The Burglar in Short Order

by Lawrence Block

  And she was in the middle of a multi-picture deal, and they needed something quick to stick her in after Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and they already had a script, sort of, so all they had to do was give it a sex-change operation.

  Look, I was in Florida. We had this big old house right there on the beach. The first day I stepped out onto the sand, turned right, walked for half an hour, turned around and walked back. The second day I turned left instead, walked for half an hour, and walked back. The third day I didn’t know what the hell to do with myself.

  I thought about Don Westlake, and his character Parker. Maybe Bernie lacked definition. What did I know, and what was I going to do about it, and what did it matter? The picture would never get made.

  Except it did.

  I’ve only seen it once, at a screening in a large movie house in midtown Manhattan. I didn’t like it, but that seemed almost beside the point. What I wanted was for everybody else to like it, so that it would sell a ton of tickets and generate a ton of publicity and induce people to buy a ton of books.

  And while the film was running, that seemed possible. There was laughter, which is a Good Thing at a comedy. (There was also scattered laughter the one time I saw a theatrical showing of 8 Million Ways to Die; that picture was a far cry from a comedy, and the laughter was Not a Good Thing. It was based on my novel Eight Million Ways to Die, but they replaced the first word with a digit, perhaps as a cost-cutting move. Never mind.)

  After the final credits rolled, our party of a dozen or so rose from our seats and headed for the exit, telling one another that we just might have a hit on our hands. That notion died in the lobby, as we heard all the strangers with whom we’d just shared this rich experience telling each other, “Well, that wasn’t much good, was it?”

  A few weeks later, my literary agent, Knox Burger, flew somewhere on business, and the in-flight movie was Burglar. Knox had been at the screening, and so paid less attention to what was on the screen than to the reactions of his seat mate. The fellow, an MBA in his thirties, laughed throughout, and when he sat back and took off his ear phones, Knox asked him how he’d enjoyed the film.

  “It wasn’t much good,” the guy said.

  Knox, incredulous, pointed out that he’d been laughing.

  “Oh, there are some funny bits,” the fellow allowed. “They give you a couple of laughs. But there’s never a moment when you lose sight of the fact that what you’re watching is crap.”

  It would be very easy to blame Whoopi.

  I don’t, and never did. She was playing an ill-conceived role in a doomed film with a lousy script, and it always seemed to me that she did the best she could with what they handed her. (Full disclosure: I’m saying this on the basis of that initial screening. I’ve only seen Burglar once, and that’s okay. I did see 8 Million Ways to Die a second time, on a surreal afternoon when Lynne and I, slogging on foot across northern Spain on our way to Santiago de Compostela, finished the day in a hotel bar somewhere in Navarre. We collapsed, way beyond exhaustion, and the waiter brought us cheese sandwiches and café con leche, and we looked up, and there on the television set were Jeff Bridges and Andy Garcia, their voices dubbed in Spanish. It took us a good ten minutes to be sure we weren’t hallucinating.)

  The critics didn’t like Burglar. Roger Ebert had this to say:

  “Does Hollywood think Whoopi Goldberg recently arrived here from another planet? Do they think she has one of those invisible protective shields around her, like in the old toothpaste commercials? Do they respond at all to her warmth, her energy, her charisma? Sure, she looks a little funny, but why isn’t she allowed to have normal relationships in the movies? Why is she always packaged as the weirdo from Planet X? The occasion for these questions is Burglar, a witless, hapless exercise in the wrong way to package Goldberg. This is a woman who is original. Who is talented. Who has a special relationship with the motion picture comedy. It is criminal to put her into brain-damaged, assembly-line thrillers.”

  So I don’t blame Whoopi, and neither do I blame the decision to cast her in the role. While it’s unarguably true that Bernie Rhodenbarr as I envisioned him was neither black nor female, well, so what? I can’t really sell myself on the notion that a filmmaker’s primary aim ought to be the transference of the author’s vision to the screen. Fans of my books might indeed be happier with a film whose lead character was closer to their image of Bernie, but if all my readers saw the film several times over, that wouldn’t put enough asses in enough seats to make the movie turn a profit. For that to happen, Burglar would have to sell a good deal more tickets than I sold books, and it would have to sell them to people who’d be meeting Bernie Rhodenbarr for the first time.

  I could point to aspects of the film I didn’t like—the writing, the direction—but so could everybody else, and with as much validity. I had a personal aversion to Bobcat Goldthwaite, whose impersonation of a nervous breakdown I always find cringe-inducing, but he didn’t kill the movie. It would have been every bit as dead with someone else playing Carolyn.

  So who’s to blame?

  My fucking agent.

  Not for the film. I’m not sorry the film was made, and why should I be? It helped me pay for my house, the one I mentioned, the one right on the beach in Florida. It was a happy day when we paid off that mortgage, though not nearly as happy as the day a couple of years later when we sold the place and moved back to New York.

  Burglar didn’t sell any books, not really, but in 1994 I resumed writing about Bernie, and when I went on tour for The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, it gave me something to talk about. It was a rare appearance that someone didn’t bring it up.

  And it was also a rare year that went by without someone wanting to make another Bernie Rhodenbarr movie—with more conventional casting, too. But Knox Burger, who negotiated the deal for Burglar himself rather than partnering with a film agent, managed to sign away the rights to all the books forever. My current Hollywood agent, looking to see if there was a way out, read the contract I’d signed and pronounced it the worst one he’d ever seen. If anyone ever wants to make a movie about Bernie, they have to get Warners to sign off—and lots of luck with that.

  Oh, let it go. Knox is gone now, and I liked him, and he was a good agent in many respects. And de mortuis and all that, you know?

  And, as time passes, I find myself reluctant to pass judgment on any motion picture. I think of Dr. Johnson, likening a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, he told Boswell, but you are surprised to find it done at all.

  That a picture actually gets made is remarkable enough. Pointing out that it’s not much good seems, well, picky.

  Afterword:

  A Burglar’s Future

  I thought I was just going out for a walk, doing what I could to pacify my Fitbit, but wouldn’t you know it? My feet had ideas of their own, and in no time at all they’d led me to that block of East Eleventh Street between University Place and Broadway.

  A tailless cat sunned itself in the window of Barnegat Books, and barely stirred when I opened the door. I got a slightly warmer reception from my favorite bookseller, who was perched on his stool behind the counter. He looked up from his book, said “Oh, it’s you,” and resumed reading.

  “It’s me,” I agreed.

  A quick look around established that the proprietor and his cat and I had the store to ourselves, unless you count the spirits of a few thousand dead writers. “Good to see you,” I said. “Um, how’s business?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “All right.”

  He sighed, and answered the question now that I’d withdrawn it. “Business,” he said, “is non-existent. I’m essentially out of business. You know the bargain table I keep out front?”

  “I knew something was missing,” I said. “What happened to it? Don’t tell me somebody walked off with it.”

  “If only,” he said with feeling. “It was rare enough that someone swiped a book. No, I got tired of
hauling it out every morning and bringing it in every night. And I got tired of people bringing a book inside and buying it and then cluttering up the store browsing through books they’d go home and order on line.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “The world’s a different place,” he said. “Barnegat Books was already an anachronism when I bought it. Still, people used to read. They used to collect first editions, and track down the complete works of writers they discovered. Now they zone out with Netflix, and what reading they do is on an eReader or an iPad. And if they’re old-fashioned enough to collect books, they don’t have to hunt for them. Why breathe in the dust of an old bookshop when you can find anything you could possibly want through a five-minute online search?”

  “You make it sound awful.”

  “But it’s not,” he said. “It’s just different. Unless you have a store like this one, in which case the answer is obvious.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded. “Close up shop,” he said. “You know, I never expected to make money here. I figured if I could break even, or keep losses to a minimum, I’d have a place to hang out and sponsor poetry readings and, well—”

  “Meet girls?”

  “And I met a few,” he allowed, “and sometimes that was good and sometimes it wasn’t, like life itself. And there was another benefit of owning the place. I had this other occupation.”

  “Burglary.”

  He nodded. “And I made enough at night to cover any losses I incurred day-to-day. But now that the entire planet’s wired for closed circuit TV, with security cameras everywhere you can imagine and some places you can’t, well, forget it. There’s no cash anywhere anyhow, and if you steal something nobody’s going to buy it from you, and being a burglar makes even less sense than being a bookseller. Two occupations, one legit and one not, and both of them rendered obsolete by encroaching technology.”

  “You sound as though you’re getting ready to close the store.”

  He looked at me. “And then what would I do? This city’s extortionate rent increases would have forced me out of here twenty years ago if I hadn’t been able to buy the building. This way I make enough renting out the apartments upstairs to keep body and soul together. If I had any sense I’d close this money pit, truck all these goddamn books to a landfill, and rent out the store to a chain drugstore or a boutique. You know what I could get for this space?”

  “A good deal, I suppose.”

  “As far as that goes,” he said, “I could sell the whole building. Get a few million for it. Retire somewhere. But you know what the problem is, don’t you?”

  “You’re too young to retire.”

  He glared at me. “And I always will be,” he said, “thanks to you, you son of a bitch. Back in 1977 I was around 35 years old. Now it’s what, 2019?”

  “Last I looked.”

  “And I’m still around 35 years old. The other guy you write about ages in real time. Matthew Fucking Scudder, the sonofabitch gets a year older with every passing year. Me, I stay the same year after year, frozen in time.”

  “So does Carolyn.”

  “Well, thank God for that. She stays the same, and so does the fucking cat. Raffles came to work here in 1994. That’s what, 25 years ago? And he was a year or two old at the time. So he’s gotta be 26 or 27, and do you have any idea what that is in dog years?”

  “Dog years?”

  “You know what I mean. He’s almost as old as those Thai yowlers Lillian Jackson Braun wrote about. One of them was named Koko, and the other wasn’t.”

  “Or maybe it was the other way around.”

  He gave me a look. “Now Raffles is establishing himself as The Cat Who Lived Forever.”

  “Well—”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’m not about to sell the building. I’m not closing the store, either, and I’m not moving anywhere. I’ll just stay here.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I have to admit I’m glad to hear that. You know, people ask me about you all the time.”

  He rolled his eyes. “When are you gonna write another book about me. That’s what they ask, right?”

  “All the time.”

  “Tell them,” he said, “never.”

  “That seems so final.”

  “Good.”

  “They keep coming up with suggestions,” I said. “Things for you to steal. Just the other day a guy wrote that his girlfriend is a violinist, and she’d had a chance to play on a Stradivarius or some other priceless violin, and he thought of Katie Huang and wondered if there was some sort of priceless flute you could steal for her, or something.”

  “Katie Huang,” he said.

  “The Taiwanese flautist who worked at Two Guys.”

  “I know who she is,” he said. “Haven’t seen her lately. And the restaurant changed hands. Two Guys from Taichung is now Two Guys from Dushanbe. That’s in Tajikistan.”

  “Oh.”

  “And it’s not a terrible idea, but you know as well as I do that something to steal isn’t an idea for a book. It’s just something to steal, and to hell with stealing.”

  “Point taken. Another guy emailed to tell me how he’d walked into a high-security building the other day completely by accident. He’d been a responsible citizen and picked up an armload of trash in the street, and he couldn’t find a trashcan, and he walked to a building entrance to ask the doorman where he could find a trash receptacle, but the doorman wasn’t paying much attention, and some tenant saw him with his arms full and held the door for him, and before he knew it he was inside this secure building.”

  He looked almost interested. “So what did he steal?” he wondered.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He found a trash can, and got rid of what he was holding, and turned around and got out of there.”

  “Hell of a story,” he said. “Alert the media!”

  “Well, he thought it was interesting. And I’d have to agree, especially in this age of security cameras.”

  “And you want to write a story about it?”

  “Well, no,” I admitted.

  “Is there anything you want to write a story about? Really?”

  “Um—”

  “Suppose I was still up for having adventures. Suppose I was as young at heart as I am in years. Suppose the two of us put our heads together and came up with something that would work, something you haven’t already written before, something genuinely good.”

  I waited.

  “Tell me the truth,” he said. “Would you be up for writing it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Because you’ve aged in real time,” he said.

  I nodded. “It’s the biggest mistake I ever made.”

  “Well, it’s a problem,” he agreed, “but I’m here to tell you that staying the same age forever isn’t so hot either. If I’m too young to retire, well, you’re way past retirement age. I read your latest novella, the one where Matt Scudder’s every bit as old as you are.”

  “A Time to Scatter Stones.”

  “A novella instead of a full-length novel. I’m guessing neither one of you had the energy for a longer book. I liked it, but it felt like a swan song.”

  “It probably was.”

  “And you’ve been doing anthologies. I read one of them. They’ve been well-received.”

  “I get good writers,” I said, “and stay out of their way.”

  “Will there be more of them?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “They’re a lot of work. I’m beginning to think maybe enough is enough.”

  “Amen to that. So what’ll you do?”

  I shrugged. “Walk enough to keep my Fitbit happy. Hang out with my wife. Watch a little TV, maybe travel a little. You?”

  “Sit right here,” he said. “God knows I won’t run out of things to read. Have lunch with Carolyn, grab drinks after work at the Bum Rap. As long as my upstairs tenants keep paying their rent, I can afford to keep the store
open. Even if nobody ever comes in and buys something.”

  “I’m glad of that,” I told him. “The place suits you.”

  “I guess.”

  “And I like having it here. You know, so I can drop by every once in a while for a little company and conversation. I enjoy our talks.”

  “Come over any time,” he said. “God knows I’m not going anywhere.”

  About the Author

  * * *

  Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. His newest book, a sequel to his greatly successful Hopper anthology In Sunlight or in Shadow, is Alive in Shape and Color, a 17-story anthology with each story illustrated by a great painting; authors include Lee Child, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Connelly, Joe Lansdale, Jeffery Deaver and David Morrell. His most recent novel, pitched by his Hollywood agent as “James M. Cain on Viagra,” is The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes. Other recent works of fiction include The Burglar Who Counted The Spoons, featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr; Keller’s Fedora, featuring philatelist and assassin Keller; and A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the 2014 film, A Walk Among The Tombstones. Several of his other books have also been filmed, although not terribly well. He’s well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit and Write For Your Life, and has recently published a collection of his writings about the mystery genre and its practitioners, The Crime Of Our Lives. 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

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