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“That’s why I’m here. Blitz was embarrassed about how he treated you after you did so much work.”
    Blitz Manners hadn’t impressed me as the type to get embarrassed about the way he treated people, but I saw no benefit to accusing Grady of lying on his friend’s behalf.
    â€œSo you’re here to smooth things over?” I asked.
    â€œI’m here because Blitz asked me to buy the whole lot.”
    I glanced at the rack of costumes and did some quick math in my head. Costumes usually rented for $150 each, with $50 of the deposit being refunded when the costume was returned in good shape. That left $100 a costume for us. Forty costumes at $100 rentals would be $4,000, with a possible two grand more if the costumes came back damaged—which I suspected they might. Not bad for a day’s work.
    But to buy them? I didn’t know what to quote. Our income came with repeat rentals. One costume could be rented over and over and earn us thousands of dollars minus the cost of cleaning. Blitz’s had said that the $20,000 was supposed to get us started, but $500 a costume would take up the wholeamount. Ebony would have nothing left to offset the costs of the party execution. If I cut the price by much less than $500, I’d be giving away potential long-term profits, not only of the costumes we’d assembled, but also the ones we’d pillaged to come up with these so quickly.
    â€œOnce costumes are sold, they’re nonreturnable. Rentals are for five days, which would get you through the weekend. They’d have to come back on Sunday. Would you rather do that? Blitz won’t be out as much if he doesn’t have the party.”
    â€œNope.” He pulled a black Amex out of his billfold and handed it to me.
    â€œDon’t you want to know the price first?”
    â€œNot necessary. I’ll square it with Blitz’s stepdad. Present for Blitz.”
    â€œIt’s going to take me a while to tally up the contents of the costumes.”
    â€œTake your time. I’ll look around.” Grady wandered into the front of the store. A round silver rack held double-breasted suits for men and fringed flapper dresses for women. Low bookshelves painted to match the wall held tommy guns, headbands, long strands of pearls, cigarette holders, and fake cigars. We rotated the inventory every few months according to popularity, but the 1930s Mafia section stayed in the front. The old-school mob look remained consistently popular regardless of the season.
    Grady disappeared behind the rack of pinstriped suits to the shelves where we kept the colored hair spray and face paint. I wrote up a description of each costume on a receipt pad. The last costume was the classic Sherlock. I added the hat, the pipe, a magnifying glass, and a pair of gloves, zipped it all into a clear garment bag, and set about determining a price for everything.
    There was a price list in a binder behind the register. The binder was divided into costumes for men, women, children, and pets. The system wasn’t much more organized than that. Names of costumes had been written on each line, with a price for rental and a price for purchase. In this day and age, it surprised me that my dad still relied on handwritten price lists and a calculator instead of a website and database. I backtracked through the pages until I had a feel for the pricing, kept a running tally on the calculator, and finally named a figure for the whole lot. Grady didn’t blink. I punched it into our credit machine, swiped his card twice before remembering the black Amex had to be keyed by hand, and asked for his signature.
    â€œI think I’ll keep the Sherlock outfit for myself. My fee for handling the small detail of the costumes. That’ll burn up Blitz pretty good, don’t you think?”
    â€œYou’re going to wear one of our costumes?”
    â€œAny reason I shouldn’t?”
    â€œI heard your