Anton Strout: Dead To Me

The chipped-tooth Indian was smiling. I knew I had blown my poker face. Damn.

“I’m sorry?” I said, trying to focus on the immediate world around me.

“George Plimpton,” Chip-tooth repeated, this time with a phlegmy chuckle. I could see the dollar signs light up in his eyes.

“The actor?” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could. Next to the console was a Mickey Mouse phone, and hoping to draw attention away from the Intellivision, I picked the plastic rodent up and tested its ancient rotary dial. “What about him?”

Chip-tooth’s attitude shifted and he put his pudgy thumbs through his belt loops. “He did a series of commercials for Intellivision. Now you wanna make me an offer on that or you gonna fondle my stuff all goddamn night?”

I didn’t appreciate his impatience or the attitude. I continued examining the phone for a few seconds more before I slowly put it down and took up the console again. “It’s not in the best shape. There’s some wear and tear to it. How much you asking for that and the pile of games?”

“A king’s ransom,” Chip-tooth said and proceeded to laugh with such force that he started to cough. His body shook with the violence of it. I thought the big guy might keel over right in front of me.

“Seriously,” I said when he finally recovered. “How much?”

He scratched his sizable gut with one hand. With the other he rubbed his chin in thought. For a moment, he looked as if he was mulling it over sincerely, but I was sure he already had a set price in mind.

“Well,” he said, drawing his words out, “seeing as how it’s got a little damage to it, I suppose I could let it all go for two hundred dollars.”

I stifled a knee-jerk urge to laugh in his face.

Two hundred dollars? He was insulting my mad phat antiquing skills! To anyone but the guy I was going to return it to, the console was worthless because of the stickers all over it. I cursed myself for blowing my poker face. I also cursed Chip-tooth for his greed.

“Three dollars,” I counteroffered, totally deadpan.

“Don’t waste my time, son,” Chip-tooth fired back.

“Three dollars,” I repeated with even more conviction.

Chip-tooth sighed and shook his head.

“Listen, son,” he said, poking one of his pudgy fingers at my chest. “That console is a gen-u-ine piece of history-of rock and roll history, in fact. I purchased it at great expense from none other than Yoko Ono herself. She and John Lennon bought it in seventy-five and they used it until the day he got shot right here in New York City. That makes it worth two hundred dollars and not a dime less.”

He was so full of shit that I felt real anger building inside me, but I simply kept calm and looked him straight in the eye.

“First of all,” I said, pushing his finger away from my chest, “even if this console had ever been within forty miles of John Lennon, you’re still as full of shit as the Hudson River. Lennon died in 1980. That gaming console didn’t release until later in the year,after his death. Now I’m gonna give you twenty dollars for this, tops, and you’re going to take it. You know why? Because I know my shit.”

Chip-tooth snorted and rolled his eyes.

“You don’t believe me?” I said, grabbing the Mickey Mouse phone and dashing it to the ground. “Ask anyone here.”

He stared at me, angry and dumbfounded, and then turned to look around. The sound of laughter rose from several of the nearby booths and I almost felt sorry for the guy. I pulled out my wallet, and held a twenty out toward him.

His face dropped in defeat. Without argument, Chip-tooth took the twenty and began to wrap the console and games in silence.

My cell phone vibrated to life in the pocket of my brown suede coat and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The last thing I expected in the predawn hours was a phone call on my private line. I pulled it out and checked the display.CONNOR CALLING.

Connor Christos was my Other Division mentor. He specialized in working with ghosts, but was surprisingly not a part of the Department’s Haunts-General Division. They took more of a ghost-busting approach to their work, while Connor was more of a spirit spotter and ad-hoc psychologist to the lingering undead, when his lack of patience didn’t get in the way. Why he was calling me this time of night, I had no idea.

I flipped my phone open and was greeted by an earful of static.

“Hello?” I said. Another wave of static crashed into my ear and I pulled the phone away as fast as I could. “Connor?”

“Simon!” Connor called out through the choppy signal. “Did…wake…ou, kid?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I was already up.”

There was desperation in Connor’s voice.

The signal on my cell phone continued to break up. It sounded like listening to an old-time radio as it was being flipped through a variety of stations.

“Still hav…trouble…sleeping?” Connor asked. In the background, I heard a loud crash from his end of the phone line. “Dammit!”

“Never mind my nocturnal problems,” I said, dismissive. “Is everything okay?”

Another wave of static crackled in my ear and I pulled it even farther away.

“Need…help. Can you meet…University…Seventh?”

Maybe it was the bad connection, but I thought I could hear nervousness in his voice and I didn’t like it. Usually he was the calm and collected one.

“University and Seventh?” I repeated. “Yeah, I’m up on Seventy-Ninth, but I can be down there in about ten minutes. Traffic should be light.”

“Thanks, kid,” he said, “and hurry.” The static rose once more and the line fell dead.

Something strange was brewing and a horrible feeling began building in the pit of my stomach. I needed to get moving, but Chip-tooth was still taking his sweet time finishing his packing job.

“Can you bubble wrap it?” I asked. “And hurry up. I’m packing for battle.”

After I hung up with Connor, I jumped a cab and headed downtown. Thirteen minutes later, the cab dropped me off at West Eighth and University and I headed toward Washington Square Park. I looked for signs of Connor, but didn’t see him. When I came across a small crowd of drunken late-night tourists fleeing toward Union Square, however, I figured I was on the right track. They jostled their way past me, and I lifted my shopping bag over my head and out of harm’s way. A clamor of footsteps and the crash of metal came from the alley between Sixth and Seventh, and I ran toward it while the last of the tourists snapped a few quick pictures.

The alley was filled with a weak yellow light from high overhead and I slowed as I followed the sound, partly out of caution but also because the last few blocks had winded me. I followed the alley along another fifty feet before it turned right. I rounded the corner and found Connor standing a few feet away with his back to me. Something stirring farther along in the darkness had caught his eye. At my approach, he turned and held a single finger to his lips. His muss of sandy brown hair looked more unkempt than usual and there was a strange white streak an inch wide in it that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

“What happened to your hair?” I whispered. Then realization dawned. “You’ve been skunked!”

“You’re kidding,” Connor said with an almost school-boyish glee in his voice. He tugged at his hair, trying to pull it far enough forward to see for himself. “Really?”

“You’re excited about it?” I asked. “Makes you look older.”

“Course I am,” he whispered back, beaming with pride. “You know it’s something special to be skunked, kid. A mark of prestige in the Department. It means you looked the devil in the eye and lived to tell about it.”