VIII. Thou shalt not steal
HANDY’S PAWN AND GOLD
by Angeline Hawkes
Handy’s Pawn and Gold Shop had been in the same location since the late twenties. It was a family-owned business and had been passed down from father to son every generation since the store had been acquired. The original owner’s nickname had been ‘Handy’. It was sort of a family joke that had Handy been handier with his finances he might not have had to sell his place to their family in the first place.
Seems old Handy had quite a bad gambling habit. When he won – he won big. The store was still stocked with oddities that Handy had acquired through the years. But, when Handy lost, he took such severe losses that one such devastating gambling debt forced him to sell his shop. He had too many bookies after him wanting to collect on the money he owed them. So many in fact that Handy had seemed desperate to sell the store so he could pacify some of the people he owed money to before they came looking for payment in blood in lieu of the money they might not ever get. No one really knew what happened to Handy after the sale of the store. The family hoped, naturally, that Handy had been able to pay off his bookies and stay on the straight and narrow, but bad gamblers usually can’t resist the lure of the bet and Handy probably wasn’t so fortunate to break the habit.
Old Handy was more legend than anything else now. The back storeroom walls were covered with tacked up maps of exotic locales Handy had visited and though the maps were yellowed and tattered now, it just didn’t seem right to take them down. They were a part of Handy’s store. Handy had won many of the exotic artifacts in the shop from the various native peoples of the strange and far off places he had traveled. In the current shop, some of the artifacts were now used for display up on the high shelves surrounding the store, rather than being offered for sale, but there were still plenty of shelves still laden with chipped, dusty pieces that were available for sale. Handy had always tried to sell his wins hoping to generate income, but the times in which he was selling just hadn’t produced much curiosity in such exotic trinkets aside from Egyptian artifacts, of which Handy had very little. Most of his journeys were to South American locales and some miscellaneous islands. His clientele consisted of the down and out looking for someone to buy their grandmother’s treasured ring or their old gold watch rather than looking for some strange bauble to purchase. So, most of Handy’s wins still sat on the dusty metal and wood shelves, selling a piece here and a pot or couple of beads there slowly throughout the years.
Until Austin had a clever idea. He checked out some reference books from the local library and carted them back to the shop to look up the oddities that sat on the shelves that were interestingly enough mingled with gold chains, old appliances and oily guns. He 
figured if they could identify and date some of the dusty old items then they might discover something of value that a museum or collector might be interested in purchasing. At first, Harvey, Austin’s brother had teased Austin about his idea, but when it turned out that they actually owned several small Mayan artifacts dating from around 600 AD, Harvey abruptly shut up. Harvey didn’t know much about the history of any population, his own included, but when Austin started finding matches to artifacts in the books, Harvey began to grow interested in learning as much as he could to assist his brother.
Before Austin’s idea, no one had really individually catalogued the artifacts. Mostly the items were shoved haphazardly onto about six shelves in the back of the shop, in a dark, dusty corner where few customers ever ventured. Austin doubted that some of the pieces had even been moved since Handy himself, stuck them on the shelf with a hand-written, penciled-on price written on the bottom of each piece. A few pieces had dust piled all over – coating the crevices and crannies in each piece. Dust sloped inward and upward towards the items’ sides like little dusty snow slopes blown around the artifacts by the wind. Austin sneezed his way through each and every one of them. There were quite a lot of bowls, some painted and some simple and unadorned. Vessels that had been used as lamps of some sort, vases, and urns. None were particularly huge or impressive. There were some depictions of birds, reptiles, a few people engaged in mysterious events, but for the most part the ceramic artifacts were plain everyday sort of utilitarian vessels. Some curious green stone beads carved with tiny x’s caught Austin’s attention and he scooped them out of the dusty bowl they rested in and into a zip up plastic bag. There were lots of pots and cups with fragments of red paint still present and some with paint that was cracked and/or flaking. He found that the pieces on the back of the shelves were better preserved. They had been protected from the sunlight and from curious prying hands.
Austin dusted off each piece, but hesitated to clean them any further not being an expert on cleaning artifacts that were hundreds of years old, if not thousands as he hoped a few were. He photographed and catalogued each one and placed them in a new, lighted glass cabinet at the front of the shop. He also began circulating photos of the collection on the web and to museums. The green stone beads, as he suspected, went quickly and fetched a hefty price. Several of the matching bowls got snapped up quickly as well. He even had a few museum curators that came to the store in person and viewed the collection, purchasing this pot or that. Some came with promises to return. Some sniffed at the collection as if it was insulting to them to have even been contacted, but most were impressed with the condition and the variety of the objects and found something to their liking that they bought without hesitating.
It was almost closing time when Austin got an email from a professor of Mayan history who lived in Mexico, inquiring about vase number X603. The professor described the vase as the only one in known existence that was still intact and in one piece. He wanted to arrange a time and place so that he could fly to the States and meet with Austin about purchasing it. He wanted to inspect the vase for himself. Austin flipped his calendar page and looked at his schedule. Then, rubbing his eyes and yawning, he shut down his computer and decided he’d finish reading the letter and reply in the morning. He was tired and his head was killing him. Besides, he had told his wife that he’d go to church with her tonight. He hadn’t been to church since the dedication service for the Ten Commandment slab and the church had been declared safe after the wire malfunction incident for a few weeks now. So, he was out of excuses for not attending. His wife couldn’t wait to see the stone tablet again. No matter how many times she saw it, it still excited her. After all of the research he had been doing on their shop’s artifacts, looking at yet another dusty hunk of carved up rock less than appealed to him, but he said he’d go – so, he’d go. He learned a long time ago, not to make promises to the wife and then back out. It just didn’t bode well for him in the end.
He turned on the security alarm, grabbed his jacket, and locked up the store. The heavy iron bars on the front windows were a reminder of the need for security in this area of town. The area of town was older and attracted less savory kinds of people, not that they were all bad; but, it was often hard to separate the baddies from the innocent homeless people just looking for a warm door to sleep in. Ironically, the bars were there to protect the jewels and guns – not the priceless antiquities that had sat neglected on the shelves for all these past years.
Austin got in his car and drove home, confident that the shop was well protected. They had never had a break-in before. They had had a few attempted break-ins, but the would be thief had always been thwarted by a curious neighbor or someone on the street. The security system had been promised by the company to be one of the top models available for that price range on the market today.
Darkness fell over the sleepy street as two old street lamps buzzed to life – dim yellow light pooling around the concrete sidewalk beneath the lamp poles – jagged, illuminated fingers reaching weakly into the shadows but not penetrating very far. The street was dark save for those two lights and the red neon letters in Handy’s window that glowed and buzzed the word, “Closed”. Occasionally, the old sign flickered on and off as if reminding passing people of the age of the old store.
Through the dark alley crept a lone figure of a man dressed in a black sweat suit with a dark gray knit cap pulled down over his head. It wasn’t particularly cold that night – the costume was more for the sake of camouflage. More for the sake of fading into the grayness of the night, into the blackness of the shadows. The figure snuck around behind Handy’s Pawn & Gold and shined a narrow flashlight beam onto the painted brick wall. His eyes followed exposed rusty pipes and twisting, tangled wires – searching for his intended target. Finding what he wanted, the man slipped a hand into the deep front pocket in his hooded sweatshirt and pulled out a pair of shiny, silver wire clippers.
Snip.
The neon sign in front of Handy’s Pawn & Gold went dead.
With the electricity off and the alarm disabled, the man went to the back door, inserted his thieves’ key and clicked around until the lock popped. No dead bolt. Easy pickings.
Sliding in through the narrow crack of the open door, the man disappeared into the darkened shop and quickly closed the door, locking it behind him. He didn’t need any unexpected guests or assistants on this gig.
Flashlight in hand, he strode up and down the metal shelf-lined aisles, curious if anything new had appeared since he had cased the joint last week. Electric fans, irons, a few microwaves, and a slew of toasters – about fifty toasters — damn, they had a lot of toasters! What did people think anyway? My electric bill is due, I think I’ll go and sell my toaster to cover it? Sheesh. He shined his flashlight on further down the shop aisles. The gold was in the front of the shop. He had already checked out all of the guns in stock. Nothing of value. Most of what they had was just old crap in the gun department. No one looking to unload a gun for cash ever had a decent piece to begin with. Good guns weren’t cheap, unless they were stolen and an establishment like Handy’s would know the difference between a hot gun and a legitimate sale. They had some good jewelry though.
He made his way to the front of the store – towards the glass cabinets with the diamond rings of broken dreams and the gold bands of broken hearts. He pulled a black canvas bag from his pocket and shook the bag open. Inside the larger bag, he had smaller bags to keep his pilfered goods separated and untangled. He went behind the counter and found the switch that unlocked the glass display cases. The tops jumped with a slight pop sound. No key needed – how quaint. He took it all. No point in dawdling over it, there would be plenty of time to sort it out in the safety of his own place. The crap he could save to pay the whores for cheap favors like blowjobs on his way through the neighborhood. Cheap whores didn’t know the difference between crap stones and quality stones. Hell, he could probably pass off the Cubic Zirconia’s as the real things with some of those strung out, desperate bitches, but he wasn’t that low. He didn’t want to take advantage of no ten dollar a blow ho. They were pathetic and sad and often had two or three kids over at grandma’s that they had to support. After all, cheap hos needed to eat too.
He closed the lid and went over towards the chains and watches. His bag was heavier now. Carefully, he looked around for whatever else might sell on the market – and his eyes landed on a spanking new glass display case with little velvet stands displaying some rather beat up looking pottery.
“What’s all this shit?” he asked himself in a whisper.
He walked around the case, flashlight shining on the items on the shelves and frowned. Maybe this stuff was some sort of antique stuff. He didn’t know much about that type of shit. He just knew how to unload gold and jewels. He slid open a glass panel and took out a small cup of some kind. He turned it over and examined it. He put it back. He moved the light over the objects until a gleam of something metallic caught his eye inside of a vase on the bottom shelf. He slid open the glass panel closest to the vase and removed the artifact. It was pretty big. The opening was large enough to see down. He placed it on the counter and flashed the light inside. There was definitely a piece of gold – looked like a large, gold coin – at the bottom of the vase.
The shadowy man tilted the earthenware vase this way and that. Each time the coin rolled to the other side. He stared at the vase for a minute. It was elaborately painted. He didn’t want to break it. He could probably sell this to some upscale art gallery through the right contacts. The coin rolled around the bottom, aggravating him. He felt like a kid trying to shake all of the pennies out of that little hole at the bottom of a piggy bank.
He thought that if he pulled his fingers in tightly and narrowed his hand, he might be able to fish the coin out with a finger or two. Positioning the flashlight on the counter so it would shine on the vase, he slipped his fingers into the neck of the ceramic vessel and then, surprised at how much room there seemed to be, he slid the rest of his hand in as well. His fingers felt around the bottom of the rough feeling vase searching for that elusive gold coin.
Where the hell was it?
He went to pull his hand out, but realized that his hand was suddenly too big for the narrow opening in the vase.
“What the fuck?” he cursed out loud, twisting his hand back and forth. He had gotten it in with no problem, why couldn’t he get his hand out again? Stupid vase. He narrowed his fingers and hand the same way he had when he inserted his hand into the vase and attempted to pull his hand out. Stuck. The opening seemed to have shrunk in the few seconds since he had stuck his hand in after the coin. He didn’t have time for this shit.
He whacked the vase against the wood counter ledge, but nothing happened. It looked fragile enough to shatter with the slightest of taps, but it wasn’t even cracking. He smacked it against the brick wall. Nothing. It was like beating a plastic bottle against a wall, only this vase wouldn’t even dent. Again, he struggled to wrench his hand free but it was pointless.
“Shit!” he bellowed, not caring how loud his voice was this time. The man gathered up his bag, now very heavy, and one-handed, headed for the back door. He put the bag down and unlocked the door, but it wouldn’t open. He jerked on it roughly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he griped and jerked on the door again. Then he shoved, and kicked, and finally he flung his entire body against the back door but to no avail.
“Shit!” he cursed again, stamping his foot in a rage.
His hand was growing sweatier, trapped in the dense ceramic vase. He wiggled his hand around only to find that the opening was now even narrower than it had been a few minutes ago. The pottery was molded around his wrist as if he had inserted his hand into the vase when it had been made of clay, unfired and soft. He couldn’t move his wrist anymore. The hard vase bit into his flesh. All he could do was stretch and curl his fingers.
He put his heavy canvas bag down on a desk in the back storeroom, knocking a pile of papers all over the room in his haste and looked for a hammer to hit the vase. Sure enough, he found a few shelves of tools and started banging the vase with an old, wood-handled hammer. Nothing. Useless. It was like he was bashing away at concrete. He couldn’t even chip the damn thing.
The vase began to grow painfully tight. The tightness had surpassed simple uncomfortableness and now it felt as though the rough-hewn pottery was cutting and slicing into his flesh. Shining the light into the neck of the vase, he observed that his flesh was raw and red. Panic seized him. His heart crashed in his chest. He looked at his watch. He had been in this store for two hours. Damn! A twenty-minute tops job was stretching on for far too long. He had to leave now. The longer he stayed in this shop, the more he increased his chances of getting caught. Frantically, he paced the room, returning to the back door and throwing himself into it once more. Then he yanked on it, and cursed and yanked some more. Nothing seemed to work.
The door didn’t budge.
The vase tightened. “Ah!” he screamed as he felt the ceramic cut into his flesh. Blood streamed from his wrist. This was insane! Blood poured from the vase, from his arm. He searched around for something to soak up the blood. Finding a cast-off t-shirt, he wrapped it around his arm, around the vase and watched as crimson soaked the white cotton at an alarming pace. He had to get out of here. Screw getting caught, if he didn’t get out of this shit hole he would bleed to death at this rate.
“Oh, God!” he screamed. “Damn!” he dropped to his knees as pain flooded his body. The vase sucked his hand in farther and cut deeply – so deep that the hardened red pottery cut to his bones.
He picked up the phone. He’d have to call an ambulance and in the process get himself thrown into jail. He didn’t have any choice. Fuck it; it was jail or bleeding to death. He stuck the receiver next to his ear.
The phone was dead.
“God damn it!” he screamed and angrily bashed the receiver into the counter repeatedly.
His eyes fell on the glass windows of the storefront. He awkwardly picked up the faux leather office chair with one arm and slung it towards the glass. It bounced off and skidded across the floor coming to a crashing halt beneath a cabinet. All he had been successful at was making a lot of noise.
He found the hammer he had used to beat the vase with and began slamming it into the glass of the window. Finally he made a hole and began pulling the pieces of broken glass away, but the presence of the iron bars outside of the glass only now dawned on him. He screamed through the hole in the glass – through the iron bars. He was trapped like an animal in the zoo. There was no way out through the front windows, no way out through the doors. Was there a way out at all? “Shit!” he hollered. Where were all the homeless bums that slept around here at night? If he could catch the attention of someone, anyone, he could get them to go for help. Maybe make a phone call. Anything but bleeding to death alone here in this shop!
A dog barked somewhere in the night.
Other than that solitary, lone howl, it was quiet.
He looked at his watch as he slumped to the hard ground, dizzy and cold. In a few hours it would be morning and the storeowners would be here to open the store. Maybe he could hold on that long. Blood puddled around him as he lay on the cold, cement floor. The t-shirt wrapped around his arm was useless – a sopping, soaked bundle. His clothes were saturated, smeared and soaked. Blood was everywhere. Everywhere he had crawled. Everywhere he had struggled. Long, bloody smears all over the floor, up and down the walls. Some of the blood was dry now, some of it was wet and glossy and slick.
Blackness was closing in around him as the vase suddenly severed his hand and rolled free. His spurting stump sprayed the last precious splatters of his life’s essence over a set of metal shelves full of old hot curlers and over all of those god damned toasters. Did they really need so many fucking toasters?
When Austin opened the store he found blood on everything and a very dead, blanche body of a handless man sprawled in the center of the store. Austin quickly picked up the vase that the thief had tried to steal. Besides just having a few drops of blood on the outside of the vase, it was otherwise unharmed. Austin breathed a sigh of relief. He wondered why the thief had it out of the display case. Probably was debating on whether or not he could sell it anywhere. Gingerly, Austin wiped the vase clean and put it back onto the shelf before it could end up in some room in an evidence pile. He was glad that nothing had happened to it. That was the vase that the Mexican professor wanted to buy. The cops came. Detectives came. In and out they came to the store taking photos, scribbling notes, whispering and talking between themselves. They couldn’t seem to locate the dead man’s missing hand. After a bit of arguing, it seemed that the cops had decided the man must have severed his hand outside of the store and then entered the store. So, the search was moved outside and into the alley in hopes of locating the missing hand.
The police left behind a man to stay with Austin as he wrapped up some loose ends. They would keep the place under lock and key until the crime scene had been properly examined, but gave Austin some time to handle his business.
He booted up the computer.
Clicking on the letter from the professor, he read what he had been too tired to read last night. The vase was supposedly cursed. The professor seemed most adamant about not putting anything into the vase – no fingers, hands, etc. He called the vase, “La taza de le mano” or the “Cup of the Hand”. Austin jumped up, startling the tired cop who was thumbing through an old copy of some yellowed sports magazine he had managed to find on the pile of stuff on the back table. Austin took the vase out of the display case and sat back down in front of the computer. He rotated the red and black vase in his hands. There was a scene depicting a man trying to steal the vase, and then the scene changed to that of the man inserting his hand into the vase, and finally, turning the vase a little more, Austin saw that the man was lying on the ground, writhing in pain with a spurting stump where his hand had just been.
“Shit!” Austin said softly and turned back to the professor’s email. Apparently the scene painted on the vase depicted some morality lesson and it had been used by Mayan kings to weed out their less trustworthy servants. Put out the vase; leave it alone with the servant, a servant with no hand, not a trust-worthy servant. A servant with two hands, a keeper. Nice little vase.
Images of the bloodless corpse lying in a pool of blood, and the blood-spattered store flashed through Austin’s mind. From what he had learned just now, their crook got a little more than he bargained for in Handy’s Pawn and Gold.
Austin carefully packed the vase in a wooden box and emailed the professor that the vase was still available for sale. He packed up his papers and stuck the box under his arm.
“Okay, officer. All done for the day,” Austin turned off the computer and left the building, the officer taping a yellow plastic ribbon across the door to ensure that no one would enter the crime scene.
Available at:
Amazon.com, Nocturne Press http://www.noctpress.com/commandments.htm
Shocklines http://shocklines.stores.yahoo.net/cocobanhabtr.html
