The yellow plastic sandwich board sign stood in the middle of the sidewalk, its red letters reflecting the morning sun.
ERNIE’S PHOTO I-D
ALL KINDS
PASSPORT
DRIVERS LICENSE
TAXI
Jack cut around it and stepped through the open doorway into a tiny store packed to the ceiling with miniature Statues of Liberty, New York City postcards, customizable T-shirts, sports caps, and anything else Ernie could cram into a rack or onto a shelf. Ernie’s shop made Abe’s seem like the wide open range.
“Hey, Em.”
The skinny, droopy-faced man behind the counter wore an ugly orange Hawaiian shirt and had a Pall Mall dangling from the corner of his mouth, J-P Belmondo style. He looked up and winked.
“Witcha in a minute, sir,” he said and went right back into his spiel to an old Korean tourist about a pair of Ray Ban Predators.
“We’re talkin’ big savings here. Real money.” He pronounced it monnay—like “Monday” without the d. “I’m tellin’ you, these list for ninety bucks. I can let you have ’em for fifty.”
“No-no,” the old man said. “I see down street for ten. Ten dollah.”
“But they’re knock-offs. They ain’t the real thing. You
buy ’em today and tomorrow morning the lenses’ll fall out and the temples’ll break off. But these, my friend, these are the real deal.”
Jack turned away and pretended to browse through a rack of bootleg videos. Nothing Ernie sold was the real deal.
His mind wandered back to Gia. He’d slept over again last night. Nice. He loved waking up next to her. But she’d seemed so jumpy this morning. She’d looked impatient when he’d been making calls, and he’d gotten the impression she’d been waiting for him to leave. He didn’t consider himself the easiest person to live with, but was he getting on her nerves already?
The old guy had haggled Ernie down to thirty-five and left wearing his cool shades.
“Hey, Jack,” Ernie said, folding the money into his pocket. Too many years of unfiltered cigarettes had given him a frog’s vocal cords. “How y’doin’. How y’doin’.” He shook his head. “Tough t’make a buck these days, y’know? Real tough.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, easing up to Ernie’s combination display case and counter. Half a dozen faux Rolexes glittered through the crisscrossed scratches in the glass. “Things are tight all around.”
“These street guys are killin’ me. I mean, what overhead they got? They roll out a blanket or set up a cardboard box and they’re in business. They’re sellin’ the same stuff as me for a fin over cost. Me, you wouldn’t believe the rent I gotta pay for this here closet.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Ernie had been crying poverty since a number of his fake ID sources dried up after the World Trade Center catastrophe. He’d been Jack’s main source of driver’s licenses and photo IDs for many years. “You get the queer we talked about?”
“Sure did.” He pointed to the door. “Make us look closed, will ya?”
Jack locked the door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. When he returned to the counter, Ernie had a stack of currency on the glass.
“Here she be. Five K of it.”
Jack picked up one of the hundred-dollar bills. He snapped it, held it up to the light. Not too crisp, not too limp. “Looks pretty good to me.”
“Yeah, it’s good work but they’re cold as bin Laden’s ass. Every clerk from Bloomie’s to the lowliest bodega’s got that serial number tacked up next to the cash register.”
“Perfect,” Jack said. Just what he wanted. “What do I owe you?”
“Gimme twenty and we’ll call it even.” He grinned as he started stuffing the bills into a brown paper bag. “I’ll knock the price down to fifteen if you take more off my hands.”
Jack laughed. “You’re really looking to dump this junk, aren’t you.”
“Tell me about it. Stuff was golden for a while, but ‘bout all it’s good for now is lightin’ cigars and stuffin’ cracks in a drafty room. Can’t even use it for toilet paper. Liability having it around.”
“Why don’t you just burn it?”
“Easier said than done, my man. Especially in the summer. First off, I ain’t got no fireplace in my apartment, and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to burn it there. And the bums ain’t lightin’ up their trashcans in this heat, so I can’t just walk by and dump a few stacks into the fire. I’m gonna hafta wait till winter. Till then, I’m glad to have someone take even a little off my hands.”
“What are friends for?” Jack said, handing him a twenty and taking the paper bag.
Ernie looked at him. “I don’t get it. Why you want bad queer when I can get you good? Whatta you gonna do with it?”
Jack smiled. “Buy myself a stairway to heaven.”