five years, plenty of which could be traced through their serial numbers. But whereas a reluctant Detective Hogan had been persuaded, ah yes, to bring up the numbers on the piece that had caused the untimely demise, ah yes, of Councilman Henderson, those serial numbers had presumably been filed offbeforethe bank robbery, lo, those many years ago. So, assuming the gun had been requisitioned, so to speak, from the Property Clerk’s Office by some enterprising police officer who knew that a weapon without a serial number was the equivalent of a naked man in a busy whore house, andfurtherassuming that the weapon had been sold on the street by said opportunistic cop and had eventually found its way into a pawnshop, it wouldstillbe unidentifiable without any numbers on it, and therefore untraceable, a clean gun that had remained clean five years after it had done its dirty deed.
So he knew the answer to the first gun question even before he asked it.
“Anybody buy a .32 Smith & Wesson from you recently?”
“Sure. Vot’s the serial numbers?”
Fat Jew pawnbrokers wearing yarmulkes who only three weeks ago had celebrated Passover, when they were closed for religious reasons, and not even a poor alcoholic writer on a so-called lost weekend could hock his typewriter to buy a bottle of booze. True high artists sure had it tough all over these days. He could just imagine how difficult it was for poor Jonathan Franzen, whom Ollie admired a great deal because he’d dissed a Negress like Oprah Winfrey.
Even when Ollie gave them the serial numbers Hogan had brought up, he knew they wouldn’t ring a bell because if the gunhadby some amazing phenomenon been hocked, with the serial numbers filed off it was like trying to identify a bare-assed newborn baby who hadn’t yet been given a name.
He asked the gun questions only because he had to.
The dispatch case was another matter.
“A Gucci dispatch case,” he told them, “tan pigskin, single brass clasp, monogrammed with the letters OWW.”
First ten pawnshops he hit hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a pigskin dispatch case from Gucci.
“Hide nor hair, you get it?” one of the pawnbrokers asked him, chuckling, making witty reference to the pigskin, Ollie guessed, which inanycase Jews weren’t allowed to eat, pig, nor Muslims, either, same as Catholics weren’t allowed to eat meat of any kind on Good Friday, man, these religions. Ollie sometimes felt if everybody in the world was allowed to eat whatever the hell he wanted, there wouldn’t be wars anymore. It all got down to eating. Which reminded him that it was almost twelve noon and he was getting hungry again.
He struck paydirt of sorts in the eleventh pawnshop he visited that morning.
A bell over the door tinkled as Ollie entered, causing him to look up in an attempt to identify the source, encountering at first glance a ceiling hung with musical instruments of every persuasion. Well, no pianos. But here in front of the counter was a gleaming brassy array of trumpets, tubas, trombones, and other alliterative instruments Ollie could not identify. And behind the counter was a hanging woodwind section of saxophones, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons, not to mention more guitars than could be found in a strolling mariachi band. A young woman with a sweet ass was standing at the counter, expectantly watching the shop owner, Ollie presumed, who had a jeweler’s loupe to his eye and what looked like a diamond ring in his hand.
He put down the loupe. He handed the ring back across the counter. “It’s glass,” he said. “I can’t give you a nickel.”
Ollie felt like telling the woman there was a massage parlor up the street where she could get work if she was really hard up.
“Guy gave it to me last night,” she told both the pawnbroker and Ollie. “Which means I got stiffed.”
Which meant she was already a working girl.
Ollie wondered if he should arrest her.
Years ago, he used to arrest hookers just to scare them into freebie blowjobs. Nowadays, they all had civil rights lawyers who took their cases all the way up to the Supreme Court. Well, what could you do?
“Girl can’t be too careful these days,” he suggested.
“Tell me about it,” she said, and swiveled her splendid ass out of the shop.
Ollie flashed the tin.
The pawnbroker nodded.
“Pigskin dispatch case,” Ollie said. “Gucci label. OWW monogram. Seen it?”
“Came in Monday afternoon,” the pawnbroker said. “Sold it in a minute.”
Ollie looked at the framed license on the wall behind the counter.
The name on it was Irving Stein.
“Tell me, Irv,” he said, “was there anything in that case when you received it?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you know the case was stolen?”
“No, I did not.”
“Didn’t you receive a flier I sent out Tuesday?”
“I didn’t see anything on any flier about any dispatch case worth a big five dollars.”
“Oh, is that what you thought a stolen Gucci dispatch case was worth, Irv?”
“That’s all it was worth to me. And I didn’t know it was stolen.”
“Cause you didn’t see my flier, right?”
“I get fliers from all over the city. Every fecockteh precinct gets a Timex wrist watch stolen, they send me a flier. If I read every flier I got, I’d have no time for anything else,” Irving said. “What’s so important here, anyway? Whose dispatch case was this? Bin Laden’s?”
“No, it wasmine.And my book was in it.”
“Must be some book, all this commotion.”
“It’s a book Iwrote,” Ollie said.
“I thought you were a cop.”
“I am a cop.”
“But you also write books, huh?”
“Is that so strange? There are many cops and former cops and district attorneys and lawyers who write mystery novels. In every corner of this great nation, there are former…”
“A mystery book writer, how about that?” Irving said. “Next you’ll be telling me you play trombone.”
“No, I play piano.”
“Piano, I shoulda guessed.”
“I play ‘Night and Day’ on the piano.”
“You play night and day, when do you find time to write and be a cop?”
“Did you get my flier, or didn’t you?”
“I told you no, I don’t remember getting it. I don’t remember seeing anything at all about a pigskin dispatch case.”
“Cause pork is against your religion, right?”
“No, cause I don’t remember seeing it.”
“Cause if youdidget the flier, and youdidknow the case was stolen, and you knowingly received stolen goods, you’d be looking at a goodly amount of time in the slammer. Want to think aboutthatone a while, Irv?”
“Give me a break, willya?” Irving said. “A piece of dreck worth five dollars? Who’s kidding who here?”
“You won’t think I’m kidding if I go after your license.”
“So go after it. For what? For making a bona fide purchase for value?”
“Ah, the man suddenly understands legal distinctions,” Ollie said to the ceiling full of hanging musical instruments.
“I didn’t know the case was stolen,” Irving said. “Period.”
“Because if you knew it was stolen, you knew you’d be looking at a D-felony, am I right?”
“Yes, Detective, you are perfectly right.IfI knew the case was stolen. Which I didn’t.”
“Who brought the case in here, can you tell me that?”
“A girl named Emmy.”
“Emmy what?”
“I didn’t get her last name.”
