American Gods (31 page)

“Mine host puts the fiddle in its case on the counter, and
Abraham takes it like a mother cradling her child. ‘Tell me,’ says the host
(with the engraved card of a man w/ho’ll pay fifty thousand dollars, good cash
money, bijrniitgin his inside breast pocket), ‘how much is a violin like this
worth? For my niece has a yearning on her to play” the fiddle, and it’s her
birthday coming up in a week or so.’ a

“ ‘Sell this fiddle?’ says Abraham. ‘I could never sell her.
I’ve had her for twenty years, I have, fiddled in every state of the union with
her. And to tell the truth, she cost me all of five hundred dollars back when I
bought her.’

“Mine host keeps the smile from his face. ‘Five hundred dollars?
What if I were to offer you a thousand dollars for it, here and now?’

“The fiddle player looks delighted, then crestfallen, and he
says, ‘But lordy, I’m a fiddle player, sir, it’s all Iknow how to do. This
fiddle knows me and she loves me, and my fingers know her so well I could play
an air upon her in the dark. Where will I find another that sounds so fine? A
thousand dollars is good money, but this is my livelihood. Not a thousand
dollars, not for five thousand.”

“Mine host sees his profits shrinking, but this is business,
and you must spend money to make money. ‘Eight thousand dollars,’ he says. ‘It’s
not worth that, but I’ve taken a fancy to it, and I do love and indulge my
niece.’

“Abraham is almost in tears at the thought of losing his beloved
fiddle, but how can he say no to eight thousand dollars?—especially when mine
host goes to the wall safe and removes not eight but nine thousand dollars, all
neatly banded and ready to be slipped into the fiddle player’s threadbare
pocket. ‘You’re a good man,’ he tells his host. ‘You’re a saint! But you must
swear to take care of my girl!’ and, reluctantly, he hands over his violin.”

“But what if mine host simply hands over Barrington’s card
and tells Abraham that he’s come into some good fortune?” asked Shadow.

“Then we’re out the cost of two dinners,” said Wednesday. He
wiped the remaining gravy and leftovers from his plate with a slice of bread,
which he ate with lip-smacking relish.

“Let me see if I’ve got it straight,” said Shadow. “So
Abraham leaves, nine thousand dollars the richer, and in the parking lot by the
train station he and Barrington meet up. They split the money, get into
Barrington’s Model A Ford, and head for the next town. I guess in the trunk of
that car they must have a box filled with hundred-dollar violins.”

“I personally made it a point of honor never to pay more
than five dollars for any of them,” said Wednesday. Then he turned to the
hovering waitress. “Now, my dear, regale us with your description of the
sumptuous desserts available to us on this, our Lord’s natal day.” He stared at
her—it was almost a leer—as if nothing that she could offer him would be as
toothsome a morsel as herself. Shadow felt deeply uncomfortable: it was like
watching an old wolf stalking a fawn too young to know that if it did not run,
and run now, it would wind up in a distant glade with its bones picked clean by
the ravens.

The girl blushed once more and told them that dessert was apple
pie a la mode—”That’s with a scoop of vanilla ice cream”—Christmas cake a la
mode, or a red-and-green whipped pudding. Wednesday stared into her eyes and
told her that he would try the Christmas cake a la mode. Shadow passed.

“Now, as grifts go,” said Wednesday, “the fiddle game goes
back three hundred years or more. And if you pick your chicken correctly you
could still play it anywhere in America tomorrow.”

“I thought you said that your favorite grift was no longer
practical,” said Shadow.

“I did indeed. However, that is not my favorite. No, my favorite
was one they called the Bishop Game. It had everything: excitement, subterfuge,
portability, surprise. Perhaps, I think from time to time, perhaps with a
little modification, it might ...” he thought for a moment, then shook his
head. “No. Its time has passed. It is, let us say, 1920, in a city of medium to
large size—Chicago, perhaps,—orNew York, or Philadelphia. We are in a jeweler’s
emporium. A man dressed as a clergyman—and not just any clergyman, but a
bishop, in his purple—enters and picks oit a necklace—a gorgeous and glorious
confection of diamonds and pearls, and pays for it with a dozen of the crispest
hundred-dollar bills.

“There’s a smudge of green ink on the topmost bill and the
store owner, apologetically but firmly, sends the stack of bills to the bank on
the corner to be checked. Soon enough, the store clerk returns with the bills.
The bank says they are none of them counterfeit. The owner apologizes again,
and the bishop is most gracious, he well understands the problem, there are
such lawless and ungodly types in the world today, such immorality and lewdness
abroad in the worldand shameless women, and now that the underworld has crawled
out of the gutter and come to live on the screens of the picture palaces, what
more could anyone expect? And the necklace is placed in its case, and the store
owner does his best not to ponder why a bishop of the church would be
purchasing a twelve-hundred-dollar diamond necklace, nor why he would be paying
good cash money for it.

“The bishop bids him a hearty farewell, and walks out on the
street, only for a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder. ‘Why Soapy, yez
spalpeen, up to your old tricks, are you?’ and a broad beat cop with an honest
Irish face walks the bishop back into the jewelry store.

“ ‘Beggin’ your pardon, but has this man just bought
anything from you?’ asks the cop. ‘Certainly not,’ says the bishop. ‘Tell him I
have not.’ ‘Indeed he has,’ says the jeweler. ‘He bought a pearl and diamond
necklace from me—paid for it in cash as well.’ ‘Would you have the bills
available, sir?’ asks the cop.

“So the jeweler takes the twelve hundred-dollar bills from
the cash register and hands them to the cop, who holds them up to the light and
shakes his head in wonder. ‘Oh, Soapy, Soapy,’ he says, ‘these are the finest
that you’ve made yet! You’re a craftsman, that you are!’

“A self-satisfied smile spreads across the bishop’s face. ‘You
can’t prove nothing,’ says the bishop. ‘And the bank said that they were on the
level. It’s the real green stuff.’ Tm sure they did,’ agrees the cop on the
beat, ‘but I doubt that the bank had been warned that Soapy Sylvester was in
town, nor of the quality of the hundred-dollar bills he’d been passing in Denver
and in St. Louis.’ And with that he reaches into the bishop’s pocket and pulls
out the necklace. “Twelve hundred dollars’ worth of diamonds and pearls in
exchange for fifty cents’ worth of paper and ink,’ says the policeman, who is
obviously a philosopher at heart. ‘And passing yourself off as a man of the
church. You should be ashamed,’ he says, as he claps the handcuffs on the
bishop, who is obviously no bishop, and he marches him away, but not before he
gives the jeweler a receipt for both the necklace and the twelve hundred counterfeit
dollars. It’s evidence, after all.”

“Was it really counterfeit?” asked Shadow.

“Of course not! Fresh banknotes, straight from the bank,
only with a thumbprint and a smudge of green ink on a couple of them to make
them a little more interesting.”

Shadow sipped his coffee. It was worse than prison coffee. “So
the cop was obviously no cop. And the necklace?”

“Evidence,” said Wednesday. He unscrewed the top from the
salt shaker, poured a little heap of salt on the table. “But the jeweler gets a
receipt, and assurance that he’ll get the necklace straight back as soon as
Soapy conies to trial. He is congratulated on being a good citizen, and he
watches proudly, already thinking of the tale he’ll have to tell at the next
meeting of the Oddfellows tomorrow night, as the policeman marches the man
pretending to be a bishop out of the store, twelve-hundred-dollars in one
pocket, a twelve hundred dollar diamond necklace in the other, on their way to
a police station that’ll never see hide nor hair of either of them.”

The waitress had returned to clear the table. “Tell me my
dear,” said Wednesday. “Are you married?”

She shook her head.

“Astonishing that a young lady of such loveliness has not
yet been snapped up.” He was doodling with his fingernail in the spilled salt,
making squat, blocky, runelike shapes. The waitress stood passively beside him,
reminding Shadow less of a fawn and more of a young rabbit caught in an
eighteen-wheeler’s headlights, frozen in fear and indecision.

Wednesday lowered his voice, so much so that Shadow, only
across the table, could barely hear him. “What time do you get off work?”

“Nine,” she said, and swallowed. “Nine-thirty latest.”

“And what is the finest motel in this area?”

“There’s a Motel 6,” she said. “It’s not much.”

Wednesday touched the back of her hand, fleetingly, with the
tips of his fingers, leaving crumbs of salt on her skin. She made no attempt to
wipe them off. “To us,” he said, his voice an almost inaudible rumble, “it
shall be a pleasure palace.”

The waitress looked at him. She bit her thin lips, hesitated,
then nodded and fled for the kitchen.

“C’mon,” said Shadow. “She looks barely legal.”

“I’ve never been overly concerned about legality,” Wednesday
told him. “And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a
little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm
blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning.”

Shadow caught himself wondering if the girl on night duty in
the hotel back in Eagle Point had been a virgin. “Don’t you ever worry about
disease?” he asked. “What if you knock her up? What if she’s got a brother?”

“No,” said Wednesday. “I don’t worry about diseases. I don’t
catch them. Unfortunately—for the most part—people like me fire blanks, so
there’s not a great deal of interbreeding. It used to happen in the old days.
Nowadays, it’s possible, but so unlikely as to be almost unimaginable. So no
worries there. And many girls have brothers, and fathers. It’s not my problem.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’ve left town already.”

“So we’re staying here for the night?”

Wednesday rubbed his chin. “I shall stay in the Motel 6,” he
said. Then he put his hand into his coat pocket. He pulled out a front door
key, bronze-colored, with a card tag attached on which was typed an address: 502
Northridge Rd, Apt #3. “You, on the other hand, have an apartment waiting for
you, in a city far from here.” Wednesday closed his eyes for a moment. Then he
opened them, gray and gleaming and fractionally mismatched, and he said, “The
Greyhound bus will be coming through town in twenty minutes. It stops at the
gas station. Here’s your ticket.” He pulled out a folded bus ticket, passed it
across the table. Shadow picked it up and looked at it.

“Who’s Mike Ainsel?” he asked. That was the name on the
ticket.

“You are. Merry Christmas.”

“And where’s Lakeside?”

“Your happy home in the months to come. And now, because
good things come in direes ...” He took a small, gift-wrapped package from his
pocket, pushed it across the table. It sat beside the ketchup bottle with the
black smears of dried ketchup on the top. Shadow made no move to take it.

“Well?”

Reluctantly, Shadow tore open the red wrapping paper to reveal
a fawn-colored calfskin wallet, shiny from use. It was obviously somebody’s
wallet. Inside the wallet was a driver’s license with Shadow’s photograph on
it, in the name of Michael Ainsel, with a Milwaukee address, a MasterCard for
M. Ainsel, and twenty crisp fifty-dollar bills. Shadow closed the wallet, put
it into an inside pocket.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Think of it as a Christmas bonus. Now, let me walk you down
to the Greyhound. I shall wave to you as you ride the gray dog north.”

They walked outside the restaurant. Shadow found it hard to
believe how much colder it had gotten in the last few hours. It felt too cold
to snow, now. Aggressively cold. This was a bad winter.

“Hey. Wednesday. Both of the scams you were telling me
about—the violin scam and the bishop one, the bishop and the cop—” He
hesitated, trying to form his thought, to bring it into focus.

“What of them?”

Then he had it. “They’re both two-man scams. One guy on each
side. Did you used to have a partner?” Shadow’s breath came in clouds. He
promised himself that when he got to Lakeside he would spend some of his
Christmas bonus on the warmest, thickest winter coat that money could buy.

“Yes,” said Wednesday. “Yes. I had a partner. A junior
partner. But, alas, those days are gone. There’s the gas station, and there,
unless my eye deceives me, is the bus.” It was already signaling its turn into
the parking lot. “Your address is on the key,” said Wednesday. “If anyone asks,
I am your uncle, and I shall be rejoicing in the unlikely name of Emerson
Borson. Settle in, in Lakeside, nephew Ainsel. I’ll come for you within the
week. We shall be traveling together. Visiting the people I have to visit. In
the meantime, keep your head down and stay out of trouble.”

“My car ... ?” said Shadow.

“I’ll take good care of it. Have a good time in Lakeside,”
said Wednesday. He thrust out his hand, and Shadow shook it. Wednesday’s hand
was colder than a corpse’s.

“Jesus,” said Shadow. “You’re cold.”

“Then the sooner I am making the two-backed beast with the
little hotsy-totsy lass from the restaurant in a back room of the Motel 6, the
better.” And he reached out his other hand and squeezed Shadow’s shoulder.

Shadow experienced a dizzying moment of double vision: he
saw the grizzled man facing him, squeezing his shoulder, but he saw something
else: so many winters, hundreds and hundreds of winters, and a gray man in a broad-brimmed
hat walking from settlement to settlement, leaning on his staff, staring in
tiirough windows at the firelight and a joy and a burning life he would never
be able to touch, never even be able to feel ...