Shift: A Novel

Washington, DC

November 8, 1963

The linoleum floor of the Salvation Army was coated with a layer of dirt that crunched beneath the soles of BC’s shoes. A mildewy tang floated through the moist air, over which came the faint sound of Christian Muzak and the hum of innumerable fluorescent tubes.

BC had never set foot in a thrift store before and was amazed at how big it was—a gymnasium-sized space filled with clothes that had been worn by other people. Not just worn. Worn in. Worn out. Though the silver-wigged old lady at the counter assured him all the clothes were washed before they were put on the racks, BC saw innumerable sweat-stained armpits and yellowed collars and any number of faint and not-so-faint bloodstains. There was even an entire rack of used underwear: limp boxers and listless jockey shorts, their leg bands stretched and flaccid from being pulled on a thousand times, their flies sadly puckered from who knew what kind of fumbled or fevered gropings. Though BC felt that it was somehow violating the industry standard not to take a disguise all the way down to the skin, there was no way in hell he was putting on another man’s skivvies.

Which still left him with the dilemma of trousers, shirt, jacket, hat. It was reasonable to assume Charles Jarrell’s house was being watched—at any rate, it was not unreasonable to assume. And, too, he wasn’t sure how Jarrell would react to a particularly G-man-looking G-man showing up on his doorstep. He might run, and BC would lose the closest thing to a lead he had to Melchior. BC had to get Jarrell to open the door. After that, he would worry about getting him to talk.

Many of the shirts had names sewn over the left breast—bowling shirts mostly, but also mechanic and gas jockey and repairman’s uniforms, the thick, shiny threads of their embroidered names often in better condition than the threadbare garments onto which they’d been stitched. That was American job security: your name, on a shirt. You knew you were there for a while. The names flashed by like index cards until:

CB

Red letters, green background. But that wasn’t what caught BC’s eye. It was, rather, the words below the name:

Hoover Vacuums

How could he resist?

It took twenty more minutes to find pants that matched the shirt’s green, a belt, a pair of battered shoes (he wasn’t about to destroy another pair of Florsheims). But the real coup was the cap. It wasn’t an actual Hoover cap, but it did bear the motto “Suck It Up.” After waving it around in what was probably a futile effort to dislodge any lice eggs, BC tried it on, glanced in the mirror. But even through the healthy coating of dust on the glass, all he saw was a G-man in a goofy cap.

For some unfathomable reason the cashier had to record each purchase in a notebook.

“Pa-a-ants,” she said, drawing out the word as she scrawled it into her spiral-bound notebook. “Twen-ty-fi-ive cennttssss. Shi-i-irt, twenty-five cents. Sho-o-oes, fifty. Ca-a-ap, fifteen.” BC felt like a barbarian standing in front of a Roman tax assessor tallying up the worthlessness of his life.

The woman held up the belt, which, though not snakeskin, was every bit as wrinkled and cracked.

“I’ll just give you that,” she said. “Will that be all?”

BC was about to nod his head when he stopped.

“Just one thing. Where’d you get your wig?”