The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Hansard’s coupe hit nothing but the high spots on the way uptown. This might be a wrong lead, of course. No telling whether the skirt at Litzman’s was the same one Tom MacReady had spotted down on Little Maiden Lane. But if she wasn’t, it was a damn queer coincidence. Women didn’t do much legitimate pawning late at night. That was a male trick, for booze money. Women usually did their hocking in the daytime, when they could buy something they needed with the money they got. But if this was the same dame, seconds might count. Litzman might not be able to stall her off for long. She’d be sure to get suspicious.

Still, there was something screwy about the set-up. That window-job had certainly been done by a professional mob of heisters. Yet no gem thief would be dumb enough to suppose he could get away with pawning a piece of glitter within a couple of hours after the stuff had been lifted.

It was ten minutes past nine when Mike got out, a block below Litzman’s. He forced himself to stroll leisurely toward the hockshop — past a couple of employment agencies.

It wouldn’t do to come tearing into the shop. There might be a lookout waiting outside, or across the street. That was why he hadn’t wanted the radio cars notified. A lookout would have spotted police cars before they could have closed in and given the alarm.

He turned in, hesitantly, under a dingy sign from which hung three tarnished gilt balls. The window was plastered, inside, with a miscellaneous network of watches, binoculars, shotguns, revolvers, banjoes, carpenter’s levels, flutes, fishing rods. Phony “flash wares” bought at auction, Hansard knew, for sale to overwise suckers.

The girl was still there. She was talking earnestly to Elias down at the far end of the counter. A bleached-out aluminum blonde with plenty of curves where they counted, and a pinched, sharp little face with too much rouge and lipstick on it. She wore a short seal jacket over a thin blue silk dress, and if Mike Hansard was any judge, she was scared silly about something.

“Won’t you please hurry,” she was saying, shrilly, to the two men behind the counter. “I tell you I’ve got to catch a train.”

Old Elias Litzman looked at her mildly over his steel-rimmed spectacles and fingered his scraggly beard thoughtfully. “In a transaction of this size, it is necessary to make out the papers correctly. I have my pawnshop license to protect—”

“I understand. But I’ve given you all the information you’ve asked for.”

“How do you spell your first name, Miss Sampson? Or here” — the pawnbroker deferentially handed her his pen — “if you will just fill this in yourself. Full name and address. Phone number, if you have one...”

The girl wrote eagerly.

Hansard rested his elbows wearily on the counter, took his watch out of his pocket as if he were greatly embarrassed.

The younger Litzman came up to him, briskly. “You wish to make a loan, gentleman?” He slid a slip of white paper under Mike’s hand.

“Like to get about five-six bucks on the turnip. It’s worth twenty-five, at least.”

On the slip he read—