William Lashner - Bitter Truth

“Yes, actually, that’s been my experience.”

“Well then, fine, we are speaking the same language. Give me a price for your one hundred percent polyester tie, such a rarity in a world lousy with silk.”

“You want to buy this tie?”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“One hundred dollars,” I said.

“A tie like that? You can buy it in Woolworth’s for seven dollars, new. I’ll give you a profit on it, though, seeing that you’ve aged it for us. Let’s say fifteen dollars? Who could refuse that?”

“Is Mr. Peckworth in?”

“Twenty dollars then.”

“I didn’t come here to haggle.”

“Thirty dollars,” said Burford.

“Let me just talk to Mr. Peckworth.”

“Well, forget the tie for the moment. Let’s discuss your socks. Tasty little things, socks, don’t you think? So sheer, so aromatic.”

“One hundred dollars,” I said.

“The thing about socks,” said Burford, “is you take them off, sell them, and all of a sudden you look more stylish than you did before. See?” He hitched up one of his pants legs. A bare foot was stuffed into a tan loafer. “Stylishness at a profit.”

“One hundred dollars.”

“That’s quite high.”

“Each.”

“Did you shower today, Mr. Carl?”

“Every day.”

“Then they wouldn’t quite be ripe enough for the price you are asking. But that tie, that is special. We don’t see enough man-made fibers these days. You don’t happen to have a leisure suit somewhere in the recesses of your closet, do you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Fifty dollars for the tie, but no more. That is the absolute limit.”

“Seventy-five dollars.”

Burford turned his face slightly and stared at me sideways. Then he took a thick roll of bills out of his pants pocket, licked his thumb with pleasure, and flicked out three twenties. He fanned the bills in his hand. “Sixty dollars. Take it or leave it,” he said, smiling smartly.

I took the bills and stuffed them in my pocket.

“Come now, come now,” said Burford. “Let’s have it. Don’t balk now, the deal’s been done, money’s been passed. Time to pay the piper, Mr. Carl.”

At the same time he was demanding my tie he stepped aside, a smooth glide slide to the left which I found peculiar. What that smooth step did, I realized, was clear my view of the large oval mirror so that I would be able to watch myself take off my tie. There was something so neat about that glide slide, something so practiced.

I turned toward the mirror and gripped the knot of my tie with my forefinger and started slipping it down, slowly, inch by inch. “Now that you’ve bought my tie, Mr. Peckworth,” I said to the mirror, “I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”

For a moment I felt like an idiot for having spoken to a mirror but then, over an intercom, I heard a sharp voice say, “Take the tie and bring him here, Burford,” and I knew I had been right.

Burford stepped up to me and held open a clear plastic bag. “You’re such a clever young boy, aren’t you,” he said with a sneer.

I dropped the tie in the bag. “I try.”

Burford moved to the desk, where a little black machine was sitting. I heard a slight slishing sound and a thin waft of melting plastic reached me. “Yes, well, I would have paid you the seventy-five. I’ll take you to Mr. Peckworth.”

Peckworth was in a large garish room, red wallpaper, gold trimmings, the ceiling made of mirrored blocks. He was ensconced on a pile of pillows, leaning against steps that ringed the floor of what we would have called a passion pit twenty years ago. There were mounds of pillows and a huge television and a stereo and the scent of perfume and the faint scent of something beneath the perfume that I didn’t want to identify. On one wall was a giant oval window looking into the room in which I had taken off my tie, a two-way mirror.

“Sit down, Mr. Carl. Make yourself comfortable.” Peckworth was a slack-jawed bald man with the unsmiling face of a tax auditor, looking incongruous as hell in his pink metallic warmup suit.

I looked around for a chair, but this was a passion pit, no chairs, no tables, just pillows. I sat stiffly on one of the steps and leaned back, pretending to be at ease.

“I hope you’ll excuse the entertainment with the tie,” said Peckworth in a sharp, efficient voice. “Burford sometimes can’t help himself.”

“I hated to part with it for sentimental reasons,” I said, “but he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Peckworth didn’t so much as fake a smile. “It is nice to be able to mix business and pleasure. Unfortunately, we’ll lose money on the tie, but you’d be surprised how much profit we can earn from our little auctions. The market is underground but shockingly large.”

“Socks and things, is that it?”

“And things, yes.”

I imagined some room in that spacious luxury duplex dedicated to the storage of varied pieces of clothing in their plastic bags, organized impeccably by the ever-vigilant Burford, their scent and soil preserved by the heat-sealed plastic. The reheating directions would be ever so simple: (1) place bag in microwave; (2) heat on medium setting for one minute; (3) remove bag from microwave with care; (4) slit open bag with long knife; (5) place garment over head; (6) breathe deep. Follow the directions precisely and the treasured artifact would be as fresh and as fragrant as the day it was purchased. That’s one of the things I loved about Philadelphia, you could learn about some foul new pleasure every day of the week.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Carl?”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said.

“Oh, a lawyer. Had Burford only known he would have negotiated a better deal. I think he mistook you for a man of principle.”

“I’m representing the sister of your former neighbor, Jacqueline Shaw.” That was technically a lie, but it wouldn’t matter to Peckworth. “I wanted to ask you some questions about what you saw the day of her death.”

“Nothing,” he said, turning his slack face away from me. “I already told the police that.”

“What you originally told the police was that you saw a UPS man in the hallway the day of her death. Which was interesting since no UPS guy had signed in that day. But later you changed your story and said you saw the guy two or three days before. The change conveniently matched the guest register at the front desk, so the police bought it. But the change of memory sounded peculiar to me and I wanted to ask you about it.”

“It happens,” he said. “I’m older than I was, my memory has slipped.”

“This man you saw, can you describe him?”

“I already told that to the police.”

“So you shouldn’t mind telling it to me.”

“Tall and handsome, broad shoulders, dark curly hair. His brown shirt and slacks, I remember, were impeccably pressed.”

“As if they had just come out of the box.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

I opened my briefcase and took out a file. Inside was a folder with eight small black-and-white photos arranged in two rows and glued to the cardboard. The photos were head shots, all of men between twenty-five and thirty-five, all with dark hair, all facing forward, all aiming blank stares at the camera. It was a photo spread, often used in lieu of a lineup in police investigations. I stepped down onto the base of the passion pit with the photo spread. The ground tumbled when I stepped on it and then pushed back. It was a giant water mattress. I fought to remain upright while I stumbled over to where Peckworth reclined. Standing before him, maintaining my balance steady as she goes, I handed the spread to him.

“Do you recognize the UPS man you saw in these photos?”