Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling

“And lesbians. You honestly couldn’t find anything about lesbians?”

“Well, there’s somebody who comes to mind. But I don’t know his name and I don’t think he was a saint.”

“Lesbians have a male saint?”

“He’s probably not a saint anyway.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who is he?”

“That little Dutch boy.”

“ What little Dutch boy?”

“You know. The one who put his finger-”

“Nobody likes a smartass, Bernie. Not even St. Vitus.”

The afternoon sped by without further reference to patron saints. I racked up a string of small sales and moved a nice set of Trollope to a fellow who’d been sniffing around it for weeks. He wrote out a check for sixty bucks and staggered off with the books in his arms.

Whenever I had a minute I called Whelkin without once reaching him. When he didn’t answer the page at the Martingale Club, I left a message for him to call Mr. Haggard. I figured that would be subtle enough.

The phone rang around four. I said, “Barnegat Books?” and nobody said anything for a moment. I figured I had myself a heavy breather, but for the hell of it I said, “Mr. Haggard?”

“Sir?”

It was Whelkin, of course. And he hadn’t gotten my message, having been away from home and club all day long. His speech was labored, with odd pauses between the sentences. An extra martini at lunch, I figured.

“Could you pop by this evening, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

“At your club?”

“No, that won’t be convenient. Let me give you my address.”

“I already have it.”

“How’s that?”

“You gave me your card,” I reminded him, and read off the address to him.

“Won’t be there tonight,” he said shortly. He sounded as though someone had puffed up his tongue with a bicycle pump. He went on to give me an address on East Sixty-sixth between First and Second avenues. “Apartment 3-D,” he said.

“Ring twice.”

“Like the postman.”

“Beg pardon?”

“What time should I come?”

He thought it over. “Half past six, I should think.”

“That’s fine.”

“And you’ll bring the, uh, the item?”

“If you’ll have the, uh, cash.”

“Everything will be taken care of.”

Odd, I thought, hanging up the phone. I was the one running on four hours’ sleep. He was the one who sounded exhausted.

I don’t know exactly when the Sikh appeared. He was just suddenly there, poking around among the shelves, a tall slender gentleman with a full black beard and a turban. I noticed him, of course, because one does notice that sort of thing, but I didn’t stare or gawp. New York is New York, after all, and a Sikh is not a Martian.

Shortly before five the store emptied out. I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand and thought about closing early. Just then the Sikh emerged from the world of books and presented himself in front of the counter. I’d lost track of him and had assumed he’d left.

“This book,” he said. He held it up for my inspection, dwarfing it in his large brown hands. An inexpensive copy of The Jungle Book , by our boy Rudyard K.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Mowgli, raised by wolves.”

He was even taller than I’d realized I looked at him and thought of What’s-his-name in Little Orphan Annie. He wore a gray business suit, a white shirt, an unornamented maroon tie. The turban was white.

“You know this man?”

Punjab, I thought. That was the dude in Little Orphan Annie. And his sidekick was The Asp, and-

“Kipling?” I said.

“You know him?”

“Well, he’s not living now,” I said. “He died in1936.” And thank you, J. R. Whelkin, for the history lesson.

The man smiled. His teeth were very large, quite even, and whiter than his shirtfront. His features were regular, and his large sorrowful eyes were the brown of old-fashioned mink coats, the kind Ray Kirschmann’s wife didn’t want for Christmas.

“You know his books?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have other books, yes? Besides the ones on your shelves.”

An alarm bell sounded somewhere in the old cerebellum. “My stock’s all on display,” I said carefully.

“Another book. A private book, perhaps.”

“I’m afraid not.”

The smile faded until the mouth was a grim line hidden at its corners by the thick black beard. The Sikh dropped a hand into his jacket pocket. When he brought it out there was a pistol in it. He stood so that his body screened the pistol from the view of passers-by and held it so that it was pointed directly at my chest.

It was a very small gun, a nickel-plated automatic. They make fake guns about that size, novelty items, but somehow I knew that this one wouldn’t turn out to be a cigarette lighter in disguise.

It should have looked ridiculous, such a little gun in such a large hand, but I’ll tell you something. Guns, when they’re pointed at me, never look ridiculous.

“Please,” he said patiently. “Let us be reasonable. You know what I want.”

I wanted to look him in the eyes but I couldn’t keep from staring at the gun.

“There is something,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve got it behind the counter, see, because of a personal interest-”

“Yes.”

“But since you’re a fan of Kipling’s, and because your devotion is obvious-”

“The book, please.”

His free hand snatched it up the instant I laid it on the counter. The smile was back now, broader than ever. He tried the book in his jacket pocket but it didn’t fit. He set it back on the counter for a moment while he drew an envelope from an inside pocket. He was still pointing the gun at me and I wished he’d stop.

“For your trouble,” he said, slapping the envelope smartly on the counter in front of me. “Because you are a reasonable man.”

“Reasonable,” I said.

“No police, no troubles.” His smile spread. “Reasonable.”

“Like Brutus.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, he was honorable, wasn’t he? And I’m reasonable.” The book screamed at me from the counter top. “This book,” I said, my hand pawing the air above it. “You’re a stranger in my country, and I can’t let you-”

He scooped up the book and backed off, teeth flashing furiously. When he reached the door he pocketed the gun, stepped quickly outside, and hurried off westward on Eleventh Street.

Gone but not forgotten.

I stared after him for a moment or two. Then I suppose I sighed, and finally I picked up the envelope and weighed it in my hand as if trying to decide how many stamps to put on it. It was a perfectly ordinary envelope of the sort doctors mail their bills in, except that there was no return address in its upper left-hand corner. Just a simple blank envelope, dime-store stationery.

Rudyard Whelkin had agreed to pay me fifteen thousand dollars for the book he wanted. Somehow I couldn’t make myself believe this little envelope contained fifteen thousand dollars.

I opened it. Fifty-dollar bills, old ones, out of sequence.

Ten of them.

Five hundred dollars.

Big hairy deal.

I dragged the bargain table in from the street. Somehow I wasn’t eager to stay open a few extra minutes in order to peddle a few old books at three for a buck. I hung the Closed sign in the window and set about shutting things down, transferring some cash from the register to my wallet, filling out a deposit slip for the check I’d taken in on the Trollope set.

I folded the ten fifties and buttoned them into a hip pocket. And snatched up a brown-wrapped book from a drawer in the office desk, and let myself out of the store and went through my nightly lock-up routine with the steel gates.