Jacket Man

I was putting gas into the van when the dark blue Chrysler 300 whipped into the station lot. The driver didn’t pull up to the pumps, but stopped alongside me and powered down the window.

“I wonder if you can help me,” he said. He had an Italian accent. Tanned, pockmarked face, jet-black moustache, black hair. Nice suit. The tie was silk.

“Sure,” I said, glancing at the pump, not wanting to go over eighty bucks. I’d already given four twenties to the attendant in the booth. I avoided credit cards, and they wouldn’t free up the pump without a card unless you went in and paid first. Which reminded me. Mary’d given me the phone and gas bills that morning so I could drop by the bank and pay them on the way home. They were still in my jacket pocket. We weren’t into online banking. We were like our parents, paying our bills at the teller’s window, although for different reasons.

“I am from Milano,” he said. “My English is not so good.”

“It’s fine.”

“How do I get back onto the highway? I am going to airport. I have to turn in this car and catch a flight home to Italy.”

“LaGuardia?” I asked. “JFK?” Although, given that we were in Stamford, it didn’t much matter. He’d need to take 95 back into the city.

“LaGuardia,” the man said.

I saw that I was at seventy-eight bucks and eased up on the trigger. Got it to stop two cents short of eighty. Close enough. Let Mobil keep the two cents as a tip.

I pointed. “Go down there to the second light, make a left. About a mile later, watch for signs for 95 to New York.”

He smiled gratefully. “Thank you!” Then, almost as an afterthought, “Nice jacket!”

I was wearing a Hugo Boss sport jacket Mary had talked me into getting. I smiled back. “Have a nice flight.”

He powered up his window and took off.

I replaced the pump, got into the van, and was pulling away when the Chrysler reappeared, in my path. I hit the brake. The guy was getting out of his car, waving his hands apologetically.

I put down my window.

“Sorry to stop you,” he said, “but I was thinking, when I see your jacket — Boss, no? — maybe I can do you a favor, because you are a man who likes to dress well.”

“A favor,” I said.

“I am in fashion, in Milano. I am here, on sales trip. Big show, at the mall here? Also in Hartford. Meeting buyers.” He reached into his pocket for a business card, handed it to me through the window.

“Okay,” I said. He was Gian — Catelli, of FASHION PRODUCTS LUXURY BRAND MANAGEMENT. There was an Italian phone number and web address.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sam.”

“I am so pleased to meet you, Sam. I am Gian.”

“So your card says.”

“I have all these samples to take back. Have to pay airline extra money. I want to thank you for your help. How about a coat? Nice Italian leather. I think I have your size. Let me do this for you!”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“No, please, please, let me. You are doing me a favor. The less I have to take back, the better.”

I hesitated, then put the van into park, took out the key. “What the hell,” I said.

I followed Gian to the back of the Chrysler. He popped the trunk. There was an entire store in there. Maybe two-dozen leather jackets in various shades. They weren’t packaged for a trip home. They were fanned out for display, as if on a table in a men’s shop.

We were standing shoulder to shoulder. When our hips bumped, briefly, I felt something that made me wonder whether these jackets were the least of his worries when it came to flying home.

He was packing.

There was no way he was getting on a plane with a gun tucked into his belt. I wondered whether it was standard practice for Italian fashion salesmen to be armed when visiting America. I mean, this was Connecticut.

He reached for a dark brown jacket. “What about this? I think this might fit you.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Slip that off, let’s see.”

“Aren’t you going to miss your flight?” I asked.

“Hey, no problem.” The word came out “prrroblem.” I was starting to wonder about the authenticity of the accent. Like any second he was going to say, “Thassa some spicy meat-a-ball.”

Gian had his hand on the top of my sport jacket, trying to slide it off my shoulder. “Okay, okay,” I said, slipped off the coat, and rested it on the leather jackets. I pulled on the other coat, which fit tight under the armpits.

“Feel the lining. Very, very nice. Warm in winter. Maybe not when snowing, but fall and spring.”

“It’s snug.”

“Keep it,” Gian said. “Take it to a good tailor, he can alter it for a few bucks. You end up with a two-thousand dollar jacket for almost nothing.”

“Two grand,” I whistled. “All the coats worth that?”

Gian shrugged. “Give or take.” He cocked his head to the right, smiled, like an idea had just occurred to him. “Tell you what. You got friends?”

“Friends?”

“Buddies. Guys who like nice clothes? I bet a guy like you has friends with good taste. I give you this coat for free, but I can sell you some of these. Like, three hundred a piece. You could resell them for a thousand each, and even then, you are giving your friends a fantastic deal. That’s fifty percent off the retail.”

“Gee,” I said. I kept thinking about the gun. How, as a sales tool, it was somewhat effective. If I didn’t want to buy, how seriously offended would he be?

Gian, again shoulder to shoulder with me, started hauling out coats. Two black ones, a light brown, one in forest green. While he made selections, he asked, “So where do you work?”

“In the city,” I said.

“New York?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Around.” Mostly Grand Central and Penn Station, but I didn’t tell him that.

“What kind of work?”

“Kind of like surveillance,” I said, wondering if that was a word that translated well to Italian. By the way he turned his head and looked at me, I was guessing yes.

“Surveillance? You are a policeman?”

I shrugged. “It’s pretty boring, really, what I do. How much for these jackets again?”

If he was unnerved by my failure to provide details, the prospect of a sale was helping him get over it.

“Well, uh, what did I say?”

“Three hundred each.”

“Tell you, what, I give you four for a thousand. That’s like, eight-thousand dollar worth of coats.”

I gave it some thought.

“It’s a great deal,” he said again. “You make some money, and you help me, you make your friends happy with real Italian leather jackets that cost next to nothing. I don’t have so much samples to take back to Milano.”

“Okay,” I said.

Gian looked surprised. “Great.” Then he grimaced awkwardly. “But I just take cash. You need to go to cash machine?”

“I got it on me,” I said. “Can you throw those four into the van?”

“Yeah, sure,” Gian said, unable to hide his surprise, and pleasure, that I had that kind of money on me. He gathered up the coats, went around to the passenger door on the van, opened it up, and tossed them onto the seat. By the time he’d turned around, I had the cash in one hand — a wad of bills, rolled up tight — and my Boss jacket in the other.

“Have a look to make sure it’s all there,” I said.

He held the money tight to his body and, chin to chest, did a quick check. “Fantastic. This is good. Okay, I got to catch my flight.”

“Sure you do,” I said, watching him get back into the Chrysler and peel out of the gas station lot.

When I came through the door to our apartment, Mary got an eyeful of me in the ill-fitting leather coat and said, “You auditioning for an episode of Fashion Crimes?”

I tossed my Boss jacket over the back of a chair and slipped out of the gift from Gian.

“If you like this one, I have four more just like it in the car,” I said.

“Let me have a look at that,” she said.

I handed it over and she gave it a thorough inspection. Mary knows a thing or two about clothes. She worked at Bloomingdales for eight years in women’s fashion.

“Tell me you didn’t pay money for this.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Someone told you this was leather?”

“Not just leather, but Italian leather,” I said. “Retails around two-thousand bucks.”

“It’s not worth twenty bucks. It’s pleather.”

“It’s what?”

“Imitation leather made from plastic. It’s crap. Probably made in China. Look at the stitching. It’s already coming apart in places. It’s probably lined with old newspaper.”

“I got five of them for a thousand bucks,” I told her.

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.”

“Oh, Samuel,” Mary said. “I feel like I sent you to sell our cow at market and you’ve come back with magic beans.”

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I bought the coats with his own money.”

Mary smiled. “Well, that’s something I suppose. Anything left over?”

I reached into the pocket of my dress slacks and pulled out some bills. “When he was showing me his wares out of the trunk of his car, I got this off him.” It was the better part of a thousand dollars. It had been tucked into his front pocket, not far from that gun. Which meant that our con man friend Gian had about two thousand on him. So, even though I’d given him a grand back, I was up a thousand.

“I don’t think I told you about the first time,” I said.

“First time?”

“About six months ago, guy with a fake Italian accent asks me for directions to get back to the Best Western for a meeting with a bunch of buyers from J.C. Penney. Says he’s here on a business trip, from Mee-lah-no. Wanted to give me a jacket. He was reading from the same script as this guy today. Both of them very good. The first time, it didn’t even hit me it was a scam, and I was pressed for time and didn’t bite. But today, when I heard the thing all over again, I got curious.” I paused. “A touch nervous, too. He had a piece tucked into his belt.”

“Oh my,” Mary said. She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad you made it home alive. I made lasagna.”

“Wonderful.”

“How’d the rest of your day go?”

I emptied out my other pocket. “About eight hundred and fifty, looks like.” As usual, I had thrown out the purses and wallets and credit cards and returned home with just the cash I’d pickpocketed. Penn Station and Grand Central were my two favorite places to work. Crowded, people fumbling with luggage, distracted by kids, confused if they were coming into the city for the first time. They weren’t paying attention to their wallets or handbags. And there were plenty of places to disappear in a hurry if someone realized they’d been picked.

“So nearly two thousand,” Mary said. “Not bad for a day’s work.”

I agreed. Especially since it was not the kind of income one generally reported to the authorities. All tax-free. But the business was not as good as it used to be. Fewer people kept much cash on them. We were becoming a cashless society. I was hanging on by my fingernails. But I didn’t like cards. With all the ways to rip them off these days, there were also too many ways to track their use.

“Oh,” said Mary. “Did you pay the phone and gas bills?”

I bounced the heel of my hand off my forehead. “I got so wrapped up with Gian—”

“Gian?”

“My new fashion adviser. At least, that was the name on his card. But I’ll bet anything the phone number and website are bogus. I totally forgot to go to the bank after. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

I grabbed my sport jacket from the chair, reached into the pocket for the bills.

“Here’s the gas one...”

I could only find the one bill.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?”

“You sure you gave me both bills to pay? I don’t have the phone bill here.”

“I gave both of them to you.”

“The other one must have fallen out. When I took it off.”

I thought back to when I had dropped my jacket into the trunk of the Chrysler. I grabbed it in a hurry while Gian was putting the pleather jackets in my van.

My missing phone bill was, in all likelihood, in his trunk. A bill that carried our name and address on it.

“Mary, I think I may have made a mis—”

Someone was banging on the door.