Free Harry Kaplan's Adventures Underground by Steve Stern Page A

on its way down, passed my papa’s on the rise. With a proud hand on my shoulder, he shrugged again, plucked a wayward thread from my lapel, and tossed me his keys. “Okeydoke, Mr. Big Shot, today you’re a man,” he informed me. “Don’t stay open too late.” And he was out the door in an arpeggio of chimes.
    His parting words, however intended, resonated odiously in my ears. They sounded to me like the kind of command you gave some flunky accomplice, that he should stand lookout while you returned to the scene of the crime.
    â€œThis is just ducky,” I said to the ceiling, catching myself in an impersonation of my father. Was it fair to say that Sol Kaplan was finally certifiably meshugge? Not happy with having turned his pawnshop into a museum of derelict rubbish, he’d gone himself one better: he’d made it a mausoleum as well.
    I resolved to try and make the best of it, though I could have done with a little more in the way of a commencement exercise. What happened to the part where I recited the Moneylender’s Creed? Still, I supposed I was glad Papa hadn’t made a big thing of it. Better that he should treat my taking over as a matter of routine. Because, if I’d thought of it otherwise, at the appearance of my first customer—a sartorial darkie in a bug-back coat, with powder-gray temples and serious, blood-rimmed eyes, carrying what looked to be a grainy black doctor’s bag—I would have panicked.
    As it was, I was able to perform before the tired eyes of my audience a quick study of my father’s bluff spirits, screwing my face into what I thought would pass for the spitting image of his benevolent smile.
    â€œHowdy doody,” I greeted, excusing myself to snatch down Papa’s eyeshade. “Now what can I do you for, uncle? Heh heh heh.”
    So far so good. This is what’s known as an aptitude for meeting the public. But judging from the suspicious frown on my client’s face, I might have been trying too hard. He was hugging his bag to his chest as if to protect its contents, which I imagined as smoky vials, polished instruments, possibly cunning devices for cracking safes: augers and drills, small explosives, a stethoscope that could sense a mechanical pulse through lead.
    â€œWhere Mr. Solly at?”
    â€œHe’s out. I’m his son, Mr. Harry,” I informed him, tugging at my lapels to simulate an expansion of my chest. But the old sawbones, or safecracker, still seemed unconvinced. He further confirmed this when, giving a disappointed tilt to his head, he turned and left the shop.
    It was a scene that repeated itself, during the next couple of hours, with only slight variations. As you might guess, this took its toll on my readiness to serve. So much was one customer’s reaction the carbon copy of another’s that you’d have thought they’d attended the same school of disappointment. Each one clutched his moth-eaten skunk boa, his cracked hourglass, his still humming beehive, grisly fishing lure, last year’s Dionne quintuplets calendar, or Jose Carioca cookie jar, as if such sought-after items were much too valuable to place in the hands of a novice. Nobody even bothered to tell me a story.
    I tried to flatter myself that they could see I wasn’t such a patsy as my papa. I could recognize their offerings for what they really were, “trash” being, to my mind, too dignified a label; and as for the charade of making them loans, that was charity, if you called it by its right name. But knowing this was small consolation in the face of their wholesale distrust. What was the matter with them, that they didn’t identify me as Sol Kaplan’s son and heir, a more or less permanent fixture around these premises? It was also beginning to irk me that Oboy was being so conspicuously out-of-pocket. He was, after all, more suited than I was, by body type and disposition, to caretaking this