by John Farrow
Giroux put a hand on his partner’s sleeve to stall their progress.
‘Is it the woman?’ he asked. ‘You want to see her twice? Maybe she’ll overlook your schnoz, get the hots for you again? Cinq-Mars, her husband is in the house. Cool your jets.’
‘Why work so hard to piss people off, Sergeant-Detective?’
‘People are slime. Every stinking soul. Let’s go talk to your doctor and his sultry wife. How’s that for a word? Sultry. She’s something. Salty, too. One thing I like about what you said – “Talk to our doctor before homicide does.” Keep the attitude. In B&E, we don’t bend over for nobody. Never.’
On the stoop, Giroux asked, ‘What were you looking for in the cruiser?’
‘The baseball.’
‘Ballsy.’
‘Is that a pun?’
‘Every drunk has the impression he’s funny. That’s the problem with drunks.’
Cinq-Mars took off the sunglasses and handed them back to his partner. ‘I made friends with him first. Then I searched his car.’
‘I got to watch it around you, Sherlock. I’ll keep an eye peeled.’
‘Here she is.’ Savina Vaccaro was undoing the locks on her door.
‘You know why she went off you? Not the nose. I said that to be nice.’
‘You don’t say anything to be nice.’
Giroux made a motion of squeezing his nostrils to diminish the stench of him. Although annoyed, Cinq-Mars conceded that the man might be right. His stink turned her off.
Forty, On a Scale of Ten
(Provenance)
Going in, Quinn felt shaky.
She had no idea that Ezra Knightsbridge was expecting her.
She rode on two buses. Images of Deets vibrated behind her eyes. She imagined telling Ezra everything, even though she intended to be circumspect. She wished she could tell him about Deets and the nude lover who carried a pistol. On the bus she was tearing up. Passengers noticed. They tried to be sensitive and look away, then kept glancing over. Quinn wanted to tell them everything, too.
‘How you do today?’ Ezra asked her, that simply.
Her eyes had reddened. Her left hand clutched her right wrist to keep it from trembling.
‘Lock the door,’ he instructed her.
She was learning to trust him and needed to do so now. Quinn turned the lock and flipped the OUVERT sign to read FERMÉ. ‘How much time should I put?’
She was referring to a cardboard clock, the hands denoting when the proprietor might return.
‘You decide.’
Quinn chose half an hour. She hung the clock in place under the FERMÉ sign, then joined Ezra behind the curtain in the dingy back room.
He put the kettle on, then shook out butter biscuits from a box, placing two on a saucer beside her cup and one next to his. He requested that she fetch a chair from the far corner of the storage space, which she positioned at a forty-five-degree angle to his, their knees almost touching. They shared a side table recently in for resale. The oval surface was sufficient for their two cups, a wee bowl of sugar, and a miniature jug of milk. Quinn experienced the fleeting sensation of being a child in a dollhouse.
‘Something interesting to show me?’ the pawnbroker asked.
She put a fist to her mouth. Then said, ‘I want to learn stuff.’
‘What is it my little thief wants to learn today?’
‘Lots of things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like why are you so nice to me?’
‘That is a mystery. Next question.’
‘What kind of a mystery?’
‘The mysterious kind. Any practical questions have you that make sense?’
‘You’re stubborn.’ She worked an object out of her jacket pocket. ‘If you were selling this, how would you do it?’
‘A baseball,’ Ezra noted as she held it up. Taking it in hand, turning it around under his lamp, provoked a heightened level of approval. ‘The provenance counts,’ he told her. ‘This signature, also.’
‘What does that mean – provenance?’
‘A French word in English,’ he explained. ‘It means “Where is this ball from?” That’s provenance. Significant, the home run? Provenance. How did this player come to inscribe his signature? Provenance. It means to tell to me the story. Applies to antiques, a history, celebrities. A stolen baseball signed by Jackie Robinson is worth X amount. Who owned the ball, how that person gained the signature, the value can change. Up. Down. It’s inscribed to Mr Sal. Who’s he? That will count.’
‘I’m supposed to make up stories now?’
He gently corrected her. ‘Provenance refers to the true story. With old items, through the wars, a story can be hard to know. This baseball,’ he said, as he handed it back to her and she forced it into her jacket pocket, ‘maybe not so difficult.’
‘For the hell of it, let’s say it’s stolen.’
‘We are only talking.’
The kettle whistled.
Ezra poured the water into the teapot, let the bags dangle, and adjusted a cozy over the pot. His hand shook. He noticed; she did not.
‘Honey in your tea? Sugar? Lemon? Milk? Or nothing at all?’
She smiled in a demure way, rare for her, and scrunched her shoulders. ‘I’ve never had tea. My dad drinks coffee.’
‘Tea you shall drink. Prepare to be corrupted.’
‘I think that’s been taken care of already.’
‘Not by me. Now, your request for knowledge. To handle a unique item, since a silly girl stole it—’
‘I’m not silly,’ Quinn pointed out.
‘Were you mentioned in our talk? Not by me.’
‘Gotcha.’
‘One solution is to approach the original proprietor. A special skill I have for that. I phone the one who bemoans the loss of a precious possession he no longer possesses.’
‘Won’t he pitch a fit?’ She recognized the phrase as an old one of her mother’s.
‘I expect abuse. I make clear I am the intermediary, not the thug who invaded his home. I want to help out.’
‘Oh yeah. That’s believable.’
Ezra flicked his own nose with a forefinger, dismissing her sarcasm. ‘I suggest to the man who’s been robbed, who gouges me with his bad words, to go ahead and collect the insurance. Why not? He was doing that anyway. He won’t get his property back, but he will have cash. Then I say to him, “Kind sir, you can have both.”’
‘Both what?’
‘That’s what he says. Both what? If it is a baseball we are talking, I say to him he can have it back. I say, take the insurance at X amount of dollars. I will see the baseball returned to you at half that price.’
Time to pour the tea. Ezra added a touch of sugar and a smidgeon of milk. Quinn followed suit. She tasted it tentatively. Without offering any definitive opinion, she gestured to indicate that she’d persevere. She found it oddly familiar, as though she did drink tea previously, years ago.
‘Now,’ Ezra continued, ‘a guy robbed of a baseball hears on his telephone that he can keep half the insurance for his baseball, and also keep the baseball. A good deal, no? A stuffed shirt might get his back up, say it’s the principle. Somebody might want to see if he can’t catch the crook who broke into his house. Get the ball back that way. Somebody might call the cops. Most of the time, the injured party sees how he can be better off. He takes half the money, plus the baseball. To pull that off is a skill of mine.’
Quinn mulled it over. Sampled her tea again. ‘Doesn’t that mean the crook gets half the value? Even less, if the profit is split with an intermediary.’
‘Sometimes. Other times, fifty percent of an insured value can be more than market value, much more than black market. With paintings, it works that way. Honest I’m being with you today. I have no experience with baseballs.’
A quiet time ensued as the tea was consumed. Then Ezra altered the mood again, asking, ‘How is it that trouble finds you, my Quinn?’
The g
entleness in his voice, the evident care: she might have broken down at that moment. Quinn took a sharp breath and clenched her hands into a single fist. For two minutes, she did not speak, nor look at him. While it had not yet come fully down around her ears, she could not escape the trouble she was in. The matter could go very badly. The police would want to talk to the dead boy’s girlfriend, to the last person known to see Deets alive. What then?
Gauging that she was not in a talkative mood, Ezra said, ‘Take your time.’
‘Why are you good to me?’ she whispered. She needed to understand.
‘Am I? We do business. Who is good to who?’
‘You know what I mean. I’m a girl. Halfway pretty. You’re not gross with me.’
‘Very much more than halfway. You are saying that if I touch you, that is gross. Such a compliment.’
‘I think you know what I mean.’
‘I prefer not to be that way. I work outside the law, but am I wicked? I say not.’
She thought it over. Then said, ‘You’re a strange old man, Ezra.’
‘You prefer I do what you expect? To push my hand inside your shirt?’
‘I’d get that, if you did. I’d kill you, but I’d get it. You, as you are, I don’t get.’
‘Maybe you don’t know so much. What you mean to say, you are not saying. You still expect a hand down your jeans someday.’
Another of her shrugs implied that he might not be wrong in that assumption.
Ezra poured more tea, speaking as the liquid filled each cup.
‘I had my share of trouble as a young man, Quinn. Trouble is not unusual. Kids step off the rails, or get lured away, or they’re snagged. I stepped off the rails on my own accord. The wrong crowd for me. I was attracted. One day I would change my life, except I got caught. Then I could not change it. I was sent to juvie. In juvie, I went with a crowd worse than my first. Something to learn. Go the wrong way, people will help you continue. You are recruited and you will be fooled. You are down the wrong path with worse people. I took my training after that to steal cars – yes, me, cars – then a jewelry thief I became and a fur coat thief. Thank God, no banks. I was not an enjoyment to myself. Women did not favor me. Not hard to guess why not. A shame, when I had so much to offer.’
He winked, and Quinn smiled back.
‘Hooligans, my friends. A few I loved. Some were mean, all of them unreliable. Apply pressure to any old friend of mine from those days and listen to him sing. An aria! I had no enemies, I made sure. Also, not too successful. A little success came by, I did not brag. When your life is among thieves, success breeds incarceration.’
The tea ceremony continued. He sipped delicately, then took a small bite of his biscuit. Quinn did likewise initially, but once she had a taste she devoured the biscuit in a trice.
‘You eat like a chipmunk,’ Ezra said.
‘You look like a goat.’
‘Long story short, I wanted out. How? Take yourself out of the picture, old pals give up your name faster than a comet. To protect the band they run with, they betray who they used to run with. An old code. To leave is big danger. What happened, off the grid, I stole from a warehouse.’
She cocked her chin, curious. ‘What does that mean, “off the grid”?’
‘Not sanctioned. No boss involved. Petty crime, we run our own deals on the side, nobody is to care. Bosses let us have our fun. To them, we honed skills later they could use. I fenced what I stole. One transaction, boxes of transistor radios. I knew what I should get for them. Not that much, but I did not get close. Ripped off by a fence. That aggravation in me led to this: I would be a fence myself. Offer honest prices for dishonest goods. I learned. Using your word, I learned “stuff”. You need for this business a stake. To borrow from sharks you must be three-quarters mad. How do I get the big paydays to establish myself in business?’
He allowed the question to hang in the air while they both sipped tea.
‘How did you?’ Quinn asked.
‘I go to a boss. Tell to him my plan. He understands my heart. I was not leaving the life. Only a new path to walk on. I was not putting myself outside the influence. To help me build my stake, the boss hired me.’
‘To do what?’
‘To set fires.’
‘Wait. What?’
‘Restaurants I burned. Factories almost out of business, apartments under construction, bars that lost their license. Insurance scam. Also, intimidation or retaliation. The gamut, Quinn. I burned my way to success. Nobody was hurt. Sheer luck. I might have killed somebody. Killed children, the wee tots. I thank the Man Upstairs I did not.’ Ezra pointed up. ‘Blind and stupid I was. Young, like you, but more foolish. I made my money then walked away. Established my business.’
‘You became a fence,’ Quinn summed up.
‘A surprise to you the people I meet in my profession.’
She didn’t understand why he said that or why he was drilling her with a look.
‘Like me?’ she asked.
‘You are one. Also, your father.’
‘My father?’
‘Your mother, too.’
‘My mother!’
‘In olden days. Do you know when your father left the rackets?’
‘I do, yeah.’
‘The day you were born.’
‘I know. How come you do?’
‘Before you, not even his most wonderful wife could stop him. Suddenly,’ Ezra snapped his fingers, ‘like that.’
‘How do you know my father’s my father?’
‘When you walked in here, I did not. Then you told me more than I needed to know.’ He looked at her slyly.
‘My name.’
‘How many Quinns and at your age? Your mom was an O’Quinn.’
‘I was named after her.’
‘Rachel Quinn Tanner. I heard about you three days after you were born. Your father, he gave to me a cigar to celebrate. Disgusting thing, a cigar. But I smoked. I shared in the good news of your arrival.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yes, wow. The cigar made me sick. The same day, he told me he was done. Easy, for him. He was a tough guy. He had a baby girl. I hope I have not betrayed him with you. In his old life he was a thief. You know this, right? A safecracker.’
‘My mom told me when she was dying. She wanted me to look after him.’
‘He didn’t send you to me?’
‘No! Have you told my father—?’
‘Quinn. Look at me. Am I looking like an idiot?’
‘I don’t think you’re an idiot.’
‘Why would I betray you? Or break your father’s heart? He quit the business to work in a factory, and that is how hard? He did this to be a good father to you. Am I supposed to tell him his daughter now follows in his original footsteps? I prefer that my bones not be broken.’
‘OK, OK. Don’t have a bird.’
‘A fence, I became. Figured out how to move merchandise the safest way. At reasonable prices. I prospered. Years go by. I have no record as an adult. Clean as a whistle. Under my new name, that is the truth. I have a legitimate license to be a pawnbroker. An objection gets raised, an allowance is paid. Besides, friends I have.’
She scoffed at the word he used and repeated it. ‘An allowance …’
‘Say what you want. I am a legitimate pawnbroker. Some will become fences, tempted by stolen property. Their morals split at the seams like old pants. With me, I am a fence first, with a legitimate facade for my work. Everything is small time. No attention to me. I live a good life, better than deserved. Along the way, if I help a young person who is on the hard path, that gives my life something extra. I protected you, Quinn, before I heard your name. For sure, after.’
‘I’m not arguing with you. Only trying to understand.’
He went on as if he was explaining it to himself. ‘Maybe you had extra attention because your parents I admire. But I treated you with kindness from the start. Tell me no different.’
‘Don’t have a
bird.’
‘I work, I live, outside the law. That does not mean I have no heart. It does not mean I have no conscience a man can depend on for his life.’
‘I never said you didn’t!’
He was momentarily startled by her outburst. ‘No, but still you wonder when I will grab you in the dark. Forget it. Instead, if you have business to do, Quinn, bring it to me. If you are smart.’
He tried to elicit a smile with his last remark, and she gave back a tepid one.
‘One thing more, my young Quinn. I did not tell your father I know you. Believe me, he does not want to find that out. Do the same. Don’t tell him you know me. I say this for your sake, and maybe for mine. Your father is a calm man. But a man no one wants to cross. You are my secret. I must be yours. We agree?’
‘Agreed. Ezra, how come, if you’re looking out for me, you never try to stop me stealing?’
He gave his chin a melancholy rub. ‘To a man in a wheelchair, I’d like to say, “Pick up your chair and walk, don’t run.” When I do that, nothing happens. He keeps wheeling around. To the blind man, I say, “Here is mud in your eye. When I wipe it clean, you will see again.” They never do. They stay blind. They do not appreciate me making their faces muddy, either.’
Through all her woes, he was causing her to giggle.
‘Oh, they get so irritated. If I said to you “Stop, thief! Steal no more!”, what would you do?’
She admitted, ‘Tell you to eff off.’
‘Why then I bother? If you want to quit the business, Quinn, quit. Quit. Quit. Quit. If you don’t want to, no point for me to say “Quinn, it’s time.” Say nothing if you want, but if you want to tell me how big the trouble it is you are in today, say it. On a scale of one to ten, how big your trouble?’
She suppressed a quaver in her throat. ‘Out of ten? A twelve. About. Fourteen?’
He inhaled sharply. ‘That’s a lot of trouble. What can you share?’
She decided that she liked tea. Perhaps in the old days her mother had her sample some. She sipped. She said, ‘I had a boyfriend. He had a car. That was key because I needed him to be my getaway driver.’
‘About this we talked. You progressed with that idea.’
‘What doesn’t make sense is, last night—’