Mr. Good(6)

I looked at the keys, then at him. "What?" I said.

"Do it, or I’ll tell the cops you robbed me." He took his cell phone out of his back pocket.

"Why do you want me to do it?" I said.

"Just because I do," he said.

"Forget you," I said.

"All right," he said and punched a button on the phone, and that’s when I thought of the seven hundred dollars in my socks and how great it would look on a guy without a coat.

The car was a Cadillac in name only. The last time it looked good Eddie Murphy was funny. I slid under the wheel, but didn’t close the door so the rooflight would stay on and I could find things. The seat was too far up for me to fit my feet to the pedals, so I reached down to find the lever and my hand hit a bottle under the seat. It was a half-pint of Jack Daniels and all that was empty was the neck. I unscrewed the cap, bent over like I’d dropped the keys and took a drink, then sat up again. The glove box was missing its door, a cigar with an inch of dead ash was in the ashtray, a single porno playing card was in the passenger seat, a woman who looked like she was waiting for surgery to begin. I turned the card over: seven of clubs. I bent over and took another drink. I was thinking of the last time I saw my father—one of these old boats always did that.

I discovered the seat wouldn’t move, so I managed to get situated with my legs splayed out on either side of the steering wheel. I shut the door, then pulled the car up in front of the trailer and cut the engine and the lights. I stuck the half-pint down the front of my pants. Then I looked in the rearview mirror: Purcell was still at the curb, under a streetlight, standing over the injured man talking and gesturing. It looked like he was haranguing a corpse.

I leaned over to get at my pants pocket and took out the hundred and fifty and put it on the dash behind the steering wheel. I just couldn’t abide the idea of having to think of Purcell everytime I played the Gibson. I would’ve rather seen it in the hands of Campfire Girls.

The pawn shop opened a half-hour before the liquor stores. I’d been waiting in a coffee shop across the street. I had the Gibson’s empty calfskin case and a Epiphone in its case. I was going to pawn the Epi which would give me the last fifty I needed to get the Gibson back, plus another sixty or seventy. That much would get me to Shreveport, and I figured I knew enough people in Dallas I could find someone who’d drive out and get me.

I went in the pawn shop, the bell ringing over my head, and right away I noticed the Gibson wasn’t on its stand in the line of guitars that sat on a high shelf in the back. Holding the two cases I suddenly felt like an idiot in a Norman Rockwell painting. The empty one felt light enough to throw through the display window.

The owner was still wearing his pea coat and was at the back of the long shotgun room behind a line of jewelry cases to my left. He came up front.

"It’s gone," he said. "Girl bought it last night not long after you came in."