Meter Maids Eat Their Young (7 page)

My first response was to ask him why he was sucking up to me. I tempered that and walked back to him, noting the freshly printed piece of paper in his hand.

“We used to type those,” I said, feeling like an old fool. “Underwoods on every desk.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing,” I said. “So, uh …” I peered at the name tag pinned to his shirt, “Wesley, what are you working on?”

He looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand.

“Oh,” he said. “Nothing. Nothing as important as the Mangler, sir. Just some homeless guy who was mugged.”

“
Just
some homeless guy … mugged?” I said. “All the stories you're sent out to cover are important, kid. Don't ever forget that. What you see that means nothing today might mean something important tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I didn't mean to imply—”

“Don't worry about it, kid. Just follow the story through.”

“Yes, sir, I'll do that, sir.”

“Oh, and one last thing, Wesley.”

“What's that, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir'.”

I looked around the newsroom, noticing for the first time that all activity had stopped during this brief conversation with Wesley.

“My name is Teller,” I said to the room. “No ‘sir', no ‘mister.' Just Teller. Okay?”

I turned and walked out the door.

I cut across the street and was about to walk into the Coney Island place when a woman, dressed in a halter top with shorts so tight they looked painted on, handed me the single leaflet she was holding and quickly walked away.

The word CARPE was splashed across its width. I remembered my mental note to check out these folks. Now seemed as good a time as any, see if they could add anything to what I had. As I entered the restaurant, I read through the material, hoping for a phone number or address and getting nothing but information on an upcoming meeting. I was about to toss it away when I noticed the handwritten scrawl at the bottom of the page: Hock It To Me Pawn, Grospecke Highway.

I looked out the window for the woman who had handed me the flyer but she was nowhere in sight. She had been alone. She had walked right up to me. With nothing but the single flyer in her hand. Had I just been given an invitation to meet with the folks at CARPE?

I did a quick geographic calculation in my head, feeling my stomach churn over as I did. That part of Grospecke Highway was west of city center in the old, and mostly forgotten, industrial part of town. I'd been avoiding that section since my return. I'd spent seven years there in a little cinder-block apartment building off Rose Street, less than a brisk walk from that pawnshop. Five of those years with Robyn.

You're a journalist, Teller, a voice in my head nagged. You go where the story takes you. Yeah, yeah, I nagged back, easy for you to say. But I knew I would go. Had to go. I folded up the leaflet, ordered the dogs to go and hurried to my car.

The day was warming up. I had the windows down as I navigated my way along the slowest route I could think of to get to Grospecke Highway. Paul Simon slipped from the speakers and whispered that he was heading to Graceland. I felt like I was heading into memory's minefield.

It's strange how the geography of a city can change so abruptly. One minute you're moving down tree-lined streets of mid- and upper-class homes; baby carriages, swing-sets, Beamers and bikes with training wheels, then within a single block and a set of railroad tracks, you've crossed over into The Land Time Forgot.

As I made that transition, the air thickened with the smell of rusting iron and diesel fuel. What sunshine there was seemed purged of warmth and vitality. Ancient wooden warehouses hugged the old rail line, their heavy plank sides and thick beams crumbling in on them.

Abandoned cars, rusted, dented, their windows cracked and broken, most on cinder blocks or bare brake drums, lined the rutted streets like rotted teeth. An ominous wind had kicked up, as if welcoming my return, scattering beer cans and scraps of paper in endless eddies.

Despite having been born and raised here, Robyn had no notion this part of town existed before meeting me. After, she took to it like a big game hunter finding virgin wilderness. We made love in several of the old warehouses, even spending a Halloween night in one, telling ghost stories and drinking Bloody Marys.

Many were the evenings we trod the broken sidewalks and overgrown rail line. She'd found a lover for Dinger here. Dinger was my cat at the time and I hadn't understood then why she needed a lover. Time hasn't enlightened me any. But that was Robyn, the way she was, the way her head worked. The affair between Dinger and the old, orange tomcat Robyn had lured back to my apartment didn't work out. Dinger nearly tore the old boy apart. Maybe some relationships are never meant to be.

Though I had sworn I wouldn't, I found myself cruising down Rose Street. After HL's talk and my increasing immersion in the Robyn Zone, you'd think I'd have better sense than to add a visit to the apartment complex – if you can call six, drab grey, cinder block apartments a complex – where I'd spent so much time with Robyn. But then, I'm not sure I've ever been known for my good sense.

Shortly after coming back to town, I'd read that the juvenile detention center, once the view from my bedroom window, had expanded their territory, taking over the complex, turning the small apartments into housing for the night staff.

The apartments were dark. There were no cars in the pitted asphalt parking lot. I stared at the first apartment, the one closest to Rose Street. The cheap shag carpet had been a grotesque shade of green and always smelled of mold, stale beer and cigarettes. Except for one or two antiques, the furniture was mostly Salvation Army rejects. My old Harley had occupied the dining room. As I drove past, I could almost see my little red Fiat sitting out front. I could almost hear Robyn's laugh.

I hit the gas. This was stupid. I could feel that trapdoor in my chest opening up again and felt that at any moment I might fold up and drop through it, Buster's laugh following me to the hard glass bottom of the bottle.

I was passing the detention center when something caught my eye. I hit the brakes, reversed, stopped again. There was a sculpture along the roadway. I stared at it in amazement. How terribly sensitive, I thought, grinding my teeth. The sculpture depicted a family scene: dad and his daughter playing catch while mom and son sat nearby watching the action. What a happy, happy little scene for the kids inside. The closest most of them had ever come to a game of catch was when dad, or mom, bounced a baseball off their heads.

I hit the gas again, hard enough to make the tires squeal, trying to outrace my tumbling feelings. A moment later I pulled into the rutted parking lot behind the pawnshop and killed the engine. I sat there a moment, the blood pounding in my head, the trapdoor in my chest squealing closed on dry hinges.

The building was old cinder block, pitted in places as if someone had fired shots at the building. There was an ancient White Owl cigar mural, faded, all but colorless, covering the entire wall. From the looks of the chips in the cinder block, it appeared the owl had been the target.

Walking around to the front of the shop, I came up short when I spotted the sign hanging off the front of the building. I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Chics Dig Guys Who Pawn
. What the hell was that about? Bristling at the misspelling, I looked around, expecting to see typographically-challenged pawnshop groupies congregating, and trying to imagine what a typographically- challenged pawnshop groupie might look like. Except for a young guy, mid-thirties, maybe, with a shaved head and huge red earrings distorting his earlobes, sitting on the sidewalk between me and the front door, I was the sole human on the street.

I took a step back, my body doing the old goose-stepping-over-my-grave shiver as I stared at the kid, the sign forgotten. There was something familiar and unsettling about him. He was wearing black slacks and shirt, a black apron and a red-and-black checked wool vest. His backpack was open, his worldly possessions scattered around him. A wheels-up skateboard with a dirty Styrofoam cup full of something brownish, and a half-eaten sandwich sat within arm's reach. There was a large pile of multicolored ties in his lap and he was tying them, one by one, around his neck with perfect Windsor knots.

Cautiously, I made a wide arc around him and stepped quickly through the pawnshop door.

A chime sounded from somewhere in the back. Muffled voices, whether a radio or a conversation I couldn't tell, fell silent. I waited for someone to part the heavy curtains near the register but no one came. I sniffed the air. There was a familiar scent and it took but a moment for the connection to click. Jaz. Or rather the scent Jaz wore. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see her, or worse, the kid who'd been outside. There was no one there.

I looked around. The room was square with plaster walls painted off-white. Some sort of wavy-line design circled the room a foot below where the wall met the ceiling. Guitars, saxophones, flutes, every musical instrument imaginable hung from the upper half of the walls. Below were shelves stacked with recording equip.m.ent and stereos. Along the back wall shotguns and hunting rifles stood upright in locked cases. The handguns and jewelry were displayed in glass cases set in a U-shape on the hardwood floor. One case near the register held nothing but laptop computers, PDAs, and other computer-related equip.m.ent. A small, black box near the end caught my attention.

As I stared down it, it came to me what it was; a voice synthesizer. Before I could give it another thought, the curtains at the rear of the shop parted and a broad-shouldered man with an even broader smile stepped through.

“Mr. Teller,” he said, his booming voice matching his bulk.

I cocked my head, alert. “You know who I am? And it's Teller, by the way. No ‘mister.'”

“Teller, then,” he answered. “And I believe everyone in town knows who you are. The conquering hero returned to vanquish the parking enforcement dragons.”

He reached his hand across the counter. “Tom Philo, at your service.”

I took his hand. Despite his stocky build, he didn't pull the macho handshake on me. I liked him for that. I hate it when men think they have to crush your knuckles to show how manly they are.

A breeze puffed out the curtain. A door slammed somewhere in the back, startling Philo. His smile faded.

“Customer?” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” he answered. “Some folks, you know, don't like to be seen in a pawnshop. I, uh, think of them as my backdoor trade.”

He laughed but it sounded hollow and nervous to me. I looked down, noticed an empty space on the shelf between two laptops. When I looked back up at Philo, I caught him looking at the same spot. Color dotted his cheeks. Something was going on but I couldn't fathom what.

“You know you have a kid sitting outside your door, right?” I said, throwing him a curve ball. He seemed relieved by the change of subject.

“Oh. Yeah. He's there most every day. Comes for the coffee and sandwich, I think. Never comes in the store, just sits out there, wrapping his ties around his neck and talking to whoever it is he talks to. He's no bother, really. The kind of clientele one gets in a pawnshop and all that. No one pays him much attention. He never gets angry or belligerent. Doesn't drink or take drugs that I can tell. Odd, considering his parentage.”

“You know his parents?”

“Both dead,” he said, suddenly more nervous than he had been when the back door had slammed. “Both, uh, before my time here.”

“Is there something I'm missing here?”

“Um.” He took a deep breath, blew it out. Took another one. “His father,” he said. “I believe you knew his father.”

“Shit,” I said, half under my breath. That's why the kid looked so familiar. “Willy T.”