The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,252

think of going up there with Reeve like a cat waiting for me to scurry across the floor. I had to sit tight. Unfortunately, the rent on the storage unit was due in three months; and what with everything else I saw no point whatsoever in going up to pay it in person. The thing was just to have Grisha or one of the guys go in and pay it for me, in cash, which I was confident they would do no questions asked. But then the second unfortunate thing had happened: because only a few days earlier Grisha had shocked me, thoroughly, by sidling up with a sideways tick of his head when I was alone in the shop and adding up my receipts at the end of the week and saying: “Mazhor, I need a sit-down.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You on lock?”

“What?” Between Yiddish and gutter Russian, jumbled through a slur of Brooklynese and slang picked up from rap songs, sometimes Grisha’s idioms didn’t make it into any kind of English I could understand.

Grisha snorted noisily. “I don’t think you understanding me right, champ. I am asking is everything square with you. With the laws.”

“Hang on,” I said—I was in the middle of a column of figures—and then looked up from the calculator: “Wait, what are you talking about?”

“You my brother, not condemning or judging. I just need to know, all right?”

“Why? What happened?”

“Peoples are hanging around the shop, keeping an eye on. You know anything about it?”

“Who?” I glanced out the window. “What? When was this?”

“I wanted to ask you. Scared to drive out to Borough Park to meet with my cousin Genka for some business he got going—afraid of getting these guys on me.”

“On you?” I sat down.

Grisha shrugged. “Four, five times now. Yesterday, getting out of my truck, I saw one of them hanging around out front again, but he slipped across the street. Jeans—older—very casual dressed. Genka, he don’t know nothing about it but he’s freaked, like I say we got some stuff going, he told me to ask you what you knew about it. Never talks, just stands and waits. I am wondering if it is some of your business with the Shvatzah,” he said discreetly.

“Nope.” The Shvatzah was Jerome; I hadn’t seen him in months.

“Well then. I hate to break it to you but I think is maybe poh-lices smelling around. Mike—he has noticed too. He thought it was because of his child supports. But the guy just hangs around and does nothing.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Who knows? But one month, at least. Mike says longer.”

“Next time, when you see him, will you point him out to me?”

“He might be private investigator.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because in some ways he looks more like ex-cop. Mike thinks this—Irish, they know from cops, Mike said he looked older, like poh-lice retired from the force maybe?”

“Right,” I said, thinking of the heavyset guy I’d seen out my window. I’d spotted him four or five times subsequently, or someone who looked like him, lingering out front during business hours—always when I was with Hobie or a customer, inconvenient to confront him—although he was so innocuous-looking, hoodie and construction-worker boots, I could hardly be sure. Once—it had scared me, badly—I’d seen a guy who looked like him lingering out in front of the Barbours’ building but when I got a better look I’d been sure I was wrong.

“He’s been around for a while. But this—” Grisha paused—“normally I would not say anything, maybe is nothing, but yesterday…”

“Well, what? Go on,” I said, when he massaged his neck and looked guiltily to the side.

“Another guy. Different. I’d seen him hanging about the shop before. Outside. But yesterday he came in the shop to ask for you by your name. And I did not like the looks of him at all.”

I sat back abruptly in my chair. I’d been wondering when Reeve would take it in his head to drop by in person.

“I did not talk to him. I was out—” nodding—“so. Loading the truck. But I saw him go in. Kind of guy you notice. Nice dressed, but not like a client. You were at lunch and Mike was in the shop by himself—guy comes in, asks, Theodore Decker? Well, you’re not in, Mike says so. ‘Where is he.’ Lot a lot a questions about you, like do you work here, do you live here, how long, where you are, all sorts.”

“Where was Hobie?”

“He didn’t want Hobie. He wanted