Nothing Short of Highway Robbery

by Lawrence Block

  He let us take a long look at the underside of the car. There was no question that something was pressing on something and cutting into it. What the hell it all added up to was beyond me.

  “Just let me talk to my brother a minute,” Newt said to him, and he took hold of my arm and we walked around the side.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you think? It looks like this old boy here is sticking it in pretty deep.”

  “It does at that. But that fan belt was shot and those hoses was the next thing to petrified.”

  “True.”

  “If they was our fan belt and hoses in the first place and not some junk he had around.”

  “I had that very thought, Vern.”

  “Now as for the shock absorbers—”

  “Something sure don’t look altogether perfect underneath that car. Something’s sure cutting into something.”

  “I know it. But maybe he just went and got a file or some such thing and did some cutting himself.”

  “In other words, either he’s a con man or he’s a saint.”

  “Except we know he ain’t a saint, not at the price he gets for gasoline, and not telling us how he eats all his meals across the road and all the time his own wife’s running it.”

  “So what do we do? You want to go on to Silver City on those shocks? I don’t even know if we got enough money to cover putting shocks on, far as that goes.”

  We walked around to the front and asked the price of the shocks. He worked it all out with pencil and paper and came up with a figure of forty-five dollars, including the parts and the labor and the tax and all. Newt and I went into another huddle and he counted his money and I went through my own pockets and came up with a couple of dollars, and it worked out that we could pay what we owed and get the shocks and come up with three dollars to bless ourselves with.

  So I looked at Newt and he looked back at me and gave a great shrug of his shoulders. Close as we are we can say a lot without speaking.

  We told the dude to go ahead and do the work.

  WHILE HE INSTALLED the shocks, me and Newt went across the road and had us a couple of chicken-fried steaks. They wasn’t bad at all even if the price was on the high side. We washed the steaks down with a beer apiece and then each of us had a cup of that coffee. I guess there’s been times I had better coffee.

  “I’d say you fellows sure were lucky you stopped here,” the woman said.

  “It’s our lucky day, all right,” Newt said. While he paid her I looked over the paperback books and magazines. Some of them looked to be old and secondhand but they weren’t none of them reduced in price on account of it, and this didn’t surprise me much.

  What also didn’t surprise us was when we got back to find the shocks installed and our friend with his big hat off and scratching his mop of hair and telling us how the rear shocks was in even worse shape than the front ones. He went and ran the car up in the air again to show us more things that didn’t mean much to us.

  Newton said, “Well, sir, my brother and I, we talked it over. We figure we been neglecting this here automobile and we really ought to do right by it. If those rear shocks is bad, well, let’s just get ’em the hell off of there and new ones on. And while we’re here I’m just about positive we’re due for an oil change.”

  “And I’ll replace the oil filter while I’m at it.”

  “You do that,” Newt told him. “And I guess you’ll find other things that can do with a bit of fixing. Now we haven’t got all the time in the world or all the money in the world either, but I guess we got us a pair of hours to spare, and we consider ourselves lucky having the good fortune to run up against a mechanic who knows which end of the wrench is which. So what we’ll do, we’ll just find us a patch of shade to set in and you check that car over and find things to do to her. Only things that need doing, but I guess you’d be the best judge of that.”

  Well, I’ll tell you he found things to fix. Now and then a car would roll on in and he’d have to go and sell somebody a tank of gas, but we sure got the lion’s share of his time. He replaced the air filter, he cleaned the carburetor, he changed the oil and replaced the oil filter, he tuned the engine and drained and flushed the radiator and filled her with fresh coolant, he gave us new plugs and points, he did this and that and every damn thing he could think of, and I guess the only parts of that car he didn’t replace were ones he didn’t have replacement parts for.

  Through it all Newt and I sat in a patch of shade and sipped Cokes out of the bottle. Every now and then that bird would come over and tell us what else he found that he ought to be doing, and we’d look at each other and shrug our shoulders and say for him to go ahead and do what had to be done.

  “Amazing what was wrong with that car of ours,” Newt said to me. “Here I thought it rode pretty good.”

  “Hell, I pulled in here wanting nothing in the world but a tank of gas. Maybe a quart of oil, and oil was the one thing in the world we didn’t need, or it looks like.”

  “Should ride a whole lot better once he’s done with it.”

  “Well I guess it should. Man’s building a whole new car around the cigarette lighter.”

  “And the clock. Nothing wrong with that clock, outside of it loses a few minutes a day.”

  “Lord,” Newt said, “don’t you be telling him about those few minutes the clock loses. We won’t never get out of here.”

  THAT DUDE TOOK the two hours we gave him and about twelve minutes besides, and then he came on over into the shade and presented us with his bill. It was all neatly itemized, everything listed in the right place and all of it added up, and the figure in the bottom right-hand corner with the circle around it read $277.45.

  “That there is quite a number,” I said.

  He put the big hat on the back of his head and ran his hand over his forehead. “Whole lot of work involved,” he said. “When you take into account all of those parts and all that labor.”

  “Oh, that’s for certain,” Newt said. “And I can see they all been taken into account, all right.”

  “That’s clear as black and white,” I said. “One thing, you couldn’t call this a nickel-and-dime figure.”

  “That you couldn’t,” Newton said. “Well, sir, let me just go and get some money from the car. Vern?”

  We walked over to the car together. “Funny how things work out,” Vern said. “I swear people get forced into things, I just swear to hell and gone they do. What did either of us want beside a tank of gas?”

  “Just a tank of gas is all.”

  “And here we are,” he said. He opened the door on the passenger side, waited for a pickup truck to pass going west to east, then popped the glove compartment. He took the .38 for himself and gave me the .32 revolver. “I’ll just settle up with our good buddy here,” he said, loud enough for the good buddy in question to hear him. “Meanwhile, why don’t you just step across the street and pick us up something to drink later on this evening? You never know, might turn out to be a long ways between liquor stores.”

  I went and gave him a little punch in the upper arm. He laughed the way he does and I put the .32 in my pocket and trotted on across the road to the cafe.

  The End

  The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons

  Chapter One

  Excerpt Copyright © 2013, Lawrence Block

  AROUND 11:15 ON a Tuesday morning in May, I was perched on my stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books. I was reading Jubilate Agno, by Christopher Smart, even as I was keeping a lazy eye on a slender young woman in jeans and sandals. Her khaki shirt had those little tabs to secure the sleeves when you rolled them up, and a scant inch of tattoo peeked out from under one rolled-up sleeve. I couldn’t make out the image, there wasn’t enough showing, and I didn’t bother to guess, or to speculate on what hidden parts of her anatomy might sport further tattoos. I was paying more attention to the capacious tote bag hanging from her shoulder, and the Frank Norris novel that had engaged her interest. />
  For I shall consider my cat, Geoffrey, I read, and looked over to the window to consider my own cat, Raffles. There’s a portion of the window ledge that the sun manages to find on clear days, and that’s his favorite spot, rain or shine. Sometimes he stretches, in the manner of his tribe, and sometimes his paws move as he dreams of mice. At the moment he was doing nothing, as far as I could tell.

  My customer, on the other hand, had fetched a cell phone from her tote bag. She’d put the book down, and her thumbs were busy. At length she returned the phone to her bag and, beaming, brought Frank Norris to the counter.

  “I’ve been looking all over for this,” she said, triumphantly. “And I’ve had a terrible time, because I couldn’t remember the title or the author.”

  “I can see how that might complicate things for you.”

  “But when I saw the book,” she said, brandishing the object in question, “it, like, rang a bell.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I looked through it, and this is it.”

  “The very volume you’ve been seeking.”

  “Yeah, isn’t that awesome? And you know what’s even better?”

  “What?”

  “It’s on Kindle. Isn’t that fantastic? I mean, here’s a book more than a hundred years old, and it’s not like it was Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick, you know?”

  Eat your heart out, Frank Norris.

  “Like, they’re popular, so you’d expect to be able to get them in eBooks. But The Pit? Frank Norris? And yet I Googled it and there it was, and a couple of clicks and I own it.”

  “Just like that,” I said.

  “Isn’t it great? And you know what it cost?”

  “Probably less than the book you’re holding.”

  She checked the penciled price on the inside cover. “Fifteen dollars. Which is fair enough, I mean it’s like a hundred years old and a hardcover book and all. But you want to know what I just paid?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Two ninety-nine.”

  “Awesome,” I said.

  CAROLYN KAISER, WHO washes dogs two doors down the street at the Poodle Factory, is my best friend and, more often than not, my lunch companion. Whoever’s turn it is picks up food at a nearby restaurant and brings it to the other’s place of business. It was her turn, and an hour after the girl with the peekaboo tattoo left poor old Frank Norris on my counter, Carolyn breezed in and began dishing out dejeuner a deux.

  “Juneau Lock?”

  “Juneau Lock,” she agreed.

  “I wonder what it is.”

  She took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and considered the matter. “I couldn’t even guess the animal,” she said. “Let alone what part of the animal.”

  “It could be almost anything.”

  “I know.”

  “Whatever this dish is,” I said, “I don’t think we’ve had it before.”

  “It’s always different,” she said, “and it’s always sensational.”

  “Or even awesome,” I said, and told her about Frank Norris and the girl with the tattoo.

  “Maybe it was a dragon.”

  “The tattoo? Or our lunch?”

  “Either one. She used your bookshop to figure out what book she wanted, and then she bought the eBook from Amazon and bragged about what a deal she got.”

  “It didn’t come off like bragging,” I said. “She was letting me be a part of her triumph.”

  “And rubbing your nose in it, Bern. And you don’t even seem all that upset.”

  “I don’t?” I thought about it. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’m not. She was so innocent about it, you know? ‘Isn’t it great how I saved myself twelve bucks?’ ” I shrugged. “At least I got the book back. I was afraid she was going to steal it.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” she said, “she did. But if you’re cool with it, I don’t see why I should be pissed off on your behalf. This is great food, Bern.”

  “The best.”

  “Two Guys From Taichung. I wonder if I’m pronouncing it correctly.”

  “I’m pretty sure you got the first three words right.”

  “The first three words,” she said, “never change.”

  The restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and East Eleventh Street, across the street from the Bum Rap, has had the same sign for almost as long as I’ve had the bookshop. But it’s changed owners and ethnicities repeatedly over the years, and each new owner (or pair of owners) has painted over the last word on the sign. Two Guys From Tashkent gave way to Two Guys From Guayaquil, which in turn yielded to Two Guys From Phnom Penh. And so on.

  We began to take the closings for granted—it was evidently a hard-luck location—and whenever we started to lose our taste for the current cuisine, we could look forward to whatever would take its place. And, while we rarely went more than a few days without a lunch from Two Guys, there were plenty of alternatives—the deli, the pizza place, the diner.

  Then Two Guys From Kandahar threw in the towel, and Two Guys From Taichung opened up shop, and everything changed.

  “I’LL BE CLOSING early,” I told Carolyn.

  “Today’s the day, huh?”

  “And tonight’s the night. I thought I might get back downtown in time to meet you at the Bum Rap, but where’s the sense in that?”

  “Especially since you’d be drinking Perrier. Bern? You want me to tag along?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure? Because it’d be no problem for me to close early. I’ve got a Borzoi to blow dry, and his owner’s picking him up at three, and even if she runs late I can be out of there by three-thirty. I could keep you company.”

  “You were with me on the reconnaissance mission.”

  “Casing the joint,” she said with relish. “Nothing to it. Piece of cake.”

  “I think it’s better if I solo this time around.”

  “I could watch your back.”

  “I don’t want to give their security cameras a second look at you. Once is fine but twice is suspicious.”

  “I could wear a disguise.”

  “No, I’ll be disguised,” I said. “And a key part of my disguise is that this time around I won’t be accompanied by a diminutive woman with a lesbian haircut.”

  “I guess diminutive sounds better than short,” she said. “And it’s not exactly a lesbian haircut, but I take your point. So how about if I hang out down the block? No? Okay, Bern, but I’ll have my cell with me. If you need me—”

  “I’ll call. But that’s not likely. I’ll just steal the book and go home.”

  “Check Amazon first,” she said. “See if it’s on Kindle. Maybe you can save yourself a trip.”

  * * *

  The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons

  About the Author

  Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His most recent novels are Hit Me, featuring Keller, and A Drop of the Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, who will be played by Liam Neeson in the forthcoming film, A Walk Among the Tombstones. Several of his other books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He’s well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, and The Liar’s Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

  Email: lawbloc@gmail.com

  Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

  Website: LB’s Blog

  Facebook: lawrence.block

  Website: lawrenceblock.com

  * * *

  More Story Collections

  available at

  Enough Rope

  The Night and the Music

  Catch and Release

  For a list of all my available fiction, go to Books on the Lawrence Block website.

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  Thanks!

  Lawrence Block