Bluff City Pawn (2 page)

He worked as an assistant for three years. The old man was amazing. Remembered every loan and could price the merchandise instantly. Books about guns, guitars, pool cues, everything on a shelf behind him, but never reaching there. And hardly ever testing the jewelry. Once in a while rubbing a ring against the touchstone, but mostly just knowing it with his eyes and hand, seeing the tone being off, feeling the weight, knowing the trademarks, how it’s stamped, manufactured. Mister Jenks knew it all.
Sorry, miss, it’s not gold.
He knew a person before they had two feet in the store. A quick glance—he knew every gesture and expression, every sob story and hustle, every thought and feeling moving beneath their skin.

But still, the guy wouldn’t maximize. He didn’t like the twenty-year-olds acting wild. Except, Huddy thought, what about a twenty-year-old bringing a fine diamond ring? Mister Jenks, as he got older, taking less risk, even shying away from electronics. He didn’t understand the video games, the PlayStations. Customers coming in nonstop, “You got CDs, you got DVDs? You got Game Boys?”

“You’re crazy, Mister Jenks, not taking in this stuff.”

“I don’t like the product. I don’t like the customer. Why bother with videotapes? They’re not even copies. They’re copy-copies. I don’t need the dollar sale.”

Huddy thought he could do better. It would take time to learn jewelry, but in other merchandise he was solid. Like when that guy tried selling a fake guitar, just slapped a Fender sticker on it, and Huddy could tell from the weight, and the bumps on the frets, and he said, “It’s a real nice,
light
guitar,” and handed it back. Liked watching the guy’s face fear up.

When the chance came, when the old man wanted out, Huddy couldn’t buy his way in, but Joe’s second marriage was ending—time to hide the assets—and Huddy said, “Set me up here,” and Joe even bought the building. Silent owner plus landlord. Two more things for Joe to have, on top of the construction business, the foundation company, the gravel pit. Now a side cash business and a rent check. Huddy standing in the store one last time with Mister Jenks. Any final advice? And Huddy thinking he’d hear something tired, “If you don’t know, loan low,” but Mister Jenks just smiled, like he’d slipped Huddy a silver-plated store when Huddy thought he’d paid for sterling. But Huddy threw a counterfeit grin right back: Get going, this place is mine.

Huddy increased the size of the yellow-pages ad. He had a billboard built. Joe even paid for it. Bluff City Pawn. Same name, but now you see it. Gave the building a bath, fresh coat of paint. Put new showcases in, new velvet displays—Huddy unlocking one of the cases now for Del, who’s looking for watches. “Man, I love watches,” Del says, “never can have too much time. Let me see that wind-up.”

Huddy slides the door, reaches in. Del examines the watch and names his price and Huddy won’t bother negotiating, because Del knows the markup rate almost as much as Huddy does. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d cracked the pricing code at Cash America. Del thinks he won, but Huddy won, too. Buy low, the selling takes care of itself.

Del hands him the money and starts talking about pipe cutting and threading. “Having a devil trying to find it.” Huddy nods, doesn’t need to tell Del to check back, since he sees a guy like this too much. “You gonna miss this?” Del says, twirling the watch on his finger.

“I think the universe is full of stuff, and you gotta just jump in and grab it.”

“I’ll tell my wife you said that.” Del closes his fist, and Huddy hears the metal click.

The mail lady, Miss Theresa, comes through the door and Huddy’s glad to be done with Del—turning from pawnshop fly to pawnshop parasite.

“Next time,” Del says, “just tell me what’s mismarked, so I can go right to it.”

He tips his hat, but Huddy’s eyes are off him with the phone ringing. “Bluff City,” Huddy says, and listens. “We have one laptop,” he says, and hears thank you.

Miss Theresa hands him the mail, and then steps over to the jewelry, leans on the glass. “I need something to go out.” She’ll do layaway and she’s good about payments, but sometimes when she stretches it, he feels like she’s treating the mail like money—“For you, Mister Huddy”—when of course it’s only bills. “Ooh, that one,” she says, and Huddy follows her finger.

“That’s a nice dinner ring,” he says.

“Ah,” she says, and then pushes away from the counter. “I’ma look at it more tomorrow. Don’t you let anyone touch it. Heard about the robbery next door.”

“What robbery?”

“The liquor store. Saturday.”

Huddy checks his watch—Mister Barnes opened at ten. “Anyone get hurt?”

She shakes her head. “Just robbed.”

And when she leaves, Huddy locks up and steps outside to peek in. Mister Barnes is reading the paper, and Huddy enters, doesn’t see blood or bandages. “What happened Saturday?”

“What happened? Turn my back to get the liquor off the shelf, turn back there’s a gun in my face.” Mister Barnes saying the last part into the paper.

“What’d they look like?” Huddy figures it’d be good to know if they’ve been in his store, or what to look for if they do.

“Look like. They looked like three young thugs. Thug clothes, thug everything. You tell your brother Joe he’s losing a tenant.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t mean that.”

“Sure do. I must be crazy thinking I could run this place without bulletproof glass. Right now, we should be talking, there should be bulletproof glass between us, and if you want to say something there’s a little airhole to do it, and you put your money through the slot—like a bank—and I put my liquor through the chute. That’s how King’s Liquor down the street doing it. They got
all
the liquor behind the glass, and if a customer wants to be robbing, he’s gonna have to rob himself.” His nostrils flare like all his liquor got skunked. “Whatever. It’s too late for changes. I’m out.”

“You’re gonna let them run you?”

“Listen. I go down to the station, they give me the pictures, see if I recognize anyone. I recognize
everyone
. I’m flipping through the pictures, they all my customers. Half the people that come into my store. Now I’ve been held up three times and I chased ’em out twice, but all them photos, forget it. Time is up.”

“You give the police a description?”

Mister Barnes shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “A description.”

Huddy microwaves his lunch, and while he carries the plate to the counter, he has a thought: He’ll be alone. Not in the store today but around him
all
days. The grocer, Mister Sanders, on his left closed out six months ago, and now it’s Mister Barnes, on his right. And this should give him leverage with Joe, who owns all three bays—you’d think he’d protect his last tenant and his middle brother—but it’ll only make him increase the rent. He did that when Mister Sanders left, and Huddy knew the talk of taxes was a lie to cover the difference.

Plus Huddy wanted to leave, too. Not the business, but the location. Because he saw how for the past year his shop was dying. When he started, the pickup rate on the loans was sixty percent—and he used to listen to Mister Jenks talk about the good old days when the rate was as high as eighty, when running a pawnshop was just turning a key in the morning and letting the interest pile up. But now the rate’s nearing thirty, two thirds of the customers forfeiting their loans. And the average loan keeps dropping, too. Instead of seventy-dollar loans, Huddy’s averaging forty, so the interest is smaller. Last month, Huddy started driving, scouting locations, looking at traffic flows—although he hadn’t told Joe about his plan, about bankrolling him one more time. But then Huddy scored a big hit here. A guy came in with a corroded ring, saying, “I know the stone’s not real, but the gold’s real and I’ll take what you can scrap it for.” And Huddy took his word on the diamond, because he was eyeing another customer snaking around the tool shelves looking for blind spots. Plus the diamond was rough, no sparkle, looking like a lump of coal. Huddy gave the man a hundred for the gold, and it wasn’t until the end of the day that he put the diamond in the cooker and got surprised. Weighed it. Over a carat. One hundred dollars making twenty-five hundred. Huddy knew the ring was a blip. But it made staying easier. Might as well wait through Christmas, and then Valentine’s for jewelry. Now, with Mister Barnes leaving, Huddy’s waited too long. It’s gonna be harder to leave, and harder to stay.

A hollow boom outside—Huddy jumps, the shop rattles—then screeching metal. The two sounds, explosion and collision, confuse, and Huddy waits for more noises to point it somewhere, screams or curses, horns or sirens, and when he hears nothing he rushes out to see what accident or mess. He looks to his left past the grocery that’s gone, and instead of chaos and flames there’s a semi in the driveway, hydraulics raised, the offloaded Dumpster behind it.

Three Mexican laborers sitting on a truck bed, a contractor at the storefront. About time, Huddy thinks. The building’s been abandoned for over a year, so at least it’s activity. Maybe they’re putting in something helpful, like an auto-parts store, which always works perfect with a pawnshop, brings in the working man. Or maybe some neutral business, insurance, whatever, neither help nor hurt. But don’t let it be public assistance—or some nightmare like a methadone clinic, addicts hanging around pissing and crapping over everything. Once that scenario pops up, Huddy finds himself walking over there just to confirm what’s
not
going in. He goes straight to the contractor, who’s posting a permit on the wall, and then he sees another worker appear in the middle doorway, a set of plans tucked under his arm, looking like the superintendent, so he slides over. “What you putting in here?” Huddy asks.

The man untucks the plans, squeezes his hands over them. “XGC Services.”

“What’s that?”

The man squints. “Blood bank.”

Huddy’s face smacked with the news. “Blood bank?” he says, just sick to repeat it. This building, long and low, same size as his own, but now it’s a tower, grown colossal.

“Manny!” the man shouts, decisive. “Wreck out the front room!” He jerks his thumb behind him and Huddy watches the lead guy turn and translate instructions to the other two, who climb back to the toolbox. “Who you?” the man says, chin up-twitched, eyes fixed and narrowed.

“I run a shop next door.”

The man glances to his right, eyes passing around, then back at Huddy, annoyed to have searched. “Well, I guess you’re getting a neighbor.”

Huddy’s lips pinch together. He scans the building’s three doorways, the work crew going in to start the demo. “Where’s it going?”

“Everywhere,” Huddy hears back. “It’s the whole place.” And when he looks over, the man’s eyes are wide.

“We already got a blood bank downtown.”

The man shrugs. “Got another one now.”

Huddy thinks, Blood bank. A bunch of people with nothing. They’ll hang around and harass—need a drink of water, need the bathroom, need the phone. “When’s it going in?”

“Three months,” the man says casually, but to Huddy it comes out like a warning. “Gut it out, frame it. Could be six.”

Huddy winces, like he’s a donor getting his arm pricked without payment.

He hears the sledgehammer knocking down a partition wall.

The man’s teeth flash as he watches Huddy leave. “Guess you ain’t giving any blood.”

Half of his meal uneaten, but Huddy can’t touch it. It’ll take less than a week after the bank’s opened before it’s wall to wall in there. And then they’ll be here. On a rainy day, a crowd’s gonna be all up under his canopy. Two hookers stroll by, one in red spandex, bright and tight; the other in jeans, whale-tail underwear peeking out the back. A car honks, hips sway and turn, but the driver doesn’t stop, was only teasing.

He calls home again.

“Huddy, what you doing? It’s naptime.” Christie whispering mad.

But the clock says earlier. “I thought I was calling before that.”

“I put him down an hour ago. The time change.”

He shakes his head, forgot. “Why didn’t you turn the ringer off?”

“I left it on, in case Harlan called. Was he in Florida last night or did he call you from the road?”

“They’re putting a blood bank in the next building.”

“Damn, he’s getting up. He’s always
up
.”

Customer comes in. “I gotta go,” Huddy says.

The man dragging his way over to the counter. He holds out a necklace that’s all kinked and damaged.

Huddy gets the scale, weighs it. Six pennyweights. “I can give you forty bucks.”

“Forty?”

“This has no value as a necklace. I can only sell its weight. It’s not a necklace anymore.”

“Come on now.” The man flings out a hand and glares. Points at the necklace like it was fine jewelry until Huddy smashed it and cheated with the scale. “That’s more than forty.”

“Not from this side of the counter,” Huddy says and he pushes the scrap back. “Thanks for stopping in.” The man’s anger spreads to confusion, then grief. “Maybe you got something else you can bring me,” Huddy says, and the man nods, slips inside himself, “Yeah, okay, might.”

Huddy wants to shut the door and unplug the phone and think about his worries—Barnes plus blood bank—figure out how to tell them both to Joe. He calls Joe, gets the voice mail, hangs up, tries the office, gets the secretary: “Do you want his voice mail?”