Lawrence Block - The Burglar who thought he was Bogart

“A book?” He looked at me, his eyes as wide as they could get. “You know what I am looking for. And please, I regret the gun. I only meant to impress you.”

“There are better ways to make an impression,” I said.

“Yes, of course, of course. You are of course correct.”

He had a foreign inflection to his speech, and he hissed his S’s. I hadn’t noticed this earlier; it was the sort of subtlety that slides right past me when I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.

“I will pay,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I will pay an excellent price.”

“How much?” And for what, I wondered.

“How much do you want?”

“As much as I can get.”

“You must understand that I am not a rich man.”

“Then perhaps you cannot afford it.” Whatever it was.

“But I must have it!”

“Then I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

He thrust his narrow face forward, aimed his sharp chin at me. “You must assure me,” he said, “that he does not have it.”

“Who are we talking about?”

He grimaced. “Must I say his name?”

“It would help,” I said.

“The fat man,” he said. “Tsarnoff.”

“Sarnoff?”

“Tsarnoff!”

“Tsorry,” I said.

“He is dangerous. And you cannot trust him. Whatever he tells you, it is a lie.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. And I will tell you something else. Whatever he will pay, I will pay more. Tell me he does not already have it!”

“Well,” I said honestly, “I can tell you he didn’t get it from me.”

“Thank God.”

“Just to clear the air,” I said carefully, “and to make sure we’re not at cross-purposes here, suppose you tell me what it is.”

“What it is?”

“That you’re seeking from me. You want it and Tsarnoff wants it. Well, why don’t you come right out and say what it is?”

“You know what it is.”

“Ah, but how do I know that you know what it is?”

“No!” he cried, and doubled up his fists and pounded my counter. I hate it when people do that. “Please, I beg of you,” he said. “I am very high-strung. You must not tease me.”

“It’ll never happen again.”

“I need the documents. You may retain the rest, I want only the documents, and I will pay well, whatever you ask if only it is within reason. I am a reasonable man, and I believe you are a reasonable man yourself, yes?”

“Reason,” I said, “is my middle name.”

He frowned. “I thought ‘Grimes.’ Is it not so?”

“Well, yes. You’re quite right. It was my mother’s maiden name.”

“And Rhodenbarr? This is your name also?”

“That too,” I agreed. “It was my father’s maiden name. But what I just said, about Reason being my middle name, that’s an idiom, an expression, a figure of speech. It’s a way of saying that I’m a reasonable man.”

“But I am just saying this myself, yes?” He shrugged. “It confuses me, this language.”

“It confuses everybody. Right now I’m confused, because I don’t know your name. I like to know a man’s name if I’m going to do business with him.”

“Forgive me,” he said, and reached into his pocket. I braced myself, but when his hand came out the only thing in it was a leather card case. He extracted a card, glanced dubiously at it, and presented it to me.

“Tiglath Rasmoulian,” I read aloud. In response he drew himself up to his full height, if you want to call it that, and clicked his heels.

“At your service,” he said.

“Well,” I said brightly, “I’ll just hang on to this, and if I ever come across these mysterious documents, I’ll certainly keep you in mind. In the meanwhile-”

The red patches blazed on his cheeks. “You are treating me like a child,” he said. There’s not a single S in that sentence, so I don’t see how he could have hissed it, but I swear that’s what he did. “That is not a wise thing to do.”

And his hand went into his pocket.

It stayed there while his eyes swung toward the door, which had just opened. “Ah,” I said, “just the man I’ve been waiting for. Ray, I’d like you to meet Tiglath Rasmoulian. Mr. Rasmoulian, this is Officer Raymond Kirschmann of the New York Police Department.”

I didn’t get the impression that this was what Rasmoulian had been hoping to hear. He took his hand out of his pocket but did not offer it to Ray. He nodded formally to Ray, then to me. “I will go now,” he said. “You will keep it in mind, what we discussed?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Have a good weekend. Oh, don’t forget your book.”

“My book?”

I turned around and grabbed a book off the shelf behind me. It was the Modern Library edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, with slight foxing and the binding shaky. I checked the flyleaf, where I’d priced it reasonably enough at $4.50. I picked up a pencil, casually added a two to the left of the 4, and smiled at him. “It’s twenty-four fifty,” I said, “but your discount brings it down to twenty dollars even. And of course there’s no sales tax, since you’re in the trade.”

He went into his pocket again, but it was the other pocket this time, and he came out with a money clip instead of a gun, which struck me as a vast improvement. He peeled off a twenty while I wrote out a receipt, carefully copying his name from his card. I took his money, slipped his receipt inside the book’s loose front cover, and slid the book into a paper bag. He took it, gave me a look, gave Ray a look, started to say something, changed his mind, and scuttled past Ray and out the door.

“Odd-lookin’ bird,” Ray said, reaching for the card. “‘Tiglath Rasmoulian.’ What kind of name is Tiglath?”

“An unusual one,” I said. “At least in my experience.”

“No address, no phone number. Just his name.”

“It’s what they call a calling card, Ray.”

“Now why in the hell would they call it that? You want to try callin’ him, I’d say you’re shit out of luck, bein’ as there’s no number to call. He in the book business?”

“So he says.”

“An’ that’s his business card? No phone, no address? An’ on the strength of that you gave him a discount and didn’t charge him the tax?”

“I guess I’m a soft touch, Ray.”

“It’s good you’re closin’ early,” he said, “before you give away the store.”

Twenty minutes later I was standing in a gray-green corridor looking through a pane of glass at someone who couldn’t look back. “I hate this,” I said to Ray. “Remember? I told you I hated this.”

“You’re not gonna puke, are you, Bernie?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not. Can we leave now?”

“You seen enough?”

“More than enough, thank you.”

“Well?”

“Well what? Oh, you mean-”

“Yeah. It’s him, right?”

I hesitated. “You know,” I said, “how many times did I actually set eyes on the man? Two, three times?”

“He was a customer of yours, Bernie.”

“Not a very frequent one. And you don’t really look at a person in a bookstore, at least I don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“Not really. What usually happens is we both wind up looking at the book we’re discussing. And if he’s paying by check I’ll look at the check, and at his ID, if I ask him for ID. Of course Candlemas paid me in cash, so I never had any reason to ask to see his driver’s license.”

“So instead you looked at his face, like you just did a minute ago, and that’s how you’re able to tell it’s him.”

“But did I really look at his face?” I frowned. “Sometimes we look without seeing, Ray. I looked at his clothes. I could swear he was a sharp dresser. But now all he’s wearing is a sheet, and I never saw him on his way to a toga party.”