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 you 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