What Is Left the Daughter (24 page)

However, it's not as if life hasn't offered some recent surprises. For instance, there's a pawnshop on Salter Street just off Hollis. It's called J. P.'s Pawn, the proprietor being J. P. MacPherson, who arrived through Pier 21 from Scotland. I couldn't tell you what the J. P. stands for. I'd passed by this shop more times than I can count. I'd looked in through the window and seen J. P. chatting up a customer. Seen the sign over her counter that reads
NO BARGAINING—NO EXCEPTIONS!
From what I'd noticed, she was not quite fifty, somewhat thick at the middle, with a shock of reddish hair and a no-nonsense, determined look. Then again, I'd never set foot in her pawnshop until about a year ago. On a freezing Saturday afternoon I was ten steps from her awning, which was sagging under snow—she should have rolled it up—when I saw her wielding a snow shovel out front. Suddenly she slipped and fell hard to the gutter. I stepped right up and said, "Can I help you there?"

"I don't know, can you?" she said.

She allowed me to take her by the elbow and help lift her to her feet. The sleeves of her overcoat were soaked with dirty slush. "Thank you," she said. "As you can see, we've got a lot of fine merchandise in the window." Quick back to business like that. When J. P. MacPherson went into her shop, my eyes immediately fell on a display of five radios, front and center in the window. And I confess, Marlais, that even at my age, I almost burst into tears right there on the public sidewalk. There was an Emerson Snow White model, a Majestic with a Charlie McCarthy decal, an RCA from the San Francisco Expo, an RCA Victor La Siesta and a Stewart Warner set with a decal of the Dionne quintuplets.

Now, I realized that any number of these models had been manufactured. But I went inside and said to J. P. MacPherson, "I'd like to purchase all those radios in the window."

"This far away from Christmas?" she asked.

"They wouldn't be for gifts."

"I can take them out for your inspection, one by one or all at once," she said. "Which do you prefer?"

"All at once," I said.

"Fine."

She lined up the radios on the counter. I looked them over. "By any chance were there more radios brought in by the same person on the same day?" I asked. "Like these—not your everyday radios."

"That's short guesswork, all right," she said. "Yes. As a matter of fact there's more out back. Each and every one of real character. I take it you're a collector of sorts."

"May I see the others, please?"

It took about ten minutes for J. P. to produce twenty-three more radios, which now completely covered the counter.

"I've had these for quite a while," she said. "A number sold quickly. Then never sold, never sold, never sold, so I stuck them in back. I'd just put them on display again last week. Lucky me."

"Lucky both of us," I said.

"The man who originally brought these in, brought in fifty-eight radios altogether," she said. "You don't forget that, I guess."

"I know your sign says no bargaining, so I won't haggle over price," I said. "But I want to suggest a trade."

"What sort?" she asked.

"I'll agree to buy all twenty-eight if you tell me who pawned them in the first place."

She didn't hesitate an instant. She opened a drawer in a metal file cabinet and after a quick search lifted out an invoice. "Are you police?"

"My name is Wyatt Hillyer," I said. "I can give you a tele phone number to call to verify that I'm a detritus gaffer for the City of Halifax. Hold the radios for me. I'd give you a down payment right now. How's that?"

"So that's what you people are officially called, detritus gaffers," she said. "I've always wondered. I've seen your crew out in the harbor."

"We're pretty noticeable, I guess."

"Listen," she said, "if you ever find something that you deem pawnable—"

"We officially have to report everything," I said. "Most of what we find is broken or otherwise useless, but not all of it. For instance, we fished out a complete set of encyclopedias."

"No kidding," she said. "Well, you know where my shop is, just in case."

She studied the invoice a moment and said, "These radios were pawned by a Mr. Paulson Lessard, resident at 56 Robie Street, Halifax."

"Thank you," I said. "How about what I've got in my wallet, eighteen dollars, as a down payment?"

"That's a lot of money to carry around," she said. "Just come back Monday and it'll be in one bill of sale, what say?"

"I'm going to take the rare day off work to do just that," I said. "I'll start to feel in ill health when, do you think?"

J. P. laughed a little, like she was pleased to participate in such harmless chicanery, and said, "Well, Mr. Hillyer, you know your superiors and I don't. But to be convincing, I'd claim you woke to a raging fever about three
A.M.
Monday morning.
Woke to a raging fever—
be sure to use those exact words. If you're worried about being caught out on the street Monday, I can send my husband, Oliver Tecosky, over to wherever's your address. He'll have the radios and you can give him the money and sign the bill of sale."

"A pawnshop that makes house calls," I said. "That's something."

"Let me write down your address," she said.

"I've been at the Waverly Hotel for six months or so," I said. "Two Seventy-four Barrington."

She wrote down the address. "Let's see, banks open at nine, so how's eleven
A.M.?
"

"I'll be in the lobby."

"I can tell you're good for the money, Mr. Hillyer," she said.

"And I can tell you're good for a fair price," I said.

"Let me add another item of interest. I'm making one hundred percent profit off these radios, due to the fact that Mr. Lessard's met his Maker."

"How do you know that?"

"I generally believe the obituaries in the
Mail.
"

"Not every day a man pawns fifty-eight radios, eh?"

"It was memorable," she said. "You know what else? When Mr. Lessard first brought these radios in, he said he was going to use the money to travel down to New York City to stay in a hotel and go in person to see a live orchestra. The such-and-such orchestra, I can't recall."

Marlais, at that moment I had unforgiving thoughts toward Paulson Lessard, the cunning old bastard. I kept them to myself, though. J. P. didn't have to suffer them.

The following Monday, as promised, I met Oliver Tecosky, nice man, in the lobby, and after a few excursions up and down in the lift, within half an hour every last one of the radios was on my bed. He told me the price, I paid him in full, and he left, the whole time maybe ten words spoken between us. I percolated coffee and the telephone rang. I thought maybe it was Oliver Tecosky, that he'd forgotten a radio, but it happened to be the Waverly's accountant, Frances Banner. She reminded me that I was late three weeks in my rent. "That's not like you, Mr. Hillyer," she said. "Usually—according to my records, you're usually no more than two weeks late."

"Well, I've just put out a lot of money for twenty-eight radios," I said.

"Why on earth?"

"So I'm a bit overdrawn. Which means I can't pay my rent just yet," I said. "But I can put in overtime at work, and that's guaranteed."

"My call was an order from management, Mr. Hillyer," she said.

"So, Mr. Brockman asked you to call me."

"Yes, Mr. Brockman," she said, "the hotel manager."

"Can I speak to him, please?"

"It won't do any good, Mr. Hillyer. I've made inquiries around town, and Mr. Brockman suggests the Homestead Hotel at 6 Duke Street. Their rent is twelve per month more reasonable than ours, if you catch my meaning."

"This isn't good news."

"It could be worse," she said. "Mr. Brockman's not charging you this month's rent."

"That's very decent of him," I said.

"The Homestead has a room reserved under your name. Mr. Brockman took the liberty."

"The fact of why he had to call them couldn't be much of a recommendation for me," I said.

"It's not so undignified as all that, Mr. Hillyer," she said. "You're hardly the first we've made such an arrangement for. And hotels in Halifax try to accommodate each other. Whenever possible."

I needed only two days to move. I was now in room 301 at the Homestead Hotel, which was a bit shabbier than the Waverly, but my room looked out through clean windows onto Duke Street, and there was a closet spacious enough to hold the radios. The bed had a good mattress, and my neighbors on either side, and above and below, were fairly quiet. I'd persuaded two bellmen from the Waverly to help me carry my possessions across town. I bought them each a beer at Rigolo's.

A week later, I'd come back from a long, exhausting day of gaffing in rough weather. Still in my work clothes, I sat at my one table, eating halibut, green beans and carrot sticks off the hot plate and listening to Corelli, the gramophone turned low, when I had the idea to telephone Cornelia. It may be that I wanted to hear a familiar voice, even though there may not be much to say. Just to speak with an old friend. I tapped the receiver buttons half a dozen times and the switchboard operator said, "How may I help you, room 301?"

"I'd like to call a Mrs. Cornelia Tell in Middle Economy," I said. "I have the number right here. Should I read it to you?"

There was a long silence. Maybe the switchboard operator was new on the job, didn't know how to connect a long-distance call. But finally she said, "Wyatt Hillyer, I noticed your name in the hotel registry."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's your old neighbor Reese," she said. "Reese Mac Isaac."

I can guarantee you, Marlais, that I almost fell off my chair. It wasn't so much that Reese was still living in Halifax. In fact, I thought I'd seen her a few times across some street I was walking on, and once through a restaurant window, but on those occasions I couldn't really be sure. More, it was the fact that she'd described herself as "your old neighbor." As if a whole world of incidents and experiences had been reduced to that.

"You know, I saw you that day," she said. "How many years back? You were standing with two people quite a bit older than you, and I was boarding the
Victoria,
going to New York City. This wasn't long after Katherine and Joe had died and I was being hounded by newspaper reporters and had to get out for a while. I stayed in New York only a short time. Foolish me and all of my foolish ambitions, eh? I actually considered trying to find acting work, but when I consulted the trade papers, there were hundreds of people looking for the same kind of work. You can't imagine. I didn't know how to go about things there. I walked around a lot and sat in my hotel room and came back within a couple of weeks. Job to job to job—and I ended up here at the Homestead about two years ago."

"You've traveled widely in Halifax," I said. "Same as me, hotel to hotel."

"That's right."

"It seems being a switchboard operator suits you," I said.

"I need a job and I know this job," she said. "In that sense it suits me."

"My parents and I saw you in
Widow's Walk.
"

"Were you surprised I wasn't nominated for an Academy Award?"

"As it turned out, what surprised me was what you meant to my mother and my father," I said. "
That's
what surprised me."

"It surprised us three as well," she said.

"Yeah, it surprised them both off a bridge."

There was a long silence.

"I'll try and connect your call now, Wyatt," she said.

In about ten minutes Reese Mac Isaac called back and said, "I let it ring thirty times or more, but your Cornelia Tell didn't pick up. Shall I try again later?"

"Maybe tomorrow," I said.

"I'm not supposed to use the switchboard for personal business," she said, "but I'm in my same house, 60 Robie. Just for your information."

"Goodbye, switchboard operator," I said.

"Did you ever know that old Paulson Lessard got a public notice and was fined for disturbing the peace?"

"I'm not on speaking terms with Mr. Lessard," I said.

"Nobody is, since he's dead and buried, Wyatt," she said.

"He pawned off my mother's radios."

"That was unkind."

"It was out-and-out theft."

"Him receiving a fine and citation, it's a small piece of news, I know. I mean, we've been through a war, haven't we? It's a small, small piece of news, but what happened was, when you moved out of town, you apparently had arranged for Paulson Lessard to look after your house. You gave him a key."

"That's true."

"Well, one Sunday night he had all of Katherine's radios blasting music at top volume. More noise than if a ghost walked through a zoo. You see, I'd only just come back from New York and was asleep when it happened. I woke up and looked through my kitchen window, but I didn't see anyone in your house. A neighbor from across the street called the police. I went out on my porch. The neighbor was standing on your front lawn. I wasn't on speaking terms with her. Nobody was on speaking terms with me, really. Except news paper reporters, and what they printed was unspeakable, all sorts of trash about me and Katherine, me and Joe. I was even offered tabloid money to tell my true story, so to speak."

"The harlot's true story," I said.

"Yes, harlot that I was," she said. "Anyway, a police car arrived and two officers knocked on your door. By this time, maybe ten or a dozen neighbors were on your lawn. I was looking out my kitchen window again. An officer stood on your porch and shined his flashlight in through your dining room window, and that's when I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lessard standing on your dining room table, naked as a jaybird. Not a lovely sight. And he was waving a spatula over his head like he was conducting an orchestra."

"What happened then?"

"They opened the front door and walked in and had a sit-down with Paulson Lessard," Reese said. "He'd wrapped the tablecloth around himself. In the end, he was charged only with disturbing the peace."

"I guess that didn't improve the reputation of my house any," I said.

"I'll say this for him, though," Reese said, "he watered the plants. He kept the lawn clipped and the snow off your driveway. He was old, but he got up on a ladder and washed windows."