“Serious?”
“Serious.”
“Reno.” He processed this new information while his bride-to-be slammed back half a foot of her beer. “How far?”
“Reno? Half an hour, maybe. Straight up Highway 95. Can’t miss it.”
A cagey look spread across the groom-to-be’s face. He wheeled back to the clerk, smacked the counter with his palm, gave her a triumphant glare.
“Ha!” he said.
He marched toward the exit. His bride-to-be hurried after him, swishing (the train) and sloshing (the beer).
Shake stepped up to the counter. The clerk smiled at him.
“There’s a proof-of-identity requirement in Reno, too, you know.”
“Is there?”
“And it’s a lot more than half an hour from here.”
“Live and learn,” Shake said.
“Thank you for that,” she said.
She had an interesting tattoo on the inside of her forearm, a frog. Shake imagined that every guy who hit on her said how much he liked that tattoo. So instead he said, “I’ll bet getting that tattoo on your arm was the worst mistake of your life.”
“What?” The clerk laughed. She’d liked him before, but now—more important—she was also intrigued. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I bet every guy who hits on you tells yo
u how much he likes that tattoo.”
She watched him. Tried to figure out his angle. Discovered it was more fun trying to figure out his angle than it was dealing with drunk people demanding marriage licenses.
“So you don’t like my tattoo?” she asked. “Or do you?”
“I’ll answer that question when we’ve concluded our official business. I don’t want our personal relationship to compromise your professional judgment. Deal?”
She laughed again. “Deal.”
“Exotic dancers in Las Vegas,” he said. “They need a sheriff’s card to work, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And you have a record of the information on those cards?”
“Yes, but—”
“You’re not allowed to give out the information.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’s my little sister. She called last night, crying, and now she’s not answering her cell phone.”
“I really can’t.”
“She has this new boyfriend who likes to slap her around. I drove down from San Francisco, and now I don’t know what to do.”
The clerk hesitated. Shake felt bad. He was a pretty good liar, but he didn’t like lying to nice people and tried to avoid it unless absolutely necessary. He’d felt relieved when Vader’s sister-in-law had seen right through his bullshit.
No, he revised with a slight smile, he really wasn’t even a pretty good liar, not compared to Gina.
“Never mind,” Shake said. “I shouldn’t have even asked.”
“You’re her brother?” the clerk said. “You’re not some kind of a stalker customer from the club where she works?”
“I am most definitely not anything like that. I promise.”
She studied him. She seemed to sense that was the truth, which it was.
“What’s your sister’s name?”
“Gina Clement.”
The clerk went to the back. After a minute she returned with a slip of paper. She handed it to Shake.
“If I’m still in town tomorrow night,” Shake told her, “I’m gonna come back here and ask you to dinner.”
That was the truth, too.
“Oh, yeah?” she said, smiling. Then, as he turned and headed toward the door, “Hey.”