The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,47

door open and stood on the sidewalk, looking around for him. He was two doors along toward University, standing at the curb and waiting to cross the street. “Hey!” I called, and got no response. If I’d known his name I’d have tried that, but I didn’t, so what I called out was, “Hey! Secret Agent!” and started jogging down the sidewalk toward him.

He turned at my voice, but maybe he’d have been better off if he hadn’t. He might have seen the car coming, whatever good that would have done him.

I don’t know what kind of car it was. I should have, because I saw it coming. I watched it pick up speed, then saw it stop abruptly with a great squeal of brakes. Then I saw the window open on the passenger’s side, and saw a gun muzzle protrude from it.

Then I didn’t see anything, because my instincts somehow guided me to the appropriate response, which was to throw myself down on the pavement so that a parked car screened me from the guy with the gun. He wasn’t pointing it at me, but that could change.

And did, I learned later, because the muzzle turned out to be that of an automatic weapon, and the shooter swept it to and fro, spraying bullets left and right. And straight ahead, of course, which was where the fat man was standing. Several slugs found the car I was hiding behind, and one made a neat hole in the window of an importer of European antiques and went on to lodge in a Country French breakfront of no particular distinction. Others went other places, but a great many went where they were supposed to go, and they didn’t do the fat man any good at all.

I didn’t know all this just yet, because I hadn’t moved. I did turn my head so that I could see what little was visible beneath the car that had just taken a bullet for me, and what I saw was this: the door of the shooter’s car opened and somebody, presumably the shooter, hopped out, scurried over to where the fat man lay, reached down, picked up something that could well have been a book-sized brown paper bag, and got back into the car and closed the door. Whereupon the car burned rubber getting out of there, took a right at University without slowing down, and inspired a good many other drivers to honk their horns in righteous indignation.

I don’t remember walking over to where the fat man lay, but I must have, because the next thing I knew I was standing there looking down at him. He must have been hit a dozen times, and the blood had poured out of him. He wasn’t smiling, and who could blame him?

“Bern?” It was Carolyn. “I came out when I heard shooting. What happened? Who’s he? And where’d all the money come from?”

I looked down and saw I was holding the $1300 in my hand. “It’s his change,” I said. “But I guess there’s no point giving it back to him now.”

Eighteen

Okay,” Ray said. “Let’s go over it one more time.”

We were in the bookstore, and it wasn’t quite three o’clock yet, for all that it felt like three in the morning. I’d had a rough night with not much sleep in it, and an easy day until the shooting started, and since then I’d been behind my counter with Ray in front of it. He kept asking questions, and I’d have answered more of them if I knew more of the answers.

“So this guy comes in,” he said now, “an’ you never saw him before in your life.”

“Never.”

“Big fat guy, all dressed up in a suit an’ tie, an’ you never set eyes on him before.”

“That’s what I just told you.”

“He never wandered in here before, lookin’ to pick up somethin’ for a friend in the hospital?”

“If he had,” I said, “I’d have remembered him. But it’s hard to remember something that never happened.”

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Some people do it all the time. It’s called tellin’ lies, Bernie, an’ over the years I’ve known you to be a master of it.”

“I’m not lying now,” I said. “He came in and played with my cat and told me I had something for him.”

“An’ you gave him a book.”

“Right.”

“You never saw him before, an’ yet you knew just what book to give him.”

“Oh, God. How many times do I have to tell you the same