The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,22
there aren’t a lot of enemies to fend off in here. Or a whole lot of trees to climb.”
“I guess.” I looked at him. There was something strange about him, but it took me a second or two to figure it out. “Carolyn,” I said, “what happened to his tail?”
“He’s a Manx.”
“So he was born tailless. But don’t Manx cats have a sort of hopping gait, almost like a rabbit? This guy just walks around like your ordinary garden-variety cat. He doesn’t look much like any Manx I ever saw.”
“Well, maybe he’s only part Manx.”
“Which part? The tail?”
“Well—”
“What do you figure happened? Did he get it caught in a door, or did the vet get carried away? I’ll tell you, Carolyn, he’s been neutered and declawed and his tail’s no more than a memory. When you come right down to it, there’s not a whole lot of the original cat left, is there? What we’ve got here is the stripped-down economy model. Is there anything else missing that I don’t know about?”
“No.”
“Did they leave the part that knows how to use a litter box? That’s going to be tons of fun, changing the litter every day. Does he at least know how to use a box?”
“Even better, Bern. He uses the toilet.”
“Like Archie and Ubi?” Carolyn had trained her own cats, first by keeping their litter pan on top of the toilet seat, then by cutting a hole in it, gradually enlarging the hole and finally getting rid of the pan altogether. “Well, that’s something,” I said. “I don’t suppose he’s figured out how to flush it.”
“No. And don’t leave the seat up.”
I sighed heavily. The animal was stalking around my store, poking his head into corners. Surgery or no surgery, I kept waiting for him to cock a leg at a shelf full of first editions. I admit it, I didn’t trust the little bastard.
“I don’t know about this,” I said. “There must be a way to mouseproof a store like this. Maybe I should talk it over with an exterminator.”
“Are you kidding? You want some weirdo skulking around the aisles, spraying toxic chemicals all over the place? Bern, you don’t have to call an exterminator. You’ve got a live-in exterminator, your own personal organic rodent control division. He’s had all his shots, he’s free of fleas and ticks, and if he ever needs grooming you’ve got a friend in the business. What more could you ask for?”
I felt myself weakening, and I hated that. “He seems to like it here,” I admitted. “He acts as though he’s right at home.”
“And why not? What could be more natural than a cat in a bookstore?”
“He’s not bad-looking,” I said. “Once you get used to the absence of a tail. And that shouldn’t be too hard, given that I was already perfectly accustomed to the absence of an entire cat. What color would you say he was?”
“Gray tabby.”
“It’s a nice functional look,” I decided. “Nothing flashy about it, but it goes with everything, doesn’t it? Has he got a name?”
“Bern, you can always change it.”
“Oh, I bet it’s a pip.”
“Well, it’s not horrendous, at least I don’t think it is, but he’s like most cats I’ve known. He doesn’t respond to his name. You know how Archie and Ubi are. Calling them by name is a waste of time. If I want them to come, I just run the electric can opener.”
“What’s his name, Carolyn?”
“Raffles,” she said. “But you can change it to anything you want. Feel free.”
“Raffles,” I said.
“If you hate it—”
“Hate it?” I stared at her. “Are you kidding? It’s got to be the perfect name for him.”
“How do you figure that, Bern?”
“Don’t you know who Raffles was? In the books by E. W. Hornung back around the turn of the century, and in the stories Barry Perowne’s been doing recently? Raffles the amateur cracksman? World-class cricket player and gentleman burglar? I can’t believe you never heard of the celebrated A. J. Raffles.”
Her mouth fell open. “I never made the connection,” she said. “All I could think of was like raffling off a car to raise funds for a church. But now that you mention it—”
“Raffles,” I said. “The quintessential burglar of fiction. And here he is, a cat in a bookstore, and the bookstore’s owned by a former burglar. I’ll tell you, if I were looking for a name for the cat I couldn’t possibly do better than the one he came with.”