Authors: Stephen Schottenfeld
“Damn,” Del says, “did I miss the closeout sale?” He shakes his head at Huddy’s mismanagement. First it was jewelry, now it’s guns, and where are the customers? Every time Del walks in here, the shop’s been reduced. He breathes an exaggerated breath, puffs up like he’s become the full set of himself.
Huddy gives a luckless shrug. Oh, well, deals just blow up sometime. It’s funny what’s happened. Downright comical, so rub it in, Del, but stop smirking. All the times the loan counter has been a barrier keeping the customer from rushing, but now it’s so Huddy won’t lunge across.
“First time you ever called me,” Del says, and crooks his face. Throws his bag on the counter.
I’m not the only one calling you, Huddy thinks. Already feels like Del’s been here all day—get him out as soon as Huddy gets his answer.
“Last time, you wouldn’t even show me them Winchesters.”
“Winchesters?” Huddy says. “That don’t sound like me. When you seen anything here but ugly guns?”
“I heard about them Winchesters.”
“Come on, Del, you an honest man. You know my racks is filled with nothing but mudpuppies.”
“I heard they got taken,” he says in a voice that from anyone else would sound sympathetic.
The gun room looks like a basement room in one of Joe’s blank houses.
“Who’d you hear it from?”
“Everywhere, Huddy. Automatic weapons! You an arms dealer?”
And Huddy wants to say what he’s heard about Del, too, not from a news source or any person, but all from within Huddy himself, didn’t even need to ask a brother, but he holds off.
“Truth is,” Del says, “I don’t much do the pawnshops anymore. I bought this Tucker saddle over on Austin Peay. I hate horses—but not a hundred bucks. I’m going more with auctions. Bought a champagne bucket last night. Made a phone call, sold it before I’m out the door. And I’ve been busy with the gold. People are just calling me up. They burning up my phone. This one fella, he works at a nursing home. Somebody falls asleep—bang!”
Huddy stares at Del’s popping mouth.
“Got someone else, he’s over at the county morgue. Stealing from corpses, now that ain’t right. And let’s not even talk about cops and crime scenes. First responders—now ain’t they lucky? Me, I been doing them gold parties. Them ladies, they’re trading in their jewelry and they can’t believe how much money I’m giving, and I’m like, Lady, you don’t know the
half
of it. I hate to be your competition, Huddy, but the secret’s out.”
Huddy shrugs again. “Weren’t you, it would be someone else getting a share.”
“I’m jumping in at the last minute, so I’m trying to catch up on what I’ve missed. In a year or two, I’ll be gone. Day the bubble bursts, I’m done.”
“Let’s hope the day before.”
“Ha! You got that right. Let some other latecomer take the hit.”
“Get as much as you can, as quick as you can.”
“You know it,” Del says, still laughing.
“Last in, first out,” Huddy says, and Del nods, but he’s ready to laugh at something else.
“Tell you, Huddy, it took me years to figure, there’s only two things worth anything—gold and bullets. The second protects you from losing the first.”
Huddy looks at the sidearm, then gestures outside. “That your extra bullets in the car?”
“Him? Yeah, he’s an idiot. Borderline bogus. I think he’s an escaped mental patient. Hope he can shoot straighter than he drives. But you said I needed a hired gun. Me and him, we’re having a salary dispute. I told him, ‘Only thing that’s keeping me from owning a hot rod is your pay.’ Hey, how much for this?” he says, gesturing at the weight bench.
“Price is on the sticker,” Huddy says.
Del squints, half-steps to the object. “Thirty. You chop it to twenty?”
“I can do twenty-five.”
“A little give-and-take. Something always gotta come off!”
“Already off. Priced at the off-price.”
“Let’s say twenty-two. As long as we price-cutting. You know me, Huddy—every corner, I whittle.”
“I could do twenty-two. That’s my minimum. Sure, Del, I know you.”
Del puts his hands up and leans back from the offer, as if any price is too pricey, any deal a forced sale. “Yeah, well, we’ll see. I need to get in shape. All I do is sit. Drive around. ’Sides, we’re here on business. I’m hot to spend my money elsewhere.”
Huddy stares at Del, then behind his back at the car, then behind the car at the lot and street. “I forgot what your rate was. I tried remembering, but I didn’t want to guesstimate.”
“We never set one. We were between ninety and ninety-five, and I said I’d bump it past whatever your man was paying, but you never says what that was.”
“Okay, so we’re doing ninety-two five.”
“Now I didn’t say that,” Del says, raising his palms. “I said we were somewhere
between
ninety and ninety-five, but I didn’t say it was halfway.”
“So ninety-two.”
“No, my limit’s ninety-one.”
Huddy concedes, and as soon as he does, he can see that Del wishes he pushed it down to ninety. He looks at the blades and sanders—the number ninety-one a dullness he’d like to sharpen. Del waits for Huddy to reach for an envelope or a drawer, but Huddy does nothing, keeps withholding, eyes staying on him. “Well, what you got?” Del says, puzzled that Huddy hasn’t moved, and still annoyed at that bad bid, that missed single concession. They’ve just negotiated the price, so where’s the offering?
Huddy’s arms outstretch to the gun room on his right and the display cases on the left, as if to say,
Can’t you see nowhere?
“You called me down here, just to ask rate?”
A truck horn sounds on Lamar, and Huddy watches the gunman glance up at the rearview, then the side-view, then twist his neck for the blind spot. “I don’t like talking rates over the phone. I might mishear you. Sometimes, what you hear over the phone is different face-to-face. And you can’t
see
nothing. One time, this customer calls me and says, ‘How much you pay for my guitar?’ And I say, ‘How ’bout you hold it closer to the phone so I can see?
’
”
“You said you had gold, Huddy?” He glares, his greed for what Huddy possesses edged with anger for what Huddy doesn’t.
“I retested it. Turns out, it’s bad.”
“So why didn’t you call back?” Del says, but Huddy won’t provide apologies or explanations for wasting time, and he’ll keep delaying with talk until he snaps the trap.
“The bracelet just jumped right up on the magnet. And I got this ring, but it’s heavily plated. Thought there was gold in there, but it’s not gold. I wouldn’t want you to buy this stuff from me, and then it don’t assay right. All trash and brass. Gold-fill, and I know you ain’t fooling with costume jewelry.”
Huddy glances outside again. The gunman is no longer watchful. Not at the mirrors or over his shoulder. Instead, his neck tilts forward, like he’s fallen asleep, or eyeing his lap, probably texting. “So I thought we could do something else.”
And Huddy reaches inside his pocket, for a piece of paper, which confuses Del—he’s still angry but wary now—because it’s not an envelope. Unless it’s a paper trick, the piece can’t hold much gold.
“And then I thought I had some pearls to sell, but they just synthetics. Everything I thought I had is something else. Now, my brother Harlan was working for me. You think he swapped out the good stuff?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Del says. “How would I know?” He stares at the folded-up paper.
“Well, how ’bout speculating? You think I got cheated? Or maybe my brother Joe, he owns this place—you might know him.”
“Don’t neither.”
“My business partner? My brother? You don’t? Skimming off the top?”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“What wouldn’t you know?”
“Your brother.”
“Which one?”
“You talking about both. I don’t know neither.”
He looks back again at Del’s driver, who’s still texting, dozing, curled up with his phone, inside it, the noise on Lamar no distraction. A man passes along the sidewalk, behind the car, and Huddy glances at the driver, who’s not training his eyes on any mirror. Huddy follows the man to see if he veers into the parking lot and becomes a threat, but he moves away, trailing past the store windows and disappearing. “Well, I know you know Harlan. ’Cause he was here the last time you were here.” He thinks of the unnoticed man in plain sight.
“Okay . . .”
“You don’t remember the one, maybe you don’t remember the other.”
Del looks outside to his protection, the car right there but the man inside way off. Maybe you should call him, Huddy thinks. Maybe you need a second guardsman, someone to guard the car, and someone beside you for confrontations. Or even a third guardsman, a second one to sit inside the car and keep tabs on the first. Huddy watches Del calculate the added support. The paper in Huddy’s hands, and he unfolds it to show a photograph of Joe from the
Memphis Business Journal
, pulled from the Internet, since Huddy doesn’t collect family pictures. Huddy’s eyes not going back and forth, not one to the other, but only point-blank on Del. It’s like Huddy, with his paperwork, gets to be ATF, and Del has to be him, and let’s see how he tries to lie.
“Yeah, sure,” Del says, and Huddy’s surprised to hear it outright. “This guy calls me up, I go meet him.”
“He’s my brother. Joe. Then it’s me, then it’s Harlan,” Huddy says, and he wants to match the unexpected directness of Del’s answer, but he just sounds defensive.
“Joe?” And Del looks back at the picture, confused. “Said his name was Hollis.”
“That’s his middle name,” Huddy says, unsure why he’s covering the falsehood. “Goes by it sometime.” Joe and Hollis, one and the same. Along with Hank and Huey and Howie. Full false name: Joe Hollis Hank Huey Howie Hiram Marr.
“Well, he didn’t say he was your brother. He didn’t say much of anything. All’s I’m doing is answering my phone. Just cash-and-carry, just throw it down, goodbye. Hell, Huddy, if I had the smelter, I’d melt it, too.” Del looks off, almost embarrassed, for both Huddy and himself, then at the merchandise, which seems embarrassing, too, just discards, odds and ends. “You and me, we both buying cheap. We both got numbers in our minds, and we squeezing, but we ain’t cheating. I don’t mean to get between you and family. Must’ve had a falling-out.”
“Guess so.” Huddy tries to add up his brother’s names but loses count. He shakes his head, because Del’s more credible than either brother, Huddy trusts him more than himself, for the way he told the truth. He was sure that Del would talk the wrong way, when he was role-playing Huddy.
“He don’t seem like you. I’m saying that now, I mean, even if I’d known he was your brother, I wouldn’t have thought it. I got a sister like that. People see us together, they never guess relation. She inherited one side, and I took after the other.”
Huddy has learned something, watching Del give his straight answers, so maybe he’ll ask what else and how much he knows, see how informed he is. “You scoring big with this gold?”
“Yeah. Sure. Big enough. Bigger than I was. It was bad before.” He nods humbly. “On a shoestring. But the gold—”
“If you were me, what would you do with this place?”
“Asking me?”
“Guess I am.”
“Move it, to where people live.”
“Trying to.”
“I mean, things are sliding everywhere, but they really sliding here.”
“I know.”
“I’d close it. Or, why you bothering with the pawn angle? What’s your default rate?”
“Like, ninety percent.”
“Ain’t really a pawnshop if it’s ninety.” But it’s not an insult, a thoughtless remark, and the voice is friendlier for being honest. “The loans—they just slowing you down, if they just defaults. You already like a buy-and-sell shop, except you a slow one. That storeroom, that’s money sitting back there. But no one can see it. Maybe you should be
all
floor. And get your stuff online.”
“Some of it is.”
“Get all of it. Do the auctions. Hell, I go to three a week. Buy all over, sell all over. Spread the joy all over town. Go chase the money. Don’t be stuck, be mobile. The whole city is your bargain counter. And the guns—what happened? You lose your license?”
Huddy nods, which becomes a shiver.
“That’s, like, twenty-five percent of your business.”
Something like that, he shrugs, and he peers at Del to find some changed impression, some unseen image, but it’s the same face.
“Damn, Huddy, that must’ve felt like a thousand kicks to the head.”
“Hurt,” Huddy says, wincing, and Del nods, and Huddy returns it, one peddler to another.
“Your brother calls again, I won’t answer.”
“No, you take it. Do the deal. Sounds like you’ve found the golden goose.”
“This gold thing. I wish I got in earlier. I think it’s my last shot. I’m rubbing sixty. Just some old goober. How long this gold run gonna last?”
“Gold market’s like any other—up and down.”