Free Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman Page A

commission. Won’t cost you more than thirty dollars. Course, that’s if the guy driving don’t sneak off with everybody’s money and everybody’s baggage while you’re still eating lunch in a cafeteria in Newark. Or worse! I heard about one old lady—’
    ‘Los Angeles?’ Sinner interrupted.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Los Angeles for thirty dollars? Hollywood?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Anywhere I can pawn a watch around here?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Sure.’
    Sinner thought about that for a while.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ the cab driver eventually said. ‘You still want to go uptown or not?’
    ‘Yeah. Uptown.’ He could go to Los Angeles tomorrow.
    They dodged between the trams at Columbus Circle and within ten minutes Sinner was paying the driver on West 70thStreet. He smoked a cigarette, drank some more bourbon, and then knocked on Balfour Pearl’s door.
    Pearl opened it in shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. He smelt of sweat, being one of those rare men who could truly exert themselves alone at a desk.
    ‘You forgot your watch,’ said Sinner.
    ‘You stole it.’
    Sinner shrugged.
    ‘I grew up in Manhattan,’ said Pearl. ‘Do you think I don’t know when a boy slips off my watch as he shakes my hand? Do you think I don’t have friends who could steal your underpants as they wave to you from across the street?’
    ‘Do you want it back?’
    ‘Yes, I want it back. Are you expecting a reward?’
    ‘I want some ice with my drink.’
    ‘I share this house with my wife and daughter.’
    ‘They’re on the long island,’ said Sinner. Pearl let him push past.
    Most of the house was dark, but there was some weak light from up the stairs, so Sinner found his way up to the study, where typewritten papers were strewn across the desk beneath a green-shaded banker’s lamp as if exhausted by their struggles with the city planner.
    ‘You won’t find ice in there,’ said Pearl, behind him.
    ‘Get me some, then.’
    ‘Perhaps I’ll call the Rabbi and let him know you’re here. He must be concerned. Would you like me to do that?’
    ‘You can do what you like after you get me some ice.’
    ‘Once again, you seem to think your insolence will impress me, and once again, I remind you that I grew up in Manhattan. Talking of which, I remember your trainer said you were desperate to see Times Square – did you take the opportunity on your way?’
    ‘It was all right,’ admitted Sinner.
    ‘Better than Piccadilly Circus?’
    ‘Yeah, maybe.’
    ‘It’s best appreciated with a map to hand – the way it slashes through the grid. Have you heard of Oscar Gude?’
    ‘He the bloke who stole your underpants?’
    ‘Oscar Gude is Times Square. In 1879 Thomas Edison had the idea for the electric light bulb and in 1892 Oscar Gude had the idea for selling things with it: firstly property on Long Island – I’m sorry, “the long island” – and then Heinz pickles. By the end of the war there must have been ten or twenty thousand billboards in America with Gude’s name on them, including a hell of a lot in Times Square. They called him “the Botticelli of Broadway”. I met him once. He thought what he did was beautiful. Did you think it was beautiful?’
    Sinner shrugged and sat down on top of the desk, his feet dangling off.
    ‘By the way, I’m sure you’re enjoying that brand of whiskey just as much as the average Appalachian hobo, but if you’d like to try something a touch more refined there’s a bottle in the bottom drawer. Yes, on the left. And glasses on the shelf. Now, to Gude, you must realise, art and advertising were two names for the same beast. I can’t imagine he’ll be the last person in New York to get rich off that thuggish notion, or the last person to think he was the first. Except he also understood that you can’t force people to look at art but you can force people to look at advertising if you put a hundred thousand light bulbs right there in the street. He liked that. He liked