The Night Beat

came back and gave me a great number of items for pawn. He insinuated I shouldn’t worry if he didn’t come back for them and also suggested I sell a few for profit.”
    The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Cotton, do you know where you put those things? All of them?”
    “Yes. I’ll show you.” He glided out of his office and I followed. We wandered in what seemed like random directions while I spent my time trying not to look down or towards the street. We reached a display marked “Specialty Items”. “Here we are.”
    I looked at what Cotton was showing me. Nothing screamed out that it was from the Prince, but that didn’t mean anything. The Prince and his minions were all over the idea of disguising evil items to look innocuous.
    “Cotton, doesn’t it…bother you? I mean where your business is located?”
    “Not so much. Convergence points aren’t an issue if you’re not heading down into the Levels.”
    “But we’re standing on the edge of a convergence chasm, not a point.”
    He shrugged. “Same thing. I don’t understand why you didn’t notice, however.”
    “You know, I’ve never come onto this side of the block, possibly in the entire time I’ve been with the Prosaic City Police. Doesn’t that seem odd?”
    “Yes. You do the job you do because of your skills, not just appearing human, but because of your powers of investigation.” Cotton looked thoughtful. “You know…it seems odd to the point of unlikely that, in a year or more you’ve never come in here.”
    “The Pleasure Palace next door has a spell on it. It extends to the back of the building. I wonder if the whole block was spelled.”
    Cotton nodded. “Could be. I don’t know how to check for that, however.”
    “The former owner was a human? You’re sure?”
    “Fairly positive. However, he was aware there were undeads about, though I don’t think he was a human in the know. The patrons considered him crazy. Crazy Ed was his name -- even he called himself that. He told me business was good and steady, but that the clientele weren’t always what they looked like. I got the impression he was getting out of Prosaic City because he was frightened.”
    “His pawnshop was sitting here and you think he might have been frightened?”
    “No need to take that tone. You didn’t notice. Why would he?”
    “I didn’t notice because when I’m on Prosaic City P.D. business, I make it a point not to look into the planes. But if Crazy Ed was a human who could see us, then he wouldn’t know how to block it out.” No wonder the poor guy was crazy and wanted to leave. “You sure he left and wasn’t killed or something?”
    “I received a letter from him a few months after he’d sold me the business. Told me he was in New York City and happy. It seemed legitimate.”
    I hoped it was. “Okay. So, how well do you know the owners of the other businesses here, The Pleasure Palace and the Salvation Center?”
    Cotton’s lip curled. “The Pleasure Palace is not a place I enter. And I have no need of the Salvation Center.”
    I refrained from comment and focused on the specialty items. “Which ones did Tony T give you?”
    Cotton pointed out several things -- an old book, a large knife with an intricately carved ivory handle, what looked like an ancient phonograph and a set of vinyl records, a bag of marbles, and a small statue of something that gave me chills to look at.
    “Were there any other items Tony T sold to you that you’ve resold already?”
    “No. These six were it, well, if we count the records as one item, which Tony insinuated I should. All worth a good deal, honestly. I had them appraised before I gave him any money.”
    “Who did the appraisals?”
    “Benny the Fence.”
    “Best choice. Cotton, I need to take these as police evidence.” And to prevent him from selling them to another unsavory being. “I’ll give you a receipt so you can reclaim them once our investigation’s over.”
    He sighed. “I assumed as much. Anything else you want to keep?”
    “Yeah,” Jack said from behind us. “I found a couple of things.” I turned. He was holding something that looked like a small guitar made by someone who didn’t know how a guitar actually worked, and several scrolls.
    Cotton sighed again, but didn’t protest. He zipped off, got a receipt book, marked down what we were taking and their estimated values, gave us a copy, then put everything into a large bag. I had to hand it to him, he