"Yes, I see,” said the buyer as he walked towards the window. For a long time he stood against the dim lights of Queen Street.
The boy could see the furniture in the room more clearly now, the Sony 42” plasma TV, the dark brown leather of the 3 seat Chesterfield sofa, and armchairs. The boy sat at a rectangular oak table and waited.
“How much tape do you have with you?” asked the buyer, turning slightly so the boy could now see his profile, “Enough for a life story?”
“Tape?” the boy asked, “oh, you mean how much hard disk space do I have for recording, 16 gigabytes.” The buyer looked questioningly at the boy, “about 30 hours.” The boy said.
The buyer approached the table and turned on the small lamp beside them. The boy let out a gasp. “My God.” He whispered, as he stared speechless at the tramp buyer.
The buyer was rugged, scarred and unshaven; he almost looked like a tramp.
“Is your equipment ready?” the buyer asked.
The boy’s mouth was open before the sound came out. He nodded. Then said “Yes.”
The buyer sat down slowly opposite him and said quietly, “Start the tape.”
The boy put his Nokia phone on the table and pressed record.
“You weren’t always a tramp buyer, were you?” He began.
“No, I was a 25 year old man when I became a tramp buyer, and the year was 1968.”
The boy thought about the year before saying “Damn, you’re old.”
The buyer glared at the boy.
“Sorry, I mean how did you become a buyer of tramps?”
“Well there is a short answer to that, but I am not going to tell you that, I want to tell you a really long story about my life, you see I have no friends any more, I sold them all.”
“But I thought you only sold tramps, you know, the homeless and the vagrants?” the boy asked.
“In the beginning it was like that, now I will sell anyone I can, to anyone with cash.” The buyer could see the confused expression on the boys face, “you see the economic meltdown affected everyone, even people traffickers, I was buying the tramps, and then selling them on for a tidy profit. When the economy went bad, I was still buying them, but I couldn’t sell them on. This house was full of tramps, I couldn’t move for tramps, tramps in the kitchen, I even tried to store some in the garden, but they ran away.”
“But I digress.” The buyer continued, “It was the year 1968, I lived in a nice house in Wimbledon, London. There was a tragedy, my younger brother died.” And then he stopped.
The boy cleared his throat, and asked, “Painful memories?”
“Oh no,” the buyer replied, “You see my brother was an idiot, and I mean a proper idiot, always doing stupid things, always getting caught in bad situations. One time he was caught with a goat, a duck and a Llama in his bedroom.”
“Where did he get a Llama in London, in 1968?” the boy asked.
“He broke into the zoo, which is tragically how he died also.”
The boy looked at the buyer for a moment before saying, “He died breaking into a zoo?”
“No,” the buyer continued, “my brother liked animals, and I do mean really liked animals. He died because he thought the tigers were, how should I say this, he thought the tigers were sexy.”
The boy let out a laugh, “so your brother tried to fu..”
The buyer interrupted, “Yes, OK enough about that unfortunate accident.”
“Well, I would hardly call breaking into a tiger’s cage to have sex with it, and the tiger eating you, an accident, would you?” The boy struggled hard to hide his laugh as he spoke.
“I told you my brother was stupid.” The buyer bowed his head in shame, the shame of his little brothers forbidden love. “After the incident, I had to move away from England, everywhere I went people would point at me and laugh, so, I moved to Paris, I rented a small apartment in Saint Germain Des Prix, and got a job washing dishes and sometimes waiting tables in a little restaurant there. Things were going fine until, I was walking home one night, it was around 4am, the restaurant had been very busy and the last patrons had left at 2:30am. I had just turned the corner into Rue St. Peres when I saw two men struggling with what looked like a body. One of them stared me right in the eyes and shouted, in English, "Hey you, give us a hand." I was in shock, there they were these two strangers in Paris asking me for help with a body, and asking for it in English.” The buyer paused for a few moments then asked the boy, “Would you like something to drink?” “I have beer or whisky.”
The boy told the buyer he wouldn’t mind a beer, and the buyer walked slowly out of the room.
The boy wiped his now sweating brow with the sleeve of his jumper, pressed pause on his phone and walked over to the window. The street outside was now deserted, the street lights, gave off a warm amber glow in the darkness, he could see the silhouettes of the trees in the garden, and tried to picture the garden filled with tramps.
“I hope it is cold enough for you.” The buyer said as he placed a tray of beer, some glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table.
The boy walked back to the table and sat down.
He poured some beer into a glass, and took a sip, “So, did you help them?”
The buyer poured himself a glass of beer, then opened the Jack, and poured himself a large shot, then told the boy, “Yes, I helped them.”
“I took hold of the legs, they started kicking at me, I nearly died of shock. I thought two men worked for the coroner, or the city, you know, cleaners or something, every big city has people that go to work at night and it’s their job to remove the dead people from the streets, but these guys were stealing live people, and I was curious as to what they were doing with them.”
“So you just went along with a kidnapping, because you were curious?” the boy looked serious and puzzled as he asked.
“Have you never done something wrong, because you were curious? I think everyone has, especially my brother.” The buyer smiled.
“We put the victim in the back of their van, and the elder of the two men introduced himself as Terry, the younger one was John. Terry asked me what I did for money, I told him, he laughed and asked me if I wanted to make some serious money. I said yes and that was the start of it all. We climbed into the back of the van, and John went in front to drive. The victim was still struggling, and Terry told him to stop, he didn’t, so I told him in French, he did. Terry explained that we couldn’t damage the package, because if we did it would be less money. We arrived in Monmatre just before dawn, we drove down a small alley, and stopped in front of some metal shutters, and John got out, dug out some keys from his trouser pocket and opened the shutters. The sign in the window said Philip’s Pet Store, and there were some puppies in a caged pen right there in the window. John opened the front door and then came back to help us with the package. We got the package out of the van and through the front door, just as the morning light from the sun fell upon the street. I stood there with a mans legs in my hands looking at an ordinary pet store, there were goldfish, kittens, animal food, some budgies, two beautiful cockatoo’s and an assortment of toys, little wind up mice for your cat, chewy bones for your dog, they even had a saddle for a llama. I remember thinking of my poor brother as Terry was telling me to hurry up and move. He was loosing his grip, and if we damaged the package then we wouldn’t get as much money. We took the package through the door at the back of the store. Terry told me to put the package down, I did. It was then that I looked around, the room was about 20 meters long and about 12 meters wide, the floor was covered with sawdust, like a hamsters cage, it was then that I noticed the smell, it was terrible, it was like acid, burning my nostrils, my eyes started to hurt, and I was gasping for breath. As I tried desperately to cover my face, John said, “Its ammonia, from the urine, you think you’ll never get used to the smell, but you will. It was then that I looked around, there were cages, lots of cages, about 2 meters cubed, and all of them had people in them there were maybe 150 people in those cages, maybe more, “The Urine.” John said. Terry took the heavy cotton sack off of the package, it was a man, in his fifties, disheveled, dressed in rags, unshaven and probably very smelly, but I couldn’t tell in that room. The man looked around, he didn’t speak, just put his head down and stared at his own feet as Terry held his arm and walked him to a cage, unlocked it and ushered him in, the cage already had 5 people inside, they were all sitting on the floor looking downwards.” The buyer took a long sip of his Jack Daniel’s, refilled the glass and asked the boy, “ Do you think they were bad people, Terry and John I mean, not the victims?”
The boy looked shocked, “could I have a shot of that?”
The buyer poured the boy a double Jack Daniel’s; the boy drank it down and coughed. The buyer laughed, “It is called a sipping Whiskey for a reason, you know.”
The boy gathered himself, took a sip of beer and asked, “Why didn’t the “package” try to run away after they took the sack off of him?”
The tramp buyer took a gulp of his beer and timidly said, “Shame, he was ashamed of his life, ashamed of how this had all come about, he, and all the other homeless people had resigned themselves to nothingness, there was only shame left for them, they have lost all respect for themselves and for humanity, they have basically lost their spirit, and when a person loses their spirit, they are easy to break, when you have nothing you will do anything, for something.”
They both sat there in silence for a few minutes, the boy finally asked, “So you stayed and worked for them, what was your role?”
“Collector.” The buyer answered with a wry smile on his lips, “I collected people, John became my helper, and driver. You see, the pet store was the best cover for our little business; people would fly in from all around the world, to come to our little shop. They were not there to buy goldfish; they were there to buy people. And they paid good money for good packages.” The buyer filled his glass with Jack Daniel’s, took a sip and continued, “The problem was transporting the packages, for instance, if a buyer wanted a Swedish girl delivered to his bar in Tokyo, we had to smuggle the package through customs.”
The boy looked at his phone, the battery was getting low, “So you would smuggle your victims on airplanes?”
“Boats are better, and cheaper. We had guys, captains of large container ships; well they would tell us where they and their ships were going a month in advance. And they were cheap too. It was all about coordination, ship going to Japan in two weeks, satisfy the Japanese clients, Greece in a week, their happy too.”
“So you were not really a tramp buyer, more like a tramp seller?” The boy stretched his hands behind his head and groaned.
The buyer took another mouthful of whiskey and spoke, “You look tired, would you like to come back tomorrow and continue?”
The boy drank some of his, now warm beer, “But I thought you were going to tell the full story tonight.”
“It is a long story, and you look tired, come back tomorrow at 5pm and we can continue. That way you or your telephone will not run out of batteries.”
“But I’m fine, it’s just my”
The buyer cut him off again, “It’s OK, here is the address, go home, recharge and be here tomorrow at 5.”
As the boy left he turned and looked at the house, the sun was almost up, there was enough light to see the red brick walls and dark slate roof of the buyers home, the buyer was standing in the room he had just left, looking out of the window, watching the boy as he walked down the tree lined street looking for a taxi, it was 5:20am.