Catch and Release

A Burglar’s Eye View of Greed

So I walked over to Barnegat Books on East Eleventh Street for a word with my favorite bookseller, Bernie Rhodenbarr. He was behind the counter with his nose in a book while his cat lay in the window, soaking up the sun. The store’s sole customer was a young woman with multiple piercings who was reading a biography of St. Sebastian.

“I understand the used-book business is hot these days,” I said. “You must be making money hand over fist.”

He gave me a look. “Every now and then,” he said, “somebody actually buys a book. It’s a good thing I don’t have to depend on this place to keep body and soul together.”

He doesn’t have to pay rent, either, having bought the building with the profits from his other career as the last of the gentleman burglars. Seriously, I told him, lots of people were making big bucks selling books on the Internet. Couldn’t he do the same?

“I could,” he agreed. “I could list my entire stock on eBay and spend my time wrapping books and shlepping them to the Post Office. I could close the store, because who needs a retail outlet when you’ve got a computer and a modem? But I didn’t open this store to get rich. I opened it so I could have a bookstore, and have fun running it, and occasionally meet girls. See, I’m not greedy.”

“But you steal,” I pointed out.

He frowned, and nodded toward St. Sebastian’s biggest fan. “Not to get rich,” he said. “Only enough to get by. I don’t want to get rich, see, because it would turn me into a greedy pig.”

“You’re saying the rich are greedy?”

“They don’t necessarily start out that way,” he said, “but that’s how it seems to work. Look at all the CEOs with their eight-figure salaries. The more you pay them, the more they want, and when the company goes down the tubes they float down on their golden parachutes and look for another corporation to sink. Or look at baseball.”

“Baseball?”

“America’s pastime,” he said. “The players used to have off-season jobs so they could make ends meet. The owners were always rich guys, but they were in it for the sport. They didn’t expect to make money.”

“And?”

“And now the players average something like two million dollars a year, and the owners have watched their investments increase in value by a factor of five or ten, and everybody’s rich, so everybody’s greedy. And that’s why we’re going to have a strike this fall. Because they’re all pigs, and all they want is more.”

“In other words,” I said, “success turns men to swine.”

“And women,” he said. “Success is an equal-opportunity corrupter. And it seems to be inevitable nowadays. Nobody’s happy just running a business and making a living. Everybody wants to grow the business, and either franchise it or sell it to a huge corporation. Luckily, I’m safe. Nobody’s aching to franchise Barnegat Books, and no multinational corporation’s trying to buy me out.”

“So you’ll go on selling books.”

“Every now and then,” he said, as the young woman put St. Sebastian back on the shelf and walked away empty-handed. “I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing I’m a thief. It keeps me honest.”