The Burglar on the Prowl

by Lawrence Block

  Something made me want to count them, but I told myself not to be silly. The likelihood of his shorting me seemed remote, and did I really care if I got eleven or twelve dollars instead of thirteen? I matched his discretion pound for pound, taking the bills in hand and conveying them smoothly to a pocket. I wrote out a receipt, tucked it into the book and the book into a book-sized brown paper bag, and handed it to him.

  “A great pleasure,” he said, smiling the broad smile again, and spun neatly around, walking right over to Raffles and scratching him one more time behind the ear. “A truly delightful pussy cat,” he said, while Raffles put everything he had into a full-throated purr.

  Then the fat man spun once more on his heel and headed for the door.

  Even as the bell was tinkling to announce his departure, I drew my hand out of my pocket. I looked down at what I was holding and saw he’d made a mistake, because the top bill was a hundred. Then I fanned the bills, and they were all hundreds.

  I may be a thief, but my thieving pulls up short at the bookshop door. I don’t rob my customers, or permit them to rob themselves. He’d just forked over $1300 for a twelve-dollar book, and that’s more sales tax than anybody should have to pay, fiscal crisis or no fiscal crisis.

  I hurried out from behind the counter, yanked the door open and stood on the sidewalk, looking around for him. He was two doors along toward University, standing at the curb and waiting to cross the street. “Hey!” I called, and got no response. If I’d known his name I’d have tried that, but I didn’t, so what I called out was, “Hey! Secret Agent!” and started jogging down the sidewalk toward him.

  He turned at my voice, but maybe he’d have been better off if he hadn’t. He might have seen the car coming, whatever good that would have done him.

  I don’t know what kind of car it was. I should have, because I saw it coming. I watched it pick up speed, then saw it stop abruptly with a great squeal of brakes. Then I saw the window open on the passenger’s side, and saw a gun muzzle protrude from it.

  Then I didn’t see anything, because my instincts somehow guided me to the appropriate response, which was to throw myself down on the pavement so that a parked car screened me from the guy with the gun. He wasn’t pointing it at me, but that could change.

  And did, I learned later, because the muzzle turned out to be that of an automatic weapon, and the shooter swept it to and fro, spraying bullets left and right. And straight ahead, of course, which was where the fat man was standing. Several slugs found the car I was hiding behind, and one made a neat hole in the window of an importer of European antiques and went on to lodge in a Country French breakfront of no particular distinction. Others went other places, but a great many went where they were supposed to go, and they didn’t do the fat man any good at all.

  I didn’t know all this just yet, because I hadn’t moved. I did turn my head so that I could see what little was visible beneath the car that had just taken a bullet for me, and what I saw was this: the door of the shooter’s car opened and somebody, presumably the shooter, hopped out, scurried over to where the fat man lay, reached down, picked up something that could well have been a book-sized brown paper bag, and got back into the car and closed the door. Whereupon the car burned rubber getting out of there, took a right at University without slowing down, and inspired a good many other drivers to honk their horns in righteous indignation.

  I don’t remember walking over to where the fat man lay, but I must have, because the next thing I knew I was standing there looking down at him. He must have been hit a dozen times, and the blood had poured out of him. He wasn’t smiling, and who could blame him?

  “Bern?” It was Carolyn. “I came out when I heard shooting. What happened? Who’s he? And where’d all the money come from?”

  I looked down and saw I was holding the $1300 in my hand. “It’s his change,” I said. “But I guess there’s no point giving it back to him now.”

  Eighteen

  Okay,” Ray said. “Let’s go over it one more time.”

  We were in the bookstore, and it wasn’t quite three o’clock yet, for all that it felt like three in the morning. I’d had a rough night with not much sleep in it, and an easy day until the shooting started, and since then I’d been behind my counter with Ray in front of it. He kept asking questions, and I’d have answered more of them if I knew more of the answers.

  “So this guy comes in,” he said now, “an’ you never saw him before in your life.”

  “Never.”

  “Big fat guy, all dressed up in a suit an’ tie, an’ you never set eyes on him before.”

  “That’s what I just told you.”

  “He never wandered in here before, lookin’ to pick up somethin’ for a friend in the hospital?”

  “If he had,” I said, “I’d have remembered him. But it’s hard to remember something that never happened.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Some people do it all the time. It’s called tellin’ lies, Bernie, an’ over the years I’ve known you to be a master of it.”

  “I’m not lying now,” I said. “He came in and played with my cat and told me I had something for him.”

  “An’ you gave him a book.”

  “Right.”

  “You never saw him before, an’ yet you knew just what book to give him.”

  “Oh, God. How many times do I have to tell you the same damned thing?”

  “Till I understand it, Bernie. So tell me again.”

  “I had a phone call.”

  “From the fat guy.”

  “No, not from the fat guy. From some customer, I think, who asked if I had a copy of a particular book.”

  “By this Conrad guy. What was his last name?”

  “Conrad. His first name’s Joseph. He was Polish, and spent a good many years at sea, and ultimately he taught himself English and became a great novelist.”

  “That’s a Polish name, Conrad?”

  “He changed it.”

  “Can’t blame him,” he said. “Probably full of Z s and Y s, and you’d have to be Polish yourself to pronounce it, an’ even then you might have your hands full. So you said you had this book, an’ you put it aside for the guy.”

  “Right.”

  “An’ when this other guy came in, the fat guy, you gave it to him instead of keepin’ it for the guy who called you.”

  “I assumed the caller had sent the fat man.”

  “You ask him what book he was lookin’ for?”

  “I said the title and he couldn’t have been happier. I handed him the book and he held it like the Holy Grail. He asked how much and I told him the price and he couldn’t wait to put the money in my hand.”

  “And then he left.”

  “First he said goodbye to the cat,” I said, “and then he left.”

  “An’ got his ass shot off. Why’d you run out after him?”

  “He walked off without his change.”

  “An’ you were gonna give it back? You, Bernie?”

  “In here,” I said, “I’m as honest as the day is long. Even today, which is shaping up to be the longest day of the year.”

  “How much was the book?”

  “Thirteen dollars.”

  “An’ how much did he give you?”

  “Fifteen,” I said. Honesty, in or out of the bookstore, has its limits. “He gave me a five and a ten and didn’t wait for me to give him his change.”

  “So that’s two bucks we’re talkin’ about, Bernie? You mean to tell me you ran out into the street after him to return two measly dollars?”

  “When Abraham Lincoln was a boy,” I said, “he had a job clerking in a shop. One day he shortchanged a customer—”

  “Abe did? An’ here I always thought he was supposed to be honest.”

  “It was accidental, and the man walked off before Lincoln realized his mistake. So that night he walked all the way to the man’s house, in the pitch dark and through deep snow, to return the man’s change. And do yo
u know how much it was?”

  “Two dollars?”

  “A penny,” I said.

  “A penny? Did it at least have his pitcher on it?”

  I gave him a look. “One cent,” I said, “but Lincoln knew it wasn’t right to keep it, and so he gave it back.”

  He frowned in thought, or the Kirschmann equivalent thereof. “You know,” he said, “I heard that story in school when I was a kid. You figure it’s true, Bernie?”

  “I think it contains a great spiritual truth.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “In a word,” I said, “it means no. I don’t believe it.”

  “I didn’t believe it back then,” Ray said, “an’ I still don’t. I think it’s like George Washington, coppin’ the neighbor’s cherry. Makes a nice story but it never happened. Gettin’ back to the book, Bernie. It’s just another old book off the shelves, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Not rare or valuable or anythin’.”

  “Not remotely.”

  “Or why would you be lettin’ it go for thirteen bucks? An’ I think you said you owned it a long time.”

  “Years.”

  “So it ain’t really what the fat guy was lookin’ for.”

  “Good thinking, Ray.”

  “Now let me ask you somethin’,” he said, “which you can answer without incriminatin’ yourself. Is there anythin’ that I don’t know about, and don’t need to know about, that you been up to lately? Somethin’ that might lead to someone thinkin’ you had somethin’ they wanted back?”

  I didn’t have to think long and hard. The only two things I’d been involved in were my adventure Wednesday night, when I’d prowled my way into Barbara Creeley’s apartment, and the Mapes burglary, which hadn’t happened yet. There was no way either could have led the fat man to my store.

  “Not a thing,” I said.

  “Then it’s the Rogovin murders,” he said. “They got in an’ they killed the people an’ they popped the safe, but there musta been somethin’ they wanted an’ didn’t get. Somethin’ that coulda been a book.”

  “A McGuffin.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’d say you’re right, they were looking for something at least vaguely booklike.”

  “Gotta be.”

  “But not The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad. That’d be too much of a coincidence.”

  “What it’d have to be,” he said thoughtfully, “is somethin’ that they don’t know exactly what it is, or else when you handed him that particular book he’da handed it right back to you.”

  “Or thrown it at me.”

  “Or at the cat. Though you’d think he’d have smelled a rat when all you wanted for it was thirteen bucks.”

  Quite so, which explained why he’d assumed I meant thirteen hundred. And even that was evidently a low price for the McGuffin, which explained the enigmatic smile, and the way he hadn’t wanted me to see how much money he’d brought along to the bargaining table. God only knows what I could have asked for.

  “Maybe he thought I just wanted to get rid of it, and the thirteen dollars was just to save face.”

  “You couldn’t save much face for thirteen bucks. Not much more’n a couple of whiskers. There’s got to be two sets of players, Bernie. The ones who hit the Rogovins and the others. My guess is Fat Boy was one of the others, and the ones who hit the Rogovins are the ones who hit him, too.”

  And who kicked my door in, I thought, since their MO was the same as in the Rogovin home invasion, down to the duct tape on the doorman. But I hadn’t mentioned my own break-in to Ray, probably because I’d promised Edgar to keep the INS away from him. I could mention it now, but then I’d have to explain why I’d held off mentioning it for so long, and it was easier just to avoid the subject altogether.

  “Two sets of bad guys,” he said, “an’ one of them’s killed four times already. An’ where’s Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernie? Right smack dab in the middle.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t be,” I said. “I’m only there because you picked me up. They found out I’d been arrested, and they didn’t spot it for the police incompetence it was.”

  “Easy there, Bernie.”

  “They actually thought you jokers knew what you were doing,” I said. “You know what I ought to do? I ought to demand around-the-clock police protection.”

  “You want it? Easiest thing in the world, Bernie. Come on over to the precinct an’ I’ll toss you in a cell.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Seriously, do you want me to get a plainclothes guy to follow you around? I’d have to clear it with the captain, but it could be done.”

  That would be peachy, I thought. The guy could tag along when we went up to Riverdale to knock off the Mapes house. He could watch the car, make sure no one ticketed it for parking in a No Burglars zone.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll pass.”

  I actually did some business while Ray was there. Customers drifted in and out of the store, doing more browsing than buying, but occasionally one brought a book to the counter and I interrupted Ray and rang the sale. Now and then someone asked about the shooting outside, and I agreed it was a terrible thing and let it go at that.

  When Ray finally left (though not without promising to return) I had an actual breathing spell and went back to John Sandford. The book was getting exciting, although the main plotline struck me as a little more far-fetched than others in the series. As usual, the point of view shifted back and forth, from Lucas Davenport, Sandford’s macho hero cop, to the villain, who was in this case a disillusioned ex-vegetarian Congregationalist minister making his brutal way around Minnesota, slaughtering prominent vegans and organic farmers, butchering them, and eating their livers. Pretty wild, but somehow he made you believe it, and I was starting to get caught up in it when, dammit, somebody else came in the door and headed straight for the counter.

  He was a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard, thin as a pipe cleaner, and wearing a three-piece brown tweed suit. His name was Colby Riddle and he was a professor at the New School. I forget what field he was in, but I’m pretty sure it ends in -ology.

  “Well,” he said, “and how are you today?”

  And, of course, it was the voice I’d heard on the phone that morning, heard and recognized but failed to place. “Oh, hell,” I said. “You’ve come for the book.”

  “Is this a bad time, Bernie?”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “Or at least no more so than any other time. Colby, somebody else walked off with your book.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “I thought you were going to put it aside for me.”

  “I did.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then someone came in and I handed it to him.”

  He tried to make sense out of this, and I wished him the best of luck. “You thought he was me,” he said at length.

  “I thought you sent him. He said he understood I had something for him, and—”

  “And you thought I’d sent him, so you handed him The Secret Agent. Why didn’t he hand it right back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because I have to say that it strains the bonds of permissible coincidence that he happened to be looking for the very book I’d asked about.”

  “He wasn’t. I don’t believe he knew what he was looking for.”

  “But you gave him my book and he was satisfied.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “He paid for it?”

  “Sales tax and all.”

  “How nice for the governor. Do you suppose he’ll bring it back?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Really? When he realizes it’s not what he wanted—”

  “He’s not going to realize it.”

  “Why, is he brain-dead?”

  I decided he was going to hear about it on Live at Five, or read about
it in the morning paper, so why not tell him now? “Among other things,” I said. “He walked out of here, book in hand, and a car pulled up and somebody rolled down the window and blew him away.”

  “Good grief. You’re serious, aren’t you? It’s not just a ruse to get around the fact that someone else paid more money for the book than the price you quoted to me.”

  “I wouldn’t sell it out from under you,” I said. “And yes, I’m serious. You can check out the hole in Cooperstone’s window. The bullet that made it missed the guy, but most of the other rounds didn’t.”

  “How shocking,” he said, “and how dramatic. More exciting than anything old Joe Conrad ever wrote, I’ll have to say that for it. Bernie, I’m sure it’s in dreadful taste to bring it up, but when they shot him and he crumpled to the pavement—I assume he crumpled, didn’t he?”

  “More or less.”

  “Well, he would have dropped the book, wouldn’t he? I don’t suppose you managed to retrieve it.”

  “No.”

  “But do you think you might?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Evidence? The police have it?”

  “The killers have it.”

  “The killers?”

  “Scooped it up and drove off with it. Broke a few traffic laws while they were at it, but I don’t suppose they were much concerned about that.”

  “They killed the man,” he said thoughtfully, “and took my book. Well, not my book. I hadn’t paid for it, so title hadn’t transferred. It was still your book.”

  “If you say so, Colby.”

  “Well, let me see,” he said, heading for the stacks. “I’ve got to find something to read this weekend, haven’t I?”

  I joined him in Fiction. I pointed out what other books of Conrad’s I had, but he wasn’t interested in them. The appealing thing about The Secret Agent, he said, was that it was set on dry land. Conrad’s sea stories were just too nautical for his taste.

  “Here’s Graham Greene,” I told him. “I’ve got a larger than usual stock of Greene, and I think a couple of these are firsts.”