Free The Pinch by Steve Stern

there were times, I confess, when I thought I might like to hunker down in that dimly lit shop till the hard rain that was coming passed over. Then I reminded myself that I belonged to a reckless tribe, who ran out to greet the winds of change with open arms; I remembered that I was, albeit at my own speed, in pursuit of a beautiful girl.
    “Avrom,” I said, as he gummed his fried egg sandwich (mine was pimento cheese), “I keep sort of stumbling into the past.”
    I wasn’t really expecting an answer, though Avrom, his mouth crusted with yellow yolk dribbling into his beard, offered an offhand response: “Rabbi bar Hana that he once bumped into a frog as big as Mount Tabor, and like the eyelids of the morning were its eyes.”
    As usual I wondered why I even bothered to confide in the old kocker, as he sometimes called himself. But for all his double-talk I suppose I invested in him a degree of authority, if only by virtue of the blue tattoo on his wrist. Surely someone who’d been where he’d been must’ve returned with some kind of momentous insight to impart. Though I admit I was reluctant to ask him about that particular journey, or what he might have lost along the way. I had after all my own concerns, and besides the old man never gave me a straight reply. “Better you should be your own shamus,” he would advise me, like he had the answers but thought it would be more educational if I found them myself. The thing was, before discovering Muni’s book I hadn’t really thought of what the questions might be.
    Today’s was “Who’s Tyrone Pin?” That was the incongruous name to which the illustrations were attributed on the title page of The Pinch. Slouched in the understuffed armchair catty-cornered from Avrom’s desk, I braced myself to hear the obvious: “He made like it says the pictures—” Imagine my surprise when, instead of the usual runaround, Avrom said simply, “Why you don’t ask him?” It was a particularly unsettling reply given his previous assurance that all persons connected with the book were “gone with the wind.” That was Avrom’s phrase, which he seemed to think was original with him.
    “And where would I find this Tyrone person?” I inquired, again expecting to be handed a riddle. By now it was apparent that Avrom was better acquainted with the book than he was willing to let on; like I said, he enjoyed making mystery. But since the answer was disturbing enough in its own right, the old man seemed to relish divulging it.
    “He’s since the war an inmate by the Western State Mental Hospital at Bolivar.”
    The information shook me to my socks. That the illustrator was living gave the book a kind of manifest presence in the world, made it more than just some indefinable artifact. But Avrom wasn’t finished. “He grew up in the Pinch, Tyrone—Katie and Pinchas Pin’s boy, a delicate kid, so I’m told.”
    Hoping to further exploit his confidential mood, I pressed him. “Did you know them, the Pins?”
    “Me, I’m a Shlomo-come-lately, who do I know? By the time I get here everyone is—”
    “Gone with the wind—so you said.”
    Later on I’m wondering what would be the point of making a trip to some ghoulish institution—which was Western State’s reputation—to talk with a lunatic. Reading the book was a daunting enough experience in itself, especially now that I’d begun running into North Main Street’s long-extinct merchandise. I stepped on an unreal roller skate and coasted a few hair-raising moments before I went sprawling; I barked my shin on the phantom fender of a 1908 Packard motor carriage and even glimpsed some ectoplasm in a serge waistcoat, watch fob, and gartered sleeves. Such occasions, despite the panoply of bruises I was collecting, were tantamount to waking up in a dream. I might have written off the incidents as acid flashbacks, but since I’d become so absorbed in the book, I was less inclined to sample the psychoactive stuff in my