Night Secrets (12 page)

“I don't know.”

“Well, if she is,” Phillips said, “what would pawning her jewelry and dropping something in Central Park have to do with it?”

Frank shook his head. “That's what I'm going to have to find out,” he said.

The man behind the wire eyed him suspiciously as he came through the door.

Frank walked up to the counter and placed the lamp Karen had given him on top of it.

The man's attention shifted to the lamp. His hand moved gently up its long slender neck. “It's a nice piece,” he said. “I wouldn't lie to you.” He looked at Frank and shrugged. “But I don't get too many calls for something this nice.”

“What's it worth?” Frank asked.

“At an antique store, you'd get more,” the man told him. “I wouldn't lie to you. Over on the East Side, they can sell it. But here, the Avenue? People want guitars, knives, ashtrays from Atlantic City. This kind of thing, so nice, they don't know from something like this.” He laughed to himself. “To the people who come in here, a lamp is something you use to see the bills with. You know what I mean? It don't mean nothing, but for light.” He touched the lamp again, caressing its stained-glass shade. “This is more what you'd call an art piece, you see what I'm saying? You'd do better on the East Side.”

“I don't want to go over to the East Side,” Frank said. “What's it worth to you?”

The man looked the lamp over again, then shrugged. “I could go a couple hundred bucks.”

“Okay,” Frank said immediately. “But I don't want the money.”

The man stepped back slightly. “What is this?” he asked darkly. “I got cameras all over this place. Don't try nothing.”

“A camera's what I need,” Frank said. “The one I was using got broken, and I need another one. I was thinking of a trade. For the lamp.”

The man looked at him unbelievingly. “You want to trade me this lamp for a camera?”

“That's right,” Frank said. “I need it for my work.” He pulled out his card and gave it to the man.

The man read it, then smiled. “You know, I thought I seen you around. You eat up on the corner sometimes, that place with the funny name.”

“La Femme Gatée.”

“Yeah, that one,” the man said. “The corn muffins are always from yesterday.”

Frank smiled. “Can you help me with a camera?”

“I'll give you a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar credit,” the man said. “Fair enough?”

“Sounds good.”

“I'm a fair man, that's the truth,” the man said. “A lot of pawnbrokers, they're scum.” He shook his head. “But not me.” He thrust out his hand. “Lazlo Pipkin, nice to know you.”

“Frank Clemons,” Frank said as he shook his hand.

Pipkin smiled. “There used to be another gumshoe that hung out in the neighborhood,” he said. “We're talking years back. Before the war. His name was Sanders, Sanderson, something like that, began with an S.”

Frank nodded.

“Big guy,” Pipkin added. “Big hands. I think he did a little bone-breaking for the shylocks.” He shook his head. “I often thought, he must scare the shit out of people. They must pay up when they see him.” He laughed to himself, then waved Frank over to another counter.

Frank spent the next few minutes making a choice, then swapped even for the lamp.

“One more thing,” Frank said just before he left. He pulled the photograph of Mrs. Phillips from his jacket pocket. “Have you ever seen this woman before?”

Pipkin glanced at the photograph. “Yeah, I seen her,” he said, as he returned the picture to Frank. “She pawned a few things over the last few months.”

“What things?”

“Some jewelry. Nice stuff, too.”

“Did she ever reclaim any of it?”

“No.”

“Was she alone?”

“She always come in alone,” Pipkin said.

“When did she come in last?”

Pipkin's eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “About two weeks ago, something like that.”

“Do you have the dates?”

“Yeah, sure,” Pipkin said. He disappeared into a small office, then returned. “Here are the tickets. They got the dates on them.” He handed them to Frank. “See?”

Frank looked at them, took out his notebook and began to record the information that was on the ticket, the items, a watch and two gold bracelets, the date she'd pawned them, March 30, and the name she'd used, Elizabeth Lancaster.

“It's nice stuff,” Pipkin said. “But it's jewelry, easier to sell. Not like a lamp. Worse comes to worse, you can always melt it down.”

Frank smiled quietly as he continued to write.

“We get more rich types over here on the West Side than you'd think. They don't have no pawnshops over on the East Side.”

Frank finished writing the information in his notebook and returned it to his pocket. “And that's the last time you saw her?”

“Yes.”

“Did she mention why she was pawning her stuff?”

“No,” Pipkin said. “But the ones from out of the neighborhood, they never tell you that kind of thing.” He shrugged. “The other ones, they don't have to tell you. It's crack or the rent, or something like that.”

“Did she say anything at all?”

Pipkin thought a moment. “She seemed real cold to me, businesslike. She just wanted to pawn the stuff and get out. But you know how it is, you're in business, you like to talk to the people a little, so I started to talk to her. Nothing serious, just shoptalk, you know?”

Frank nodded.

“Anyway, I said to her, I said, ‘I don't think you've ever pawned anything in here,' and her head shot up, and it was like her eyes closed down on me, like she was squeezing me, and in this real hard voice she said, ‘There's a lot of things I haven't done before.' Then she just snapped up the money, and she was gone in a flash.”

Frank took out his notebook and wrote down the remark, sharp, cold, terse, the only words he'd heard so far from her tightly drawn and silent mouth.

L
a Femme Gatée was only a few blocks away, and so after leaving the pawnshop, Frank walked up to it for a quick dinner. The man behind the counter greeted him as a regular, then took his usual order of ham and cheese on a roll.

“Be just a minute,” the man said. “I'll bring it to you.”

Frank nodded, took a Coke from the cooler across from the counter and headed for a table at the rear of the room.

It was nearly seven in the evening, and the place was empty except for a single couple, who sat drinking coffee in the back. While he waited for his sandwich, Frank watched them squabble quietly with each other.

“You can't beg 'em,” the man said emphatically. “You look like a fucking creep, you do that.”

The woman dropped her eyes. “I don't know how, Eddie.” She was dressed in a soiled blouse, and an old blue sweater hung limply over her shrunken shoulders.

“Christsake,” the man hissed at her. “You can't look like you ain't worth nothing, like they already said no. It don't work that way. You got to go after 'em, Frannie. You got to make 'em
see
you. Otherwise, they just go right by.” He shook his head despairingly. “There ain't enough to you. You don't scare nobody, so they walk right through you, like you was air, like you was nothing.”

The woman's eyes lifted toward him, her face broken but intent on his instructions. She fingered the napkin absently while she listened.

“You got to look 'em in the eye,” the man told her. “You can't just head away from 'em, like no matter what, they ain't gonna give you nothing.”

The woman nodded meekly. “Okay, Eddie. I'll do better next time.”

“We ain't got much time, Frannie,” the man said hotly. “I ain't staying with you tonight, you don't get it straight.”

“I'll get it straight,” the woman said determinedly. She lifted her head. “I'll get it straight, no shit.”

The man nodded, unconvinced. “Yeah, well, you got to. 'Cause if you don't come up with something, we'll be in the fucking park tonight, and I ain't staying there. You're gonna be on your fucking own, you understand?”

“I understand.”

“It's fifteen bucks at the Mayfair,” the man told her. “Fifteen fucking bucks, and you got to get it.” He shook his head. “You got to do it, Frannie. Nobody'll get that close to me.” His hand lifted toward his face. “'Cause I got these spots on me.”

“I'll do better, Eddie,” the woman assured him. “I heard what you said. You got to come right up to 'em, look 'em straight.”

“And mention kids,” the man reminded her. He coughed into his fist, a hard, dry cough mat he finally brought under control. When it was over, he looked half-dazed, as if he'd forgotten where he was.

“I'll look 'em straight, Eddie,” the woman told him.

Her words seemed to return him to consciousness. “Yeah, yeah,” he murmured weakly.

“And kids, too,” the woman said, as if coaxing him back to earth. “I won't forget the kids.”

“Right, kids,” the man said. He drew in a long, feeble breath. “Like you got 'em in a hotel or something, you know what I mean?”

“Okay, Eddie.”

The man nodded toward her coffee. “Well, finish it up, then. We got to get started.”

Frank's sandwich arrived a moment later, and he ate it pleasurelessly while the man and woman stared mutely at each other before they finally struggled to their feet and headed out to the street. After that, he sat alone, his eyes moving continually toward the window, then beyond it, into the dark interior of the unfinished building that now towered over the neighborhood. Within a few months it would be finished, and the new residents would begin to take over, bringing their new demands for restaurants, clubs, boutiques. He wasn't sure what would be lost once the building was completed, only that something would, a rich, more concrete life of street scenes and loud music and something else that was even more important, but that he couldn't put his finger on.

He finished his sandwich, and headed down Forty-ninth Street toward his office. Up ahead, he could see a small, twisted figure staggering toward him, but the darkness concealed it until she came toward him in the grayish light of the single streetlamp which still shone between the avenues. It was the woman he'd seen in the restaurant only a few moments before, and she was moving toward him very firmly, her eyes fixed on his.

“Kids,” she said as she came up to him, her hand outstretched. “I got to help my kids. They're in this hotel, and I got to get 'em out.”

Frank said nothing. Not far away, he could see the man leaning against the wall, his head drooped forward as he coughed hoarsely into his fist.

“Things happen in them hotels,” the woman said, “to them kids they got there.”

Frank reached into his pocket for some change and came up with a couple of quarters. As he dropped them into her hand, he thought of the tower again, and realized instantly what would be lost when it was completed: the chance to see, every day, every hour, how much still remained to be done.

A black limousine was parked in front of his office, and as Frank approached it, a woman got out.

“Hi, Frank,” she said.

It was Karen, his old lover, and suddenly, as he looked at her, a strange anger swept over him. It wasn't directed at her, he realized immediately, but at what had happened between them, the desert it had left behind, and as he looked at her, took in her sleek figure, her smooth skin, the lights that seemed always to be flickering in her hair, he knew with a sudden consuming emptiness how much he missed the old passion he had once felt for her, how dry his life had become without it.

“I guess you're surprised to see me,” Karen said.

Frank nodded. “How you doing?”

“Fine,” Karen said. She glanced toward his office. “May I come in?”