The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,36

fists and pounded my counter. I hate it when people do that. “Please, I beg of you,” he said. “I am very high-strung. You must not tease me.”

“It’ll never happen again.”

“I need the documents. You may retain the rest, I want only the documents, and I will pay well, whatever you ask if only it is within reason. I am a reasonable man, and I believe you are a reasonable man yourself, yes?”

“Reason,” I said, “is my middle name.”

He frowned. “I thought ‘Grimes.’ Is it not so?”

“Well, yes. You’re quite right. It was my mother’s maiden name.”

“And Rhodenbarr? This is your name also?”

“That too,” I agreed. “It was my father’s maiden name. But what I just said, about Reason being my middle name, that’s an idiom, an expression, a figure of speech. It’s a way of saying that I’m a reasonable man.”

“But I am just saying this myself, yes?” He shrugged. “It confuses me, this language.”

“It confuses everybody. Right now I’m confused, because I don’t know your name. I like to know a man’s name if I’m going to do business with him.”

“Forgive me,” he said, and reached into his pocket. I braced myself, but when his hand came out the only thing in it was a leather card case. He extracted a card, glanced dubiously at it, and presented it to me.

“Tiglath Rasmoulian,” I read aloud. In response he drew himself up to his full height, if you want to call it that, and clicked his heels.

“At your service,” he said.

“Well,” I said brightly, “I’ll just hang on to this, and if I ever come across these mysterious documents, I’ll certainly keep you in mind. In the meanwhile—”

The red patches blazed on his cheeks. “You are treating me like a child,” he said. There’s not a single S in that sentence, so I don’t see how he could have hissed it, but I swear that’s what he did. “That is not a wise thing to do.”

And his hand went into his pocket.

It stayed there while his eyes swung toward the door, which had just opened. “Ah,” I said, “just the man I’ve been waiting for. Ray, I’d like you to meet Tiglath Rasmoulian. Mr. Rasmoulian, this is Officer Raymond Kirschmann of the New York Police Department.”

I didn’t get the impression that this was what Rasmoulian had been hoping to hear. He took his hand out of his pocket but did not offer it to Ray. He nodded formally to Ray, then to me. “I will go now,” he said. “You will keep it in mind, what we discussed?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Have a good weekend. Oh, don’t forget your book.”

“My book?”

I turned around and grabbed a book off the shelf behind me. It was the Modern Library edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, with slight foxing and the binding shaky. I checked the flyleaf, where I’d priced it reasonably enough at $4.50. I picked up a pencil, casually added a two to the left of the 4, and smiled at him. “It’s twenty-four fifty,” I said, “but your discount brings it down to twenty dollars even. And of course there’s no sales tax, since you’re in the trade.”

He went into his pocket again, but it was the other pocket this time, and he came out with a money clip instead of a gun, which struck me as a vast improvement. He peeled off a twenty while I wrote out a receipt, carefully copying his name from his card. I took his money, slipped his receipt inside the book’s loose front cover, and slid the book into a paper bag. He took it, gave me a look, gave Ray a look, started to say something, changed his mind, and scuttled past Ray and out the door.

“Odd-lookin’ bird,” Ray said, reaching for the card. “‘Tiglath Rasmoulian.’ What kind of name is Tiglath?”

“An unusual one,” I said. “At least in my experience.”

“No address, no phone number. Just his name.”

“It’s what they call a calling card, Ray.”

“Now why in the hell would they call it that? You want to try callin’ him, I’d say you’re shit out of luck, bein’ as there’s no number to call. He in the book business?”

“So he says.”

“An’ that’s his business card? No phone, no address? An’ on the strength of that you gave him a discount and didn’t charge him the tax?”

“I guess I’m a soft touch, Ray.”

“It’s good you’re closin’ early,” he said, “before you give away the store.”

Twenty minutes later I was standing in a gray-green