Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

“You look and smell just like a vanilla bean,” I said.

“I appreciate that, Michael,” Barry said. “I like to think that if you look good, you feel good, and I feel good now. Better than I have all week.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said. I gave him a big, warm smile. “Now tell me what your guy said before I strangle you, too.”

Barry cleared his throat and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a torn out page from the phone book with scribbles on it. “You’re gonna wanna get onto Sixteenth Avenue and turn left.”

“Where are we going?” I said.

“I’m just following directions,” Barry said. “My guy was very specific.”

“Who is this guy?” I said.

“I’ve only ever known him as Jacques,” Barry said. “Never seen him in person. But I told him I was in a bind and I really needed his help. He owes me a few favors.”

If you’re the kind of guy who knows how to move things on the black market-and Barry was pretty much the Walmart of the black market-you end up with plenty of acquaintances who owe you a favor or two. In that way, Barry wasn’t so different than Sam. In all other ways, it was like apples and chainsaws.

“This is a guy who can keep a secret?” I said.

“He’s a ghost,” Barry said. “Really. The guy is Fort Knox. You think guys who can hand engrave plates for money just blab to everyone they meet about their special skill?”

I started the car and headed out of the mall and followed Barry’s circuitous directions until we came to a stop on Aragon Avenue in Coral Gables, some ten miles from where we started, even though we’d traveled closer to twenty. I looked around for some obvious sign of the world’s finest plate engraver, but all I saw was a taupecolored strip mall that boasted a hair salon, a coffee place called Cliffhanger and…

“What did you say this guy’s name was?” I said.

“Jacques,” Barry said.

“Not Harvey?” I said.

“Why would it be Harvey?”

“I don’t know, Barry. Maybe because we’re currently parked in front of Harvey’s Trophy World,” I said. I pointed out the window to the storefront. A painted sign in the window announced that Harvey’s was THE OFFICIAL HOME OF ALL YOUR LITTLE LEAGUE NEEDS!

“Everyone has a day job,” Barry said.

“Yeah,” I said, “what’s yours?”

I got out of the car, and Barry trailed after me. “He said no guns,” Barry said.

“I’m not coming to rob him,” I said.

“He might pat you down,” Barry said.

The door to Harvey’s shop opened up and a young boy and his mother came out clutching an armful of awards. “Great,” I said. I went back to my car and dumped my guns. I didn’t even bother to pick up the paintball gun, for fear that I might shoot Barry with it. “You sure this guy is what you say he is? Because I don’t want to walk into this place and find out we’ve wasted the afternoon.”

“Mike, trust me,” Barry said. “Have I ever steered you wrong where money was concerned?”

He had a point. Barry was especially good for his word with money, so I let him lead the way across the street and into the shop.

The interior of Harvey’s was filled, wall to wall, with awards, trophies, pendants, charms, commemorative cups, water bottles, fake fish mounted above empty gold labels, tote bags that said YOUR LOGO HERE on them. There were also pennants, dish towels, sun visors and every other conceivable item that could possibly have a logo or saying or award declaration placed on it.

The store was a narrow funnel that led to a single counter in the back, where the cash register was located. Behind the counter was a double door that led into, presumably, Harvey’s great factory of fame and recognition. All I knew for certain from where I stood soaking up the ambience of Harvey’s was that he hadn’t dusted in at least a decade, nor bothered to change any of his displays.

“Nice place,” I said.

“Maybe he does a big mail-order business,” Barry said. “Now, just follow my lead here. He was very specific in his directions.”

“You’re the boss,” I said.

We walked to the back of the store and Barry rang the bell on the counter… the one that had a sign next to it that said PLEASE RING THE BELL. I MAY NOT HEAR YOU COME IN OTHERWISE, which to me sounded like an invitation to pull the cash register off the counter. Except, oddly, the register was bolted to the wall and down to the floor using thick titanium bars. Not exactly standard for a trophy shop.

And then I began to notice other details. The floor, while dusty, was lined with razor-thin metal piping that led directly into a series of small boxes built into the floor at the front of the store. The only time I’d seen that previously was in a vault inside a mansion in Belarus, which is good, because once you see a floor that’s capable of electrocuting you with the flip of a switch, you generally want to avoid a second occurrence.

The double doors swung open and out came a man of about seventy. Maybe seventy-five. He did not look like the kind of guy who would electrocute you without cause. Nor did he look like someone named Jacques. Harvey? Certainly. He was bald except for a wisp of gray hair in the center of his head, wore eyeglasses with no frames and had on a dust-covered gray shirt covered only nominally by a dust-covered gray apron.

“Are you here to pick up your trophy or to design a plaque?” Harvey said.

Barry started to speak, stopped, started again, and then reached into his pocket for the scrap of the yellow pages he’d scribbled on, and attempted to read his own handwriting. “Uh, we are here to pick up the trophy for, uh, the, uh, Desperados?”

Harvey didn’t respond.

“The, uh, Diamondbacks?”

Still nothing.

Barry attempted again. “The, gosh, Destroyers?”

Harvey scratched at something on this nose.

“Mike, you wanna take a shot at this?” Barry said and handed me the paper.

Anyone with this much patience and an electrified floor probably didn’t appreciate Barry’s inability to read his own words, so I decided to take a more direct approach. “Harvey,” I said, “we’re here because I need a plate to counterfeit money from. Is this the right place?”

Harvey pulled a cloth handkerchief from his pants pocket, took off his glasses and then spent a few moments cleaning the lenses, all the while breathing so heavily I thought he was having a stroke. When the glasses were finally clean enough, he put them back on and stared at me with something like recognition. It was a look I’d seen many times before, just in a different package, and usually not in a trophy store.

“Marines?” he said.

“Rangers,” I said.

“CIA?”

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“Not officially, no,” I said.

“You lose your pension or something?”

“Something,” I said.

“You going to pay someone to blow up a government building or fund a terrorist cell?”

“No,” I said.

“You usually work for people like Barry?”

“For? No. Barry and I have some mutual interests. In this case, specifically, I’m trying to keep him alive.”

“In the event it’s possible, will you return the plate to me?”

“In the event it’s possible, absolutely.”

“Are you local?”

“Born and raised right here,” I said.

“Back for a visit?”

“You could say I had a burning desire to come home.”

Harvey cleared his throat and then spat on the floor. I had the sense maybe he’d found himself in a similar situation in the past.

“Yes,” he said. “Well. I don’t suppose you have a card or something?”

“My name is Michael Westen,” I said.

“Oh. I see.”