Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“But not too grateful to keep you from picking up some jewelry.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “I just realized something. I ran into Isis in the hallway outside Anthea Landau’s room.”

“So?”

“So what the hell was she doing there?”

“Didn’t you say she was waiting for the elevator?”

“So she said, and eventually it came and she got on it, though not a moment too soon. But forget the elevator. What was she doing on the sixth floor?”

“What do you mean?”

“I may not remember Elvis on black velvet,” I said, “but I remember that fire escape. I went out Landau’s bedroom window and climbed down three flights of rickety iron steps until I found a room with nobody home. That was on the third floor, and that’s where Isis lived, and-”

“No.”

“No?”

“I distinctly remember,” he said, “that her room was on the sixth floor. So she had every right to be waiting for an elevator in the sixth-floor hallway. But if her room was on Six, and if the room you broke into was three floors below…”

We looked at each other.

“The cat uses the toilet,” Henry Walden said. “But of course you would know that. You’re probably the one who taught him.”

“The only thing I ever taught him is to play shortstop,” I said, and crumpled a sheet of paper into a ball, flinging it to Raffles’s left. If he was at shortstop, then the ball was headed straight for second base. He pounced on it, robbing me of a base hit.

“Like that,” I said, “but I don’t know how much teaching was involved. He’s responded like that from the very beginning. And I’ve gotten nowhere at teaching him to throw to first, and let’s not even talk about turning the double play.”

“He went right over to the bathroom door,” Walden said, “which I’d closed, not realizing that you left it open for him. He scratched at the door, and I got the idea and opened it, and he went right in and hopped up onto the seat, and used it just as if it were a litter box.”

“Did he flush?”

“Why, no.”

“He never does,” I said. “I’d have to say there’s a limit to what you can teach him. He won’t throw to first base and he won’t flush the toilet after himself. Other than that-” I crumpled paper, hurled it “-he’s not so bad.”

I went on throwing balls of paper to catdom’s Derek Jeter. I’d initiated the routine to hone Raffles’s mousing skills, but as it turned out his mere presence was enough to keep my shop a rodent-free environment. He didn’t actually have to do anything. Still, it wouldn’t do to let him lose his edge, and for my own part I was pleased to discover that throwing balls of paper for him to chase was something I could still do after three stout glasses of Kessler’s Maryland Rye.

There’d been some traffic in the shop, Henry told me, and he’d sold some books, collecting the marked price for each and remembering to charge the sales tax. He’d made out a slip for each sale, something I don’t always remember to do, and had the carbon copies clipped together and tucked away in a corner of the cash register.

A woman had come in with a shopping bag full of books, hoping to sell them, and Henry had persuaded her to leave the books so that I could appraise them at leisure. I took a quick gander at them and saw Mark Schorer’s biography of Sinclair Lewis, a first of James T. Farrell’s Gas-House McGinty, and a batch of boxed Heritage Press editions, never hard to find but always easy to sell.

“Yes, I can use these,” I told him. “I think the Farrell’s genuinely rare. I know I’ve never seen a copy. The only thing harder to find is someone who collects the man, but if I get stuck with it I can always read it.”

“They looked like good books,” he said. “I didn’t have the authority to make her an offer, but I didn’t want her to sell them to somebody else, either.”

I told him he’d done perfectly, and you’d have thought I scratched him behind the ear. He had a short list of phone messages, too, and I went over them. Carolyn had called to cancel our standing date for drinks. Something had come up. A man named Harkness, from Sotheby’s, had called and left a number. And a woman had called several times and had declined to give her name, or leave any message at all.

I said, “The same woman each time? And she didn’t say her name was Alice?”

“She never gave a name.”

“Hmmm. Did she sound as though her name might have been Alice?”

That confused him, and I could understand why. I had the feeling I wouldn’t have asked the question if I hadn’t had that third drink at The Pretenders. Three stiff drinks on an empty stomach-empty unless you count the pastrami sandwiches, and I figured they’d used up all their absorbency neutralizing the cream soda.

It was past closing time. Henry gave me a hand with the table, and I closed the window gates and changed Raffles’s water and did my other evening chores. Raffles had seen it before, but Henry stood around and watched, utterly absorbed, as if I was passing on the tricks of the bookselling trade with my every move.

I wanted to give him a few dollars, but he flat out refused to take money from me. It was a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, he said, and who knew but that it might be good experience? He had to spend the rest of his life somewhere, and he could do worse than spend it in a bookshop.

“The best way to learn a business,” he said, “is to work for somebody who’s already in it. That’s how you learned, isn’t it? By helping out in somebody else’s store?”

“No, I just plunged in,” I said. I started walking, and he fell into step beside me. “I used to buy books from Mr. Litzauer, and he was talking about how he’d move to Florida in a heartbeat if he could just get a halfway decent price for his store, and I asked him what a halfway decent price amounted to in dollars and cents. He fumfered around a little, but then he came up with a figure and I said I’d buy the place.”

“Just like that?”

“I’d come into a few dollars, and I figured why not? Otherwise I’d only piss it away on food and shelter. So I just jumped in with both feet. I didn’t know zip about the business, and if I had I might have had the sense to stay out of it.”

“But you love it,” he said.

“Do I? I guess I do.” And we walked along, talking books and bookselling, and before I knew it my feet showed they had a mind of their own, and a lousy one at that. They took me right to the Bum Rap.

I figured the least I could do was buy the guy a drink. We went in, and I sat where I usually sit, and he sat in Carolyn’s chair, and when Maxine came over I asked Henry what he’d have. He asked me what I was having. I said I’d been drinking rye lately and figured I ought to stick with it, and he said that sounded good.

I didn’t need that drink, but if I’d had it and left I’d have been all right. But then, wouldn’t you know, Henry insisted on buying a round, and how was I supposed to refuse without offending him? There’s no logical justification for the third round, I’ll admit, but after the second round logic went out the window, if it had even strolled through the door in the first place.

It might have helped if I’d eaten something, but eating at the Bum Rap has never helped anybody but the makers of Alka-Seltzer. At one point Henry wanted to order a burrito, but I talked him out of it, and the next thing I remember was playing the jukebox. It’s always a bad sign when I decide to play the jukebox. I always pick the same records-Bunny Berigan’s “I Can’t Get Started” and Patsy Cline’s “Faded Love,” and there’s nothing wrong with either of those two, but it’s still a bad sign when I play them, because it means I’m drunk.