's no secret to it, I
think. Just diligence: you've got to go out every chance you get, or you'll miss
the big score."

He chuckled. "I hear that. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in my office, and I'll
just _know_ that they're putting out a piece of pure gold at the Goodwill and
that someone else will get to it before my lunch. I get so wound up, I'm no good
until I go down there and hunt for it. I guess I'm hooked, eh?"

"Cheaper than some other kinds of addictions."

"I guess so. About that Indian stuff -- what do you figure you'd get for it at a
Queen Street boutique?"

I looked him in the eye. He may have been something high-powered and cool 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 afte