Though Not Dead (36 page)

He liked the look of the compass, but that wasn’t why he was here. “Mr. Pappardelle—”

Pappardelle waved him to a seat. “I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning, young man, and I refuse to talk business until I am fully awake.” He busied himself with a percolator while Sam removed a stack of
Life
magazines, a lace tablecloth, a box of firecrackers, and a tabby cat from an aged wing chair. It had a high back and was upholstered in a revolting shade of dark red leather that looked like dried blood.

He seated himself nevertheless, and in due time and with due ceremony was served with the best cup of coffee he’d had since coming to Seattle, and then Pappardelle got to work on breakfast, ham and eggs and potatoes and thick slices of toast soaked in butter. Sam had been making good wages on the docks, but every penny he could spare was going into the bank for his return journey home and his stake once he got there, and he’d been skimping on meals. The second full spread in less than twenty-four hours required his complete attention.

When he sat back Pappardelle was regarding him with approval. “It is good to see a man enjoy his food,” he said, and topped up Sam’s mug with fresh coffee. “Now let’s hear your story, young man. I have an ear for stories, and it tells me that yours will be a good one.”

Pappardelle’s near-together eyes were shrewd but kind, and Sam remembered what his date had said the night before.
The
ne plus ultra
authority whenever one of us is thinking of buying something of whose provenance we aren’t quite sure.
His instincts told him that he would receive no honesty from this man unless he was prepared to share some of his own. “I told you the truth, Mr. Pappardelle. I’m trying to track down a family heirloom.”

He told Pappardelle the story of the stolen icon, beginning with the flu pandemic and its decimation of Kanuyaq and Niniltna, the funeral potlatch, the display of the tribal relic and its subsequent disappearance. He gave a detailed physical description of Mac, and the exact date of the sale.

“Hmm,” Pappardelle said at the end. “And how did you come by that specific date, young man?”

“Like I told you, sir. My father left me a letter.”

“He died, you said.” The older man’s face wore an expression that was hard to read.

“Yes, sir. In the war.” It was close enough to the truth.

Pappardelle subjected him to a steady, narrow-eyed look. After some minutes he said, “Yes, well, perhaps you will tell me the truth of that one day, because it sounds like the most interesting part of your story.” He sighed. “But then the parts left out are always the most interesting.” He pushed himself out of a basket chair that creaked alarmingly under the pressure and moved nimbly through his overcrowded living quarters to a massive oak bookcase that took up all of one wall. He beckoned, and Sam edged cautiously through the accumulation to stand next to him.

“One of my proudest acquisitions,” Pappardelle said. The bookcase’s trim was carved with vines and leaves and flowers, the pulls were solid brass, and the glass in the doors was convex so that the titles of the books inside were magnified to the person reading them from the outside.

Sam had never seen such a thing and said so.

Pappardelle ran a caressing hand down the wood. “I could have sold this ten times over—in fact, there is a gentleman with a summer home on Lake Washington who has made three offers on it—but I can’t bear to part with it. At least not yet.” He sighed. “It is a great mistake in this business to fall in love with your stock. You end up dead in a room other people can’t get into for the clutter.”

Sam cast a glance around the room and refrained from the obvious reply.

Pappardelle opened the glass doors and ran a finger down the spines of a set of red ledgers that took up the middle shelf, each with a year in gilt letters on the spine. They ran all the way from the present year back to 1901. He smiled at Sam’s expression. “What, you thought I did not keep records? Are you familiar with the word
provenance
?”

The first time he’d heard it said out loud was last night. Sam said, “No, sir.”

“It is a fancy way of saying where the item you buy or sell comes from,” Pappardelle said. “In the antiques trade, the history of the item is often even more valuable than the item itself. For example, if you have a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, one way to authenticate it is to have a record of how the letter got from Thomas Jefferson to you. Family members, heirs, dealers, collectors, names, and dates of acquisition—they can be listed in inventories, bequeathed in wills.” Pappardelle’s bulbous nose almost twitched. “Every item in my store, every item I’ve ever bought, has its own story.”

“And how complete the story is directly affects how much you can charge for it,” Sam said.

Pappardelle beamed at Sam as if he were a teacher and Sam were a particularly bright student. His formal style of speech and his deliberate diction bespoke a formal education, and he wasn’t shy to display it, although never on this day or on any of the other days Sam spent in his company did he ever by word, look, or deed belittle Sam for his lack of same. Instructive, yes. Patronizing, never. “Exactly,” he said.

He pulled out the volume for 1919 with something of a flourish and wove a path back to his basket chair. He set the heavy volume on his legs, moved his spectacles from the top of his head to the tip of his nose, and opened the ledger to peer nearsightedly at the pages.

This time Sam paused before sitting down, wondering for the first time what the history of the wing chair was, and if the color of the cracked leather had been accidental, deliberate, or simply a result of the chair’s sitting too long in front of a sunny window. Who had put a cigar down on the right arm to cause that burn? Who had let the cat scratch at the left front leg? Who had worn the comfortable hollow in the seat? Was the hard lump in the back by accident or intent, part of a design determined to make an entire generation sit bolt upright?

He sat down. “What’s the story on that compass?” he said.

Pappardelle raised his head to give the compass a fond look. “Ah yes,” he said. “That particular piece is almost a hundred years old, according to a marine salvage expert I know. The man who sold it to me swore it was out of the CSS
Shenandoah
. Are you familiar with the vessel?”

Sam frowned. “The name sounds like I ought to be.”

Pappardelle nodded. “And quite right, too, given your own provenance.” He chuckled over his little joke. “The CSS
Shenandoah
was the ship purposed by the Confederate states to attack and sink Yankee whalers in the Pacific Ocean, with the stated object of doing harm to the Northern states’ economy.”

Sam sat up. “That’s right,” he said. “I served in the Aleutians during the war. There wasn’t a lot to do, so every now and then to keep the enlisted out of trouble the brass would get the big idea to have educational talks by anyone they could sucker out of the ranks. Some of them actually were kind of interesting. One night this Signal Corps guy from Tacoma—what was his name? Morgan, that was it. Anyway, Morgan was some kind of writer or professor or something in real life and he gave us a talk about how the last shot fired in the American Civil War was fired in the Aleutians.”

“By the CSS
Shenandoah.
” Again, Pappardelle looked delighted at his star pupil’s intelligence.

Sam put a tentative finger on the compass and gave it a gentle push. It swung on its gimbals and righted itself. According to it, he was facing north. “And this compass was off that ship?”

“Alas,” Pappardelle said regretfully, “I am unable to trace it to the
Shenandoah
specifically, though my marine salvage expert does not rule out that possibility. He is certain it is of that era, and has provided me with documentation to that effect.”

“Why isn’t it out in the shop?”

“I like it,” Pappardelle said. “I like looking at it and wondering how it came into the hands of the man who brought it in the door. I wonder how many ensigns—or is it bosuns?—stood their night watch before it. I wonder what happened to the ship it came out of, if she was delivered to the unmerciful hands of the ship breakers or if she survives, one day perhaps to sail into this very port.” His smile was wry and self-deprecating.

“Like the bookcase,” Sam said.

“I’m afraid so.” Pappardelle sighed. “I would be a richer man by far if I could bear to part with some of my more treasured items.”

“But maybe not a happier one?”

A slow smile spread across Pappardelle’s face. “Perhaps not,” he said. He gestured toward the ledger in his lap. “Are you ready to hear this now?”

Sam’s stalling for time hadn’t fooled Pappardelle for a minute. He braced himself. “I’m ready.”

Pappardelle’s glasses slipped down even further, so that they lodged just above the bulb on the end of his nose. It made him look like a de-bearded Father Christmas. “It is fortunate you have the month and year,” he said. “July, July, July, here we are. Ah, yes. July 17.” He showed Sam a closely scripted page in upright penmanship, the black ink now fading. “I met the Alaska Steam ship
Baranof
at the dock. At the time,” he said, looking up, “it was the habit of many people to meet the ships when they docked from Alaska. Newspapermen. Wives and children of the men who had gone north. Creditors of same.” He grimaced. “Various and sundry members of the law, hoping to close out a warrant of arrest on miscreants who had escaped their long arm in the North.” He gave Old Sam a sharp look.

Old Sam kept his expression one of pleasant interest. Or he hoped he did.

“And of course people such as myself, people in the trade. Many, in fact most, of the people who sought their fortune in the north returned home with little more than the clothes on their backs. Usually, they were willing to trade the one keepsake they had managed to hold on to through the vicissitudes of the gold fields for a little cash so they could eat. I am not a pawnbroker, you understand, then or now, but I would guarantee that if the object did not sell in the meantime, when they had managed to save a little money, I would sell the item back to them for the same price for which I had bought it.”

“One of the reasons you kept such good records,” Sam said.

“Yes.”

“Not a bad deal for a hungry man forced into a hard choice.”

Pappardelle blushed at the compliment and cleared his throat. “Yes, well…”

“What kinds of keepsakes?”

“Small enough to fit in a pocket, most often jewelry. Portability would have been very desirable in objects of this kind, for reasons of both transportation and security. Pocket watches, signet rings, brooches, necklaces. The occasional tiara. I remember once a very fine engagement ring with the most enormous diamond in it. Rather vulgar, but undeniably valuable. The gentleman—he’d come south from Fairbanks, I believe—who sold it to me never wanted to see the ring again. I could not afford to pay him anything remotely close to its true value. He didn’t care, he just wanted enough cash to get home to Minnesota.” Pappardelle cleared his throat again. “I gathered that the lady in question had discovered the remunerative advantages of multiple partners, as opposed to just one.”

It took Sam a minute to work this out. “Oh,” he said. “She was working the Line.”

His turn to explain, and Pappardelle said, “Ah. Yes. I believe it was something of that nature,” and blushed again. “Well.” He looked back down at the ledger and ran his finger down the page of July 17. “So. I met the Alaska Steam ship
Baranof
at the dock at three in the afternoon. It was the third steamer from Alaska that day. This one had debarked from the port of Seward.” He squinted through his spectacles. “I purchased items from three different passengers from the
Baranof
, it seems, and all with unique items for sale. The first was a five-by-eight floral sculpture, Chinese, Qing dynasty, sold by a young woman who, as I recall, it was obvious had seen better days, poor girl. The second item was a French telescope from the early 1800s, sold by a gentleman I took to have been a sailor at one time. I remember this item particularly because he was so loath to part with it, and I had hoped he would be able to redeem it before it was sold.”

“Was he?”

“Unfortunately”—Pappardelle tapped a notation next to the price of purchase—“it sold the very next day to a collector of maritime memorabilia, who is still quite a good customer of mine today.”

“Did the sailor come back for it?”

“He did, almost a year later, and I am happy to say looking much better fed. I believe he prospered in the timber industry. I introduced him to the gentleman who had bought it, and they came to some arrangement that restored the telescope to its original owner.” He looked up and fixed Sam with a stare that was much at variance with the rambling style of his discourse. “And now we come to it. Young man, I have understood from the story you told me that you are searching for an item of great value, not so much to yourself as to your family. From the state of your physical condition and your attire, not to mention your appetite”—Pappardelle smiled faintly—“I believe you may even consider yourself cast off. It may be that you seek reinstatement in your family with the restoration of it to its rightful owners.”

Sam could feel his spine stiffening. The old man saw too damn much.

Pappardelle acknowledged his resentment with an inclined head. “Nevertheless, I feel myself constrained to point out that no physical object can provide you with the redemption you may be seeking. These objects”—he waved a hand at the quarters crowded with the flotsam and jetsam of his trade—“are just that, objects. Things. The detritus of life. They can be lost, destroyed, stolen. The fullness of time can and will erase their very existence. The value they have is only and ever the value you are willing to assign to them.”

Their eyes met and held, and Pappardelle nodded once for emphasis. “A wise man concentrates on the value he can accrue to himself through the practice of the golden rule. High ideals are much scoffed at these days, I know. It is the natural consequence of a long and hard-fought war. I saw such cynicism myself following the Great War, and in much of the literature written by its veterans. But your soul is what wants work, young man. Finding this object will advance you no farther down the road of its cultivation. Do you understand?”