After the First Death

I lit a cigarette. The excitement was beginning to bubble inside me. I wanted to go back to the store and grab the little man by the throat “I’ll shake it out of him,” I said.

“No.”

“He’ll tell us. Why not?”

“No. Wait a minute.”

I waited.

“If it weren’t for the damned uniform you could pretend to be a cop,” she said. “But that’s no good now. What do they call them-Army Police?”

“Military Police. MP’s.”

“Yeah. Could you be something like that? But not after the bit we been working, it wouldn’t go down right Let me think. Do you have about fifty dollars?”

“I think so.”

“Make sure.”

I checked my roll. I had seventy dollars and change. “It won’t leave much,” I said, “but I’ve got it.”

“Good.”

“Why fifty? He said forty.”

“Forty for the watch. Ten more for him to remember where he got it. We got to scare him and bribe him both. C’mon.”

We went back into the store. He seemed surprised to see us. He had already put the watch away. He got it out, and I handed him forty dollars in fives and tens.

“I’ll have to charge you the tax-”

“No tax,” Jackie said.

“Listen, I don’t make the rules.”

“You make the prices. You’d of taken thirty-five and we both know it. You absorb the tax.”

“Well, I suppose I could do that-”

“And while you’re at it,” she said, watch in hand, “You can tell us who laid the watch on you, baby.”

He just looked at her.

“It was boosted Saturday night” she went on. There was a tough, flat quality to her voice that I had not heard before. “Somebody brought it here Monday morning. You tell me who.”

“Now, miss, you must be thinking of some other watch. I’ve had this particular watch in stock for over three months, and-”

She was shaking her head “No.”

“A lot of watches look alike. Lord Elgin, that’s not an uncommon-”

“No.”

He didn’t say anything. He had the money and we had the watch, and it was our move, and he didn’t get it.

She said, “You got the forty, that’s what you paid plus a profit. All we want is a name.”

“Believe me, if I could help you-”

“You’d rather talk to the cops?”

The round face turned sly. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that if you wanted to go to the police, you wouldn’t pay me forty dollars. The interest you have in this, you don’t want police.”

“Maybe.”

“So?”

“So it’s a private matter.”

“Everything’s a private matter. Nothing you come across these days is anything but a private matter.”

Scratch a receiver of stolen goods and you find a philosopher. I said, “All right, so tell him.”

Jackie looked at me, puzzled.

“We were at a private party Saturday night,” I said. That’s when the watch was taken. So you can see what that means. It was taken by someone at the party, and everyone there was a friend of ours. At least we thought so.”

“Ah,” the man said.

She came in on cue. “Which means we do not want police.”

“This I can understand.”

“But,” I said, “we would also like to know who our friends are.”

“So who wouldn’t like to know this?”

“Uh-huh.”

A sigh. “If I could help you.”

“Just a name.”

“I could tell you a name, and it wouldn’t mean anything, and I could say that this is the only name I know, and then what?”

“And a description.”

“So what’s a description? It might fit someone and it might not, and the person who took the watch, if this was the watch you lost, might not be the same person who sold it to me. If this was the watch in question.”

Jackie looked at him, then at the watch. She handed the watch to me and I put it on. I liked the old band better. I asked him if he had the old band around, and he looked at me for a moment and then smiled. He seemed to be enjoying this.

Jackie said, “If you don’t give us a name and a description, or if you do and we don’t get anywhere with it, somebody else is going to come here and ask the same questions, and it might be somebody who isn’t as nice as us.”

“Such threats from such a nice couple.”

“Sometimes threats come true.”

“Like wishes?”

We fenced like this, the three of us, with Jackie carrying most of the load while I picked up a cue now and then and helped her along. She was getting increasingly nervous, and several times I saw her rub the back of her hand over her nose or mouth. Her eyes were watering behind the dark glasses. A rage mounted in me, and I wanted to grab the round little man and hurt him.

The rage passed, but I reached out mental fingers and pulled it back for another look at it. And I took out another ten dollar bill and put it down on the counter, and he looked at it and at me.

I said, “That’s ten more dollars for a name and a description. You better take it, and you better deliver.”

“And if it’s a lie that I sell you?”

“Then I come back here,” I said, “and I kill you.”

“Would you really do this?”

“Is it worth finding out?”

He decided it wasn’t.

20

THE ONLY NAME I HAVE FOR HIM IS PHIL. IT COULD BE HIS name. Who knows? Age, I would say, late twenties. I think he is Italian. Maybe Jewish, but I would think Italian. On the short side. Maybe five-foot- seven. A little shorter than myself, I would say. Dark hair, black, not too long and not too short. No part, just combed straight back. A pointed face like a piece of pie, you know what I mean? Like a triangle. Long nose. Thin lips. Pockmarks on his cheeks and chin. Walks with his shoulders hunched forward. Thin in the body. Very nervous, with the hands moving all the time…

When we’d been over it three times, when we had all he had to give us, I told him he should forget he ever saw us. “You shouldn’t worry,” he said. “You were never here, I never met you, you shouldn’t worry.”

We left the store, walked two blocks, turned a corner, stood waiting for a cab. Jackie was overdue now. She said, “Oh, Jesus, we got to get home. We got to get home. Is it cold out, Alex?”