'What's the G for?' Magliore asked.
'George. '
He opened the wallet and dealt the contents out in front of him like a solitaire hand.
Forty-three dollars in twenties and ones.
Credit cards: Shell, Sunoco, Arco, Grant's, Sears, Carey's Department Store, American Express.
Driver's license. Social Security. A blood donor cans, type A-positive. Library card. A plastic flip-folder. A photostated birth certificate card. Several old receipted bills, some of them falling apart along the fold seams from age. Stamped checking account deposit slips, some of them going back to June.
'What's the matter with you?' Magliore asked irritably. 'Don't you ever clean out your wallet? You load a wallet up like this and carry it around for a year, that wallet's hurting.'
He shrugged. 'I hate to throw things away.' He was thinking that it was strange, how Magliore calling him a shitbird had made him angry, but Magliore criticizing his wallet didn't bother him at all.
Magliore opened the flip-folder, which was filled with snapshots. The top one was of Mary, her eyes crossed, her tongue popped out at the camera. An old picture. She had been slimmer then.
'This your wife?'
'Yeah. '
'Bet she's pretty when there ain't a camera stuck in her face.'
He flipped up another one and smiled.
'Your little boy? I got one about that age. Can he hit a baseball? Whacko! I guess he can.'
'That was my son, yes. He's dead now.'
'Too bad. Accident?'
'Brain tumor.'
Magliore nodded and looked at the other pictures. Fingernail clippings of a life: The house on Crestallen Street West, he and Tom Granger standing in the laundry washroom, a picture of him at the podium of the launderers' convention the year it had been held in the city (he had introduced the keynote speaker), a backyard barbecue with him standing by the grill in a chef's hat and an apron that said: DAD'S COOKIN', MOM'S LOOKIN'.
Magliore put the flip-folder down, bundled the credit cards into a pile, and gave them to Mansey. 'Have them photocopied,' he said. 'And take one of those deposit slips. His wife keeps the checkbook under lock and key, just like mine.' Magliore laughed.
Mansey looked at him skeptically. 'Are you going to do business with this shitbird?'
'Don't call him a shitbird and maybe he won't call me a dork again.' He uttered a wheezy laugh that ended with unsettling suddenness. 'You just mind your business, Petie. Don't tell me mine.'
Mansey laughed, but exited in a modified stalk.
Magliore looked at him when the door was closed. He chuckled. He shook his head. 'Dork,' he said. 'By God, I thought I'd been called everything.'
'Why is he going to photocopy my credit cards?'
'We have part of a computer. No one owns all of it. People use it on a time-sharing basis. If a person knows the right codes, that person can tap into the memory banks of over fifty corporations that have city business. So I'm going to check on you. If you're a cop, we'll find out. If those credit cards are fake, we'll find out. If they're real but not yours, we'll find that out, too. But you got me convinced. I think you're straight. Dork.' He shook his head and laughed. 'Was yesterday Monday? Mister, you're lucky you didn't call me a dork on Monday.'
'Can I tell you what I want to buy now?'
'You could, and if you were a cop with six recorders on you, you still couldn't touch me. It's called entrapment. But I don't want to hear it now. You come back tomorrow, same time, same station, and I'll tell you if I want to hear it. Even if you're straight, I may not sell you anything. You know why?'
'Why?'
Magliore laughed. 'Because I think you're a fruitcake. Driving on three wheels. Flying on instruments.'
'Why? Because I called you a name?'
'No,' Magliore said. 'Because you remind me of something that happened to me when I was a kid about my son's age. There was a dog that lived in the neighborhood where I grew up. Hell's Kitchen, in New York. This was before the Second World War, in the Depression. And this guy named Piazzi had a black mongrel bitch named Andrea, but everybody just called her Mr. Piazzi's dog. He kept her chained up all the time, but that dog never got mean, not until this one hot day in August. It might have been 1937. She jumped a kid that came up to pet her and put him in the hospital for a month. Thirty-seven stitches in his neck. But I knew it was going to happen. That dog was out in the hot sun all day, every day, all summer long. In the middle of June it stopped wagging its tail when kids came up to pet it. Then it started to roll its eyes. By the end of July it would growl way back in its throat when some kid patted it. When it started doing that, I stopped patting Mr. Piazzi's dog. And the guys said, Wassa matta, Sally? You chickenshit? And I said, No, I ain't chickenshit but I ain't stupid, either. That dog's gone mean. And they all said, Up your ass, Mr. Piazzi's dog don't bite, she never bit nobody, she wouldn't bite a baby that stuck its head down her throat. And I said, You go on and pat her, there's no law that says you can't pat a dog, but I ain't gonna. And so they all go around saying, Sally's chickenshit, Sally's a girl, Sally wants his mama to walk him past Mr. Piazzi's dog. You know how kids are. '
'I know,' he said. Mansey had come back in with his credit cards and was standing by the door, listening.
'And one of the kids who was yelling the loudest was the kid who finally got it. Luigi Bronticelli, his name was. A good Jew like me, you know?' Magliore laughed. 'He went up to pat Mr. Piazzi's dog one day in August when it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, and he ain't talked above a whisper since that day. He's got a
