her paint a portrait of you in a clown suit?”
“Nice, Bern.”
“Well—”
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’s Lolly Stoppelgard.”
“Lolly Stoppelgard.”
“Didn’t you think she was nice?”
“Very nice, but—”
“But she’s married. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
“You didn’t see the looks she was giving me, Bern.”
“No, that’s true.”
“And you didn’t hear what she said to me on the way downstairs. ‘Call me,’ she said.”
“So you called her.”
“Uh-huh, and in the long run I’ll get my heart broken, but that’s what hearts are for, and mine’s getting used to it. She’s really nice, isn’t she? Pretty and sharp and funny.”
“It’s a shame to think of all that wasted on Borden Stoppelgard.”
“Well, I look at it this way,” she said. “I figure he’ll be an easy act to follow.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-four
A day or two later I was on the phone with Wally Hemphill when the front door opened. “That’s great,” I told my lawyer. “So I’ll see you then. Listen, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got a customer.”
It was Borden Stoppelgard.
“I got your message,” he said, “and I’d have to say you’ve got your nerve, asking me to stop by. That was some little show you put on the other night. By the time we got out of there, my marriage was hanging by a thread.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Well, it’s all right now. Things blow over, you know? She’s a lot calmer the past couple of days. Now what’s this item you got that I might be interested in? Early Sue Grafton? Marcia Muller? What?”
I took an acetate-wrapped card from my breast pocket and laid it on the counter.
“You know,” he said, “when you talked about finding the Chalmers Mustard card in that schmuck Santangelo’s apartment, I wanted to ask whatever became of it, whether you or Wendy wound up with it. But it didn’t seem like the right time or place.”
“Probably not.”
“So you want to sell it? ‘A Stand-up Triple!’—right? That’s one of the later ones, so it’s worth a few bucks. What do you want for it?”
“Take a closer look, Mr. Stoppelgard.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “ ‘That Home Run Swing.’ Card #40. This is the key card of the whole set. Where the hell did you get this?” Even as I was plucking the card from his fingers, light dawned. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You got Marty’s cards!”
“It looks that way,” I admitted. “So now all you have to do is draw up that lease we talked about, the one that gives me a thirty-year extension at the current rent.”
“Shit.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, hell. This is embarrassing, all right? I sold the building.”
“What?”
“When you’re in the real estate game,” he said, “you don’t marry buildings, you just buy and sell them. Anything’s on the block if the price is right. A few days ago I got an offer that was too good to turn down. So I took it.”
“But—”
“You should be getting a notice in the mail, where to send the check every month and like that. Your new landlord’s something called Poulson Realty. They’ll be in touch.”
“I hope they like baseball cards.”
“Maybe they won’t even notice the lease is ready to expire,” he said, which didn’t strike me as very likely. “Or maybe they’ll give you a break in order to keep the space rented to somebody reliable. Of course, the way they came to me and sought out the building, my guess is they want the space for their own purposes. But you’re a resourceful guy. You can work something out.”
“You sold the building,” I said. “Sold it out from under me.”
“Dammit, why didn’t you say something? How was I supposed to know you had the cards?”
“I didn’t want to announce it in front of everybody.”
“No, but—”
“And you must have already said yes to the deal on the building by then, anyway.”
“Yes, but—”
“So that’s that,” I said, and put the Splendid Splinter in my pocket.
“Listen,” he said, “I still want to buy those cards. The only thing is I’m a little short right now. If you could hold on to them for a couple of months—”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I guess that’s a no. What would you say to a straight exchange of equity? There’s any number of things I could let you have. Could you use a very nice two-bedroom condominium on the Rego Park side of Forest Hills? Look, you could just say no. You don’t have to make that kind of face at me.”
“If I’m going to have to