Bluff City Pawn (30 page)

“You’ll have him commit crimes to get a lighter sentence?”

“Backwards, huh? ’Cept forwards is going broke. Don’t tell me what’s fair. I ain’t hearing from a loan shark about fairness. If I did what you did, it would tear me up. I’m saying, Harlan, he’ll be on board with this.”

Harlan worked for Huddy, and now he’s been passed on to do contract work for Joe. Huddy forgave Harlan’s debt, but Joe will make sure he redeems the bail. Why does Joe get to set Harlan’s amends? Where is Harlan? Here, nearby? Kept upstairs in a bedless room? Huddy listens for footsteps, a creak of a door half-opening. He looks to the window for a face to show, turns to the doorway for Harlan to cross the threshold. Maybe he’s skulking in the street, or hiding behind the roundabout rock.

“And this big lawyer, this plea deal, Harlan gets less by telling more?”

“Are you crazy? And lose the guns?”

But the guns are almost lost. Sitting level with Joe, and Huddy thought it was a clear conspiracy between the two of them against Harlan, thought Harlan was theirs, and now it’s Joe and the lawyer and Harlan colluding against him. Huddy is in the room, but he’s the odd man out. First-born and last-born, with Huddy in the excluded middle. “I think I’ma stick with my lawyer.”

“I’m not gonna play him against you, ’cause I’m in with you.”

“How do I know you’re bringing me all the gold?”

“How do I know you’re bringing back all the cash?”

He eyes Joe, who eyes him back with mutual suspicion. “I guess everyone’s siding with everyone.” Mirror images, with Joe trying to make money on both sides. “As long as we don’t trust each other equally, we’re okay.”

A shaky deal with no agreement, not even a hands-free nod. Joe’s arms stay folded and he adds to what wasn’t finalized, to what he might not deliver. “I can’t do halves on this. It’s gonna have to be two-thirds, one-third. ’Cause my risk is double.”

“Your risk? What role you playing? Maybe you ought split your thirds with who’s risking. Fifty-fifty. This money ought be shared three ways.”

“Okay,” Joe says, but Huddy knows how he’ll divide the difference, a high-low split with his third worth more. But Huddy won’t negotiate percentages for an absent party, and he won’t demand evens. “He said the way he did sheds was fast. Four or five in a night. Full speed, then wait for things to quiet down. Full speed again.”

His voice switches, and Huddy realizes Joe wasn’t just repeating Harlan’s words but attempting an impersonation. “Stash it here,” Huddy says. “No one’s worried about you.”

“I’m worried about me,” Joe says, back to his own voice. He looks around to comprehend how his open house can become a hiding place. He stretches his face, as if that mask that Huddy imagined fit on too tight. He taps his jaw. His cheeks are red, his eyes bulging as if sitting by fire, too close to burning air.

“I’m worried about you, Joe. You worried about Harlan?”

“Harlan’s not worried about Harlan.” Joe looks off, disowning. “Yeah, I’m worried.” But not for Harlan’s punishment but his experience, about whether he’s competent enough to be a professional thief. “You?”

“I think you better slap a GPS on him. Brand it on his butt.”

Joe tugs his arm to check his watch, frowning at the time, but Huddy knows it’s not impatience but fear. Joe’s not delayed today, because today is over, tomorrow is beginning, and he’s already running ahead breakneck.

“Harlan,” Joe says again, and for once tonight, the meaning can’t be apprehended. The name could be used as assurance or warning or grievance. Huddy’s only sure of what it’s long stopped being—a shared joke. Joe glances overhead, and Huddy can’t perceive that action either, if he’s confirming that Harlan’s up on the second floor, or if he’s praying to a higher power—for forgiveness or assistance or answers—or if he’s scared of all that could fall upon him, or if he’s saying,
Look at me, Huddy, hanging on air
.

“Harlan,” Huddy says back, his eyes not going vertical but straight ahead at Joe, as if Harlan were right there, in between. Huddy sees through him and then beyond to Joe, who appears to look back but only gazes inward, his body freezing.

“No,” Joe says, like he’d just flinched awake from a nightmare, and then he shuts his eyes as if he were entering another one, some picture of Harlan tripping alarms, being chased. Or maybe it’s his own arrest, Huddy can’t say. Joe draws his lips together, his eyes open and squinting to study what’s dreamless before him, which is just as confused, and he glances at Huddy for understanding, but Huddy can’t explain it—can’t find any reason in a voided room—how his life ended up here.

“You want to know how to make a million?” Joe asks.

“How’s that?” Huddy says.

“Start with ten.” Joe covers his neck, but Huddy still sees him swallow. “Let’s get this
over
,” Joe snaps, and his face seems to Huddy both sad and ferocious. Huddy hears the bad rhythm, the heavy, overworked sound, of Joe breathless again.

And with the conversation settled and with no interference—nothing in the way on the walls and every wall the same nothing, no centerpiece on the floor as if the entire floor, including the two people at the margins, were in the center—Huddy doesn’t need to close his eyes to any clutter. He can envision his entire inventory, his mind running through his stockpile to furnish a useful accessory, like a police radio, left by a cop with a drug problem, who pawned it, got fired and never reclaimed the device.

“You’re gonna need a scanner,” Huddy says, and they both sit still and don’t talk at all, as if they were already listening but not yet hearing outside voices.

Fourteen

But before any gold
comes in, the guns come out. A car appears, a man exits, enters Huddy’s store. He wears a suit, a badge, a gun, and he identifies himself: Shelby County Criminal Investigator. He asks if he’s Huddy Marr, and Huddy wonders about the cost of saying no. For an instant, he thinks he might get off lighter, that his lawyer knocked the charges down, the U.S. Attorney’s office dropping it into the county’s lap. Federal got bigger fish, and Huddy wants to be small, and maybe this has all been a scare.

“Mister Marr,” the man says, “the state is prepared to send to the grand jury a statement with the following charges.” He places a large sheet of paper on the counter, but Huddy is unsure if he’s supposed to read the paper or keep hearing the man, so he listens to the litany. “Two counts of unlawful possession of a prohibited weapon. One count, false statement to law enforcement. One count, tampering with or falsifying official documents and evidence.”

Which means the charges haven’t been lowered, the federal laws mirror the state, the county DA treating him like he’s big enough to reduce him to nothing.

“Four charges. If you’re convicted of all four counts, you’re looking at a minimum of twelve years. We’re offering you an opportunity to play right, but you’ll catch these charges if you don’t play. We will refuse to prosecute on the condition that you give up all your guns and surrender your license. And you agree to contact Memphis Burglary Bureau if an individual is looking to drop off stolen merchandise.”

Huddy avoids the man. If he never looks up again, if he only looks down at the paper but never touches it, maybe the charges can never touch him.

“That’s the offer. Today. Right now.”

Huddy shakes his head. The man can stay, but the paper doesn’t belong here.

“You won’t cooperate?”

No, the man can’t be here either. “I don’t know who you think I am.”

The man points to the paper for his list of answers. There is nothing more to understand.

“I’m not some undertrader. These gun charges—”

“Sir, I’m only gonna run it down for you one more time. We’re done talking.” He repeats the charges, fast and emphatic, as if they’ve been memorized for years. “And you agree to apprise us of other criminal activity. Do you accept the terms?”

What about if Huddy knew of a plan in the works? Would he get his guns back? Keep them? But he can’t get credit for what he’s agreeing to do.

“No jail?” Huddy asks.

“As long as you play ball.”

He waits for something—a thought, a call, a signal. He is silent a long time. The wall clock reads 9:22 or 23, an in-between number, misaligned, as if this moment were happening too early or even more late. If this paper is on Huddy’s counter, why isn’t it for sale? His mind narrows. Then he nods.

“I’ll need you to open up your gun safes,” the man says, and he gets on his phone and Huddy sits and buries his face and before long two more vehicles appear, one identical to the investigator’s sedan, the other a white panel truck with gold lettering. The truck swings around and backs in next to the parked sedan, the other sedan parks on the other side, boxing the truck in between. Four men step out of the two vehicles and slide open the truck and remove Anvil cases and carry them into the shop. The investigator meets them inside the door and they huddle together and then the men walk to the back room and grab the guns and tie-wrap the cylinders, the guns go in a box, the box goes in the Anvil case, a receipt is attached to the case with the serial number of each weapon inside. Two men grab handles and carry a case to the investigator, who stands near the counter writing out the serial numbers. Huddy looks away, but the monitor shows the same image, as if the seizure is happening twice at once, one real and one recorded—but it should be happening a million real times. He’d switch off the recording, erase the footage, if it would help him forget this wrong moment, but it’s already his worst memory. The cases go out to the truck, the gate slides up and then down, the men return to the store with more cases and disappear into the back and emerge again. Huddy wants to leave. He doesn’t want to see this awful procedure. The men convey the cases, pause before the investigator for the writing, and walk again. The investigator provides Huddy with a copy of the manifest, three eleven-by-seventeen pages, all the guns listed, and Huddy can’t take his eyes off the pink pages.
Confiscated by Shelby County District Attorney’s Office, Criminal Investigative Division, File Number
—ten digits, far bigger than the profit Huddy would have made.
You want to know how to make a million?
Did he hear this line or think it himself or say it aloud? The investigator turns his back and leaves. Huddy stares at the gun list and wishes he were seeing these numbers for the first time, that he was back in the hunt room with the widow, starting the acquisition, his initial sight of those fine makes and numberings. He has a sick thought that these agents are working for her, that they’ve confiscated the guns to return them to her—perhaps the son has arranged it—to rest them back on the racks in Yewell’s gun room, which sits inside the treasure house, as if Huddy’s bid and purchase weren’t nothing but a break-in. When he closes his eyes, he sees the investigator handing the widow the original white copy of the manifest. He sees Kipp spinning the wheel. He opens his eyes and watches three cars drive off in a line, and it’s surprising that they turn left, away from Germantown, because he’d already completed the neat circle in his mind. It’s the quietest robbery ever, no smashed glass, no taunts, no roughing up. Nothing ransacked, everything standing. Never once rubbed his face in it. He’s never been so politely bullied.

He stares at the duplicate pages and calls Joe. “The guns are gone,” Huddy says, and he’s phoned because he doesn’t want to hear more face to face. “I’m out,” and the silence means Joe knows it’s more than the guns. No scanner, no selling.

“Me, too,” Joe says, but Huddy doesn’t believe him, he hears it being said to a third person who’s not listening in.

“Where’s Harlan?”

“You lost the guns. Got no right to find anyone.” The phone shuts off.

Driving home, he sees a dead animal on the road, but on closer inspection the carcass is nothing but a wet, mashed-up cardboard box. He tells Christie that it’s done, that he’s not going to jail, and when she asks about the guns, he turns away from the center of the bed and repeats to the wall that he’s not going to jail. He doesn’t mean to snub, but he just wants to be shut of the day. Except, he keeps thinking of the widow—as if each eye-blink trips a silent alarm in his head. He can’t help reconnecting the confiscation to her. She graciously thanks the men for the recovery, the pages a valued want list, while Kipp excuses himself to recount the guns.

It’s quiet and Huddy keeps to the bed edge. He can feel Christie deciding what to do with his ignoring. And then the mattress jostles as she shoves her weight out, her feet down on the floor and away. He pushes out, shuffles along the narrow aisle between the bed and the wall, through the hallway and follows her into the living room, where she’s at the front door, and he thinks she’s turning the key to go outside—he’s about to say, “Wait”—but she’s just double-checking the deadbolt. He hears metal click against metal. The sound is thick and solid. Not a safety lock, but it still feels pickproof and secure.

“I’m glad you ain’t going to
jail
, Huddy,” she says, and she falls back on the couch. He stands before her, his toes touching the scatter rug. Her hand rakes across her face, and then drops to her lap. “Now, you wanna tell me where you
are
going? Maybe fill me in on
that
.”

He presses a hand to his forehead to stop the pounding. He tries to answer, but his day’s been too full of demands and penance.