Lights Out

the three of them on the desk, Benjamin Franklin side up, flipped them over, then over again.

“Which is the lucky charm?”

Eddie studied the bills. There had to be a reason why Paz wanted the bill, had to be a reason why El Rojo had tried to smuggle it to him; something that made it different from the other bills. Invisible ink? Should he take all three, examine them under ultraviolet light? Eddie doubted that El Rojo had that kind of writing material in his cell.

One of the bills was crisp and unwrinkled; as though fresh from the mint. Eddie concentrated on the other two, holding each up to the light. He looked for clues in Franklin’s prosperous image, in the leafy scene on the back, in the clock tower of Independence Hall, where the time appeared to be 1:25. He checked the margins and the other open spaces for handwriting, but found none. None, unless you counted the tiny numbers inked here and there on the more wrinkled of the two bills.

Eddie had another look. He located the numbers one through fourteen, all on the Franklin side, inscribed in black ink. Some of them were written under individual digits of the serial number, B41081554G. The one, for example, appeared under the four. Other numbers were elsewhere: ten in the borders of the S in “ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.”

“This is it,” Eddie said.

“How do you know?” asked the maitre d’, peering over his shoulder.

“By the cigarette smell.”

The maitre d’ sniffed the air. “You have a good nose, monsieur.”

“Armagnac lovers. We’re all like that.” Eddie handed over the two fifties.

The maitre d’ looked at them doubtfully, tried snapping one of them between his fingers.

“That doesn’t prove a thing,” Eddie said. He’d known a few counterfeiters.

Eddie took the bus back to New York. On a pad of paper he realigned the printed letters and numbers on the bill according to the order suggested by the inked-in numbers, one through fourteen. That produced the following sequence: 4650571914THST

Meaningless. Eddie knew nothing about codes. He made the obvious move, assigning a letter value to each number, governed by its place in the alphabet: four becoming D, six becoming F, and so on. The only problem was the zero. He decided to substitute the letter O for now, and change it later if needed. Soon he had a line of fourteen letters: DFEOEGAI-ADTHST

He played with those letters all the way to the city. The best he could manage was this: DIE SAD THEFT AGO

Eddie stared again at the original line: 4650571914THST. He began at the letter end. ST. TH. TH was short for Thursday. It also made the sound th. ST could be short for Saturday. It was also short for saint and street. Thursday Saturday. Thursday Saint. Thursday Street. Was there a Thursday Street? He hadn’t heard of one. He had read and half understood a yellowed paperback called The Man Who Was Thursday, but he recalled no Thursday Street. TH ST. TH Street. His gaze slid back into the numbers. 14 TH ST.

14th Street.

Fourteenth Street.

There were certainly 14th streets. Were there 914th streets as well? Probably not. So stick with fourteenth.

Eddie went back to the beginning. He now had this: 46505719 14THST

Was it an address? 9 14th Street? 19 14th Street? 719 14th Street? 5719 14th Street? And if so, in what city? It suddenly occurred to him to check what Federal Reserve Bank the bill had come from.

B. New York.

He dropped 5719 because he didn’t think street numbers went that high in New York; high street numbers meant out west. So, it was 9, 19, or 719. Then what were 46505 all about? He tried to fit them into some form of address and couldn’t.

A voice spoke, “Let’s go bud. Haven’t got all day.”

The bus driver was standing over him. They were in the station and the bus was empty. Eddie rose, but slowly, the driver’s words lingering in his mind.

“What’s the date?”

“The sixth. All day.”

“Of April?”

“Yeah. Where you been?”

Eddie got off the bus. April 6. 4/6. 4/6 505 719 14th St. 4/6 5:05 719 14th St. 5:05.

5:05. A.M. or P.M.?

Eddie checked the clock in the terminal: 4:15.

He went outside, stuck up his hand at a passing cab. It passed, as did several others. Then one stopped, but a woman with a shopping bag jumped in ahead of him. When the next one stopped, Eddie jumped in ahead of someone else.

Eddie gave the driver the address and asked, “Is it far?”

“No far.”

“Can you get me there by five?”

“Fi dollar?”

“Five o’clock.”

“Eas’ or wes’?”

“What?”

“Eas’ or wes’ fourteen?”

Eddie didn’t know. They tried west, but found no 719. There was a 719 East Fourteenth. The driver dropped Eddie outside it at ten to five, by the clock hanging in the window of Kwik ’n Brite Dry Cleaners next door. It was impossible to see into 719 itself. The windows had been painted red to eye level. The neon sign said: “Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps.” A secondary, hand-lettered sign added: “Male-Female, Female-Female, Male-Male, More.”

Eddie went inside. There were two men in the store. One wore a ponytail and a Harvard sweat shirt. He stood behind the counter, inhaling nasal spray. The other wore a stone face and a suit. He browsed in the all- amateur section of the video department. Neither looked at Eddie.

He left the store, crossed the street, waited with his back to a florist’s shop. The rain had softened to a light drizzle. It glistened on the flowers in their bins outside: tulips, roses, others Eddie couldn’t name. He smelled their smells and kept his eyes on “Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps.”

The browser came out, a plastic shopping bag in his hand. A woman in a black sombrero walked quickly past. A young man, not much older than the bookstore boy, went by the door of 719, turned, passed the other way, glanced around, saw Eddie, checked his watch as though he were on a schedule, and slinked inside the store. Then came a woman with a leashed mongrel that pissed against the wall of the store, a bare-chested man on roller blades, and an unleashed mongrel that sniffed the wall and raised its leg in the already pissed-on place.

At 5:04, by the clock in the Kwik ’n Brite window, a taxi stopped in front of 719 and a man got out. He wore a trench coat and a hat, the kind of hat men wore in old movies-a fedora maybe, Eddie didn’t know much about the names of hats. He had fat cheeks reddened by the sun, curly graying hair, a trim gray beard: a potential department-store Santa. Eddie couldn’t name him at first. That was partly because of the coat and hat, mostly because the man was so far out of context. But Eddie knew him, all right. How could he forget a man who had taken a gram of muscle from his forearm with a big square-ended instrument for some drug company, who had labeled him an inadequate personality, who had predicted that Eddie would be back in prison soon? It was Floyd K. Messer, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Treatment.

The taxi drove off. Messer stood on the sidewalk. He glanced around, his gaze passing over Eddie, not ten yards away, with no sign of recognition. Eddie ducked into the florist’s, watched Messer through the window.

Messer looked behind at 719, saw the sign, and moved in front of Kwik ’n Brite. He checked his watch. Cars