The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,26
fed him. The rest of the time I hardly knew he was there. He walked around on little cat feet, appropriately enough, and he didn’t bump into things. Sometimes he would catch a few rays in the front window, and now and then he’d make a silent spring onto a high shelf and ease himself into the gap between James Carroll and Rachel Carson, but most of the time he kept a low profile.
Few customers ever saw him, and those who did seemed generally unsurprised at the presence of a cat in a bookstore. “What a pretty cat!” they might say, or “What happened to his tail?” He seemed most inclined to display himself when the customer was an attractive woman, which made him something of an asset, functioning as a sort of icebreaker. I don’t know that he earned his keep in that capacity, but I’d have to list it as a plus on his résumé.
What paid the Tender Vittles tab, as far as I was concerned, was what he’d been hired for in the first place. Since Carolyn brought him into the shop, I hadn’t found a single book with a nibbled spine. The rodent damage had ceased so abruptly and permanently I had to wonder if it had ever happened in the first place. Maybe, I sometimes thought, I’d never had a mouse in the store. Maybe the Waugh and Glasgow volumes had been like that when I got them. Or maybe Carolyn had snuck in herself and gnawed at the books, just so she could find a permanent home for the Third Cat.
I wouldn’t put it past her.
Once I’d filled his dinner bowl and his water dish, I locked up again and went over to Carolyn’s place. “I already ate,” she said. “I didn’t think you were going to open up today.”
“That’s what I figured,” I said, “but I wanted to check. Let me grab something around the corner and I’ll be right back. We have to talk.”
“Sure,” she said.
I went to the nearest deli and came back with a ham sandwich and a large container of coffee. Carolyn had a small brown dog on the grooming table. It kept making a sort of whimpering noise.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she told me. “And is it all right if I finish up Alison while we talk? I’d like to be done with her.”
“Go right ahead,” I said. “Why’s she making that noise?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I wish she’d stop. If she does it while the judge is looking her over, I think her owner can forget about Best of Breed.”
“And what breed would that be?”
“She’s either a Norfolk terrier or a Norwich terrier, and I can never remember which is which.”
“And her name’s Alison? No clue there.”
“That’s her call name,” she said. “The name on her papers is Alison Wanda Land.”
“I think I know why she’s whimpering.”
“Maybe it’s because she misses her littermate, who didn’t come in today because she’s not scheduled to be shown this weekend. Her call name just happens to be Trudy, so do you want to guess what it says on her AKC registration?”
“It can’t be Trudy Logan Glass.”
“Wanna bet?”
I shuddered, then straightened up in my seat. “Look,” I said, “go on fluffing Alison, but while you do I want to tell you what happened last night.”
“No need, Bern.”
“Huh?”
“Really,” she said, “what makes you think you have to do that? You were the one who was doing all the drinking at the Bum Rap. I know I’m apt to have a blackout once in a while, but last night I didn’t have enough booze to feel a glow, much less wipe out a few thousand brain cells. I remember everything up until the time you left, and there’s nothing to remember after that because all I did was go to sleep.”
“I want to tell you what happened to me.”
“You went straight home.”
“Right. And then I went out again.”
“Oh, no. Bern—”
“Look, just let me tell it all the way through,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I just don’t get it,” she said. “You worked so hard, Bern. You did everything possible to keep from breaking into the Gilmartin apartment.”
“I know.”
“And then, purely on the spur of the moment—”
“I know.”
“It’s not as if you had any reason to think there’d be anything there worth stealing. For all you knew, the Nugents didn’t have a pot or a window.”
“I know.”
“And you were already through for the night. You were home safe in your own apartment.”