The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams Read online

  THE BURGLAR WHO TRADED TED WILLIAMS

  LAWRENCE

  BLOCK

  This one’s for all the people who’ve come up to me over the past ten years to ask me if I was ever going to write another book about Bernie. If half of you buy it, I’ll be rich.

  It’s also for Sue Grafton, a very classy lady indeed. And for Steve King, who wanted a book about cats.

  And it’s for Lynne. You want to know a secret? They’re all for Lynne….

  Contents

  ONE

  “Not a bad-looking Burglar,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d…

  TWO

  “According to Oscar Wilde,” I told Carolyn, “a cynic is…

  THREE

  “The rent’s only part of it,” I said. “There’s more…

  FOUR

  The elevator huffed and puffed getting me to the ninth…

  FIVE

  You’re not here, I told the dead guy. You’re a…

  SIX

  Look, it wasn’t my idea.

  SEVEN

  Well, it seemed to be working out. I’d had plenty…

  EIGHT

  Trade picked up as the afternoon wore on, with a…

  NINE

  “Before I forget,” Wally Hemphill said, “I called your therapist.

  TEN

  I could have gone straight to the store and opened…

  ELEVEN

  “In 1950,” I told Carolyn, “the Chalmers Mustard Company got…

  TWELVE

  Faded jeans, a cocoa-brown turtleneck, and a black leather bikers…

  THIRTEEN

  Ten minutes later we were sitting in a Blimpie Base…

  FOURTEEN

  “Here we are,” I said. “The 1950 Chalmers Mustard Ted…

  FIFTEEN

  Once, briefly, there was a Second Avenue subway. Back in…

  SIXTEEN

  I was somewhere, God knows where, picking a lock. Had…

  SEVENTEEN

  “This is an interesting combination,” Carolyn said, inspecting her sandwich.

  EIGHTEEN

  When I went out for lunch with Martin Gilmartin I…

  NINETEEN

  The car slowed. I pressed a button to lower the…

  TWENTY

  He was right. It was a busy week.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At exactly seven-thirty the following evening I presented myself to…

  TWENTY-TWO

  I had a tense moment there, I have to admit…

  TWENTY-THREE

  I had a lunch date the following day, so I…

  TWENTY-FOUR

  A day or two later I was on the phone…

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  BOOKS BY LAWRENCE BLOCK

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  CHAPTER

  One

  “Not a bad-looking Burglar,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d happen to have a decent Alibi?”

  I didn’t hear the italics. They’re present not to indicate vocal stress but to show that they were titles, or at least truncated titles. “A” Is for Alibi and “B” Is for Burglar, those were the books in question, and he had just laid a copy of the latter volume on the counter in front of me, which might have given me a clue. But it didn’t, and I didn’t hear the italics. What I heard was a stocky fellow with a gruff voice calling me a burglar, albeit a not-bad-looking one, and asking if I had an alibi, and I have to tell you it gave me a turn.

  Because I am a burglar, although that’s something I’ve tried to keep from getting around. I’m also a bookseller, in which capacity I was sitting on a stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books. In fact, I’d just about managed to forsake burglary entirely in favor of bookselling, having gone over a year without letting myself into a stranger’s abode. Lately, though, I’d been feeling on the verge of what those earnest folk in twelve-step programs would very likely call a slip.

  Less forgiving souls would call it a premeditated felony.

  Whatever you called it, I was a little sensitive on the subject. I went all cold inside, and then my eyes dropped to the book, and light dawned. “Oh,” I said. “Sue Grafton.”

  “Right. Have you got ‘A’ Is for Alibi?”

  “I don’t believe so. I had a copy of the book-club edition, but—”

  “I’m not interested in book-club editions.”

  “No. Well, even if you were, I couldn’t sell it to you. I don’t have it anymore. Someone bought it.”

  “Why would anyone buy the book-club edition?”

  “Well, the print’s a little larger than the paperback.”

  “So?”

  “Makes it easier to read.”

  The expression on his face told me what he thought of people who bought books for no better reason than to read them. He was in his late thirties, clean-shaven, with a suit and a tie and a full head of glossy brown hair. His mouth was fulllipped and pouty, and he’d have to lose a few pounds if he wanted a jawline.

  “How much?” he demanded.

  I checked the penciled price on the flyleaf. “Eighty dollars. With tax it comes to”—a glance at the tax table—“eighty-six sixty.”

  “I’ll give you a check.”

  “All right.”

  “Or I could give you eighty dollars in cash,” he said, “and we can just forget about the tax.”

  Sometimes this works. Truth to tell, there aren’t many books on my shelves I can’t be persuaded to discount by ten percent or so, even without the incentive of blindsiding the governor. But I told him a check would be fine, and to make it payable to Barnegat Books. When he was done scribbling I looked at the check and read the signature. Borden Stoppelgard, he had written, and that very name was imprinted at the top of his check, along with an address on East Thirty-seventh Street.

  I looked at the signature and I looked at him. “I’ll have to see some identification,” I said.

  Don’t ask me why. I didn’t really think there could be anything wrong with him or his check. The lads who write hot checks don’t offer you cash in an attempt to avoid paying sales tax. I guess I just didn’t like him, and I was trying to be a generic pain in the neck.

  He gave me a look that suggested as much, then hauled out his wallet and came up with a credit card and driver’s license. I verified his signature, jotted down his Amex number on the back of the check, then looked at the picture on the license. It was him, all right, if a touch less jowly. I read the name, Stoppelgard, Borden, and finally the penny dropped.

  “Borden Stoppelgard,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Of Hearthstone Realty.”

  His expression turned guarded. It hadn’t been all that open in the first place, but now it was a fortress, and he was busy digging a moat around it.

  “You’re my landlord,” I said. “You just bought this building.”

  “I own a lot of buildings,” he said. “I buy them, I sell them.”

  “You bought this one, and now you’re looking to raise my rent.”

  “You can hardly deny that it’s ridiculously low.”

  “It’s eight seventy-five a month,” I said. “The lease is up the first of the year, and you’re offering me a new lease at ten thousand five hundred dollars a month.”

  “I imagine that strikes you as high.”

  “High?” I said. “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I can assure you—”

  “Try stratospheric,” I suggested.

  “—that it’s very much in line with the market.”

  “All I know,” I said, “is that it’s completely out of the question. You
want me to pay more each month than I’ve been paying for an entire year. That’s an increase of what, twelve hundred percent? Ten-five a month is more than I gross, for God’s sake.”

  He shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to move.”

  “I don’t want to move,” I said. “I love this store. I bought it from Mr. Litzauer when he decided to retire to Florida, and I want to go on owning it until I retire, and—”

  “Perhaps you should start thinking early retirement.”

  I looked at him.

  “Face it,” he said. “I’m not raising the rent because I’m out to get you. Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Your rent’s been a steal since before you even bought the store. Some idiot gave your buddy Litzauer a thirty-year lease, and the escalators in it didn’t begin to keep pace with the realities of commercial real estate in an inflationary economy. Once I get you out of here I’ll rip out all that shelving and rent the place to a Thai restaurant or a Korean greengrocer, and do you know what kind of rent I’ll get for a nice big space like this? Forget ten-five. Try fifteen a month, fifteen thousand dollars, and the tenant’ll be glad to pay it.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?”

  “Not my problem. But I’m sure there are places in Brooklyn or Queens where you can get this kind of square footage at an affordable rent.”

  “Who goes there to buy books?”

  “Who comes here to buy books? You’re an anachronism, my friend. You’re a throwback to the days when Fourth Avenue was known throughout the world as Booksellers’ Row. Dozens of stores, and what happened to them? The business changed. Paperback books undermined the secondhand market. The general used-book store became a thing of the past, with the owners retiring or dying off. The few who are left are on the tail end of long-term leases like yours, or they’re run by canny old codgers who bought their buildings outright years ago. You’re in a dying business, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Here we are on a beautiful September afternoon and I’m the only customer in your shop. What does that say about your business?”

  “I guess I ought to be selling kiwi fruit,” I said. “Or cold noodles with sesame sauce.”

  “You could probably make this enterprise profitable,” he said. “Throw out ninety-five percent of this junk and specialize in high-ticket collector items. That way you could make do with a tenth the square footage. You could get off the street and run the whole operation out of an upstairs office, or even out of your home. But I don’t want to tell you how to run your business.”

  “You’re already telling me to get out of it.”

  “Am I supposed to support you in a doomed enterprise? I’m not in business for my health.”

  “But,” I said.

  “But what?”

  “But you’re a patron of the arts,” I said. “I saw your name in the Times last week. You donated a painting to a fund-raising auction to benefit the New York Public Library.”

  “My accountant advised it,” he said. “Explained to me how I’ll save more in taxes than I’d have made selling the painting.”

  “Still, you have literary interests. Bookstores like this one are a cultural asset, as important in their own way as the library. You can hardly fail to appreciate that. As a collector—”

  “An investor.”

  I pointed at “B” Is for Burglar. “An investment?”

  “Of course, and a hell of a good one. Women crime writers are a hot item right now. Alibi was less than fifteen dollars when it was published a dozen or so years ago. Do you know what a mint copy with dust jacket will bring now?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “Somewhere around eight-fifty. So I’m buying Grafton, I’m buying Nancy Pickard, I’m buying Linda Barnes. I have a standing order at Murder Ink for every first novel by a female author, because how can you tell who’s going to turn out to be important? Most of them won’t ever amount to much, but this way I don’t have to worry about missing the occasional book that jumps from twenty dollars to a thousand in a few years’ time.”

  “So you’re just interested in investment,” I said.

  “Absolutely. You don’t think I read this crap, do you?”

  I pushed his credit card across the counter, followed it with his drivers license. I picked up his check and tore it in half, then in half again.

  “Get out of here,” I said.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me,” I said. “I sell books to people who enjoy reading them. It’s anachronistic, I know, but it’s what I do. I also sell them to people who get satisfaction out of collecting rare copies of their favorite authors, and probably to a few visually oriented souls who just like the way good books look on the wall flanking the fireplace. I may even have a few customers who buy with an eye toward investment, although it strikes me as an uncertain way of providing for one’s old age. But I haven’t yet had a customer who was openly contemptuous of what he was buying, and I don’t think I want that kind of customer. I may not be able to pay the rent, Mr. Stoppelgard, but as long as it’s my store I ought to be able to decide whose check I take.”

  “I’ll give you cash.”

  “I don’t want your cash either.”

  I reached for the book, but he snatched it away from me. “No!” he cried. “I found it and I want it. You have to sell it to me.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “You do! I’ll file suit if I have to. But I won’t have to, will I?” He got a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet, slapped it on the counter. “You can keep the change,” he said. “I’m taking the book. If you try to stop me you’ll find yourself charged with assault.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “I’m not going to fight you for it. Hold on a second and I’ll get you your change.”

  “I told you to keep it. What do I care about the change? I just bought a five-hundred-dollar book for a hundred dollars. You damned fool, you don’t even know how to price your own stock. No wonder you can’t afford the rent.”

  CHAPTER

  Two

  “According to Oscar Wilde,” I told Carolyn, “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I’d say that fits Borden Stoppelgard well enough. He doesn’t even read the books but he knows what they’re worth. I called a couple of the mystery bookstores, and the son of a bitch is right about the prices. ‘A’ Is for Alibi has been bringing close to a thousand in decent shape. And my copy of Burglar was a five-hundred-dollar book.”

  “I have both of them.”

  “Really?”

  “In paperback.”

  “In paperback they’re worth something like a buck apiece.”

  “That’s okay, Bern. I wasn’t planning on selling them anyway. I have all the early books in paperback. I didn’t start buying Sue Grafton in hardcover until the book about the photographer who took blackmail shots of the school principal and the nun. I forget the title.”

  “‘F’ Is for Stop.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. I think it’s the first book of hers I ever picked up in hardcover. Or was it the one about the exploitative sex therapist?”

  “‘G’ Is for Spot?”

  “Great book. I know I’ve got that one in hardcover, and I think I’ve got the F one, too, but I didn’t buy them for investment. I just didn’t want to wait a year for them to come out in paperback. Bern? Do you suppose she’s gay?”

  “Sue Grafton? Gee, I don’t think so. Isn’t she married?”

  She shook her head, impatient. “Not Sue Grafton,” she said. “I’m positive she’s straight. Didn’t I tell you I met her at a signing last spring at Foul Play? Her husband was there, too. Real muscular guy, he looked like he could bench-press a Pontiac. No, I would say she’s definitely straight.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “No lesbian vibes at all. Hundred percent heterosexual, that’s my take on the woman.” She sighed. “What a waste.”

  “Well, if she’s straight—”
/>   “Definitely, Bern. No question.”

  “Then who were you wondering about?”

  “Kinsey.”

  “Kinsey?”

  “Kinsey Millhone.”

  “Kinsey Millhone?”

  “What are you, an echo? Yeah, Kinsey Millhone. What’s the matter with you, Bernie? Kinsey Millhone, leading private detective of Santa Teresa, California. Jesus, Bern, don’t you read the books?”

  “Of course I read the books. You think Kinsey’s gay?”

  “I think there’s a good possibility.”

  “She’s divorced,” I said, “and she’s involved with men from time to time, and—”

  “Camouflage, Bern. I mean, look at the evidence, okay? She doesn’t care about makeup, she’s got this one all-purpose dress that she’s still wearing ten books into the series, she’s tough-minded, she’s hard-boiled, she’s sensible, she’s logical—”

  “Must be a lesbian.”

  “My point exactly. God, look at the men she gets involved with, like that shmendrick of a cop. Pure camouflage.” She shrugged. “Now, I can certainly understand why she’d be in the closet. She’d lose a lot of readers otherwise. But who knows what she gets mixed up in between books?”

  “Did you ask Sue Grafton?”

  “Are you kidding? I could barely bring myself to speak. The last thing I was gonna do was ask her what Kinsey liked to do in bed. She signed her book for me, Bern. In fact, she inscribed it to me personally.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Isn’t it? I said, ‘Miss Grafton, my name’s Carolyn, I’m a real Kinsey Millhone fan.’ And she inscribed it, ‘To Carolyn, a real Kinsey Millhone fan.’ ”

  “That’s pretty imaginative.”

  “I’ll say. Well, the woman’s a writer, Bern. Anyway, I’ve got a signed copy of one of her books, but I don’t suppose it’ll ever be worth a thousand dollars, because there must be a ton of them. The line that day reached all the way to the corner. It’s the book about the doctor. Have you read it yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you can’t borrow my copy, because it’s autographed. You’ll have to wait for the paperback. Since you haven’t read it I won’t say anything about the murder method, but I have to tell you it’s a shocker. The guy’s a proctologist, if that gives you a hint. Why can’t I ever remember the titles?”