mother-of-pearl lorgnette in a faded plush case to a Single Action Frontier Colt, .44 caliber, the model they still make for Western peace officers whose grandfathers taught them how to file the trigger and shoot by fanning the hammer back.
I went into the shop and a bell jangled over my head and somebody shuffled and blew his nose far at the back and steps came. An old Jew in a tall black skullcap came along behind the counter, smiling at me over cut out glasses.
I got my tobacco pouch out, got the Brasher Doubloon out of that and laid it on the counter. The window in front was clear glass and I felt naked. No paneled cubicles with hand carved spittoons and doors that locked themselves as you closed them.
The Jew took the coin and lifted it on his hand. “Gold, is it? A gold hoarder you are maybe,” he said, twinkling.
“Twenty-five dollars,” I said. “The wife and the kiddies are hungry.”
“Oi, that is terrible. Gold, it feels, by the weight. Only gold and maybe platinum it could be.” He weighed it casually on a pair of small scales. “Gold it is,” he said. “So ten dollars you are wanting?”
“Twenty-five dollars.”
“For twenty-five dollars what would I do with it? Sell it, maybe? For fifteen dollars worth of gold is maybe in it. Okay. Fifteen dollars.”
“You got a good safe?”
“Mister, in this business are the best safes money can buy. Nothing to worry about here. It is fifteen dollars, is it?”
“Make out the ticket.”
He wrote it out partly with his pen and partly with his tongue. I gave my true name and address. Bristol Apartments, 1634 North Bristol Avenue, Hollywood.
“You are living in that district and you are borrowing fifteen dollars,” the Jew said sadly, and tore off my half of the ticket and counted out the money.
I walked down to the corner drugstore and bought an envelope and borrowed a pen and mailed the pawn ticket to myself.
I was hungry and hollow inside. I went over to Vine to eat, and after that I drove downtown again. The wind was still rising and it was drier than ever. The steering wheel had a gritty feeling under my fingers and the inside of my nostrils felt tight and drawn.
The lights were on here and there in the tall buildings. The green and chromium clothier’s store on the corner of Ninth and Hill was a blaze of it. In the Belfont Building a few windows glowed here and there, but not many. The same old plow horse sat in the elevator on his piece of folded burlap, looking straight in front of him, blank-eyed, almost gathered to history.
I said: “I don’t suppose you know where I can get in touch with the building superintendent?”
He turned his head slowly and looked past my shoulder. “I hear how in Noo York they got elevators that just whiz. Go thirty floors at a time. High speed. That’s in Noo York.”
“The hell with New York,” I said. “I like it here.”
“Must take a good man to run them fast babies.”
“Don’t kid yourself, dad. All those cuties do is push buttons, say ‘Good Morning, Mr. Whoosis,’ and look at their beauty spots in the car mirror. Now you take a Model T job like this—it takes a man to run it. Satisfied?”
“I work twelve hours a day,” he said. “And glad to get it.”
“Don’t let the union hear you.”
“You know what the union can do?” I shook my head. He told me. Then he lowered his eyes until they almost looked at me. “Didn’t I see you before somewhere?”
“About the building super,” I said gently.
“Year ago he broke his glasses,” the old man said. “I could of laughed. Almost did.”
“Yes. Where could I get in touch with him this time of the evening?”
He looked at me a little more directly.
“Oh, the building super? He’s home, ain’t he?”
“Sure. Probably. Or gone to the pictures. But where is home? What’s his name?”
“You want something?”
“Yes.” I squeezed a fist in my pocket and tried to keep from yelling. “I want the address of one of the tenants. The tenant I want the address of isn’t in the phone book—at his home. I mean where he lives when he’s not in his office. You know, home.” I took my hands out and made a shape in the air, writing the letters slowly, h o m e.
The old man said: “Which one?” It was so direct that it jarred me.
“Mr. Morningstar.”
“He ain’t home. Still in his office.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. I don’t notice people much. But he’s old like me and I notice him. He ain’t been down yet.”
I got into the car and said: “Eight.”
