Read Craphound for Free Online Page B

and
    collected in his natural environment, but just then, he was as eager and nervous
    as a kitchen-table poker-player at a high-stakes game.
    "Maybe fifty bucks," I said.
    "Fifty, huh?" he asked.
    "About that," I said.
    "Once it sold," he said.
    "There is that," I said.
    "Might take a month, might take a year," he said.
    "Might take a day," I said.
    "It might, it might." He finished his beer. "I don't suppose you'd take forty?"
    I'd paid five for it, not ten minutes before. It looked like it would fit
    Craphound, who, after all, was wearing Scott/Billy's own boyhood treasures as we
    spoke. You don't make a living by feeling guilty over eight hundred percent
    markups. Still, I'd angered the fates, and needed to redeem myself.
    "Make it five," I said.
    He started to say something, then closed his mouth and gave me a look of thanks.
    He took a five out of his wallet and handed it to me. I pulled the vest and bow
    and headdress out my duffel.
    He walked back to a shiny black Jeep with gold detail work, parked next to
    Craphound's van. Craphound was building onto the Lego body, and the hood had a
    miniature Lego town attached to it.
    Craphound looked around as he passed, and leaned forward with undisguised
    interest at the booty. I grimaced and finished my beer.
I met Scott/Billy three times more at the Secret Boutique that week.
    He was a lawyer, who specialised in alien-technology patents. He had a practice
    on Bay Street, with two partners, and despite his youth, he was the senior man.
    I didn't let on that I knew about Billy the Kid and his mother in the East
    Muskoka Volunteer Fire Department Ladies' Auxiliary. But I felt a bond with him,
    as though we shared an unspoken secret. I pulled any cowboy finds for him, and
    he developed a pretty good eye for what I was after and returned the favour.
    The fates were with me again, and no two ways about it. I took home a ratty old
    Oriental rug that on closer inspection was a 19th century hand-knotted Persian;
    an upholstered Turkish footstool; a collection of hand-painted silk Hawaiiana
    pillows and a carved Meerschaum pipe. Scott/Billy found the last for me, and it
    cost me two dollars. I knew a collector who would pay thirty in an eye-blink,
    and from then on, as far as I was concerned, Scott/Billy was a fellow craphound.
    "You going to the auction tomorrow night?" I asked him at the checkout line.
    "Wouldn't miss it," he said. He'd barely been able to contain his excitement
    when I told him about the Thursday night auctions and the bargains to be had
    there. He sure had the bug.
    "Want to get together for dinner beforehand? The Rotterdam's got a good patio."
    He did, and we did, and I had a glass of framboise that packed a hell of a kick
    and tasted like fizzy raspberry lemonade; and doorstopper fries and a club
    sandwich.
    I had my nose in my glass when he kicked my ankle under the table. "Look at
    that!"
    It was Craphound in his van, cruising for a parking spot. The Lego village had
    been joined by a whole postmodern spaceport on the roof, with a red-and-blue
    castle, a football-sized flying saucer, and a clown's head with blinking eyes.
    I went back to my drink and tried to get my appetite back.
    "Was that an extee driving?"
    "Yeah. Used to be a friend of mine."
    "He's a picker?"
    "Uh-huh." I turned back to my fries and tried to kill the subject.
    "Do you know how he made his stake?"
    "The chlorophyll thing, in Saudi Arabia."
    "Sweet!" he said. "Very sweet. I've got a client who's got some secondary
    patents from that one. What's he go after?"
    "Oh, pretty much everything," I said, resigning myself to discussing the topic
    after all. "But lately, the same as you -- cowboys and Injuns."
    He laughed and smacked his knee. "Well, what do you know? What could he possibly
    want with the stuff?"
    "What do they want with any of it? He got started one day when we were cruising
    the Muskokas," I said carefully, watching his face. "Found a trunk of old cowboy
    things at a rummage sale.