He sighed to himself. That was one of the major drawbacks of living between the lines. If you didn’t have an SSN, you were barred from countless things. You couldn’t hold a regular job, couldn’t buy or sell stock, couldn’t take out a loan, couldn’t own a home, couldn’t even complete a Blue Shield form. The list went on and on.
His thumb casually hooked in his left rear pocket, Jack stopped in front of a rundown office building. He rented a ten-by-twelve cubicle here—the smallest he could find. He had never met the agent, nor anyone else connected with the office. He intended to keep it that way.
He took the creaking Otis with the penny-studded floor up to “4” and stepped off. The hall was empty. Jack’s office was 412. He walked past the door twice before pulling out the key and quickly letting himself in.
It always smelled the same: dry and dusty. The floor and windowsills were layered with dust. Dust bunnies clogged the corners. An upper corner of the only window was spanned by an abandoned spider web—out of business.
There was no furniture. The dull expanse of floor was broken only by the half dozen or so envelopes that had been shoved through the mail slot, and by a vinyl IBM typewriter cover and the wires that ran from it to the telephone and electrical outlets in the wall on the right.
Jack picked up the mail. Three were bills, all addressed to Jack Finch in care of this office. The rest belonged to Occupant. He next went over to the typewriter cover and lifted it. The phone and the answerphone beneath appeared to be in good shape. Even as he squatted over it, the machine clicked on and he heard Abe’s voice give the familiar salutation in the name of Repairman Jack, followed by a man complaining of an electric dryer that wasn’t drying.
He replaced the cover and went back to the door. A quick peek showed two secretaries from the shoe importing firm at the other end of the hall standing by the elevator. Jack waited until the door slid shut after them. He locked his office, then ducked for the stairway. His cheeks puffed with relief as he started down the worn steps. He hated coming here and made a point of doing so at rare, random intervals at odd times of the day. He did not want his face in any way connected with Repairman Jack; but there were bills to be paid, bills that he didn’t want delivered to his apartment. And popping into the office at random hours of the day or night seemed safer than having a post office box.
Most likely none of it was necessary. Most likely no one was looking to get even with Repairman Jack. He was always careful to stay far in the background when he fixed things. Only his clients ever saw him.
But there was always a chance. And as long as that chance existed, he made certain he was very hard to find.
Thumb hooked again into that important pocket, Jack moved into the growing lunch hour crush, luxuriating in the anonymity of the crowd. He turned east on Forty-second and strolled up to the brick-front post office between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. There he purchased three money orders—two in negligible amounts for the phone and electric bills, and the third for a figure he considered preposterous considering the square footage of office space he was renting. He signed all three Jack Finch and mailed them off. As he was leaving, it occurred to him that while he had the cash, he might as well pay the rent on his apartment, too. He went back and purchased a fourth money order which he made out to his landlord. This one he signed Jack Berger.
Then it was a short walk past an art deco building to the side of the Port Authority building, then across Eighth Avenue and he was in Sleazeville, U.S.A.—Times Square and environs. A never-ending freak show that would put Todd Browning to shame. Jack never passed up an opportunity to stroll through the area. He was a people-watcher and nowhere was there such a unique variety of Homo sapiens low-lificus as in Times Square.
He walked the next block under an almost continuous canopy of theatre marquees. Exploitation Row—films here were either triple-X sex, kung-fu imports, or psycho-with-a-knife splatter films from what Jack liked to call the Julia Childs slice-and-dice school of movie-making. Stuck in between were hole-in-the-wall porn shops, stairways to “modeling studios” and dance halls, the ubiquitous Nedicks and Orange Julius stands, and sundry stores perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy—or so their window signs claimed. Mingling among the patrons of these venerable establishments were hookers and derelicts of both sexes, plus an incredible array of epicene creatures who had probably looked like boys when they were little.
He crossed Broadway behind the building that had given the Square its name, then turned uptown on Seventh Avenue. Here the porn shops were slightly larger, the movie ticket prices higher, and the fast food of a better grade, such as Steak & Brew and Wienerwald. Set up on tables along the curb were chess and backgammon boards, where a couple of guys would play anyone for a buck. Further down were three-card monte set-ups on cardboard boxes. Pushcarts sold shish-kebab, Sabrett hot dogs, dried fruits and nuts, giant pretzels, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The odors mingled in the air with the sounds and sights. All the record stores along Seventh were pushing the latest new wave group, Polio, playing cuts from their debut album onto the sidewalk. Jack stood waiting for the green at Forty-sixth next to a Puerto Rican with a giant cassette box on his shoulder blasting salsa at a volume that would probably cause sterility in most small mammals, while girls wearing tube tops that left their midriffs bare and satin gym shorts that left a smooth pink crescent of buttock protruding from each leg hole roller-skated through the traffic with tiny headphones on their ears and Sony Walkmans belted to their waists.
Standing directly in the middle of the flow was a big blind Black with a sign on his chest, a dog at his feet, and a cup in his hand. Jack threw some loose change into the cup as he slipped by. Further on, he passed the ’Frisco Theatre, which was once again showing its favorite double feature: Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones.
There was something about New York that got to Jack. He loved its sleaze, its color, the glory and crassness of its architecture. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Upon reaching the Fifties, he turned east until he came to Municipal Coins. He stopped in front and glanced briefly at the low-priced junk under the red-and-white WE BUY GOLD sign in the window—proof sets, Confederate paper, and the like—then went in.
Monte spotted him right away.
“Mr. O’Neil! How are you!”
“Fine. Just call me Jack. Remember?”
“Of course!” Monte said, grinning. “Always with the informality.” He was short, slight, balding, with scrawny arms and a big nose. A mosquito of a man. “Good to see you again!”
Of course it was good to see him again. Jack knew he was probably Monte’s best customer. Their relationship had begun back in the mid-seventies. Jack had been stashing away his cash earnings for a while and was at a loss as to what to do with it. Abe had told him to buy gold. Krugerrands, specifically. It had been the summer of 1976 and gold was selling for $103 an ounce. Jack thought that was ridiculously high, but Abe swore it was going to go up. He practically begged Jack to buy some.
It’s completely anonymous! Abe had said, saving his most persuasive argument for last. As anonymous as buying a loaf of bread!
Jack looked around the shop, remembering his anxiety that first day. He had bought a lot of ten coins, a small part of his savings, but all he dared risk on something like gold. By Christmas it hit $134 an ounce. That was a thirty percent increase in four months. Spurred by the profit, he began buying gold steadily, eventually putting every cent he had into Krugers. He became a welcome face at Municipal Coins.