Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“And did they agree?”

“They hadn’t decided, and won’t until they see the material. My hunch is they’ll parcel it out. That means bidding lot by lot. I’ll do that if I have to, but I’d much rather write one enormous check and be done with it.”

Checks, I pointed out, could be a problem. Not for Sotheby’s, he said, but in the event of a private sale, entirely off the record, it would be a simple matter to handle the transaction in cash. He told me he was staying at the Mayflower, on Central Park West, and that he’d be there for the next week or so. There were some other dealers he had to see, booksellers and others, and he might get to a few museums and see a show or two. Gulliver Fairborn, while his great passion, was not his only interest.

We shook hands. I expected a sweaty palm, but his hands were dry, his grip firm. He wasn’t creepy after all. He was just a collector.

I picked up the phone and tried Alice Cottrell and Mowgli, neither of whom answered. I decided they must be having a late lunch together, and talking about me. I put down the phone and reached for O’Hanlon, but before I’d hacked my way through the first overgrown paragraph someone got my attention by clearing his throat. It was my friend with the long face and the silver beard.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said.

“Neither could I.”

“Was that gentleman serious?”

“He’s a collector,” I said. “They’re like that.”

“Not all of them, surely.”

“He’s like the rest of them,” I said, “only more so.”

“This writer,” he said. “Gulliver Fairborn. It sounds as though he wants to…to possess the man. To stuff him and mount him on the wall.”

I nodded. “Properly preserved,” I said, “and perfectly displayed. It’s a passion or a mania, or maybe both, but whatever it is he’s got it. And you can see how it starts. He read a book and he liked it. Well, I read it myself.”

“So did I.”

“And I suppose I could say it changed my life.”

“Some books have changed my life,” he said, grooming his beard with his fingertips. “But then it was time to move on and lead my new life, not fill up the old one with memorabilia. I certainly didn’t come away from any of them with the urge to have a jar full of the author’s fingernail clippings.”

We drifted into a nice bookish conversation, of the sort I’d envisioned when I decided to buy the store. I told him my name, which he’d already overheard, and he gave me a card proclaiming him to be Henry Walden, from Peru, Indiana.

“But I don’t live there anymore,” he said. “I had a little factory, a family business with about twenty employees. We made modeling clay, and then a big toy company came along wanting to gobble us up.” He sighed. “I liked being in the clay business,” he said, “but they made us an offer my brother and sister couldn’t refuse.”

He was outvoted, so he gave in gracefully and took the money, but he didn’t want to go on living in the midst of two siblings he’d ceased to like and twenty out-of-work claymakers who’d ceased to like him. He’d always liked New York, and now he was staying at a hotel while he looked for an apartment and figured out what to do with the rest of his life.

“I’ve even thought-promise me you won’t laugh-of opening a bookstore.”

“I’d be the last person to laugh,” I said, “and I think it’s a great idea. Just remember the surefire way to wind up with a small fortune in the antiquarian book business.”

“What’s that?”

“Start with a large fortune,” I told him. “Meanwhile, do you want some hands-on experience? You can help me carry in the bargain table.”

“You’re closing?”

“I’m afraid I’ve got an appointment half a mile uptown, and I’ve enjoyed our chat so much I’m running late. So if you’d like to give me a hand-”

“I could shop-sit for you,” he offered. “God knows I’ve got nothing else to do. You wouldn’t want me to close up, but if you’ll be back at the end of the day…”

I took ten seconds to decide to leave him in charge. I could tell he was honest, but people have thought that of me, so how could I be sure? In less time than it would have taken to close up, I told him what to do and how to do it. “Anything else,” I said, “people with books to sell, people who want to argue about the price, tell ’em to wait for me. And if there’s anything I haven’t covered, ask Raffles.”

“Meow,” said Raffles.

“Kessler’s Maryland Rye Whiskey,” Martin Gilmartin pronounced, holding his glass to the light. “Sounds like something a bellhop would bring you.” He took a sip, considered it. “Sweet, but not cloying. Still, I don’t think it will win me away from scotch.”

“No.”

“But it has a distinctive taste. Got some body to it. And some authority, I’d say.” He took another sip. “Very American drink, isn’t it? Though I don’t know of anyone who drinks it, American or otherwise. Still, people must. The bottle wasn’t covered with dust.”

I’d asked if the club had rye, not a blend but a straight rye whiskey, and the waiter had brought the bottle of Kessler’s to the table. I’d studied it like an oenophile peering at a wine bottle, trying to make out if it was chateau-bottled. I said it looked all right to me, and he took it away and brought back a couple of drinks, and we were doing our part and drinking them.

“I could imagine John Wayne ordering this,” he said. “In a film, that is to say. Shoving his way through the bat-wing doors of a saloon. The room goes dead silent. He bellies up to the bar. ‘ Rye whiskey,’ he says, putting that take-it-or-leave-it tone of his in each syllable.” He took another sip. “It grows on you,” he said.

We were in the downstairs lounge at his club on Gramercy Park. We were both wearing blue blazers and striped ties, but Marty managed to look a good deal more elegant than I. He always does. He’s tall and slender and silver-haired, with the kind of looks and bearing that belong in a Man of Distinction ad-or in a club like The Pretenders, where the portraits on the walls were mostly of great actors of the past, Drew and Barrymore and Booth. They all looked at once dashing and distinguished, and so did my host.

Marty’s a businessman and an investor and not an actor at all, except insofar as he plays his part in the drama of life. But there are non-actors among The Pretenders-a pulse and a checkbook seem to be the principal qualifications for membership. Marty’s listed on the club’s rolls as a patron of the theater, which generally means no more than that the member so designated goes to a play once in a while. But Marty’s connection is deeper than that. He’s an occasional angel for off-Broadway productions, and he’s made a habit over the years of one-on-one interactions with individual members of the acting profession.

Individual female members, that is to say.

“It said in today’s Daily News that she’s an actress,” I said, and hefted my glass of rye. “I suppose I should have guessed as much.”

“ Isis, you mean.”

“Isis Gauthier. She’s a beauty, Marty. I’ll say that for her.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said, and then looked aghast at his own words. “I can’t believe I said that. ‘It’s not what you think.’ Of course it is, it’s very much what you think, so let me amend my statement. It’s not just what you think.”

“All right.”

He raised his glass, found it empty, and motioned for the waiter. When both our glasses had been refilled, he took a sip and heaved a sigh. He said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever met my friend John Considine.”