So he and Bob pulled the black curtain aside and slipped into the hidden depths of the locker.
And they found boxes. Two dozen boxes of various sizes, all unmarked. And a small woman's vanity made of a beautiful dark wood with a built-in mirror three feet tall and two feet wide and matching stool underneath.
And that was it, stuff that easily could have been stored in an attic or a basement. Surely not enough to require a ten by ten storage unit that must have cost a hundred bucks a month. Unless the owners had already emptied much of it. Or had planned on putting more in before they decided to skip town instead.
And this stuff was definitely nothing that needed to be hidden from prying eyes by a black sheet.
“Glad I didn't pay more than two and a quarter for this,” Glenn said to Bob, disappointment thick in his voice.
“Hey, who knows what's in these boxes. Could be treasure.”
Glenn walked over to the closest box, a two by two by two brown cube balanced on top of two others. He pulled out a small knife, cut through the packing tape, and peeled the flaps open. He smiled wryly, held up what looked like a coffee mug covered in gray packing paper. Removing the paper revealed a white, non-descript porcelain mug. “About fifty cents?” he asked.
Bob laughed. “Or three for a dollar.”
Glenn sighed.
“Hey, it's not too bad,” Bob said, his eyes exploring the vanity in the back corner. “That piece looks real nice. Mahogany or rosewood. Could probably get fifty bucks for it at a consignment shop.”
Glenn moved away from the boxes and approached the vanity. He knocked on the table with his knuckles. Felt like real wood, not some cheap particle board. And there was some nice scrollwork around the edges of the mirror. He could get fifty for it. Maybe seventy-five if he sold it himself on Craigslist. He looked back at the boxes. Hell, unless the boxes contained photo albums or other personal effects, he could possibly get a hundred for whatever was inside them. A small loss, maybe, but not too bad. Hey, in this business, you won some, you lost some. You couldn’t get involved with storage auctions unless you were willing to take a hit. Just had to roll with the punches.
But still... his sixth sense had never let him down before. Maybe there was something valuable in one of the boxes. He didn't plan on opening and going through them here. He could easily load all of the cartons, and the vanity and stool, into the cargo bed of his F150. He would go through it at home. But he didn’t plan on leaving right away, and he didn’t want to keep this stuff in his truck where someone could steal it. Better to just leave it here for now.
“How long do I have the unit for?” Glenn asked, turning to Bob.
“Until five on Monday. Then you gotta pay for the month.” Bob moved toward the sheet. “And don’t forget to stop by the office on your way out to fill out the paperwork,” he called back. And then he was gone.
Glenn sighed again, drummed his fingers on the vanity. He looked back down at it. It really was a nice piece of furniture, definitely worth something. He’d find someone to take it off his hands. He was about to leave the unit when something caught his eye on the front of the vanity. It was a little brown handle he hadn't seen at first because it really blended into the wood. But now that he was standing above it and looking down, he saw it clearly, a half inch-long knob protruding from what must have been a drawer. He took the knob in hand and slowly pulled the drawer open.
What he saw stole his breath away.
It was a diamond necklace nestled on a black velvet floor. The diamond itself was teardrop in shape and set in a gold setting so minimal that little of it was visible at first look except for the small loop which attached the setting to the chain. It was almost a third of an inch long by his estimation, and a quarter inch wide at its widest toward the rounded base. He gingerly lifted the gold chain out of the drawer, allowed the diamond to dangle at the end.
It was simple yet stunning. The diamond spun a bit, and even in the limited light of the storage unit, it sparkled. He knew it could get him a pretty penny, but at that moment all he was concerned with was how beautiful it was. How perfect it was. He felt his gaze being tugged into the shimmering depths… He suddenly shook his head, aware that he was allowing himself to be hypnotized by the thing. How silly. He fished a small velvet draw-string bag from his right pocket—he always carried one with him to auctions just for situations like this, for loose jewelry or coins he sometimes found—and slipped the necklace into it. He went to close the drawer when something else inside caught his eye: a ring. As he went to pick it up, he wondered if it was going to match the necklace. A matching set would have been a phenomenal find. But in this regard, he was disappointed. He held the ring up and studied it. It was a simple silver ring, tarnished and borderline ugly. It wouldn't get him anything at the pawnshop. It looked like a cheap, fifteen dollar promise ring a high school sophomore would give his girlfriend as a sign of his undying love. Or the type of ring a man down on his luck would give his bride to be (with the promise of a real one when he got back on his feet) in a sappy Hollywood romance. It was worthless. If he kept it, it would just end up in the back of a junk drawer, quickly forgotten. Better to just throw it away. He considered sticking it back in the drawer for disposal later, almost did, but decided to stick it in his left pocket instead. He closed the drawer.
Glenn finally left the unit, swinging the padlock he had brought with him around on his right ring finger. Most of what he had found was certainly junk, but the necklace... that had made this little endeavor worth it. He didn't know exactly what it was worth, but it was definitely more than a thousand. Assuming it was real, of course. He had no reason to believe otherwise, though. Throw in what he would get for the vanity, and he had more than covered the cost of the unit and his hotel and all of his food. Even his nighttime activities.
He slid the metal door down and locked it, a smile on his face.
It had turned out to be a good day.
Chapter 4
Gary Snyder looked down at the lunchbox sitting on the glass counter below him, then looked back up at the heavyset twenty-something-year-old standing expectantly in front of him. The boy was sweating bullets, not necessary an abnormal state in Vegas, but considering the chilly air of the store, the temperature was not responsible for the kid’s perspiration. No, Gary knew what it really was. It was withdrawal. Need. Sickness. What else would force a man-child like this, who probably still lived in his mother’s basement and worshipped Star Trek memorabilia, to sell a prized collectible? He needed drug money, and he needed it now. Gary wouldn’t use the kid’s addiction to lowball his offer, though—he wasn’t that kind of guy—but addicts, paranoid as they were, always felt that they were being taken advantage of.
“A hundred bucks,” Gary said.
“A hundred bucks?” the kid asked, his high, nasally voice practically a whine. “It’s worth at least four hundred bucks. I’ve seen them go that high on eBay.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Gary said, his voice even. “But I’m sure many of those were in better condition than this.”
“It still has the thermos. Collectors love thermoses.”
“That may be,” Gary countered, moving his hands toward the Beatles Yellow Submarine aluminum lunchbox that rested on the table between them. “But this is not in great shape. A lot of the paint is gone. It’s scratched in a couple of places. The paint’s gone. There are a couple of dents.” He opened the lunch box and pulled the thermos out and examined the inside. “It may be a collectible, but collectors want better shape than this for what you’re asking.”
“But it’s worth more than a hundred.”
Gary nodded. “Probably. But I have to spend my time trying to sell it. It’s going to sit.” He put the thermos back inside, closed the box.
The boy pulled the lunch box back toward himself. “Maybe I’ll just take it and sell it myself on eBay,” he said, a small glimmer coming to his anxious eyes.
“Go ahead,” Gary said. “It’s
your lunch box.” But he knew that he wouldn’t. Kids like this, they didn’t have eBay accounts. And even more importantly, they didn’t have patience. Or time. Dependency and addiction didn’t wait for auctions to end to be fed. They were nasty, punishing masters that demanded immediate sustenance. Sure, the kid could leave and try to sell it at some other pawn shop, but Gary doubted he would do that. A hundred bucks was a hundred bucks after all, and there was no guarantee he would get a better deal somewhere else. Many of the other local shops didn’t deal in collectibles. And many of the other pawn brokers wouldn’t think twice about trying to take advantage of the poor kid. While his own modest shop was not as fully stocked as the one across town that had a show on TV, he did a brisk trade in collectibles because he did have time and patience and an eBay account where he could sell stuff that sat too long.
“You know,” the kid said, clutching the brightly colored box to his chest like a security blanket, “you could always call an expert. I know you can do that. Get a guy who knows toys. He’ll tell you what this is worth.”
Gary sighed. That fucking show had filled so many people’s minds with the wrong idea of how real pawn shops worked. His shop, like almost all pawn shops, didn’t have experts available at the drop of a hat. He used his computer and did some quick research when possible, made a couple of calls here and there when people wanted to sell more exotic stuff, and pretty much gambled and guessed their way through the rest.
“Look,” Gary said, “I’ll give you a hundred and thirty for it. But no more. This is a business, son, and I got to make money from it. I’m not going to pay you wholesale. You want top dollar, you sell it yourself. “
The kid seemed to think about it for a minute, then put the lunch box back down on the table. “A hundred and thirty?”
Gary nodded. “A buck thirty. In cash.” So you can go buy your choice of drugs and inject or smoke your way into a better place.
The kid nodded. “Okay. Okay. A hundred and thirty.”
Gary turned and nodded to one of his men who stood fifteen feet down the counter. “Write this young man up, Pete” he said. “A hundred and thirty.” He quickly surveyed the store, noted that there wasn’t anyone else in need of attention at the moment, and disappeared into the back room of the store holding the lunch box.
Being a pawn shop, there was much more to the store than what was up front. Behind the long glass case in the back of the respectfully sized showroom were two doors: the one to the left led to his own small office while the other entered into a large L-shaped room used for storage that curled behind his private room. The storage room was used to store many things: merchandise that had been pawned and therefore not for sale yet, duplicate items (he didn’t need to have more than one Xbox on the floor at a time), and larger items which would just clutter the sales floor. There was also a safe where expensive items, including a lot of jewelry, were kept and brought out for examination only at a request from a buyer. He did brisk jewelry business because his prices were generally well below an actual jeweler’s, but he never felt safe keeping most of the real nice stuff up front, even locked in the glass case. If someone was serious about buying a nice necklace or ring, they tended to be willing to wait for him to get it from the back.
Being in Las Vegas, he did good business all around. People were desperate for cash here, both the locals and the tourists. Sure, people flocked to that place from TV, but it had recently become more of an over-priced tourist trap than a real pawn shop, and many disappointed patrons ended up in his shop or one of the other dozens when they found themselves being ripped off by the celebrities. Which was just fine with him.
The pawn shops in Vegas were a little different than the classic dark, sleazy shops seen in the movies, run by suspicious, greasy looking men that smelled of garlic and spoke with suspicious accents. Sure, in other cities—dirty cities—pawn shops did most of their business pawning items, giving loans to patrons who used personal items as collateral. The patron then had a certain amount of time to pay back the borrowed amount, plus a reasonable amount of interest, to get their valuables back. He did his fair share of pawning, mostly jewelry and electronics, but he did a lot of buying and selling, too. Vegas was a unique city. Tourists came to the pawn shops looking for cheap and unusual items they couldn’t find anywhere else. Chronic gamblers were always looking for places to quickly sell their crap for cold hard cash that they could pump into slot machines or put on the Giants, who were a minus seven against the Redskins that week. And then there were the regular, run-of-the-mill citizens who just wanted to upgrade their old things—motorcycles, TVs, tools, etc.—to newer models and wanted to get what they could for their old stuff rather than just toss it. Hell, he could buy a used tool kit in decent condition for forty bucks and sell it for eighty.
Gary sat in the chair at his desk, the Beatles lunch box in hand. He turned it over again, opened it, examined it, made a quick list of the small defects. He tended not to sell this type of thing in his store because eBay had stolen a lot of the collectible market from pawn shops over the past decade. He would keep it out for a week or two at a slightly inflated price, about $350, and if it didn’t sell to some Beatles junkie who just happened to wander in, he would move it to eBay. He may not get exactly what he wanted, but it would sell. He knew what he was doing. He had done this before.
When it came to what he would buy and sell and what he wouldn’t, he had a few rules. He didn’t have appraisers on site so he stayed away from anything that really needed to be assessed by a professional to determine worth or authenticity. No guns, very few antiques, little art. He would take a chance on something that was questionable if he was intrigued and the price was right, but not very often. The one type of collectible he did cherish and buy, though, was sports memorabilia. Old programs, championship rings, signed bats and balls, cards. His brother Paul was an expert on that shit and could tell real from fake with little trouble. And that type of stuff… it was just cool. As for jewelry… he had learned enough back in Brooklyn years ago to buy and sell most jewelry with confidence. Hell, you couldn’t be a respectable pawn broker anywhere in the country without being able to buy and sell jewelry without the help of an appraiser. It was the most common commodity in the pawn business.
After examining the lunch box, he put it on a small card table in the corner that contained other items he had purchased today which needed to be priced and put on the floor: A beautiful vintage Rolex he planned to put in one of the cases up front ($1000 retail, he paid $300, on sale for $700), a brand new carbon composite HEAD tennis racquet ($150 retail, he paid $40, on sale for $100), and a PlayStation 3 ($150 retail, he paid $50, on sale for $110). On the floor next to the table were a pair of twenty-six-inch Samsung LCD TV’s which he could easily sell to one of the hotels looking to replace busted units ($280 retail for the pair, he paid a $100, on sale for $200 as a set) and a twenty-five pound bag of 1950 silver nickels and dimes he had bought at market value and would have to decide whether to sell now or hold on to for investment purposes.
All in all, Gary thought as he surveyed his little office, it had been a good day.
Chapter 5
Dressed in a pair of khaki pants, a maroon polo shirt and a pair of loafers, feeling clean for the first time since leaving his hotel that morning, Michael took the elevator down to the lobby level, where the buffet was located. He walked into the restaurant, scanned the enormous room swarming with several hundred people, and somehow managed to find the table where his three associates were seated without having to scamper around like a rat in a maze. He walked over to the table, waving and nodding as he went.
The older man at the table was Jerry Pascall, the southeast regional manager of CoreGen who worked out of Atlanta. Like Michael, he was one of the original salesmen when the company opened fifteen years ago. He was tall, even fully seated, and possessed a round face that always seemed to display a smile and a head mostly bereft of hair. His fingers were long, delicate, and they tapped
out a light rhythm on the white tabletop. Michael spoke to Jerry occasionally, once or twice a month, usually about business, but they did shoot the shit and brag about their families once in a while.
Next to Jerry sat Chelsea Reynolds, a petite blonde dressed in a baby blue tank top which accentuated her feminine features quite well. She worked at the corporate headquarters in Carson City, Nevada. Only out of business school three years, she probably shouldn’t have been one of the company's four representatives at such a large national event, but when you were the CEO's daughter... well, trips to Vegas were the types of perks you expected to receive.
Across from Chelsea, next to the empty seat, was Jake Jasper, the hotshot up-and-coming sales representative responsible for California and the rest of the Pacific coast. He worked out of San Francisco. He had connections, he had charisma, and he had the business savvy to make it big in the company if he chose to stay long term. And rumors were that he was banging Chelsea. The man had it all and he knew it.
“Now that we're all here,” Jerry said, rising to his feet, “we can eat.”
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Michael chided the tall man. “This isn’t a formal occasion.”
“We’ve only been waiting two or three minutes. It’s not a big deal.”
The two younger salespeople stood, and Michael easily read the looks that passed between the two. They were definitely sleeping together, and the coquettish look Chelsea gave Jake caused a small surge of jealously to run through him. Not jealously because Jake had Chelsea, but jealousy because the look Chelsea gave Jake reminded him of the looks his own wife had given him once upon a time. He shook his head and pushed away the anger. Sometimes life was unfair.
Michael followed the three to the buffet which, like all Vegas buffets, was a lesson in gluttony. Foods representing almost every ethnicity could be found at one of the dozen massive tables which lined the walls of the room. There was something for everyone here, even the most discriminate eater. Normally, he would have gorged himself on the worst of the foods, the high-in-fat but utterly decadent fried chicken and mashed potatoes and fettuccine alfredo and giant calzones. The items which accelerated your chances of suffering a massive coronary. After all, how often did he have the opportunity to indulge in something like this? The small chain buffets around his home didn’t hold a candle to this place.
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