Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life Read online

  I reach out and run my finger down the slope of the telescope. Who has stared through that viewfinder? What did they see?

  “Where did you get it?” I ask reverently.

  “In 1944 a young man named Amos Grady moved to Brooklyn from Kentucky. He brought this to my grandfather’s shop. Granddad paid Amos forty-five dollars for it. That was a lot of money in those days. He should have turned it over to the government for scrap metal, but for reasons of his own, he did not.”

  “Let me guess,” Lizzy says. “Today we’re going to return this old telescope to Amos Grady, right?”

  “No,” Mr. Oswald replies. He turns back to the shelves and picks up an ornate stained-glass lamp with a frayed brown cord. “Today you’re going to deliver this lamp to a Mr. Simon Rudolph on Avenue B.”

  He places the lamp into Lizzy’s surprised hands. She examines it. “Does this thing even work?”

  Mr. Oswald chuckles. “I never thought to try it.”

  “Was Amos Grady under eighteen?” Lizzy interrupts.

  “Fourteen to the day,” Mr. Oswald replies.

  “Then what your grandfather did was illegal?” she asks.

  I slide down in my chair, unsure where to look.

  Mr. Oswald nods. “Oh, yes, quite.”

  “I knew it!” Lizzy exclaims. “I knew there was something suspicious going on here. Didn’t I tell you, Jeremy?”

  I slide farther down in my seat. My eyes are level with the top of the desk now.

  Mr. Oswald returns to his chair. He holds up his hand. “Before you get the wrong idea, allow me explain as I promised earlier.”

  Lizzy places the lamp on the desk next to the telescope and sits back, arms folded. When I’m sure she’s not going to yell anymore, I slide back up in my chair.

  Mr. Oswald clears his throat. “Everyone in New York City knew my grandfather, Old Ozzy, they called him, even before he got old. Priests and rabbis and business leaders came to him for his sensible advice. Little children would follow him in the streets. He always had a piece of taffy or a pickle to give them.”

  “A pickle?” I can’t help interjecting. “Kids would follow him for a pickle?”

  Mr. Oswald smiles. “For blocks and blocks. These pickles were aged to perfection in big wooden barrels down by the piers. Nothing like them back then, or since.”

  I shudder involuntarily.

  Mr. Oswald continues. “But more than the pickles, the children knew they could come to my grandfather with their worries. And in those days—the nineteen thirties and forties—there were a lot of worries to be had. Now as Miss Muldoun here rightly pointed out, it was, shall we say, frowned upon to accept an item in a pawnshop from a child. But as I said, times were tough back then, and everyone had money problems, even children. So Ozzy, he made a deal with the children who came to see him.” He pauses here and says, “With me so far?”

  We nod. I’m actually on the edge of my seat. Even with the part about the pickles.

  “Ozzy told the kids he would buy what they offered on one condition. He made up a special form for them to fill out explaining where the item came from, and why they needed to sell it. He would sit the kids down in front of the typewriter, and even if it took them all day, they recorded their stories. Ozzy never judged the children’s reasons, and he always paid a fair price. Having to fill out the form scared away all but the most resolute.”

  “But why didn’t Ozzy turn around and sell these things to someone else?” I ask. “Isn’t that how the pawn business works?”

  Mr. Oswald nods. “Indeed it is. But helping these youngsters out was never about the money. Ozzy stashed the items and the letters in a special closet in the back of his storeroom, and no one knew about them, not even my own father, who ran the store for thirty years.”

  “Do you think he meant to give them back to the kids?” I inquire.

  “I wish I knew,” Mr. Oswald replies, glancing over at an old black-and-white photograph on his desk.

  I hadn’t paid attention to the photo before, but now I lean in to examine it. It shows a middle-aged man holding up a fish and a pole, posing next to a wooden sign that reads YOU SHOULD SEE THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY!

  “Old Ozzy?” I ask.

  Mr. Oswald nods. “A big fisherman in his youth.”

  “But how did you find these people after so many years?” Lizzy asks.

  “I hired a good detective. With so much information on the Internet, it wasn’t very difficult to find out more than we even wanted to know.”

  “Tell me about it,” I mutter.

  They both turn to look at me. I pick up the lamp and say, “So what’s this guy’s story?”

  Mr. Oswald checks his watch. “I didn’t plan to spend so much time here this morning. I don’t have time to pack up the lamp. You can carry it, right?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he reaches into his top drawer and pulls out an envelope. He holds it out to me. I am not surprised to see Simon Rudolph’s name printed on it in the same neat handwriting as the other. I slide it into my back pocket.

  Before I can remind him that he still hasn’t told us anything about Simon or his lamp, James appears and hands Mr. Oswald his pipe and a newspaper.

  “I have the car ready for the children out front, sir,” James says.

  “Teenagers,” Lizzy mutters under her breath. “Practically,” she adds.

  “Good, good,” Mr. Oswald says to James. He lifts a Post-it note off the top of his desk, and hands it to him. “There is no house number outside Mr. Rudolph’s door,” he warns us all. “Mr. Rudolph’s a bit, shall we say, eccentric. Bring your notebooks to our next visit. I’ll be out of town for the next two days, so I will see you on Friday. Thank you in advance for a job well done.” Mr. Oswald leaves the room, and James follows.

  Lizzy and I are alone. Neither of us makes a move to take the lamp. “Um, I guess we should go, too?” I suggest.

  “This is just like last time,” she grumbles, but she picks up the lamp. “We don’t know anything about this guy. We don’t know what to expect.”

  As we head toward the front door I whisper, “This isn’t exactly like last time.”

  “I know, I know,” Lizzy replies, and then poorly mimics Mr. Oswald’s voice. “Because nothing is ever exactly like anything else.”

  “No. I mean this time we know what the envelope is for.”

  Lizzy stops walking and stares at me. “Did I just hear what I think I heard? Is the honorable Jeremy Fink suggesting we open the envelope before we get there?”

  “He might be,” I say with a proud smile.

  “There’s hope for you yet,” she says approvingly.

  I’m glad she’s pleased by my willingness to break the rules, even though Mr. Oswald didn’t specifically tell us not to read it. But honestly, I’m motivated less by curiosity and more by fear. I don’t like being unprepared for anything. And if Mr. Rudolph is as “eccentric” as Mr. Oswald said, I want to know exactly what we’re walking into.

  Chapter 11: The Lamp

  “You can open it,” I whisper, pushing the envelope across the seat to Lizzy.

  “No, you,” she says, pushing it back.

  “You!” I toss it onto her lap, and she tosses it right back.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” James says from the front seat. “I’ll open it.”

  Guiltily, I pass the envelope through the partially open window divider. I hear a ripping sound, which makes me cringe a little, and the letter appears a few seconds later. This one isn’t as yellowed as the other one. I unfold it slowly.

  Oswald’s Pawn Emporium

  Date: August 11, 1958

  Name: Simon Rudolph

  Age: 14 (today)

  Location: Manhattan

  Item to Pawn: Multicolored glass lamp

  Personal Statement of Seller: I need the money to buy a silver watch. All my friends have nice watches, but my mother is too busy spending money on herself at Bergdorf’s and Bloomingdale’s to buy m