The Burglar on the Prowl

Seventeen

I took less than an hour for lunch, and was behind the counter and ready for business a few minutes before one. When I thought about it later, I decided that the fat man must have been perched in a doorway down the block or across the street, waiting for me to come back and open up, because I'd no sooner reached for the John Sandford novel and found my place in it than the bell tinkled to proclaim his arrival.

That didn't mean I had to stop reading. I gave him a welcoming smile and a little nod and left him to browse my shelves, which is what just about everybody does upon arrival, unless they've got books to sell me, or they want directions to Grace Church. His hands were empty, so any books he wanted to sell were still on his shelves, and I didn't get the feeling he had the urge to seek out a moment of peace and quiet among the Episcopalians around the corner, so I closed my book and waited to find out what he wanted.

I'm sure it's politically incorrect to call him a fat man, on the general PC principle that the last thing you should do is call a spade a spade. There's probably an acceptable euphemism for it, but I've thus far been spared knowing what it is, so I'll go on calling him fat in the hope that you won't object, and the certain knowledge that he won't.

And he was fat, all right. You see people who are uncomfortable in their fatness, as though all this extra weight just happened to them while they were thinking of something else, and now that they've got it they don't know what to do with it. Well, he wasn't like that. One look at him, the way he held himself, the way he moved, and you somehow knew he'd been fat all his life, a fat baby who'd blossomed into a fat little boy, gone through the awkward years as a fat teenager, and emerged at last as a fat grownup. He didn't have one of those pot bellies that look as though you're trying to smuggle a beach ball through Customs, didn't have skinny arms and legs sticking out of a fat torso like a potato imbedded with toothpicks. No, he was fat all over, and I got the feeling it was fine with him.

He was wearing a blue suit, and if it hadn't been made to measure then it had at the very least been tailored to fit him, and by a tailor who knew what he was doing. It didn't make him look thin, nothing could have, but it did make him look fit and natty and prosperous, and what more can you ask of a few yards of wool?

His shirt was white, with a spread collar, and his tie was this year's width, with regimental stripes of navy and scarlet. I can't tell you about his shoes because I didn't notice them when he walked in, and by the time I looked him over he was standing too close to the counter for his feet to show. But I'll bet they were good shoes. I've never yet known a fat man who didn't spend good money on shoes, and put a lot of care into their selection.

"Mr. Rhodenbarr," he said, making it not a statement but not quite a question, either. When I nodded, confirming his identification, he gave me a smile that showed a lot of teeth. They were perfectly white and perfectly even, so much so that one could hardly avoid the suspicion that they were not perfectly real. But then you could have said much the same thing about the smile.

"A pleasure," he said firmly, and stuck out his hand, which, it will not surprise you to learn, was fleshy. I shook his hand. If there's a way to avoid shaking a hand that's thrust at me, I've yet to figure it out, and I always wind up taking the proffered hand before I have time to wonder whether or not it's something I really want to do. In this case, though, I was perfectly willing to shake hands with the man. He was probably a customer, and even if he wasn't he was cheerful and pleased to see me, so why would I want to leave him standing there with his arm hanging out?

While we were shaking hands, Raffles seized the moment to leap down from his spot in my sunny window and come over to the counter, where he began circling the fat man's feet, rubbing against his ankles in the process. He goes through this routine with me when I open up in the morning, it's his way of letting me know he wants to be fed, as though it would never occur to me without this daily reminder. But he'd been fed already today, and couldn't logically expect a stranger, however well-fed himself, to do the honors.

This would have been a good time for me to check out his shoes, while I was looking down to watch Raffles polish them, but I was too busy noting the cat's uncharacteristic behavior to notice what he was rubbing up against. Anyway, I'll bet they were expensive shoes, and that he had a dozen pairs every bit as good in his closet.

He released my hand and looked down at Raffles. "A pussy cat!" he cried, with evident delight. "I love pussy cats. But what happened to his tail?"

"He was born without it," I said, wondering if I was telling the truth. "He's a Manx."

"Ah, of course. From the Isle of Man. "

"Well, not personally-or do I mean cattily? His forebears were from Man, but Raffles was born right here in New York."

"I love pussy cats," he said once more, and demonstrated his affection by reaching down to give Raffles a little scratch behind the ear. The little devil purred, and the fat man scratched him some more, and Raffles purred some more, and then trotted off and leapt onto an open spot in the cookbooks section, on the fourth shelf from the bottom. From there he gazed at us, and if he'd had a grandparent from Cheshire instead of the Isle of Man, I do believe he'd have been smiling.

"It would be nice to be able to have a cat," the fat man reflected. "If I ever had a bookstore, I would definitely keep a cat in it. I think it was a very wise choice you made."

"Thank you."

"And now," he said, "I believe you have something for me, Mr. Rhodenbarr."

"I do?"

"I believe so."

He smiled again, same as before, and I decided that maybe those were his teeth after all. I was sure he would choose his dentist with as much care as his tailor, and dentistry has come a long ways in recent years. With regular visits to a first-rate dentist, you can have a mouthful of teeth so perfect that anyone would guess they were false.

But what could I have for him?

Oh.

"The Secret Agent,"I said, and he beamed. I reached behind me, picked Conrad's novel off the shelf. I started to hand it to him, and he started to reach for it, and I drew it back a few inches. "But that wasn't you on the phone before, was it?" He hesitated, and I answered my own question. "He sent you to pick up the book for him."

That got me the smile again, and a nod to go with it. I handed it to him and he looked it over, but in a curious fashion; he didn't page through it, didn't even glance at the title or copyright pages, but instead turned it over and over in his hands, as if to absorb the essence of it through his palms. I've seen collectors do something similar with first editions or fine bindings, but this was just a reading copy.

But he was picking it up for the man who'd called, and might not know much about books beyond the fact that a cat fit nicely into a bookstore. Maybe he thought this was what you did when somebody handed you a book.

"Yes," he said with satisfaction. "How much do you want for it?"

"Same as I said on the phone. It's marked twelve. With tax it comes to a little over thirteen, but we can round it off. Thirteen'll be fine."

"Thirteen," he said. Something rather like amusement showed in his blue eyes. He turned to his left-toward Raffles, actually-and took a dark brown leather notecase from his breast pocket, standing so that his body screened its contents from my view. He counted out thirteen bills, or what he said was that number, pronouncing "Thirteen" with the same curious inflection as he returned the notecase to his pocket. He turned to face me again, folded the sheaf of bills in half, and palmed them discreetly to me.

Something made me want to count them, but I told myself not to be silly. The likelihood of his shorting me seemed remote, and did I really care if I got eleven or twelve dollars instead of thirteen? I matched his discretion pound for pound, taking the bills in hand and conveying them smoothly to a pocket. I wrote out a receipt, tucked it into the book and the book into a book-sized brown paper bag, and handed it to him.

"A great pleasure," he said, smiling the broad smile again, and spun neatly around, walking right over to Raffles and scratching him one more time behind the ear. "A truly delightful pussy cat," he said, while Raffles put everything he had into a full-throated purr.

Then the fat man spun once more on his heel and headed for the door.

Even as the bell was tinkling to announce his departure, I drew my hand out of my pocket. I looked down at what I was holding and saw he'd made a mistake, because the top bill was a hundred. Then I fanned the bills, and they were all hundreds.

I may be a thief, but my thieving pulls up short at the bookshop door. I don't rob my customers, or permit them to rob themselves. He'd just forked over $1300 for a twelve-dollar book, and that's more sales tax than anybody should have to pay, fiscal crisis or no fiscal crisis.

I hurried out from behind the counter, yanked the door open and stood on the sidewalk, looking around for him. He was two doors along toward University, standing at the curb and waiting to cross the street. "Hey!" I called, and got no response. If I'd known his name I'd have tried that, but I didn't, so what I called out was, "Hey!Secret Agent! " and started jogging down the sidewalk toward him.

He turned at my voice, but maybe he'd have been better off if he hadn't. He might have seen the car coming, whatever good that would have done him.

I don't know what kind of car it was. I should have, because I saw it coming. I watched it pick up speed, then saw it stop abruptly with a great squeal of brakes. Then I saw the window open on the passenger's side, and saw a gun muzzle protrude from it.

Then I didn't see anything, because my instincts somehow guided me to the appropriate response, which was to throw myself down on the pavement so that a parked car screened me from the guy with the gun. He wasn't pointing it at me, but that could change.

And did, I learned later, because the muzzle turned out to be that of an automatic weapon, and the shooter swept it to and fro, spraying bullets left and right. And straight ahead, of course, which was where the fat man was standing. Several slugs found the car I was hiding behind, and one made a neat hole in the window of an importer of European antiques and went on to lodge in a Country French breakfront of no particular distinction. Others went other places, but a great many went where they were supposed to go, and they didn't do the fat man any good at all.

I didn't know all this just yet, because I hadn't moved. I did turn my head so that I could see what little was visible beneath the car that had just taken a bullet for me, and what I saw was this: the door of the shooter's car opened and somebody, presumably the shooter, hopped out, scurried over to where the fat man lay, reached down, picked up something that could well have been a book-sized brown paper bag, and got back into the car and closed the door. Whereupon the car burned rubber getting out of there, took a right at University without slowing down, and inspired a good many other drivers to honk their horns in righteous indignation.

I don't remember walking over to where the fat man lay, but I must have, because the next thing I knew I was standing there looking down at him. He must have been hit a dozen times, and the blood had poured out of him. He wasn't smiling, and who could blame him?

" Bern?" It was Carolyn. "I came out when I heard shooting. What happened? Who's he? And where'd all the money come from?"

I looked down and saw I was holding the $1300 in my hand. "It's his change," I said. "But I guess there's no point giving it back to him now."