The witch pursed her lips. “Go on.”
“So he wanted to know what I was doing in your room, and I said I was staying with you.” Candy looked apologetically at Stubb. “It just slipped out, Jim. I don’t think he’ll rat on us, because he sounded so damn glad he didn’t have to talk to her. He asked me to tell her—that’s why I said it was for me.”
“Tell me what?”
“That there was some trouble about the money he owes you, but he was trying to raise it, and he’d pay you tomorrow night—that would be tonight now—for sure.”
“And you said you would?”
“Yeah. That was when I said okay. And don’t tell me I didn’t do it, because I just did.”
“Very well. A second question, and I will be finished. A blanket is hardly sufficient to cover you, and last night I observed you to rise and take a fur from your little bag. When you were asleep, I rose also and examined it. It is very soft and rich, and much, much larger than the pelt of a single mink.”
Barnes interrupted. “I saw it on her bed at Free’s!”
“This I have confirmation, though I did not require it. I was about to say that though it is so large, it is the skin of a single animal; the tail has been cut away, but one sees where the legs were. Mr. Free gave that to you, I should guess, and thus we know why you returned to his house when the police released you. Am I correct?”
Candy nodded. “It filled up my AWOL bag, almost, but I didn’t want to leave it.”
“Nor would I. Did Mr. Free tell you what it was?”
Candy shook her head. “He just went downstairs and came back with it. He said here keep this, I want you to have it, and I said it was pretty, and he said valuable too, you hang onto it. That’s everything, honest.”
“I believe I know what it is,” the witch said. “It is the pelt of a beaver. Yet I cannot guess what it means, or where he got such a thing. Can anyone?”
No one spoke; as the waitress brought their orders, Stubb rapped his glass with a spoon. “Maybe we’re going to find out. I want to hear about Free from both of you. Not just the skin, everything you saw or heard. After that, I’ll have assignments for everybody.”
Vendo
Outside, the morning sun shone as though winter had never come. The snow, already churned to gray sludge along the middle of the sidewalk, had frozen hard in the night, but at the edges of this beaten track a white margin pure as the plastic flakes lingering in the corners of the department-store windows remained to reflect the sunshine and blue the shadow of each passerby.
Hurrying along, stumbling and slipping sometimes in the frozen gullies, tripping and sliding on the icy ridges, Barnes yearned for good boots and thick stockings, for a sweater too, and gloves. He was cold—nearly frozen, he told himself—despite his threadbare topcoat and his hat. Hocking the coat was out of the question until better weather arrived. After a big breakfast and innumerable cups of coffee, he was not hungry, but the need for money was like a hunger in him; he longed for it as a prisoner in some Siberian camp might long for bread.
As he walked, he watched the sidewalk and the gutter. In his mind’s eye, he could see plainly a bill lying in the snow where it had been dropped by someone paying off a cab, a coin trodden underfoot like a pebble. He watched the people who hurried past as well; it seemed possible—indeed, it seemed likely—that one of them would require some sudden service. He saw himself snatching a child from beneath the wheels of a truck for a fortune, collaring a runaway dog for a dollar.
His fingers toyed with the three locker keys in his pocket, but he did not go directly to the bus station. The branch post office that had served Free’s house while that house yet stood was only a block out of the way; he waited patiently in line there to reach a window. “You were supposed to hold my mail,” he told the bearded young clerk. “The house was torn down.” He gave the address.
The clerk vanished somewhere in the back of the post office. Barnes could feel the accusing eyes of the people behind him on the nape of his neck. I only came to buy stamps, the eyes of a thin woman there whined, it would only take a second. The eyes of a portly man in a five-hundred dollar suit said: My affairs are urgent. Very urgent. Barnes rubbed the back of his neck and pretended not to hear the eyes.
“Nothing,” the bearded clerk said, returning. “When was your last delivery?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Well, there was nothing yesterday, then. You got a new address?”
“Not yet,” Barnes said. “Just hold anything that comes for me.”
There were stamp machines in the lobby of the post office. He felt in the coin return of each, hoping for an overlooked dime or quarter.
That gave him an idea. Outside, he stopped at each curbside phone booth he passed. Sometimes, because he thought people were looking at him, he pretended to make calls, dropping imaginary money into the slot and groping in the cold metal receptacle as though the call had not gone through, as though he had failed to reach his party, as indeed he had.
The Greyhound station was a gem set in a coronet of cheap restaurants. It blazed with light and seemed designed for thousands of surging people, vivacious and gaily dressed, not for the thin, exhausted woman who slept with her exhausted infant on her lap (both worn out with weeping) or the red-headed sailor who had contrived with drunken ingenuity to sprawl across parts of several benches, or for Osgood M. Barnes with his creaseless trousers and thin-soled, frozen shoes.
There were two sample cases, and he had put them in two lockers because one would not hold them both. The lockers would be good now until evening, though he might, perhaps, carry everything to the Consort and smuggle them up to seven seventy-seven. For a moment he considered it, but he did not feel certain there would be anyone there to let him in. Candy would certainly be gone. It seemed likely that Stubb would be as well. Madame Serpentina might be there, but she might not. He tried to recall which case he had put in which locker, then realized he was no longer sure even of which of the three held his personal effects. In the end he chose a key at random, and when he swung back the locker door, he saw with pleasure the rectangular black bulk of a sample case. Thanks to his breakfast, it seemed a trifle lighter than it had the night before.
He had never called upon the restaurants around the bus station. The chain fast-food outlets would be out of the question, but some of the diners might sell a few novelties, cards behind the counter, possibly a display on the cigar case. The only question was where to start. He glanced about at the exits, and in the process noticed a wizened man rolling up the grills that had protected his magazine stand. In half a minute Barnes was there, his sample case open beside the cash register
“Now here’s a nice item—dog collars that glow in the dark. Say you’ve got a black dog, like one of those toy poodles, for instance. When he goes out at night, you can’t see the little devil. Put one of these on him and you can spot him right away. Twenty-two fifty for the card; when you sell the last collar—at the price printed right on the card—you’ve made forty-five bucks.”
“No,” the wizened man said.
“Okay, here’s another one. This can’t miss; they sell like hotcakes every place we get them in. I’ve had customers call me begging me to get them more. It’s a rose, see? Just an ordinary plastic rose like you might wear in your buttonhole if you were dressed up. Just twist the stem, the petals open, and there’s a lovely, naked centerfold inside. Of course, if the customer wants to, he can take that out and put in any picture he wants. He can put in his girl’s picture and give it to her. Card of six costs you five ninety-nine, and you sell them for a buck ninety-eight each—a real high-profit item.”