The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,83

now you’re here in person. You get a chance to look at those books I left for you?”

I hadn’t, of course, and didn’t really have time to look at them now, but I found the sack of them behind the counter and gave its contents a fast look-through. It was good stuff, including a couple of early Oz books with the color frontispiece illustrations intact. We agreed on a price of seventy-five dollars, less the ten bucks Carolyn had advanced him, and I found four twenties in the cash drawer and held them out to him.

“Haven’t got change,” he said. “You want to give me sixty and owe me five, or can I owe you the fifteen? That’s what I’d rather do, but maybe you don’t want to do it that way.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Help me move some furniture and you won’t owe me a dime.”

“Move some furniture? Like move it where, man?”

“Around,” I said. “I want to create a little space here, set up some folding chairs.”

“Expecting a crowd, Bernie?”

“I wouldn’t call it a crowd. Six, eight people. Something like that.”

“Be a crowd in here. I guess that’s why you want to move some stuff around. What’s on the program, a poetry reading?”

“Not exactly.”

“Because I didn’t know you were into that. I read some of my own stuff a while back at a little place on Ludlow Street. Café Villanelle?”

“Black walls and ceiling,” I said. “Black candles set in cat-food cans.”

“Hey, you know it! Not many people even heard of the place.”

“It may take a while to find its audience,” I said, trying not to shudder at the memory of an evening of Emily Dickinson sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and a lifetime supply of in-your-face haiku. This wouldn’t be a poetry reading this afternoon, though, I added. It was more of a private sale.

“Like an auction?”

“In a way,” I said. “With dramatic elements.”

He thought that sounded interesting, and I told him he could hang around and sit in if he wanted. He helped me bring some chairs up front from the back room, and about that time Carolyn turned up. She had a couple of folding chairs at the Poodle Factory, and Mowgli went with her to fetch them.

Right after they left I got a phone call, and when they came back I made a phone call, and then I actually got a couple of customers, one of whom asked about an eight-volume set of Defoe and actually pulled out his wallet when I agreed to knock fifteen dollars off the price. He paid cash, too, and left me to wonder if I’d been making a mistake all these years, closing up on Sundays and holidays.

At twelve-thirty Carolyn went around the corner to the Freedom Fighter Deli and brought back lunch for all three of us. We each got a Felix Dzerzhinsky sandwich on a seeded roll and a bottle of cream soda, and we sat on three of the chairs I’d set up and pushed two of the others together to make a table. Afterward I repositioned the chairs and stood back to survey the result.

Carolyn said it looked good.

“That’s the easy part,” I said. “But do you figure anybody will show up?”

Mowgli put his hands together and made a little bow. “If you build it,” he announced, his voice unnaturally deep and resonant, “they will come.”

And, starting an hour later, they did just that.

The first arrivals were two men I’d never laid eyes on before, but even so I knew them right away. One was tall and hugely fat, with a big nose and chin and impressive eyebrows. He was wearing a white suit and a white-on-white shirt with French cuffs, the links made from a pair of U.S. five-dollar gold pieces. A black beret looked perfectly appropriate on top of his mane of steel-gray hair.

His companion was rain-thin, with a weak chin and not nearly enough space between his shifty little eyes. He had the kind of pallor you could only acquire by sleeping in a coffin. A lit cigarette burned unattended in one corner of his sullen mouth.

The fat man looked us over. He acknowledged Carolyn with a polite nod, checked out Mowgli and me, and guessed correctly. “Mr. Rhodenbarr,” he said to me. “Gregory Tsarnoff.”

“Mr. Tsarnoff,” I said, and shook his hand. “It’s good of you to come.”

“We seem to be early,” he said. “Punctuality is a fault of mine, sir, and the lot of