He closed the top and pushed the box to the side.
“I’m impressed,” Jack said. “First time I ever saw you do that.”
“I’ll be thin as you before you know it.” He found a crumb on the counter and popped it into his mouth, then looked longingly at the brownie box. “Yessir. Before you know it.”
In what Jack knew was an prodigious act of will, Abe pushed away from the counter and shrugged. “Nu?”
“Need a few things.”
“Let’s go.”
Abe locked the front door, turned a closed for lunch sign toward the street and, navigating aisles just wide enough to allow his bulk to pass, led the way toward the back. He followed Abe into the rear closet and down to the cellar. The neon sign that overhung the stone steps flickered but never quite came to life.
“Got a sick sign there, Abe.”
“I know, but it’s too much trouble to get fixed.”
He hit the switch that illuminated the cellar’s miniature armory. Abe moved among his stock, adjusting the pistols and rifles in their racks, straightening the boxes of ammo on their shelves. Everything neatly arranged down here, in sharp contrast to the floor just above them.
“Restocking or something new?”
“New,” Jack said. “Need a pair of weighted gloves.”
“You lost the last pair you bought?”
“No, but I need a white pair.”
Abe’s eyebrows lifted. “White? I never heard of such a thing. Black, of course. Brown, maybe. But white?”
“See if you can find me any.”
“I should go asking for white leather gloves with half a pound of fine steel shot packed into the knuckles? You want this in a lady’s size perhaps?”
“No, it’s for me. To go with formal wear.”
Abe sighed. “And I should have it for you when?”
“Tonight if you can, but by early tomorrow at the latest. And listen for any noise about someone with a whole bunch of kids’ Christmas gifts to sell… cheap… already wrapped, most likely. I told Julio to put his ears on too. You hear about someone like that, get word to the guy that you know a buyer. Someone who’ll take his whole stock.”
Abe’s curiosity got the best of him. “Just what is it you’re getting into this time, Jack?”
“Something I probably shouldn’t be involved with. But to do it right, it looks like I’m going to have to do something stupid.”
Abe stared and Jack knew he wanted to know just how stupid. But Abe wouldn’t ask, knowing Jack would tell him about it afterward.
Jack looked around and spotted something hanging on a rack in the corner. And that gave him an idea.
“You know what? Maybe I could use one more thing…”
5.
Jack took the A train downtown and emerged into the bustling Third World bazaar that was Fourteenth Street. He threaded his way among dreadlocked Dominicans, turbaned Sikhs, sailed Indians, suited Koreans, Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, and an occasional European mixing in the chill air on sidewalks flanked with signs in half a dozen languages.