Chapter Twelve
More and more human tourists were coming to the Quarter, happy couples who strolled down the main streets and peeped into the windows of friendly shops that catered to various types of monsters.
The Timeworn Treasures pawnshop was not one such place.
No one would pass the pawnshop by happy accident. Timeworn Treasures was tucked in a gloomy side street off the gloomy main drag, a dingy and cluttered shop filled with other people’s junk. Customers, or victims, slunk down the main street, ducked into the alley when they thought no one was looking, and slipped through the front door to negotiate with the furry proprietor.
I understood that people ran into tough times and had to resort to desperate measures to pay the bills, or get that operation, or buy the shiny new RV they wanted so badly. To me, a pawnshop was a repository of lost dreams, a place where customers surrendered their precious possessions as collateral for high-interest loans, often for pennies on the dollar, hoping to restore their finances in time to retrieve their valuables before someone else bought them. In extreme cases, they sold their items outright.
That was how Jerry the zombie had lost his heart and soul.
I straightened the collar of my sport jacket, tilted back the fedora on my head, and pulled open the door. I hoped the pawnbroker was a reasonable person who would react favorably to a business proposition. That way, I could take care of this quickly and cleanly for Mrs. Saldana.
Unfortunately, the shop owner was a gremlin, the unnatural equivalent of a pack rat who loved to collect esoteric objects for the sole purpose of having them. A gremlin pawnbroker wasn’t interested in making a profit from buying and selling these objects; he just wanted to surround himself with them. I had seen an episode about gremlins and all their junk on Unnatural Hoarders.
After entering the shop, I let my eyes adjust to the gloom. I saw shelf after shelf filled with items on display, arranged in no order that I could discern: used spellbooks, fat leatherbound volumes as well as the more compact paperback editions; bone china hors d’oeuvre plates and entertainment sets for coven get-togethers; a Maltese falcon with a price so ridiculously high that I didn’t dare touch it; next to it, a shriveled and curled monkey’s paw was marked down at a discount, “Special Offer This Week: Only One Wish Left.”
There were racks of moldering old clothes and a jewelry case filled with fashionable rings, necklaces, brooches, and bracelets. Zombies and vampires fresh from the grave often found themselves in a tight financial spot, forced to pawn the jewelry and clothes in which they’d been buried for seed money to start a new un-life. Timeworn Treasures was one of the places they went.
Propped on a high wooden stool behind a chicken-wire barrier sat the gremlin proprietor. He was only about three feet tall, average size for a gremlin, with tiny teeth, a pinched face, and tufts of fur in all the wrong places. He was not a member of the silly fictional species that you weren’t supposed to feed after midnight. This guy was an old-school gremlin, the type that liked to hitchhike aboard planes and rip the cowlings off engines or punch holes through wings. After strict airline safety regulations made such mischief a thing of the past, the gremlin had found himself a new career as a pawnbroker.
“How can I help you?” he asked, his voice nasal, his words blurred at the edges as if his lips and tongue were still fighting off the effect of a dentist’s anesthesia. “Looking for anything in particular?”
Not bothering to look at more shelves of what the gremlin classified as “timeworn treasures,” I fished out my business card. “Actually, I want to see you. Dan Chambeaux from Chambeaux and Deyer Investigations. A client asked me to make inquiries on his behalf.”
With small clawed fingers, the gremlin reached through a gap in the chickenwire, took the business card, and perused it with yellow slitted eyes. He made a gurgling rumble in his throat, halfway between a purr and a growl. I didn’t think it was an indication of anger or displeasure, just the fact that he was congested.
He scootched his butt on the small chair, and I could see that his little legs dangled high above the floor, and he wore no shoes on his furry feet. He set the card down, as if unimpressed, made a coughing harrumph, then picked up a dirty rag, dabbed it in a jar of silver polish and began vigorously rubbing an inscribed silver chalice along with its accompanying silver-handled sacrificial dagger. Around him, other silver objects gleamed. Though the gremlin was little, he had bulging biceps, probably from vigorous and constant polishing.
He looked up at me. “Shiny,” he said, still lisping. “I like shiny thingth.”
At his left elbow, in a large stone stand that might originally have been a birdbath, sat a crystal ball a foot in diameter, marked NOT FOR SALE. The gremlin touched the surface of the crystal ball and peered into the transparent depths. “Shiny,” he said again. When he removed his finger, he found a smear on the globe’s surface, which he rubbed away before heaving a contented sigh.
“Let me tell you about my client, Mr. … uh?”
“Thnaathzhh.”
I had never heard such a name before. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Thnaathzhh.”
The gremlin’s moist nostrils flared. “Not Thnaathzhh. Thnaathzhh!”
“Thnaathzhh,” I said again, precisely the same way he was pronouncing his name. In a huff, the gremlin tore a sheet from his receipt book and scribbled on it, “SNAZZ.”
“Oh, Snazz! That makes more sense.”
“Thnaathzhh,” the gremlin repeated, working his lips with such determination that spittle flew out. Luckily, the chickenwire blocked the trajectory so the spittle did not make it to me and my jacket.
“Struggling with sibilants, I see? The sequence of so many esses does sometimes seem silly.”
The annoyed gremlin struggled to find a sentence that did not contain the letter S. He found a good one. “What do you want?”
“My client is a zombie named Jerry who works for the Hope and Salvation Mission. He pawned his heart and soul here, and he would like to purchase it back.”
“Already thold,” said Snazz.
“That’s what I hear.”
The gremlin continued to polish his silver. “Heavy demand on the combo packth, already thold theven thetth thith month.”
“Seven sets this month? I was hoping you could tell me who the customer was. I’d make it worth your while.” I lowered my voice. “I have some sparkly and shiny things I could pass your way.”
The gremlin’s eyes lit up. “Shiny …” He sounded very tempted.
He bent over to a credenza next to his stool, worked a combination lock to open the drawer, and pulled out a ledger book nearly as big as he was. He propped it on his lap, taking care to keep the contents out of my sight-line. He flipped from page to page, humming, gurgling, until he found the correct entry. “Yeth, I know who bought it.”
I contemplated what sparkly or shiny objects I could use for trade. Snazz seemed like the sort of person who might even be delighted with strips of aluminum foil.
“Won’t tell you.” The gremlin slammed the ledger book shut. “Not worth it.”
“I haven’t even made an offer yet.”
“Thtill not worth it.”
Either the intractable gremlin had a well-defined sense of business ethics, or he was genuinely afraid to divulge the identity of the purchaser. Why would anyone want Jerry’s heart or soul in the first place? I tried a different tactic. “You said you’ve sold several combo packs in the past month. All to the same customer?”
“None of your buthineth.”
“Actually, it is my business, Mr. Snazz. I’m a private detective, and this is a case.”
“Private meanth I don’t have to answer your quethtionth. Thith ith a pawnshop. Buy thomething, or go away.”
I could see that traditional negotiation would get me nowhere. If McGoo got a warrant, the pawnbroker would have to reveal the purchaser, but even though McGoo and I kept a running back-and-forth of favors, I didn’t have a legitimate legal reason to request a warrant—Jerry had pawned his heart and soul, and someone had purchased it. No crime committed.
Still, I needed information from that ledger book. Maybe, I realized, if heart-and-soul bundle packs were such a hot commodity, I could spot the avid collector if I kept an eye on Timeworn Treasures.
To be polite, I perused the objects on the shelves. On one of the high displays, I actually found a coffee pot to replace the one Sheyenne had broken when her brother Travis made his surprise visit. I didn’t even want to imagine the dire circumstances that would drive a person to pawn a used coffee pot for cash.
But when I offered to buy the coffee pot for the price marked on the tag, the pack-rat gremlin couldn’t bear to part with it. “Thank you anyway, Mr. Snazz.” I tipped my hat to him, then walked out the door.
As I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, I found the delivery paperwork I had snagged from the golem sweatshop: the address of the warehouse where the souvenir doodads were to be shipped. Even though Bill the golem and his companions had been freed, and Irwyn Goodfellow had already put Robin to work drawing up the papers for his Adopt-a-Golem charity, I sensed there was more to the case. And I was disinclined to be thrilled with the Smile Syndicate’s expansion into the Quarter.
By now it was sunset, and since I was out anyway, I decided to snoop around the warehouse. The cases don’t solve themselves. A detective has to organize information, put the pieces together, and come up with viable answers.
But first I had to collect the pieces.