Mystery

They went past the policemen drinking Pusser’s at the end of the bar out to the Street of Widows. The rolled-up windows of a black and white police car in a no parking zone just outside the entrance reflected a red neon scimitar flashing on and off in the restaurant’s window. To their left, cars, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages rolled up and down Calle Drosselmayer. The St. Alwyn side of the street was in deep shadow; on the other, the shadow ended in a firm black line that touched the opposite sidewalk, and blazing sunlight fell on a shoeless native dozing on the pavement before a display of hats and baskets on a red blanket. On one side of the vendor was an open market with ranks of swollen vegetables and slabs of fish protected from the sun by a long awning. Melting ice and purple fish guts drizzled on the pavement. On the other side of the vendor, two wide young women in bathrobes sat smoking on the front steps of a tall narrow building called the Traveller’s Hotel. They were watching the entrance of Sinbad’s Cavern, and when Tom and von Heilitz came out, they looked at them for only seconds before focusing on the door again.

Von Heilitz strode diagonally across the street, came up on the curb just past the steps where the women sat, and turned beneath a gilt sign reading ELLINGTON’S ALLSORTS AND NOTIONS into the entrance of a dark little shop. Tom caught the door behind him, and a bell tinkled as he walked in.

Von Heilitz was already moving quickly down an aisle stocked with bottles of hot sauce, canned salmon, cat food, and boxes of cereal with names Tom had never seen in his life—Delilah’s Own and Mother Sugar—to a shelf with ballpoint pens, pads of paper, and boxes of envelopes. Von Heilitz picked up a pad of yellow paper and six boxes of variously colored envelopes, swung around and passed them to Tom, and whirled away into another aisle.

“I thought you said two thousand,” Tom said.

“I said it would feel like two thousand,” von Heilitz called from the next aisle.

Tom rounded the top of the aisle and saw him swoop down on a loaf of bread, a bag of potato chips, a wrapped pound of cheddar cheese, a container of margarine, a long salami, a box of crackers, cans, bottles, bags—half of these things he tossed to Tom, and the rest he piled in his arms.

“What’s all this food for?”

“Sustenance,” the old man said. “What is food usually for?”

When both of them were carrying so much that the stacks of containers threatened to fall out of their arms, von Heilitz came around the last aisle and unceremoniously dumped everything he was carrying on a scarred wooden counter. A small bald man with toffee-colored skin beamed at him from the other side of the counter.

“Hobart, my dear old friend,” von Heilitz said, “this is a close friend of mine, Tom Pasmore.”

Tom put down his groceries, and the little man grabbed his hand. “Lamont, he looks like you! I declare it! I think he must be your nephew!”

“We use the same tailor.” He gave a twinkling glance toward Tom. “Do you think I could use your back room tonight?”

“Tonight, tomorrow, any time.” The shopkeeper snatched at von Heilitz’s hand and pumped it.

Hobart added up the total on a scrap of paper and began putting their goods into bags while von Heilitz counted out bills on the counter. “Someone else will be joining you, Lamont?”

“One other man. Athletic-looking, with dark hair. In his late thirties.”

“What time?” He gave a heavy bag to Tom with a conspirator’s wink.

“Ten-thirty, eleven o’clock, around then.”

Hobart filled the second bag and handed it to von Heilitz. “The lights will be off.”

Von Heilitz marched off through the door, saying, “Thank you.”

Hobart said, “He is a very great man,” and Tom, following the detective, said, “I know!” He came out into the shower of blinding light. Von Heilitz had already carried his shopping bag halfway across the street. Tom stepped down from the curb into the shadow of the St. Alwyn Hotel. The two young women in bathrobes were sitting in the police car with the policemen who had been in the bar.

“Hurry along,” von Heilitz said, holding open the door of Sinbad’s Cavern. “We have notes to write, if we want to make today’s delivery.”