to be a tough sell. He’d bought the set from the family of a Filipino ukulele maker; it came wrapped in goatskin, which was how, the family said, he always kept them. Jimmie acknowledged the orders, promised shipping first thing tomorrow, then e-mailed for package pickup. Business as usual. Not a big business, but his.
He logged on to check payments, then began his cruise of sites where he regularly picked up items for resale. Over time he had found his way to some fairly obscure sites. These didn’t take long, as turnover was slow, and often a glance was enough before moving on. Even with the common sites, eBay and so on, one learned to scan efficiently: using keywords, selecting chronological entries, and skipping to the end, setting very specific search parameters.
His eyes went down the pages:
Printing press circa 1919, fully functional
Loom, brought over from Scotland
Artist action mannikin, 15 inch
Planter made from authentic coolie hat
Button collection, over 1,000!
He read the entries, registered them as his eyes moved down the listings. He flagged four to keep watch on. But he wasn’t there, not really. He was walking down that corridor again, watching the featureless heads turn toward him. He was beside his mother on the street, watching the pigeon try to fly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“THING ABOUT IT IS, you sit there and you’re mad, but after a while the mad starts to get boring, so you move on, think about other stuff. How often do you get the chance, day to day, to just sit and think?”
Too often.
“And you for damn sure can’t sleep. Sounds like a train station down in there. Doors clanging, walls shaking, voices everywhere. Footsteps you hear from half a mile away. Deep thoughts, that’s what come to you. What’s it all about, why are we here, who am I. All that shit. Then you look around and all at once you see it’s like you’re back in college, this steaming mass of bodies, bullshit, attitude, big talk.”
Having never been to college, Sayles wouldn’t know. Back in the day, when he came on the job, high school was good enough; lot of old-timers didn’t have that. Nowadays, newbies like Graves, they knew everything. Stop for hot dogs at a roach coach and you’d hear about the industrial revolution. By the time your indigestion kicked in some miles down the road, they’d be on to union activity in the forties, maybe hum a bar or two of “Which Side Are You On?”
Truth to tell, Sayles often thought of his partner as pompous and full of himself, never far away from cutting one fine figure of fool. Kind of guy who grew up in Cedar Rapids on meat loaf and green bean casserole and just knew he was beyond all that. But Sayles also had to remember how many times he’d seen Graves turn on a dime, veering from his usual mode to sudden, wheels-down compassion in the presence of real pain.
Graves waved a hand. “And then I woke up.” He waited. “It’s the punch line—”
“I know, Graves. I know. But what the hell are you doing here? You just got out, right? Why aren’t you home? Showering, sleeping, having a stiff one?”
“And pass up all this?” He cast a glance, proud shepherd, out over the field of desks, chairs, side tables, and filing cabinets. “I would not, however, pass up a kind offer of breakfast.”
At the Early Bird, surrounded by lawyers prepping clients or puffing out cheeks at one another, businessmen with laptops, and slow-eyed hospital workers going off shift, Sayles heard about his partner’s prison experience, which sadly, unlike what people seemed to claim these days of just about anything from reading a bestseller to going to the dentist, had not changed his life.
As they ate, Sayles brought Graves up to speed on their cases, not that there was much speed to any of them. Janice Beck’s boyfriend had come in to confess, saying he put her and the child in the cedar chest to keep them “fresh” and keep the bugs away. They’d packed him off
He logged on to check payments, then began his cruise of sites where he regularly picked up items for resale. Over time he had found his way to some fairly obscure sites. These didn’t take long, as turnover was slow, and often a glance was enough before moving on. Even with the common sites, eBay and so on, one learned to scan efficiently: using keywords, selecting chronological entries, and skipping to the end, setting very specific search parameters.
His eyes went down the pages:
Printing press circa 1919, fully functional
Loom, brought over from Scotland
Artist action mannikin, 15 inch
Planter made from authentic coolie hat
Button collection, over 1,000!
He read the entries, registered them as his eyes moved down the listings. He flagged four to keep watch on. But he wasn’t there, not really. He was walking down that corridor again, watching the featureless heads turn toward him. He was beside his mother on the street, watching the pigeon try to fly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“THING ABOUT IT IS, you sit there and you’re mad, but after a while the mad starts to get boring, so you move on, think about other stuff. How often do you get the chance, day to day, to just sit and think?”
Too often.
“And you for damn sure can’t sleep. Sounds like a train station down in there. Doors clanging, walls shaking, voices everywhere. Footsteps you hear from half a mile away. Deep thoughts, that’s what come to you. What’s it all about, why are we here, who am I. All that shit. Then you look around and all at once you see it’s like you’re back in college, this steaming mass of bodies, bullshit, attitude, big talk.”
Having never been to college, Sayles wouldn’t know. Back in the day, when he came on the job, high school was good enough; lot of old-timers didn’t have that. Nowadays, newbies like Graves, they knew everything. Stop for hot dogs at a roach coach and you’d hear about the industrial revolution. By the time your indigestion kicked in some miles down the road, they’d be on to union activity in the forties, maybe hum a bar or two of “Which Side Are You On?”
Truth to tell, Sayles often thought of his partner as pompous and full of himself, never far away from cutting one fine figure of fool. Kind of guy who grew up in Cedar Rapids on meat loaf and green bean casserole and just knew he was beyond all that. But Sayles also had to remember how many times he’d seen Graves turn on a dime, veering from his usual mode to sudden, wheels-down compassion in the presence of real pain.
Graves waved a hand. “And then I woke up.” He waited. “It’s the punch line—”
“I know, Graves. I know. But what the hell are you doing here? You just got out, right? Why aren’t you home? Showering, sleeping, having a stiff one?”
“And pass up all this?” He cast a glance, proud shepherd, out over the field of desks, chairs, side tables, and filing cabinets. “I would not, however, pass up a kind offer of breakfast.”
At the Early Bird, surrounded by lawyers prepping clients or puffing out cheeks at one another, businessmen with laptops, and slow-eyed hospital workers going off shift, Sayles heard about his partner’s prison experience, which sadly, unlike what people seemed to claim these days of just about anything from reading a bestseller to going to the dentist, had not changed his life.
As they ate, Sayles brought Graves up to speed on their cases, not that there was much speed to any of them. Janice Beck’s boyfriend had come in to confess, saying he put her and the child in the cedar chest to keep them “fresh” and keep the bugs away. They’d packed him off
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