The Pawn Broker
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About this ebook
One synonym for pawn is hock. Hock comes from a Dutch word, hok, which is defined as prison or debt.
Another definition of a pawn is a person used to advance another's purposes. We think of a pawn broker as a person who is authorized to pay out money against personal property left with him. More often than not, the property is never redeemed and is later sold to recoup the broker's investment and make a little profit on the deal.
But what if one particular pawn broker dealt not in objects but in people?And what if some people felt so imprisoned in their current lives that they were willing to become pawns?
Maybe they would…if they knew where to find the Pawn Broker.
Sandy Grissom
Sandy Grissom has loved books all her life. That love began by listening to her older sister read when she was still too young to discover the magic for herself. She's read everything from history to the phone book but her favorite authors are James Michener, Agatha Christie and the mystic William Blake. Over the years, romantic novels became a favorite. The top of that list is Pride and Prejudice. When she retired she had too much time on her hands and spent too much money and trips to the library to get books in order to satisfy her restless soul. It was then she began to write herself. As an adult she held a variety of jobs, all of them grist for her imaginative mind. The occupations in Choppy Waters will hopefully inspire someone to fight for their own dreams, to never give up on themselves or on love. A widow, Sandy recently moved to southern Indiana where she lives near the younger of her two beloved sisters.
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The Pawn Broker - Sandy Grissom
The Pawn Broker
By Sandy Grissom
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by S. K. G. Haag
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Cover image by:Andrew Dunn, used under Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike 2. 0 Generic License
I dedicate this book to all those like me who believe there are people in the world who care about others enough to reach out and help them. Too often we wait for people to ask for our help but for one reason or another, they don’t. Shouldn’t we be looking for those who need our help?And when we find them, shouldn’t we make a way to help without causing them to lose their pride?Or thinking we need their gratitude?Shouldn’t we help simply because it’s the right thing to do?
My hero does this in a very dramatic way, in the flavor of Leverage or Person of Interest yet even ficton should still remind us to reach out to others and see how much of our little corner of the world we might change for the better.
A PAWN BROKER
Pawn: anything given as security, as for a debt, performance of an action, a pledge, guarantee, hostage; the state of being pledged; to stake, wager or risk; a chessman of the lowest value.
One synonym for pawn is hock. Hock comes from a Dutch word, hok, which is defined as prison or debt.
Another definition of a pawn is a person used to advance another’s purposes. We think of a pawn broker as a person who is authorized to pay out money against personal property left with him. More often than not, the property is never redeemed and is later sold to recoup the broker’s investment and make a little profit on the deal.
But what if one particular pawn broker dealt not in objects but in people?And what if some people felt so imprisoned in their current lives that they were willing to become pawns?
Maybe they would…if they knew where to find the Pawn Broker.
CHAPTER 1
The Pawn Broker
Harry locked the back door and set the alarm. He replaced the trash can that he’d emptied in the big bin outside by the desk and then stepped across to a secret panel in the back room of the pawn shop. Harry stepped on a button on the floor which caused a special picture sized section of the wall to slide open. There he entered a code in an electronic panel that appeared. Harry changed the code daily for security purposes. Even so, if someone got inside the inner room, they would only see partial evidence of the life he used to live before he became the pawn broker.
Harry had led what some would call an exciting life. In truth, that kind of life gave a man ulcers. Harry was lucky. He got out before it got that bad. He’d seen the writing on the wall where others had not.
Harry began his career in the FBI. He’d been recruited in college because of scores on tests that were obscure to the rest of the world but shouted out ‘agent’ to the Bureau. It wasn’t long before he was transferred to the CIA where he became an undercover operative, in a word a spy.
The work seemed valuable at first. That was before Harry realized he was a pawn in a game he had no control over. He feigned a breakdown and was transferred to a supposedly safer job, the Witness Protection Program. That was similarly a joke. Harry spent his time relocating and protecting criminals who testified against other criminals, many of them not nearly as bad as the ones he was forced to protect.
That, too, in short order became more unhealthy than Harry wanted for his life. He took all those jobs thinking he might make a difference but then realized he couldn’t, not enough anyway. It was so much of it merely politics and Harry wasn’t built for that kind of dealings.
When his world came crashing down, not all of it real but real enough to get released, he opened the pawn shop. It only seemed appropriate. Now Harry spends his time helping those who deserve to be helped and no others.
Harry moved on into the hidden room and locked the secret door behind him. The security device was reset from the inside.
Harry snickered thinking he could have a heart attack and die in here and they’d never find him in the long narrow space he had created between the walls.
He sat down at his secure authorized computer to wander through all the programs he used. Harry needed to be aware when anything changed in those programs, whether it was an operational or a security access change. Not that he made entries on this computer. He only used it to look around. He did that other work elsewhere.
It was late. The store was closed. Harry had time.
If you could ask Harry, he would say he was the king on a chess board moving around in any direction he wanted. Or perhaps he’d say he was the player who moved the pieces on the chessboard of life.
But if a pawn broker acts in good faith to advance another’s purpose, is he not also a pawn?
CHAPTER 2
THE DAD
Harry watched the man for a number of weeks before he spoke to him. The pawn shop was in a run down part of the city. It was unusual to see a decently dressed man walking down the street alone and carrying what was obviously his baby. It was the third week when Harry became acquainted with who the mother of the child was.
Harry saw her as she ran after the man whining something up at him. Harry couldn’t hear what she said since the couple were across the street from his store. He did see the man shake his head and then hand her a few bills in what looked to Harry like exasperation. The scantily dressed woman dashed back in the direction she’d come passing his store in the process.
When she was almost in front of Harry she yelled at the man, Have him back by three.
It looked to Harry as if the man was having to pay for the privilege of visiting with his son. Harry never got over how callous and selfish people could be. They had one agenda alone and to heck with anyone else. No wonder he hated it when he worked for the government.
Harry didn’t talk to the man that day. He never talked about how he might be able to help someone in or near his pawn shop. He never even gave his name out to people, nothing that would alert others that he might be anything but a pawn shop owner.
He also didn’t want those whom he helped to be able to contact him, not during or after he helped them. That, too, would raise red flags. Harry didn’t take referrals from former clients either. Everything Harry did was done by Harry and Harry alone. He was extremely careful in all he did so that no one could trace anything he did back to him.
Wednesdays and Saturdays. Those were the days when the man got to take his baby. It hadn’t taken Harry long to plot that out along with where the man went. It was usually the park or a small apartment not terribly far away but in a bit nicer area.
Harry followed and watched long enough to know the man loved the boy who was probably seven or eight months old. He laughed and played with the child and only got solemn again as he walked back toward where the mother lived.
The following Saturday, Harry followed the man and baby once again. He hurried to get a block ahead when he realized that the man intended to get on a bus. When the man and his son stepped aboard, Harry was already seated behind the only vacant seats comfortable enough for both the man and baby. The pawn broker struck up a conversation with the man he learned was named Don. Commenting on the child, it wasn’t a difficult thing to do. With careful questioning, Harry learned a great deal about Don’s situation. It seemed the man, in his early twenties, had gotten involved with the wrong type of woman. He was a quiet man so Harry could see that such a man might be easily manipulated. Don’s next comment reaffirmed that feeling for Harry.
"I know now she was using me. Sherrie always seemed to need money…for rent, food, something. It was stupid of me not to see it but I didn’t. I was shocked when she got pregnant. She said she was on the pill but I used a condom anyway. You just don’t know these days.
Even so, I can’t be sorry. This little boy is my life now. If only I could raise him, I’d be the happiest man in the world.
Have you tried to get him through the courts,
Harry asked.
"I’ve done everything I can but to no avail. Sherrie can be quite the little actress when she wants to be. She can come across as the doting mother, the misused young girl or whatever persona she needs for the immediate situation.
I don’t care about her anymore except as how it affects my son. I hear stories from the neighbors about neglect, how my son cries all day and night because she doesn’t take care of him. Of course, they won’t tell that to the authorities. No one ever wants to get involved.
Yes, people are like that these days. I’m getting off at the park,
Harry suggested.
Oh yeah, me too,
Don said gathering up the dingy diaper bag and then picking up his son. Harry noted that something had been spilled down the side of the bag, soda, he thought, or perhaps whiskey.
The men and baby exited the bus and moved across to a park bench where they sat down. Don spread a blanket and set the boy down on it to play. He handed him a toy duck he’d taken from his pocket, clean Harry noted. Don smiled as the kid stuck it in his mouth and chomped down on the rubber.
He tries to chew on everything. Teething, you know.
Tell me,
Harry asked, how does she get away with it?I mean aren’t there checks done on her when complaints are made?
"The only complaints are mine and they are not taken seriously. I don’t know how but somehow Sherrie finds out when the CPS or welfare people are coming. The apartment and Mike are spic and span then. So no one believes my complaints. The day after a visit the place looks like a wild party went on there which I believe actually is the case. Then knowing it was me who made the complaint, she gives me hell about seeing little Mike when my next visiting day comes around.
Lately, there’s been an odd smell in her apartment. I worry that it might be pot. I don’t want my baby smelling pot. And if she’s smoking that, what other drugs might she be using?
Forgive me for asking but are you sure the boy is your son?
Don’t apologize. I thought of that myself so I had a test done right after he was born. He’s mine but it wouldn’t have mattered. He’s my son in my heart, blood son or not.
Harry nodded.
I run into one dead end after another trying to get custody of my boy. I’ve come to realize it’s a lost cause and it’s breaking my heart. I could deal with visitation rights if I knew Mike was being cared for the way he should be. But I know he’s not and I’m so afraid that by the time the truth comes out, it may be too late. I can’t bear to lose him because Sherrie gets drunk or stoned and something happens to my boy.
Have you considered taking the child and moving away somewhere?
More than once but it’s against the law. If I was found, they’d take Mike away from me and give him back to Sherrie. Then we’d be right back where we started except that then I would have proven I am not fit to raise my son.
What if, hypothetically, you could get away?Would you go?
If I knew I could move across the country and Sherrie would never find me, I’d go in a heart beat. I keep thinking that if I were gone long enough, she might give up looking for us. Whether that’s true or not, I really don’t know. It’s a dream I have, though, me and my son in our own home.
It’s a nice dream,
Harry told him.
Yeah, but still a dream.
Don watched his son seated on the quilt squeaking his duck and sighed.
There might be a way,
Harry said, to make that dream come true.
Sure,
Don replied hopelessly.
Meet me at the bus stop a block west of that big laundry on Simpson street next Wednesday at 5:30. I have some contacts. I’ll see if there’s some avenue you haven’t explored yet.
Why would you do that for me?
For the last hour I put myself in your shoes. I think I know how you must feel. Trust me. There may be a way out of this situation.
Harry stood then and walked away. He turned at the corner and waved and then kept walking. The direction he took was west, the opposite one from the pawn shop. When he met the man on Wednesday, he’d walk south, the last time east.
Harry hadn’t helped anyone in some time. He was careful not to very often. You got careless that way. Besides, the people he helped had to be serious about leaving everything behind. In addition, they had to know deep down that the only option left to them was to pawn themselves to Harry. That is, they had to be desperate.
Harry waited in his car around the corner until he saw Don and Mike sit down on the bench. Then he got out and moved to