Lawrence Block - After the First Death

“You would know it if you saw it?”

“I suppose so.” I concentrated. “There was a link missing in the band, and-”

“Forget the band. It probably has a new band by now.”

“Oh. Just a minute. I think I could recognize it by the face. There’s a nick in the paint around the dial. If I saw it, I’m sure I would know it. But why? How could we find it?”

“If he stole it to keep ft, then we can’t Unless you walk around the city until you happen to see it on somebody’s wrist But if he stole it to sell it, it’s less than a week, and whoever took it probably still has it A watch that’s worth around a hundred dollars, you could fence it almost anywhere. I mean you wouldn’t have to go to an important fence. Just any pawnshop, and you would get ten or fifteen dollars for it. Maybe twenty, but probably ten or fifteen. So if we go looking to buy a watch, and we happen to see it-”

“It sounds impossible, Jackie.”

“You think so?”

“You said it yourself. How many pawnshops are there in the city? And how many watches? It could be anywhere.”

“It’s most likely around midtown. There’s some places a person would be most likely to go.”

“Still-”

“Can you think of a better place to start?”

“No, but-”

“I know a few people in hockshops.” Her hand moved, unconsciously, I think, to her upper arm. A sweater covered the hit marks, but I had seen them last night “The scene I have, things of mine go in and out of hockshops. So there’s some people I know.”

She was right. It was a place to start “Well try it,” I said.

“Let me get a coat on.”

“All right.”

At the doorway I said, “Jackie, why are you doing this? Why take the trouble?”

“What’s it matter?”

“I just wondered.”

She shrugged but didn’t say anything. The sun was bright outside, and she took sunglasses from her purse and put them on. We walked toward the park to catch a taxi While we were waiting she said, “You want to know something? I like you, Alex. I don’t like many people. That I can talk to and relax with.”

I found her hand. It was small and soft, and cold.

“Do you like me, Alex?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t say it unless it’s true”

“I like you, Jackie.”

“You ought to pull your cap down a little. You don’t want too much of your face showing.”

“All they notice is the uniform.”

“I suppose.”

“You’re a sweet person, Jackie.”

We stood waiting. There was a dearth of empty cabs. I lit us each a cigarette. She said, “Look, don’t make me a saint. Maybe I’m just interested, you know? Nothing ever happens. Something to do, you know?”

“Sure.”

She was superb in the pawnshops. Before we went to the first place, on Eighth Avenue just below Forty-seventh Street, she went over the routine with me. “Now the way it ought to play is that I’m in love with you and I want to buy you a present. See, the places we’ll be going, they’ll know that I’m a prostitute. So what they’ll figure is that you’re my man, and they’ll think, you know, a prostitute and her man, and they won’t be afraid to show a watch that is hot, like they might be otherwise.”

Prostitute. The word had an odd sound on her lips. Unlike the slang and the euphemisms, it was clinically accurate, devoid of the usual overtones. A prostitute and her man.

We played it by ear at the first shop and refined the script as we went along. First we would stand around outside, studying the watches on display in the window. Then, inside, she would explain that we wanted to buy a watch. A decent watch, and it had to have a sweep second hand-mine had had one, and that was one quick way to narrow down the entries.

“What was the brand you said you liked, honey?”

“Lord Elgin.”

“That’s it Do you have any Lord Elgins?”

They usually did; it’s not an uncommon watch. And they showed us tray after tray of watches. We made a great business of looking at watches, with Jackie now and then pointing one out and asking me if I didn’t like it, and with me always finding some reason to reject what was shown to me. We were careful to seem like live customers. If the pawnbroker had a Lord Elgin in stock, we wanted to make damned certain we got a look at it.

And we went from shop to shop, and looked at watch after watch after watch, and kept not finding mine.

We broke for a late lunch, bacon and eggs at an Automat on Sixth Avenue. I said, “Well, it was a good idea.”

“We’ll find it, Alex.”

“I don’t even know if I would recognize the damned thing. I’ve seen so many watches already today. Maybe somebody showed it to me and I didn’t spot it.”

“You would know it. How long have you had it?”

“I don’t know. Eight, ten years. Gwen gave it to me.”

“Your wife?”

“That’s right”

“Oh.” She took a sip of coffee. “If you wore it all that time, you’ll know it when you see it. And there are more places to try. We’ll find the watch.”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t like what we’re pretending, do you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know. That you’re my man.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No?” She searched my eyes, then looked away. “I don’t blame you,” she said.

“I really don’t mind it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I wanted to change the subject “Did Robin have a man?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. If she did, he might know something.”

“She had somebody. Danny, his name was. But he died about, oh, two or three weeks before she did. Two weeks, I think. An OD. That’s an overdose. Heroin.”

“He used it, too?”

“Oh, sure. And Robin had to hustle twice as hard. Two habits, you know. Anybody who says two can live as cheap as one isn’t on stuff.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m getting a little ginchy, like I should go back to the apartment and fix. It’s not time. I think it’s talking about it that’s doing it. Sometimes it’s in the mind, you know? How did we get on this subject?”

“Robin’s man.”

“Yeah. I don’t know. He got a cap that wasn’t cut the way they usually are, or he used two caps to get up higher, or something. He died with a needle in his arm and Robin was there when it happened. Oh, Jesus. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

“All right.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“You want to go back to the apartment, Jackie?”

“No, I’m all right”

“You sure?”

“I’m all right. It’s my hangup and I know what it’s all about.” She took my arm. “We’ll find your watch,” she said. “I got a feeling.”

And we did, three or four places later, three or four blocks downtown and a block west. In a secondhand shop with a window full of radios and cameras and typewriters, we looked at a few watches, and then Jackie asked me what brand it was that I was especially interested in, and I said Lord Elgin right on cue, and the little old man in shirtsleeves remembered a Lord Elgin in truly perfect shape, a bargain, he could give us an awfully good price on it, and it was my watch he showed me.

He’d changed the band, just as Jackie had said he would. But it was the same watch and I would have known it a block off. “This is it,” I said. And added, “This is just what we’ve been looking for.”

Jackie reached to take it from me, nudging me with her foot. I guessed that this meant I should shut up and follow her lead. She studied the watch, then asked the price.

“Forty-five dollars.”

She thought it over, then set it down on the counter. “Well think it over,” she said. “We’ll be back.”