“We?” the director said again.
“If we can find Mission Dolores,” Jack replied.
“It’s an old church here in the city,” Hitchcock said. “As a matter of fact, I intend to view it later today for a potential location shoot.”
“So we can go together,” Jack said.
Hitchcock’s fleshy lips pressed together. “I suppose if the kidnapper planned to do something truly dastardly or dangerous, he’d choose a place where less divine attention might swing his way. But where would this ransom come from?” Hitchcock added.
“You’re rich,” said Jack.
“Young man, even the wealthy don’t keep that kind of money in their pockets. It would take days to get it together, at least.”
“We’ve already got ten thousand,” Jack said. He waved the stack of cash in front of his face.
“That would be stealing,” the director said.
“Well, you know what they say. ‘It takes a thief . . .’ ”
“Indeed.”
“Now, do you know where I can get the other hundred and ninety thousand in just three hours?”
Hitchcock drifted toward the dresser. “We’ll probably both end behind bars, but as long as we are being naughty boys . . .”
He opened the jewelry box. When he turned back to Jack, he had a large ring on each finger.
“Perhaps these would help us? They must be worth a few quid.”
“WORTHLESS, JUST LIKE THE OTHERS,” the jeweler said. “Worthless!” He was a lean, shriveled man. His tongue darted in and out when he wasn’t speaking, as if he were taking little tastes of the air. With his loupe held stationary in one eye and the other eye flitting from face to face between Hitchcock and Jack, he looked positively reptilian.
“But diamonds that big must be worth something,” Jack said.
“Diamonds this big are worth a fortune, sonny. A fortune,” the jeweler replied. “Even crystal this big is worth something. But this? Paste. Just paste! Don’t take a bath in them or they will melt away. Ha!”
“But—”
“You would get better from a box of Cracker Jacks. And have something sweet to munch. Heh!” The jeweler threw the rings onto the counter with a careless toss of his hand.
Behind him, on a round table, blue flames flickered from a one-ring burner. A little pot with an intricately engraved copper bowl the size of a billiard ball sat on top. A long silver handle extended from the bowl. The handle vibrated and the pot rattled as the water inside it boiled over and splashed on the burner with a hiss.
Jack leaned forward to pick up the rings. As he did so, something slipped out between the second and third buttons of his shirt. The jeweler’s hand shot forward and formed a fist above Jack’s heart. He yanked Jack toward him a little before loosening his grip to reveal the dog tags and silver coffin. The tip of his tongue peeked out through his lips, unmoving for the moment, as he peered at the little silver charm. His loupe swung up and down like some mad optical metronome.
“This may be worth something, boy,” the jeweler said. Hiss.
“The coffin?” Jack asked. “It’s not for sale.” He pulled gently on the chain. The silver charm adhered for a moment to the jeweler’s palm, then slipped away and disappeared into Jack’s shirt.
The pot hissed a third time. The jeweler grabbed the far end of the handle and poured the steaming water into a tiny cup in front of Jack. A caramel-colored froth bubbled up in the cup and spilled a little over the side, leaving a trail of black grounds.
“Coffin? Heh!” said the jeweler. “Still I will give you something for it. You came to sell jewelry, no? You need money, yes? Money?”
“Look, it’s not for sale,” Jack repeated.
“Bet you don’t even know what it is. Do you? Coffin! Huh! Why do you want to hang on to something, when you don’t even know what it is?”
“I know what it is.”
“Yes? Yes? Well, what then? What?”
Jack held the pendant beneath his shirt. He bit his lower lip and mumbled, “Amum . . . ento mrrr . . .”
“What? A memento? Did you say ‘memento’? Of what?”
“A memento mori,” Jack said. “All right? Have you heard of that? A token of mortality. A reminder of death. Jeez.”
“Death. Death? Whose death?”
“My father’s, all right?”
“Father’s? Heh!” The jeweler peered at Hitchcock through his loupe. Up and down the eyepiece swung, taking in the dark suit, the sunglasses and hat. “Not sure I give him long, but he is not dead yet.”
“Good heavens! I’m not the boy’s father,” Hitchcock said. “I am a director in the cinema.”
“Movie pictures?” the man said. “Pfff. Never watch them. Foolish food for fools.”
Hitchcock’s placid, round-eyed face broke out in lines and squints. “Well!”
“My father died a long time ago,” Jack said, “in the Second World War. And the Marine Corps must have made this as a memorial.” He fished out the charm. He turned it over to show the words written in capital letters on it. “See. It has a phrase in Latin, like the armed forces use for mottos and stuff. IPSE DIS.”
“And what does the phrase mean, sonny? Hmm? Tell me.” The jeweler removed the top from a little ceramic dish and pinched up the gray-brown powder inside. This he sprinkled from a height above the tiny cup. A dusting of it blew through the air. It smelled a little like cinnamon, but with a lemony tang that bit at Jack’s nose.
“I don’t know for sure,” Jack said. “I looked up the words, though. ‘Ipse’ means ‘himself.’ ‘Dis’ is from ‘dives.’ It means ‘having value or worth.’ I guess it means, ‘He was a worthy man.’ He must have been a hero.”
“Heh! So you think the marines gave out little silver coffins to heroes? Stars, yes. Crosses. Eagles. Even ladies with flaming swords. But coffins? Hah! No.”
Jack’s bottomless pit engulfed him. He said nothing.
But Hitchcock did. “You know,” he said, “there isn’t much to be said in favor of grown men who pick on young boys. Dreadful habit. Perhaps, instead, if you know something about the little charm, you would be so kind as to tell us.”
The jeweler looked toward Jack, whose bowed head hid his eyes. The jeweler’s eyepiece sagged a little. “No harm meant,” he said. “It is just funny to know what little boys think. Hmm? Hmmm? A little coffin! Memento! Ha! Little know-it-all.”
“Well, then,” Hitchcock said. “What is it?”
“It . . . Hm! Well, it is sort of . . . You could say . . . Heh!”
“Yes?”
“A memento,” the jeweler finished.
Jack looked the jeweler square in the eyepiece. “Oh, really.”
“Yes. But not a memento mori. No! More of a . . . memento fortuna. Yes. Fortuna!”
“What’s that?” Jack said. “You’re making it up.”
“Memento fortuna? Maybe. But perhaps you have heard of the Gold Rush? Hmm? When men of bold heart dug up the West to look for precious minerals? Heh? But do you think gold and silver come out of ground in the shapes of coins and bars?”
“I guess not,” Jack said.
“No. Of course not. So! Before the federal government set up a mint here, they gave the authority to assayers to strike coins and bars. Ingots really—gold and silver bars. Coffin-shaped bars, yes. Reputable assayers stamped ingots with an alphanumeric”—he said the word slowly, like he was unaccustomed to its shape in his mouth—“a string of letters or numbers—the name of company to assure quality. Maybe numbers to show purity, say, or a serial number, or a dollar value. Most coins and bars they sent east to Philadelphia, to make into federal money. But some circulated here. It was the only time a state legally made its own money.” He scooped the air in front of him, as if running his fingers through a pile of coins. Then his hands swung to the side and he shrugged. “Maybe some miner forty-niner kept a bar to remember his lucky strike.”
Jack took out the silver ingot and looked at it. “Ki
nd of small for a silver bar, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” The jeweler waved his hand vaguely in front of him. “Many sizes were made. Maybe a miner had a little one made, like a souvenir. Heh! Or maybe he had only a little strike. Ha!” He looked closer. “IPSE DIS. Maybe this is the name of assayer’s company?”
Jack rubbed the little silver bar between his thumb and forefinger. “Memento fortuna. And it’s worth a lot?”
“A lot? Who knows? Eventually the U.S. mint came here and made federal money. So assayer coins and ingots are rare. Museums and collectors may pay big for a ‘memento’ like this, if it is a verified ingot from those days. It must have a proper, authentic stamp though. Heh! Wait here.” He ducked around a curtain behind the counter.
Jack stared at the silver coffin—no, ingot—for maybe the millionth time. For so long it had been the only connection he had to his father, besides his mother’s sparse knowledge. He’d gone to the library in LA. The librarian was helpful, but couldn’t identify it. She suggested that it was from the Marines, since it was on the same chain as the dog tags, and that seemed plausible. She had shown him a Latin-English dictionary, so he could translate the words. Would he now finally find out something that would tell him who his father was? Had he been a coin collector? No. Something more adventurous.
“Maybe he was a treasure hunter,” Jack said out loud.
“Who?” asked Hitchcock.
“My father. He died before I was born. I don’t know much about him. I don’t even know what he looked like. Except Mom said I look just like him.” Never knew him, but miss him just the same. Sort of. Does the paper miss the erased line? Jack wondered what scores and smears of his father’s life would impress themselves upon him.
“I see,” said the director, “and you think perhaps he was a treasure hunter because this man believes this charm is some sort of historic artifact?”
Jack looked again at the string of letters on the charm. “Maybe if he had lived, we would have gone caving in an old gold mine together and found a new vein that everyone had overlooked and we’d be rich.” A wistful look played across Jack’s face. “I wish all the time I could speak to him.” He looked at Hitchcock. “Have you ever been caving?”
“I haven’t the proper shape,” Hitchcock replied.
“We should go. You’d like it, I think,” Jack said.
Hitchcock stood a little straighter and buttoned his jacket. “If my schedule allowed such frivolity, it is possible I would.”
“Oh,” Jack said, looking down, “right.”
The jeweler came back, leafing through a little book. “All assayer marks are here. I . . . IP . . . IPE . . . IS—No. Nothing. Not here. No assayer left this mark.” He bent over and looked at the silver ingot again through the loupe. “A few dollars for the silver. Otherwise—worthless.”
Jack closed his hand around it. “No, it isn’t.”
“Worthless,” the jeweler repeated. “Like the rings. Leave now. Take this worthless junk with you. Passing off ragweed as roses. Heh!” He took a sip of his coffee. “Hurp.” He burned his tongue.
“Pity,” Hitchcock said. “Come, Jack, let’s leave this man to his work. I’m sure he has many brass rings to gold-plate.”
Hitchcock collected Aunt Edith’s rings. As they exited the shop, a limousine pulled up. The chauffeur got out and opened the car door for a well-dressed elderly gentleman with a pretty young woman on his arm. Hitchcock glanced back at the jeweler. Then he flipped the sign on the glass door to CLOSED. He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and began coughing into it. When the old man reached the door, Hitchcock held out his hands, pointing to the sign.
“So early? But it isn’t closing time yet,” the rich man said.
“Sorry—aherm ahrharharharh,” Hitchcock sputtered. “Touch of the flu. Ah—Ahchooo!” He sneezed on the old man, who covered his face with his hat and pushed the young woman back into the limo.
Hitchcock smiled and peered in at the unwitting jeweler. “Poor bloke,” he said. “Looks as if he just lost a major sale.”
“LOOK. WE HAVEN’T GOT TIME for goofing,” Jack said. The limousine squeezed up the narrow alley of Maiden Lane. Jack followed on foot, searching for another jeweler.
“On the contrary,” Hitchcock replied, striding to keep up. “There’s always time for a practical joke.”
“We have a deadline,” Jack said. The shadows of small trees sprouting from the sidewalk crowded up to their trunks. Noon was fast approaching.
“Actually, I have several deadlines, ones that I am currently postponing to be here.” The director’s voice was diamond hard, much as Aunt Edith’s rings were not.
“But this is important,” Jack said. He crossed over Grant Avenue, a main thoroughfare. Cars coughed out exhaust as they dodged delivery vans. Truck drivers unloaded boxes large and small.
“As is my work.” They continued down the relatively quiet alleyway, past the many small shops of luxury goods.
“Adults always talk about work. But this is my life. My life is more important than your work. My life isn’t supposed to be an orphan.” Anger scrambled Jack’s words. “Adults aren’t supposed to leave,” he ended miserably.
“Yes. Well . . .” Hitchcock trailed off. He looked down at the sidewalk. So did Jack. The concrete was fractured and pitted. From habit, Jack avoided stepping on the cracks. He’d never wanted to break his mother’s back. It seemed pointless now, but he noticed Hitchcock did the same thing. The silence stretched as the pair trooped past the storefronts. Then Hitchcock said, “I don’t think another jeweler will help. That’s the third one who said these rings are worthless.”
“I don’t understand how that could be,” Jack said. “I mean, what’s a lady who carries around ten thousand dollars in her purse doing with fake jewelry?”
“Perhaps the money is fake too? I myself had a distant aunt who liked to run off ten-shilling notes on a little press in the potting shed. Strictly butter and egg money, of course.”
Jack stopped, tilted his head, and closed one eye. “Is that true?” he asked.
“True enough for the movies,” Hitchcock answered.
Jack shrugged. He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket. If he had ever seen one before, he might have pulled up its image in his mind for comparison. But he hadn’t. His artist eyes, however, found nothing suspicious in the etched loops and whorls of the greenback he held. “It looks real enough.”
“Young man, I hope you aren’t carrying around the whole wad. Not in this neighborhood.”
Jack looked around. They had come to the end of Maiden Lane, where its trickle of commerce flowed from the headwaters of a vast public space surrounded by department stores, hotels, and specialty boutiques.
“Union Square?” Jack said. “But this place is perfectly safe. It’s full of rich people.”
“Well, yes. And how do you think they got that way? Thieves, murderers, and Mafia dons are likely nesting nearby.”
“Actually I think the police commissioner and some city politicians live around here.”
“Criminals of a worse kind!” said Hitchcock, taking the bill from Jack. He held it up to the sun. He rubbed it between his fingers. “Yes. Authentic beyond question. Now put this away safe.”
Women in hats and gloves with shopping bags slung over their arms bustled past. Across the square a display of old-time firefighting equipment was being assembled, part of the Festival of Progress earthquake celebration.
Jack stuffed the bill back into his pocket. He was now extra conscious of the lump the money made there. “I hope we don’t get robbed.”
“Despite my warning, young man, the square is full of good people at this time of day.” Hitchcock sat down on a bench to rest. “But I wouldn’t walk it in the wee hours of the night. Imagine how that would be.” Jack did. He would like to draw it that way, just the solid reliable stones and monuments, empty of the flowing, unstable crowds of people. Hitchcock stretched his arms out in front of him, ma
king a rectangle with his hands, and panned across the square. People glanced in his direction but kept walking in a sophisticated urban sort of way, until his arms lined up with a school group on a field trip—a pack of young girls in plaid skirts who giggled and pointed.
“You have a fan club,” said Jack, joining the director on the bench.
“One of the dangers of being a public figure,” Hitchcock said, still panning with his hands. “A single man walks across the abandoned square. A lonely image, made more so because one doesn’t expect such a place to be empty.”
“Mr. Hitchcock, please. We need to find a way to get the ransom money.”
“Do we?”
“What? Yes!” Had he said “we” with just a little too much emphasis? As if only Jack needed the money? “Look, didn’t you read the ransom note?”
“Young man, there are certain principles of film-making that I have found translate acceptably well to life. One of them is best summed up by saying ‘If the audience wants what it sees, it will see what it wants.’ ”
“Huh?” Jack stared at the director. Behind him the fan club girls were coming closer. They’d circled around for a rear attack.
“In the cinema an audience can be manipulated, through camera angles, through story sequencing, through counterpoint and the creation of suspense. And once you have manipulated the audience’s emotion, you can make them see what you wish them to. And we do have an audience—an audience of one.”
“The kidnapper!”
“Yes. And we have something that he wants, and wants badly.” Hitchcock leaned back on the bench, turning his face to the sun overhead.
“The money. But we don’t actually have it.”
“No, but he wants it. He is expecting it. When an audience is expecting something you needn’t give it all to them. Just show them a little, and their imagination will do the rest.”
Jack considered this. “So we can make ten thousand dollars look like two hundred thousand?”
“With a little planning and a little luck. And we have a lucky charm, after all.”
A Hitch at the Fairmont Page 7