ALL KINDS
PASSPORT
DRIVERS LICENSE
TAXI
Jack cut around it and stepped through the open doorway into a tiny store packed to the ceiling with miniature Statues of Liberty, New York City postcards, customizable T-shirts, sports caps, and anything else Ernie could cram into a rack or onto a shelf. Ernie's shop made Abe's seem like the wide open range.
"Hey, Ern."
The skinny, droopy-faced man behind the counter wore an ugly orange Hawaiian shirt and had a Pall Mall dangling from the corner of his mouth, J-P Belmondo style. He looked up and winked.
"Witcha in a minute, sir," he said and went right back into his spiel to an old Korean tourist about a pair of Ray Ban Predators.
"We're talkin' big savings here. Real money." He pronounced it monnay-like "Monday" without the d. "I'm tellin' you, these list for ninety bucks. I can let you have 'em for fifty."
"No-no," the old man said. "I see down street for ten. Ten dollah."
"But they're knock-offs. They ain't the real thing. You buy 'em today and tomorrow morning the lenses'll fall out and the temples'll break off. But these, my friend, these are the real deal."
Jack turned away and pretended to browse through a rack of bootleg videos. Nothing Ernie sold was the real deal.
His mind wandered back to Gia. He'd slept over again last night. Nice. He loved waking up next to her. But she'd seemed so jumpy this morning. She'd looked impatient when he'd been making calls, and he'd gotten the impression she'd been waiting for him to leave. He didn't consider himself the easiest person to live with, but was he getting on her nerves already?
The old guy had haggled Ernie down to thirty-five and left wearing his cool shades.
"Hey, Jack," Ernie said, folding the money into his pocket. Too many years of unfiltered cigarettes had given him a frog's vocal cords. "How y'doin'. How y'doin'." He shook his head. "Tough t'make a buck these days, y'know? Real tough."
"Yeah," Jack said, easing up to Ernie's combination display case and counter. Half a dozen faux Rolexes glittered through the crisscrossed scratches in the glass. "Things are tight all around."
"These street guys are killin' me. I mean, what overhead they got? They roll out a blanket or set up a cardboard box and they're in business. They're sellin' the same stuff as me for a fin over cost. Me, you wouldn't believe the rent I gotta pay for this here closet."
"Sorry to hear that." Ernie had been crying poverty since a number of his fake ID sources dried up after the World Trade Center catastrophe. He'd been Jack's main source of driver's licenses and photo IDs for many years. "You get the queer we talked about?"
"Sure did." He pointed to the door. "Make us look closed, will ya?"
Jack locked the door and flipped the open sign to closed. When he returned to the counter, Ernie had a stack of currency on the glass.
"Here she be. Five K of it."
Jack picked up one of the hundred-dollar bills. He snapped it, held it up to the light. Not too crisp, not too limp. "Looks pretty good to me."
"Yeah, it's good work but they're cold as bin Laden's ass. Every clerk from Bloomie's to the lowliest bodega's got that serial number tacked up next to the cash register."
"Perfect," Jack said. Just what he wanted. "What do I owe you?"
"Gimme twenty and we'll call it even." He grinned as he started stuffing the bills into a brown paper bag. "I'll knock the price down to fifteen if you take more off my hands."
Jack laughed. "You're really looking to dump this junk, aren't you."
"Tell me about it. Stuff was golden for a while, but 'bout all it's good for now is lightin' cigars and stuffin' cracks in a drafty room. Can't even use it for toilet paper. Liability having it around."
"Why don't you just burn it?"
"Easier said than done, my man. Especially in the summer. First off, I ain't got no fireplace in my apartment, and even if I did, I wouldn't want to burn it there. And the bums ain't lightin' up their trashcans in this heat, so I can't just walk by and dump a few stacks into the fire. I'm gonna hafta wait till winter. Till then, I'm glad to have someone take even a little off my hands."
"What are friends for?" Jack said, handing him a twenty and taking the paper bag.
Ernie looked at him. "I don't get it. Why you want bad queer when I can get you good? Whatta you gonna do with it?"
Jack smiled. "Buy myself a stairway to heaven."
3
"You're sure you want to go in?" Jack said as he pulled his car into an empty parking spot about half a block from Ifasen's house.
Gia thought about that a second. "Of course. I wouldn't have come otherwise."
He shook his head. "You've never, ever done anything like this before."
She smiled at him. "First time for everything, right?"
Like being a father, she thought.
She was such a coward. Jack had said he was going to pay a call on Ifasen-although he was calling him Lyle now-to pick up a fee, and she'd told him she wanted to come along. She'd explained it as some sort of proprietary interest-after all, she'd found him the job-and had kidded him about collecting a finder's fee.
But she had a more serious reason for going with him. Two of them, in fact.
First, she'd decided to tell him about the pregnancy now rather than later. She wasn't good at hiding things or keeping secrets. It wasn't her nature. Best to put it out in the open where they both could deal with it.
But she hadn't found an opening. Or so she'd told herself during the trip from Midtown to Astoria. Truth was, she simply hadn't been able to admit that she'd been so careless.
She'd tell him on the way home for sure.
The second reason was that she wanted to ask Ifasen-Lyle-about his two-child prediction. The rational part of her brain knew it had been a trick or a lucky guess, or whatever, but another part kept asking, Did he know? And if so, was there any more he could tell her? She knew the questions would keep bouncing around her mind until she had some answers.
Yes, she knew it didn't make sense, and that this wasn't like her, but...
Hey, I'm pregnant. I've got hormones surging every which way. I don't have to make sense.
Jack had his arm around her waist as they walked along the uneven sidewalk toward Lyle's yard.
Lyle... it carried nowhere near the spiritualistic ring, the psychic vibrations of Ifasen.
"You have returned?"
Gia jumped at the sound of a lilting woman's voice behind her. She and Jack turned as one.
"Pardon me?" Gia said.
An Indian woman in a red sari. Gia thought she looked familiar, and then remembered she'd seen her Friday night. Right here in fact. She'd worn a blue sari then, but she had the same big German shepherd on a leash.
"You must not go in there," the woman said. "Very bad for you."
"You told us that the other night," Jack said, "but nothing happened. So why are you-?"
"Something did happen!" Her black eyes flashed. "Earth tremble!"
"So what are you telling us?" Jack said. "If we go in there again there'll be another earthquake?"
"I am telling you it is a bad place, dangerous for both of you."
The woman seemed so sincere, and that struck an uneasy chord within Gia. When her dog looked up at her with his big brown shepherd's eyes and whimpered, it only added to her disquiet.
"Thank you for the warning," Jack said. He took Gia's arm and guided her away, toward the house. "Let's go."
Gia complied, but as they moved away she glanced back over her shoulder to see the woman and her dog staring after them.
She leaned against Jack. "What was she talking about?"
"She could be talking about the house's history, or she might think we're heading in to attend a seance and because of that our salvation is in jeopardy. Who knows?"
Gia glanced back again but the woman and her dog were gone. Moved on, she guessed.
As they headed up the walk toward the house Gia tried to put her unease behind her. To lighten up she pointed to the dead brown leaves on all the foundation plantings.
"Who's his gardener? Julio?"
Jack laughed. "No. Just one phase of the harassment he's been suffering. If all goes well, that will come to an end real soon."
"But no rough stuff, right?"
"Pure subterfuge, my dear, and nothing more."
Good, she could have said. I don't want your child growing up without a father.
But she didn't want to lay that on him just as they walked through Lyle Kenton's door.
The man who had been Ifasen answered Jack's knock. He wore a cutoff Spartans sweatshirt, blue running shorts, and was barefoot.
"Jack," he said, but his smile was weak, distracted. "Right on time. Come on in."
"I don't know if you remember Gia," Jack said. "She was here Friday night with Junie and the rest of us."
"Yes, of course." He gave Gia a fleeting smile and a quick little bow. "Nice to see you again." He seemed tense.
Jack must have noticed it too. As he guided Gia ahead of him through the door he said, "Something wrong?"
Lyle shook his head. "Some strange stuff going on with the house last night."