Justin Stone and the Iris of the Madonna

[joegoda]

Even on the brightest, sunniest of days, there are places in any city that are dark. Dark with shadows and dark with emotion. Dark corners and dark streets and dark buildings that loom over dark streets with windows like eyes that watch and doors like mouths that will eat a person alive.

These are the places where the 'nice' people tread carefully and with fear. It doesn't matter if they are completely alone in the middle of a wide avenue. There is always that niggling feeling on the back of the neck of being watched, of being measured, of being weighed.

Ernest was not used to running. He had led the soft and sedentary life of an minor accountant working for a minor accounting firm. Two things had happened in quick succession that turned his life around and about.

The first thing was that he had received a letter from the Stone Foundation, offering him a position in their grants division. No longer would he be simply looking at lines and columns of numbers. The position that he was being offered would enable him to actually direct where those numbers went. The letter made mention of the honors he had received while a student at Harvard, and said that they could use a man of his caliber. The offer was a cherry of a position and would finally enable him, at twenty-two, to purchase a house and afford to marry.

He even had a girl in mind. She had already been hired by the Stone Foundation and worked in their secretarial pool. They had been high school sweethearts, and had only been apart long enough for him to go to school in Boston. They had written each other every single night and both families had agreed that it was destined to happen.

The second thing that had happened was a envelope he received the same day as the Stone Foundation offer. It was a simple brown envelope that had no return address. The envelope contained a pawn ticket and a letter. The letter offered him the sum of three thousand dollars if he would go to a particular pawn shop and retrieve a package there that was connected to the ticket. The letter mentioned that the tidy sum would go quite a way toward building a new home for him and his intended. It was signed 'from a friend'."

Three thousand dollars is quite a bit of money. Ernest, being young and in love, wanted to give his future wife a life she could be proud of. He was also a bit naive, and believed that the letter was indeed from a 'friend', who wanted nothing more than to aid him in building his nest egg.

He had even fantasized that the second letter had also come from the Stone Foundation. Perhaps they, in some secretive way, had found out about his and Mary's engagement. Perhaps this was an early engagement present. The Stone Foundation, or so the rumors went, could reach into everywhere, and see everything.

He was a bit portly, Ernest was. A large figure was part of his family heritage. No matter how much he exercised, and no matter how little he ate, he had always been a roundish person. The fact that he wore a brown derby and brown pinstriped suit, regardless of the weather, gave him a bit of a comical look. It was something that he had gotten used to, and something that he accepted. He would never cut a dashing figure, and it was his belief that it made him, somehow, appear harmless.

He was dressed in his brown pinstriped suit and derby when he left his little flat in Mrs. McGinty's boarding house. In one pocket was the envelope containing the pawn ticket and the address of the pawn shop. In the other he carried the offer letter from the Stone Foundation. Tonight, at the Stone Foundation's party, he would surprise Mary with a ring and a question.

2232 NW Murphy was in a dark part of the city. The police rarely patrolled there. It wasn't from the lack of diligence on the part of the police or from the presence of fear the place inspired. It was quite simply the logistics of the place. There were only so many policemen, and it was a very large city. 2232 NW Murphy existed in a part of the city called the Hallows, and all manner of riff-raff existed there, like rats in the walls of a posh hotel.

The Hallows was a place of alleyways, narrow cobblestone streets and overhanging rooftops. There were no gaslights on the corners in this part of the city. The lighting of this place at night became cost prohibitive. A few hours after a city crew had installed one of the tall and slender iron poles, it would be dismantled and sold to an unscrupulous metal dealer. Even in the middle of the day, it was an oppressive place, shadowy and exuding danger.

Ernest was sweating heavily when he opened the door to the pawn shop. He looked over his shoulder as he entered, expecting to see a lead pipe wielding assailant. There was nobody behind him, of course, but he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched.

The bell above the door dinged as he entered. Ernest looked around the interior, seeing piles of clothing, suitcases, shoes, a musical instrument or two and quite a number of well worn tools. There were long cases on either side of the narrow room, holding old and well used appliances, eyeglasses, wallets and jewelry. On the walls behind the cases hung portraits in gilded frames, parts from carriages, horse saddles and harnesses, and, oddly, a fully stuffed moose head.

A gruff voice from the dingy room called out "What do you want?"

Ernest squinted in the dim light, and could make out a hunched figure sitting behind a barred window near the back of the pawn shop. He stepped cautiously toward the window, cleared his throat and said in a tremulous voice, "I was sent to pick something up."

A cracked laugh came from behind the cage. "That's a hot one!" It was the voice of too many cigarettes, too much hard liquor. "Picking something up. Heh heh heh." A long pause that was punctuated with heavy coughing fit followed by the sound of a wheezing draw of breath, a hacking sound and a spit. "Well?" the tortured voice roared. "You gotta ticket?"

"Yes, uh, sir."

The face that Ernest could barely see was slim and lined. The man looked like a weasel, with large, pointed ears that stuck out on either side of his head. White tufts of hair grew from the top of his head, which gave him an odd halo in the dingy light from the single lamp that sat behind the cage with who must only be the shopkeeper. A thin and black cigar was stuck between equally thin and bloodless lips. Lamplight glinted off of large round lenses, perched on a large and bulbous nose.

"Well?" the man roared again. "You gonna stand there until your feet grow roots? You gotta ticket, bring it up here for me to see." A thin hand with long fingers waved Ernest forward. "Bring it up here, boy!"

Ernest walked timidly up to the cage, a great brass thing that may have once been the entry way to a garden. The cage was tied to the wooden floor by large iron bolts and ran all the way to the ceiling. It reached from one side of the room to the other, completely enclosing the back quarter of the room.

Though the single lamp was fairly dim, Ernest could see that, on the other side of the cage, there were more cases. Those cases contained none of the disarray of the ones on Ernest's side of the cage. Those cases on the other side were lovingly arranged and the glass that surrounded them was spotless. The contents of those cases was arranged and cared for, and the contents of those cases made Ernest's eyes grow large.

There were rubies, and emeralds sitting on black velvet. There were expensive pocket watches, their gold cases encrusted with diamonds. There were rings of gold and rings of silver containing any manner and arrangement of jewels. There was a pile of gold coins, sitting off in a corner of one of the cases. At the sight, Ernest gasped audibly.

"That's why I have the cage, buddy." Another hacking cough. The man had large owl-like eyes gazing from behind his pince-nez glasses and he blinked twice, slowly. "You say you gotta ticket? Let's see it."

"Oh!" Wrenching his eyes away from the dazzling display on the other side of the cage, Ernest dug in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled out the brown envelope and opened it. Handing the ticket to the man behind the counter, he asked, "Do you have any engagement rings?"

The shopkeeper's eyes blink again, slowly and a phlegmy laugh erupted from a mouth of poorly kept teeth. "Look around, young pup. What do you think?" A skeletal hand reached forward and snatched the ticket from Ernest. Holding the ticket into the lamplight and squinting at it, the man hummed to himself.

Ernest cleared his throat again. "Do you think you could show me what you have? I'm going to propose to...."

A roar interrupted him. "What?" A torrent of rage spat from the shopkeeper's mouth. "Do you think I can just get up and walk out there? Are you blind, man? Are you stupid?"

Shaken, Ernest began to stammer an apology for something he didn't understand. Then it became clear to him. The man on the other side of the cage wasn't sitting in a chair. He was sitting on the counter. He had to, because he couldn't stand, as he had no legs.

Shocked, Ernest took a step backward. "I'm so sorry!" he babbled. "I didn't know!"

"Of course you didn't know." growled the shopkeeper. "You didn't look. You didn't see. All you saw were all the pretties I had back here, didn't you?" Turning back to the pawn ticket, the man peered at it, and mumbled the numbers that were printed on it. In a softer voice, but no less virulent, he said, "Look around out there, young pup. What you'll find out there will be more to your price, I think."

"But, but, but" Ernest stammered, "I'll have three thousand dollars once I pick up the package that ticket redeems."

The weasel face jammed itself closer to the bars. "Will you now? How very lucky for you, pup." The man tried hard to pull something close to a smile. It was a frightening visage, more full of teeth than of cheer. "Let me go look for your 'package', then. Once you have your money, perhaps we can find something your young lady would like."

With that said, the half-man placed the ticket between his teeth and reached above his head with his left hand. His grasped a handle that hung suspended there and lifted himself off the counter. Then, monkey-like, he swung himself outward and grasped another suspended handle with his right hand. In that fashion, he moved away quickly and was soon lost in the dim of the back of the pawn shop. The sounds the handles made reminded Ernest of the rattling of chains, and an involuntary shiver ran up his back.

Ernest peered up at the ceiling. There he saw triangular shaped handles hanging at regularly spaced intervals. It was how the man was able to move about the shop, and it seemed to Ernest to be a fairly smart idea, if not a bit creepy.

Ernest pulled a linen handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. Nervous sweat had sprung up all over his body. This was not as easy as he had expected it to be, but other than the strangeness of the shopkeeper, it had been a fairly easy assignment. He would have to take a quick bath when he made it home, so as to be fresh tonight when he went to the party... and Mary.

While he waited, he did, indeed, look around. The outer part of the pawn shop, on his side of the brass cage, was a shambles, with no sort of order at all. It would have been a surprise to Ernest if anyone could make heads or tails in trying to find anything. He lifted a well worn and broken leather harness, apparently a discard from one of the horse-drawn taxis that ran through the streets. Underneath the harness was a sword. He lifted it, feeling its heft and balance.

It was quite likely, he imagined, left over from the War Between the States. There were markings near the hilt that read "Ames MFG Co. Cabot Ville" and the date "1850". It appeared well used and there were rust colored spots on the steel blade that might have been rust... or might not have. Hearing a noise like chains from behind him, Ernest quickly put the sword down.

"Fancy that sword?" wheezed the shopkeeper. "It'll cost you fifty."

"Heh," Ernest laughed nervously. "No, I was just admiring it. I would never buy such a thing."

The owl-like eyes blinked twice, and the thin lips opened in that grimace like smile. It gave Ernest the feeling that he was being sized up, as if he were a field mouse.

"No," the shopkeeper grumbled. "I don't suspect you ever would." He dropped a solid sounding object onto his counter top. "Here's your 'package'. I'll need a signature for it, though." His thin finger tapped a ledger book.

Ernest walked back to the cage and reached through the bars for the ledger. This was something familiar to him, the signing of receipts. He deftly produced an ink pen from his shirt pocket and signed his name, 'Ernest J. Hauptman'. "There you are," he said.

The shopkeeper pulled the ledger back and leaned down to peer at the name. "Ernest," he said. "My grandfather's name was Ernest. Died of Cholera in India." For a brief moment, the man faded to memory, his eyes blinking again, moistly. He pushed the brown wrapped package over to Ernest. "There is no storage fee."

"Thank you," Ernest said as he lifted the package. It was heavier than he thought it would be. The package was the size of a big man's fist, and oddly shaped, almost triangular in form with rough edges. The brown paper wrapping was wound tightly about it and bound with copper wires. He hefted it twice.

"It's pretty heavy," he said, looking at it. "Maybe five or six pounds. What is it?"

"How the hell should I know?" spat the shopkeeper. "It was here before me. Do you think I go looking at every little bit of every little thing I have back there? I'm not likely to just jump down from here and go scrounging around, am I?"

Again shocked at the force of the man's anger, Ernest stammered out a quick apology. "No, no! Of course not." He turned the package over in his hands. There were no markings on the package, no writings of any kind. "I was just wondering what it might be."

"Well, you can wonder on your own time!" The shopkeeper reached above his head and grasped a handled. "I'm busy and we're closed." He began to monkey swing away.

"What about my ring?" Ernest asked.

"Come back when you have your money!" growled the shopkeeper's receding back as he disappeared into the gloom.

"What a very unpleasant man," Ernest said as he closed the pawn shop's door behind him. He looked up at what he could see of the sky. The snowy clouds that covered the sun brought the feeling of oppression. Ernest pulled his jacket closer about him, trying to ward off the cold.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had not received his three thousand dollars. Just as suddenly, it also occurred to him that there had been no instructions on where he was to take the package. He felt quite the fool. Perhaps, he thought, the location of where he was to take the package was on the letter, and he had simply overlooked it.

He pulled the brown envelope out of his pocket, and tucking the package under his arm, retrieved the letter. He turned it over several times, furiously looking at the paper, as if the address would magically appear where before it had not been.

Frantic, he scanned the envelope. There was, as he already knew, no return address. "The Stone Foundation must be the place," he muttered absently to himself. "That's the only thing that makes sense." He resolved that he would go to the foundation now, present the package and get his money. Then he would go to a more... reputable establishment and buy a proper engagement ring.

Ernest stuffed the envelope and letter in his pocket and took two steps forward. Then, with a gasp of shock, he fell onto his knees, a sudden pain at the back of his neck. Blackness enveloped him and then he knew nothing at all.