Chapter 9 (p.2)
“Mine host examines the violin, curiosity mingling with cupidity in his veins, and a plan begins to bubble up through his mind. But the minutes go by, and Abraham does not return. And now it is late, and through the door, shabby but proud, comes our Abraham, our fiddle-player, and he holds in his hands a wallet, a wallet that has seen better days, a wallet that has never contained more than a hundred dollars on its best day, and from it he takes the money to pay for his meal or his stay, and he asks for the return of his violin.
“Mine host puts the fiddle in its case on the counter, and Abraham takes it like a mother cradling her child. ‘Tell me,' says the host (with the engraved card of a man who'll pay fifty thousand dollars, good cash money, burning in his inside breast pocket), ‘how much is a violin like this worth? For my niece has a yearning on her to play the fiddle, and it's her birthday coming up in a week or so.'
“‘Sell this fiddle?' says Abraham. ‘I could never sell her. I've had her for twenty years I have, fiddled all over the country with her. And to tell the truth, she cost me all of five hundred dollars back when I bought her.'
“Mine host keeps the smile from his face. ‘Five hundred dollars? What if I were to offer you a thousand dollars for it, here and now?'
“The fiddle player looks delighted, then crestfallen, and he says, ‘But lordy, I'm a fiddle player, sir, it's all I know how to do. This fiddle knows me and she loves me, and my fingers know her so well I could play an air upon her in the dark. Where will I find another that sounds so fine? A thousand dollars is good money, but this is my livelihood. Not a thousand dollars, not for five thousand.”
“Mine host sees his profits shrinking, but this is business, and you must spend money to make money. ‘Eight thousand dollars,' he says. ‘It's not worth that, but I've taken a fancy to it, and I do love and indulge my niece.'
“Abraham is almost in tears at the thought of losing his beloved fiddle, but how can he say no to eight thousand dollars?—especially when mine host goes to the wall safe, and removes not eight but nine thousand dollars, all neatly banded and ready to be slipped into the fiddle player's threadbare pocket. ‘You're a good man,' he tells his host. ‘You're a saint! But you must swear to take care of my girl!' and, reluctantly, he hands over his violin.”
“But what if mine host simply hands over Barrington's card and tells Abraham that he's come into some good fortune?” asked Shadow.
“Then we're out the cost of two dinners,” said Wednesday. He wiped the remaining gravy and leftovers from his plate with a slice of bread, which he ate with lip-smacking relish.
“Let me see if I've got it straight,” said Shadow. “So Abraham leaves, nine thousand dollars the richer, and in the parking lot by the train station he and Barrington meet up. They split the money, get into Barrington's Model A Ford and head for the next town. I guess in the trunk of that car they must have a box filled with hundred-dollar violins.”
“I personally made it a point of honor never to pay more than five dollars for any of them,” said Wednesday. Then he turned to the hovering waitress. “Now, my dear, regale us with your description of the sumptuous desserts available to us on this, our Lord's natal day.” He stared at her—it was almost a leer—as if nothing that she could offer him would be as toothsome a morsel as herself. Shadow felt deeply uncomfortable: it was like watching an old wolf stalking a fawn too young to know that if it did not run, and run now, it would wind up in a distant glade with its bones picked clean by the ravens.
The girl blushed once more and told them that dessert was apple pie, apple pie à la mode—“That's with a scoop of vanilla ice cream”—Christmas Cake, Christmas Cake à la mode, or a red and green whipped pudding. Wednesday stared into her eyes and told her that he would try the Christmas Cake à la mode. Shadow passed.
“Now, as grifts go,” said Wednesday, “the Fiddle Game goes back three hundred years or more. And if you pick your chicken correctly you could still play it tomorrow anywhere in America.”
“I thought you said that your favorite grift was no longer practical,” said Shadow.
“I did indeed. However, that is not my favorite. It was fine and enjoyable, but not my favorite. No, my favorite was one they called the Bishop Game. It had everything: excitement, subterfuge, portability, surprise. Perhaps, I think from time to time, perhaps with a little modification, it might…” He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Its time has passed. It is, let us say, 1920, in a city of medium to large size—Chicago, perhaps, or New York, or Philadelphia. We are in a jeweler's emporium. A man dressed as a clergyman—and not just any clergyman, but a bishop, in his purple—enters and picks out a necklace, a gorgeous and glorious confection of diamonds and pearls, and pays for it with a dozen of the crispest hundred-dollar bills.
“There's a smudge of green ink on the topmost bill and the store owner, apologetically but firmly, sends the stack of bills to the bank on the corner to be checked. Soon enough, the store clerk returns with the bills. The bank says they are none of them counterfeit. The owner apologizes again, and the bishop is most gracious, he well understands the problem, there are such lawless and ungodly types in the world today, such immorality and lewdness abroad in the world—and shameless women, and now that the underworld has crawled out of the gutter and come to live on the screens of the picture palaces what more could anyone expect? And the necklace is placed in its case, and the store owner does his best not to ponder why a bishop of the church would be purchasing a twelve-hundred-dollar diamond necklace, nor why he would be paying good cash money for it.
“The bishop bids him a hearty farewell, and walks out on the street, only for a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder. ‘Why, Soapy, yez spalpeen, up to your old tricks are you?' and a broad beat cop with an honest Irish face walks the bishop back into the jewelry store.
“‘Beggin' your pardon, but has this man just bought anything from you?' asks the cop.
‘Certainly not,' says the bishop. ‘Tell him I have not.' ‘Indeed he has,' says the jeweler. ‘He bought a pearl and diamond necklace from me—paid for it in cash as well.' ‘Would you have the bills available, sir?' asks the cop.
“So the jeweler takes the twelve hundred-dollar bills from the cash register and hands them to the cop, who holds them up to the light and shakes his head in wonder. ‘Oh, Soapy, Soapy,' he says, ‘these are the finest that you've made yet! You're a craftsman, that you are!'
“A self-satisfied smile spreads across the bishop's face. ‘You can't prove nothing,' says the bishop. ‘And the bank said that they were on the level. It's the real green stuff.' ‘I'm sure they did,' agrees the cop on the beat, ‘but I doubt that the bank had been warned that Soapy Sylvester was in town, nor of the quality of the hundred-dollar bills he'd been passing in Denver and in St. Louis.' And with that he reaches into the bishop's pocket and pulls out the necklace. “Twelve hundred dollars' worth of diamonds and pearls in exchange for fifty cents' worth of paper and ink,' says the policeman, who is obviously a philosopher at heart. ‘And passing yourself off as a man of the church. You should be ashamed,' he says, as he claps the handcuffs on the bishop, who is obviously no bishop, and he marches him away, but not before he gives the jeweler a receipt for both the necklace and the twelve hundred counterfeit dollars. It's evidence, after all.”
“Was it really counterfeit?” asked Shadow.
“Of course not! Fresh banknotes, straight from the bank, only with a thumbprint and a smudge of green ink on a couple of them to make them a little more interesting.”
Shadow sipped his coffee. It was worse than prison coffee. “So the cop was obviously no cop. And the necklace?”
“Evidence,” said Wednesday. He unscrewed the top from the salt-shaker, poured a little heap of salt on the table. “But the jeweler gets a receipt, and assurance that he'll get the necklace straight back as soon as Soapy comes to trial. He is congratulated on being a good citizen, and he watches, proudly, already thinking of the tale he'll have to tell at the next meeting of the Oddfellows tomorrow night, as the policeman marches the man pretending to be a bishop out of the store, twelve hundred dollars in one pocket, a twelve-hundred-dollar diamond necklace in the other, on their way to a police station that'll never see hide nor hair of either of them.”
The waitress had returned to clear the table. “Tell me, my dear,” said Wednesday. “Are you married?”
She shook her head.
“Astonishing that a young lady of such loveliness has not yet been snapped up.” He was doodling with his fingernail in the spilled salt, making squat, blocky rune-like shapes. The waitress stood passively beside him, reminding Shadow less of a fawn and more of a young rabbit caught in an eighteen-wheeler's headlights, frozen in fear and indecision.
Wednesday lowered his voice, so much so that Shadow, only across the table, could barely hear him. “What time do you get off work?”
“Nine,” she said, and swallowed. “Nine thirty latest.”
“And what is the finest motel in this area?”
“There's a Motel 6,” she said. “It's not much.”
Wednesday touched the back of her hand, fleetingly, with the tips of his fingers, leaving crumbs of salt on her skin. She made no attempt to wipe them off. “To us,” he said, his voice an almost inaudible rumble, “it shall be a pleasure-palace.”
The waitress looked at him. She bit her thin lips, hesitated, then nodded and fled for the kitchen.
“C'mon,” said Shadow. “She looks barely legal.”
“I've never been overly concerned about legality,” Wednesday told him. “Not as long as I get what I want. Sometimes the nights are long and cold. And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning.”
Shadow caught himself wondering if the girl on night duty in the hotel back in Eagle Point had been a virgin. “Don't you ever worry about disease?” he asked. “What if you knock her up? What if she's got a brother?”
“No,” said Wednesday. “I don't worry about diseases. I don't catch them. People like me avoid them. Unfortunately, for the most part people like me fire blanks, so there's not a great deal of interbreeding. It used to happen in the old days. Nowadays, it's possible, but so unlikely as to be almost unimaginable. So no worries there. And many girls have brothers, and fathers. Some even have husbands. It's not my problem. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I've left town already.”
“So we're staying here for the night?”
Wednesday rubbed his chin. “I shall stay in the Motel 6,” he said. Then he put his hand into his coat pocket. He pulled out a front-door key, bronze-colored, with a card tag attached on which was typed an address: 502 NORTHRIDGE RD, APT #3. “You, on the other hand, have an apartment waiting for you, in a city far from here.” Wednesday closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, gray and gleaming and fractionally mismatched, and he said, “The Greyhound bus will be coming through town in twenty minutes. It stops at the gas station. Here's your ticket.” He pulled out a folded bus ticket, passed it across the table. Shadow picked it up and looked at it.
