Page 58 of Whistle

That Saturday was the annual sidewalk sale.

This was the brainchild of the local business improvement association. Lucknow’s main street was closed to traffic, half a dozen food trucks were allowed to set up, there were face-painters and jugglers and mimes for the kids, and last but not least, shop owners were encouraged to set up their wares on tables out front of their establishments.

By noon, the main street was thronged with adults and children. Some were out simply for something to do, to enjoy the fall air, to randomly run into friends and neighbors. And there were others engaged in doing what the town’s boosters hoped they would be: they were shopping.

Featherstone’s Men’s Wear and the ladies’ fashion shop, Yolanda’s, had wheeled out racks of clothing. Mostly discounted stuff, outfits they hadn’t been able to unload all year that were no longer in vogue, but a deal was a deal. Same with Smitty’s Shoes, which was trying to unload sandals with winter only a couple of months away. The Different Drummer Bookstore had two tables stacked with remaindered editions. Len’s Bakery wasn’t offering anything different from what they usually had indoors behind glass, but having muffins and scones and cupcakes and cookies out on the sidewalk proved to be a brilliant marketing strategy.

At the Lucknow Diner, it was business as usual. But the lack ofa table out front had done nothing to hurt their business. The place was packed, even busier than on a usual weekday morning. Inside, Jenny and her staff were run off their feet, showing people to booths, taking orders, wiping down tables the moment customers left so they could quickly seat people waiting in line, refilling mugs of their famous coffee. In the kitchen, the two cooks were furiously cracking eggs, frying bacon, and flipping pancakes.

Harry had been working the street since just after ten. Not only did he feel a need to be seen, he was making himself available to anyone who knew something that would be helpful to his investigation but had been keeping it to themselves. The odds were long, but you never knew.

As he passed the diner, he glanced at the bench out front where he would, most mornings, find Gavin. Today the space was occupied by two kids around seven years old who’d had their faces painted. Cheeks turned green, noses red, oversized black eyebrows. They were each working on a stick of cotton candy. Gavin had either surrendered his spot, Harry figured, or wanted to avoid the downtown altogether on a busy morning like this.

He went into the diner, bought a to-go coffee in a paper cup, and resumed strolling the main street, nodding and smiling as people said hello.

Harry had no interest in shopping, even with Christmas looming on the horizon. Well, hardly looming. It was more than two months away. He didn’t usually start thinking about what to get Janice until around the twentieth of December. But just the same, he checked out what everyone was offering, paid his respects to the various merchants.

There was a small crowd in front of that new store.

What was it Gavin had said the owner’s name was? Edwin or Edgar. Something like that. And he was out front of the store, looking as ridiculous as he had when Harry’d met him briefly that other morning, wearing his engineer’s cap and vest adorned with various railway patches. Harry chided himself for his harsh judgment. Mr. Choo was in uniform. This was what he wore to draw attention to what he was selling, no different than Gary Featherstone down at the menswear store looking smart in a three-piece suit, or Len at the bakery in his hairnet and apron.

Harry staked out a spot out front of the store, a few feet into the street, folded his arms across his chest, and watched this Mr. Choo do his pitch in front of about ten kids, mostly boys, and several adults. On a broad table, he had set up two loops of track, one within the other, and was running two trains in opposite directions.

“... and believe me, it’s not just the kids who love them!” Mr. Choo said, which sparked some laughs among the adults. One woman whispered into her husband’s ear, and he nodded, gave her a look that seemed to say,Guilty as charged.

“Steam engines, diesel, I’ve got whatever you might want,” Mr. Choo said. He waved his arm at a stack of packaged train sets. “You get one of these, and everything is included. An engine, some cars, lots of track, and a transformer to make it all go. And that’s just the start! There’s so much you can add! Switches and sidings and buildings. I’ve got it all. These trains are something you actually playwith. Connect the track pieces, mix-and-match engines. It’s not like some video game, where you just sit on the couch and press some buttons. That’s not my kind of fun, let me tell you.”

A boy was tugging at his father’s sleeve. Another was pleading with his mother. Wallets were coming out.

As Harry watched, Mr. Choo sold five sets. They were going as fast as the bakery’s chocolate chip muffins. The guy was a true carnival barker.

This, Harry thought, had to be where Auden’s birthday presenthad been purchased. Not that Harry intended to mention to Mr. Choo how no train set, no matter how grand, would have been enough to lift Auden’s spirits on that horrible day.

Harry was about to speak to Mr. Choo when he spotted a familiar face. Walking past was a man in his mid-thirties with his wife and young daughter, whose hand he was hanging on to tightly.

The family members’ olive-like complexion distinguished them from most of the crowd. Vermont was, according to the latest census, the whitest state in America, running at about 90 percent. Mixed-race, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians made up most of the rest, but Ahsan Basher was almost statistically nonexistent. As a Muslim in Lucknow, he considered himself aninvisibleminority. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t attracted attention since September 11, and none of it welcome.

The self-serve gas station and convenience store he ran on the town’s outskirts had been vandalized twice. The first time, after closing, someone had spray-paintedosamalover go homeacross the front windows. The second incident occurred ten days later when Ahsan was inside behind the cash register. A brick came crashing through that same window. A red 1973 Ford Torino was caught on surveillance video speeding away.

Harry paid a visit to one Delbert Dorfman, to whom the vehicle was registered. A six-foot-four twentysomething asshole with one minor assault conviction who worked various shifts at Dexter’s Bar & Grill. Harry couldn’t prove Delbert threw that brick, or was even behind the wheel of the car, but he knew, and he told Delbert he knew, and put him on notice. If Ahsan’s business got hit again, Harry was going to make him the sorriest son of a bitch Lucknow had ever seen.

“Mr. Basher,” Harry said, tossing his unfinished coffee into a nearby waste bin and extending a hand.

“Chief,” he said, smiling and returning the handshake. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Aisha, and this is our daughter, Maryam.”

“A pleasure,” Harry said, bending over to greet the little girl. “You having fun?”

“We’ve been to three food trucks,” Maryam said. “I had a churro. I liked it, but I’m full.”

Harry shifted his focus to her parents and asked quietly, “How have things been lately?”

Ahsan was hesitant. He said to his wife, “Why don’t you get Maryam some cotton candy.”

Aisha nodded, and led the girl away.

“She will have a stomachache for sure now,” Ahsan said. He took a breath. “Nothing has happened, but I sometimes see this Delbert Dorfman driving by, slowly, like he wants me to know he’s keeping his eye on me. It is a hard car to miss. And he came in once, to buy gas, and he had this grin on his face the whole time, like he knew that I knew but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”

Harry didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay. I’ll pay him another visit. Anything happens, you know you can call me anytime, day or night.”

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