“We did a condo here last month,” says Hank.
I say, “I wasn’t called for that one.” Guillermo shakes his head — him neither.
“Mostly crap,” says Jeff. “The family took everything. All that was left was the bedroom set.”
“Alex said it was good to get us in with the building,” says the old guy, his voice frayed and shy. “And look, already they’ve called us for another.”
Sharon Lawler parks across the street. She waves, but doesn’t get out. Sharon, as we all know, runs hot and must blast her air-conditioning. She drives a wagon like mine but with purple-tinted windows to prevent fading of the vintage clothes she sells on eBay.
These are my fellow members of the species Magpie. We are smalltime antique dealers, which is to say we are collectors who sell to support our habit. We glean old things and send some on their journey up in price, which lets us make a buck and keep the treasures we cannot bear to part with. We’d be mere hoarders if we didn’t sell.
Me? I’m Ray Strout. Old, but not that old: sixty-three, retired cop, good pension, bad arteries, but I keep going. I’m into paper ephemera. Books, magazines, letters, photos, bills, matchbooks — anything like that interests me. There’s history in paper. The card for a boxing match, a punched train ticket, the menu of a dinner in honor of a later-indicted honcho — these fascinate me. I take apart vintage magazines for the ads, back them with cardboard, wrap them in plastic, and sell them on Lincoln Road on Sundays in the season. One old House Beautiful from the ’40s can yield two dozen sales at ten to fifteen bucks each.
Alex comes out and waves and hops in with the Kussrows, who drive around the left side of the building, past the bougainvillea-draped stucco wall that hides the service entrance. We parade behind. Back here the balconies look out on Biscayne Bay. I gaze up at the building: twelve stories of curves and niches to break up the wind and survive a hurricane. When the glass towers collapse, the Delphi will weather on.
The truck backs up against the loading dock, while the rest of us park in its shade. I get out one of the old suitcases I use for hauling off my finds. My stuff, thank God, is light. The old guy leaves the dog in the van with the windows rolled down. From the back he takes out the first of many much-used liquor-store cartons in which he’ll pack up smalls for Alex.
There’s not enough room in the freight elevator for all of us at once, so Alex takes me, Guillermo, and Sharon up first. Guillermo has his satchel full of flannel sheets — he likes to swaddle his gizmos lovingly. Sharon — her hair tinted the color of Cherry Coke and her chest draped with lots of amber beads — carries her capacious purse. Most clothes she’ll take right on their hangers.
Alex sends the freight elevator back down, and we follow him along the eighth floor hallway which smells of last night’s dinners — you’ll never catch me living in a condo — to Mrs. Dorsett’s place. Alex unlocks the door and we’re in 8-G.
“Nice,” says the Gizmo Man. He’s looking at the Grundig Majestic stereo hi-fi/radio in its Moderne cabinet.
But I echo, “Nice.” The living room is ’50s Louis Quinze, with pale blue sofa and chairs grouped around a coffee table. Alex shows us an elaborate silver lighter/cigarette dispenser: You lift the top and cigarettes rise like petals of a flower. Alex has marked it and the crystal ashtray with his red stickies: He’s into tobacciana. Sheers cover the French doors to the balcony so the bay is just a pale blue suggestion out beyond there. There’s a small kitchen to our left off the living room and, opening from both it and the living room, a dining area where the hutch flutters with Alex’s stickers. To the right there’s a hall, down which Alex leads us. He opens the bedroom door with a flourish.
Light slants through actual Venetian blinds, striping the pure Deco circle of the mirrored dressing table. The slipper chair. The ivory satin-padded curving headboard of the bed. Sherry breathes, “My God, the noir boudoir,” and so it is.
“Great, isn’t it?” says Alex.
The Kussrows come in behind him with the old guy peeking between their shoulders.
“A veritable time capsule,” says Alex. “Listen, there’s a lot in here for Sherry and Ray. You folks,” he says to the Kussrows, “do the big pieces in the living room first. Cash, I need you to pack up all the stuff from the hutch and then Hank and Jeff can get the dining room set. We’ll get the furniture from in here last.”
Sharon dives into the closet while I move around, scanning for what I’ll take. Books fill the lower shelves of both bedside tables. In a nook between bedroom and bath there’s a lady’s bill-paying desk. I glance at a picture on top of it in an etched Lucite frame. Alex hasn’t marked it, so maybe the frame doesn’t interest him, but I’ll have to check. Lucite has value these days. I can always use frames and I like the picture. I assume it’s the dead lady in her youth: white skin, full lips, beautiful curve of nostril and brow, the eyes pale under curved eyelashes. She’s a babe. Her hair lifts from a side part and cascades. She’s vaguely familiar, like a minor movie star.
I get a queen-sized sheet from the linen closet and spread it out to protect the bedspread; the satin looks glamorous with the matching pillowcases propped against the headboard. I open my suitcase on top of the sheet and lay the picture down next to it. I check the bedside table drawers. Spot a great little notepad holder, embossed leather. Mechanical pencil. Several matchboxes from restaurants. A double set of playing cards for bridge, shagreen boxed. I’m making a mental tally of what I’ll offer Alex. I put things in my case but it stays open for his inspection. I toss a hankie over to the other side of the bed, for Sharon’s pile.
Guillermo comes in to get the bedside clock radio: ’60s tortoise plastic.
“Hubba hubba,” he says, looking at the picture. “Nice frame too.”
Sharon comes out of the closet with an armful of suits and asks, “That her?” and looks and says, “Oh.” She lays the suits down on her side of the bed. “Alex,” she calls, “what did you say her name was?”
“Dorsett,” he says, coming in. “Helena Dorsett.”
“The lovely Helena Dorsett,” says Sharon. “What do you know. I didn’t see an obit.”
I ask, “Was she an actress?”
“Femme fatale,” says Sharon, enjoying the effect. I notice that the others have come to the door to see what’s going on.
“Well, tell us,” Alex says.
“She was a singer, for a while, I believe,” says Sharon, “but then she married. Twice. It was when the second husband got killed that she became notorious.”
“Both husbands?” I ask.
Sharon nods. “I was in the ninth grade, so it was 1962. They lived in the Gables. They were society people. Dorsett — husband number two — was trampled to death by a horse he owned, in the stables at Hialeah. And then it came out that her first was run down when he was crossing Collins, a few years before.”
“A theme,” I say. “Death by transportation.” They nod at me. They know I was a cop up north. Mine was a small dying New Jersey city, troubled, but not a patch on what Miami has to offer.
“Well, the first was just an accident, as far as I recall. But in the second husband’s case, they found he had been murdered. Not by her. She was nowhere near the stables.”
“Stable boy?” says Guillermo. “Jockey?”
“Another horse owner?” I say.
“No,” she says. “The vet.”
“Aah,” I say. “Did something to the horse?”