The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,62
stores do you have, smartie?”
“I was closed today, Carolyn.”
“That’s what you think.”
“You opened up for me?”
“Well, I had to go in to feed Raffles,” she said, “and I got to thinking that somebody might be trying to get in touch with you. Like Tiggy, for instance, or Candlemas, or the other one whose name was mentioned. The fat man. Sarnoff.”
“Tsarnoff,” I said.
“Whatever you tsay, Bern. I figured nobody could reach you at home, and they didn’t know you were staying here, and you don’t have an answering machine on either of your phones, so how could they get in touch with you?”
“They can’t,” I said, “which should make it hard for them to kill me.”
“Well, I didn’t think anybody would try to kill me, so I figured I’d spend the day in the bookstore. It’s not as if I had anything else to do. My store’s closed for the weekend.”
“So was mine. How did you manage? The bargain table must have been a bitch to move.”
“For a small weak woman like me? That’s what I figured. I left it inside.”
“Really? It’s a good draw, it lets people know they’re passing a bookstore.”
“Bern, I wasn’t looking to do big business. I just wanted to be open in case anybody came by with a message for you. I sold some books, but that wasn’t the point.”
“You actually sold some books?”
“What’s so remarkable about that? You sit behind the counter, people bring up a book, you check the price and add the tax and take their money and make change. It’s not nuclear physics.”
“How much did you take in?”
“I don’t know, a little under two hundred dollars. Whatever it was, I left it in the register.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t send it to the hip dysplasia people.”
“I wish I’d thought of it. A lot of your regular customers asked about you. They wanted to know if you were sick. I told ’em you were up till all hours and had a killer hangover.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“People like hearing that sort of thing, Bernie. It’s a humanizing flaw, they identify with you and feel superior to you at the same time. Anyway, I didn’t want to say you were sick or they might worry.”
“You could have said I had hip dysplasia.”
“You think that’s funny, but—”
“I know, I know, it’s no laughing matter.”
“Well, it’s not.” She poured herself a little more Scotch, hanging in with a vengeance. “Mowgli came by with a shopping bag full of treasures from the Twenty-sixth Street flea market. He said he was sure you’d want them, but I said I couldn’t do any buying.”
“Is he going to come back?”
“He’ll have to. I gave him a ten-dollar advance and got him to leave the books for you to look at. If they’re not worth ten dollars—”
“They’ll be worth it. You did the right thing, otherwise he’d have taken them to somebody else. Anybody else come in that I should know about?”
“Tiggy Rastafarian.”
“Rasmoulian.”
“I know, I was being funny.”
“You’re joking anyway, right? He didn’t really come in.”
“Sure he did. I think that book confused him, Bern. He didn’t know what to make of it. He’s a snappy dresser, the way you said, and I guess he’s pretty short, but you made him sound like a midget.”
“For a full-grown person,” I said, “he’s not.”
“He’s taller than I am, Bern.”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different? Because I’m a woman? Why should that make a difference?”
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a clear-cut case of sex discrimination, and I think there must be a government agency you can call. What did he want?”
“Tiggy? He wouldn’t come right out and say, and then he didn’t get a chance to say anything, because Ray came in.”
“Again? Tiggy must think he lives there.”
“That’s what Ray seems to think. He comes in and makes himself right at home, doesn’t he? He remembered Tiggy, who I guess would be hard to forget, wouldn’t he? Ray greeted him by name, but of course he got the name wrong, not that Tiggy bothered correcting him. He just got the hell out of there, which gave Ray a chance to do what he’d wanted to do from the minute he walked in.”
“What was that?”
“What he always does. Make short jokes. ‘Hey, Carolyn, it does my heart good to see you finally got a boyfriend your own size.’ And that was just to get himself warmed up. I happen to be altitudinally challenged. What’s the big deal?”