When I entered my apartment, the top light was blinking on my answering machine. I pushed t he bar. The tape rewound, then the unit made several noises that sounded like locks being turned.
The message began: “Mr. DeGarcey, this is Maureen Shultz. I reached John Heidel. He’s not sure exactly where Eddie and his friends went, only he knows they went south… He did give me some more information on the girl. Her parents are from Elizabeth City, in North Carolina… anyway, that’s where she grew up. That’s all I got out of John, I hope it helps… If you talk to Eddie, tell him his father and me… tell him we said hello.”
THIRTEEN
The day after Maureen Shultz left a message on my machine was the last Saturday I worked for Nutty Nathan’s.
I woke that morning after a troubled night of sleep, a night in which I rose several times to wander around my apartment, sitting in different chairs and on my couch for long stretches at a time.
Sometime around dawn I lay awake in bed and watched my room begin to lighten, and the jagged, irregular lines of rainwater slide down my bedroom window. My cat stayed on top of the radiator, staring at the wall and listening to the rain.
At eight I got up, made coffee, and sat on the couch to read the Post. Two more people had been killed, execution style, in Northeast. The mayor denied allegations that he was a drug user, charged his accusers with racism, and said that all of this negative publicity was interfering with his “agenda” for running the city. There was a lengthy feature in Style on the outspoken and rather cartoonish wife of a freshman Southern senator (didn’t they all come to town vowing to turn “buttoned-down” Washington on its ear?), and the main head in Sports dealt with the upcoming Skins-Giants clash, complete with the media-generated quarterback controversy.
When I was finished devouring the last section, I showered, shaved, and dressed. I put on light wool, faintly patterned teal slacks, a cream cotton oxford, a blue and beige Italian silk tie, and my twenty dollar sports jacket. I changed the litter box and filled the food and water dishes. My cat blinked at me from the radiator as I walked out the door.
The deep gray sky heightened the slowly emerging October oranges of Rock Creek Park as I drove west on Military Road. I was listening to Billy Bragg’s “Talking with the Taxman about Poetry” on the box, and I turned the volume up enough to overtake the sound of my fraying wipers as vgg’s they dragged themselves across the windshield.
When I entered the store and knocked the rain off my shoulders, the crew was in and standing around the front counter. They were drinking coffee from 7-Eleven go-cups and picking from a box of doughnuts iced in peculiarly unnatural colors.
McGinnes leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. Malone lounged beside him, coffee in one hand, Newport in the other. Lloyd was holding a doughnut up near his face, examining it as he chewed in slow, exaggerated chomps. Louie was spreading out newspaper ads on the counter.
“Black?” Lee asked, handing me a cup.
“You wish,” I said, and took the coffee.
“All right, everybody,” Louie ordered, “listen up,” and we moved around him in a semicircle. McGinnes nudged me and pointed at the folds of fat at the back of Louie’s head, which seemed to be fused onto his thick shoulders.
“Did you lose your neck, boss?” McGinnes asked.
“Shut up and look here, McGinnes.” Louie pointed to the ads he had torn from the paper and spread on the counter. “Electric Town is running with the top-rated Sharp CD player for one nineteen. You boys know that that model has been discontinued-we don’t have it and we can’t get it. But they have a very sharp price on that Sharp.” Louie looked back at us for recognition of his pun.
“We get it,” Malone said. “You sharp, Louie.”
Louie cleared his throat and turned back to the ads. McGinnes closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest, and began softly snoring.
“Anyway,” Louie continued, ignoring McGinnes, “I called them up first thing this morning, and they don’t have but one or two in stock. So now you know what to tell the consumers.”
“Okay, Louie,” McGinnes and Malone said robotically and in unison.
“Now,” Louie said, “this one’s tough,” and he pointed to a Stereo Godfather’s (“Our Competition Sleeps with the Fishes!”) ad. “They’re runnin’ a VT290 for three ninety-nine. That’s damn near cost. We can’t meet the deal at that price. We’ve got to figure some way to get off of it.”
“No problem,” McGinnes said. “Isn’t that the same model that caught fire in the customer’s house last year?”
“Yeah,” Malone said. ”Killed a couple kids, too. Little itty-bitty motherfuckers.”
“And we absolutely refuse to sell that model,” McGinnes said, “until the manufacturer corrects the problem. It’s a matter of principle.”
“You know what the problem with that piece was,” Malone said.
“What’s that?” McGinnes asked.
“Fire in the wire.”
“Really?” McGinnes {”'›said. “I thought it was shrinkage in the linkage.”
“All right, girls,” Louie said. “I don’t care what you tell the customers. Just don’t give the damn thing away. And we need some volume today. I figure we’re about twenty-five grand down in pace for the month. On the for- real side, provided we get some traffic in here, I’d like to make up fifteen of it today.”
“Shit, Louie,” Malone said, “I’ll write fifteen myself.”
“Sellin’ woof tickets, maybe,” Louie said. “There’s a case of beer for the top dog today. And five percent of your volume has to be in service contracts. Any questions?”
“Just one,” I said. “What is the meaning of life?”
Lee laughed charitably but the others ignored me. Louie was already headed for the back room.
Lloyd said, “Did anyone see ‘Mr. Belvedere’ last night?”
“Too busy gyratin’, Lloyd,” Malone said. “How about you? You been doin’ ‘the nasty’?”
Lloyd gave Malone an awkward wink and raised his pipe to his mouth, hitting his teeth with the stem in a botched aristocratic gesture. Splotches of pink began to form on his pasty face.
“Well, Andre,” McGinnes said happily. “I can almost taste that case of beer right now.”
“Go on and taste it,” Malone said, pointing to the front door as the first customer of the day walked in, “while I take this motherfucker to the bridge.”
The morning was evenly paced with customers, mostly young couples with the type of money that affords residence in upper Northwest. Malone and McGinnes handled the floor nicely and closed most of their deals, as did Louie, whose strength on the floor I had forgotten.
The boys had instructed Lee to tell any customers who phoned, inquiring about small appliances, to “please ask for Lloyd” when they came in. This would keep him tied up in the low-commission department, and also keep him from blowing any major deals.
I took the overflow when the floor traffic became heavy and picked up my first customer of the day. She was an attractive woman in the last leg of her thirties, wearing colorful, gauzy clothing that attempted to conceal her shapeliness, but failed.
After my greeting she immediately pulled from her tote bag a copy of Consumer Reports, a legal pad on which she had neatly charted competitive prices, and a pen. She asked for the price of the top-rated VCR. I explained to her that, as is often the case, the top-rated model had been discontinued one week before the article was published; that top-rated models were usually a poor buy anyway, since manufacturers, upon receiving the rating, jacked up the cost of the particular model to their distributors, who passed it on to the retailers, who passed it on to the customers; and that the intelligent model to purchase would be one of the same brand and similar features but with a different model number and hence a lesser retail.
She wanted the model number that was printed in the magazine. Further, she thought Consumer Reports was just great, a protection against sleazy retailers who take advantage of unsuspecting customers. A smug smile
