John H. Porter
THE PALE VIRGINS SHROUDED IN SNOW
"This guy who was once a lifeguard and then got a job
buying old gold from door to door never knew why they tapped him
for the job, unless perhaps the one man they'd always wanted was
just the kind of moon-face he happened to be, with a twenty-mile
stare like you," said Scotty, grinning at Mr. Ennis across the desk in
the disorderly, donkey's-hide office they shared at S & D; talking a
mile a minute, either because one of Scotty's talking jags had just
come over him or because he guessed the long yaddity-yaddity Mr.
Ennis had listened to that morning over the phone, and to which he
had answered only "Uh," came from the rubbery lips of his lawyer
announcing that Mr. Ennis' wife had finally got custody of the kid,
a long, thin drink of water called Nicky who used to go down to the
Village with his father to listen to Eddie Condon's jam sessions
in
a
long silence broken only when the little boy shook his head and, in
his squeaking treble, said, "Solid, Jack."
"Anyway, there he was," said Scotty, "shaken hands with,
clopped on the back, bonded, asking the
yentas
of Brooklyn if they
happened to have any old gold, exhibiting his good faith with a
small pair of scales and a bottle of aqua regia, before he'd had time
to tell them there,
in
the office, he'd give it a whirl. He knocked them
dead from the start, staggering back up the three flights to the office
with a briefcase bulging with old wedding rings he'd had to help
them pry loose from their fingers, watches, brooches, fountain pens,
buttons, picture frames, and believe it or not, from the darker
purlieus of Brownsville, gold inlays of every conceivable size and
shape and plenty of big, solid, fourteen-carat gold teeth.
It
got to be a
regular routine, 'Any gold teeth, today, lady, you're not living on
pork chops,' and the time I was going to tell you about, this tall,
tan, terrific number, like they used to say on the marquee of the
