The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling

CHAPTER Five

I don’t know what time I got into bed, but by some miracle I got out of it in time to open the store by ten-thirty. At a quarter to eleven I called the number on J. Rudyard Whelkin’s business card. I let it ring unheeded for a full minute, then dialed 411 for the number of the Martingale Club. They charge you for those calls, and I could have taken a minute to look it up in the White Pages, but I’d earned a fortune the night before and I felt like sharing the wealth.

The attendant at the Martingale Club said he didn’t believe Mr. Whelkin was on the premises but that he’d page him all the same. Time scuttled by. The attendant reported mournfully that Mr. Whelkin had not responded to the page, and would I care to leave a message? I decided not to.

A couple of browsers filtered into the store. One of them looked potentially larcenous and I kept an eye on him as he worked his way through Biography and Belles-Lettres. He surprised me in the end by spending a few dollars on a volume of Macaulay’s historical essays.

Carolyn popped in a few minutes after noon and deposited a paper bag on the counter. “Felafel sandwiches on pita bread,” she announced. “I decided I was in the mood for something different. You like felafel?”

“Sure.”

“I went to that place at the corner of Broadway and Twelfth. I can’t figure out whether the owner’s an Arab or an Israeli.”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, I’d hate to say the wrong thing. I was going to wish him a happy Rosh Hashanah, but suppose that’s the last thing he wants to hear? So I just took my change and split.”

“That’s always safe.”

“Uh-huh. You missed a terrific meal last night. I ate half the stew and froze the rest and started watching the new sitcom about the three cheerleaders. I turned the sound off and it wasn’t half bad. But I got to bed early and I got a ton of sleep and I feel great.”

“You look it.”

“You, on the other hand, look terrible. Is that what a night on club soda does to a person?”

“Evidently.”

“Maybe you got too much sleep. That happens sometimes.”

“So they tell me.”

The phone rang. I went and took it in the little office in back, figuring it was Whelkin. Instead it was a slightly breathless woman who wanted to know if the new Rosemary Rogers book had come in yet. I told her I handled used books exclusively and suggested she call Brentano’s. She asked what their number was and I was reaching for the phone book to look it up when I came to my senses and hung up on her.

I went back to my felafel. Carolyn said, “Something wrong?”

“No. Why?”

“You jumped three feet when the phone rang. The coffee okay?”

“Fine.”

“The felafel?”

“Delicious.”

Mondays and Wednesdays I buy lunch and we eat at the Poodle Factory. Tuesdays and Thursdays Carolyn brings lunch to the bookshop. Fridays we go out somewhere and toss a coin for the check. All of this is subject to last-minute cancellation, of course, in the event of a business luncheon, such as my earlier date with Whelkin.

“Oh,” I said, and finished swallowing a mouthful of felafel. “I haven’t squandered the morning.”

“I never said you had.”

“I did some research. On patron saints.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s my patron saint?”

“I don’t think you’ve got one.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know. I checked a lot of different books and kept finding partial lists. I don’t know if there’s an official all-inclusive list anywhere.” I groped around, found the notepad I’d been scribbling on earlier. “I told you about St. John of God, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but I forget what. The store?”

“Patron saint of booksellers. He was born in Portugal in 1495. He worked as a shepherd, then became a drunkard and gambler.”

“Good for him. Then he switched to club soda and became a saint.”

“The books don’t say anything about club soda. At forty he went through a mid-life crisis and moved to Granada. In 1538 he opened a shop-”

“To sell books?”

“I suppose so, but did they have bookstores then? They barely had movable type. Anyway, two years later he founded the Brothers Hospitalers, and ten years later he died, and his picture’s hanging over my desk, if you’d care to see it.”

“Not especially. That’s all you found out?”

“Not at all.” I consulted my notes. “You asked if there was a patron saint of burglars. Well, Dismas is the patron saint of thieves. He was the Good Thief.”

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“He’s also one of the patron saints of prisoners, along with St. Joseph Cafasso. Thieves and prisoners do overlap, although not as thoroughly as you might think.”

“And prisoners need an extra patron saint because they’re in real trouble.”

“Makes sense. A burglar’s a thief, when all is said and done, and there doesn’t seem to be a special burglar’s saint, but there’s always St. Dunstan.”

“Who he?”

“The patron saint of locksmiths. Burglars and locksmiths perform essentially the same task, so why shouldn’t they both turn to Dunstan in time of stress? Of course, if the situation’s really dire, a burglar could turn to St. Jude Thaddeus or St. Gregory of Neocaesarea.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Because those guys are the patron saints of persons in desperate situations. There were times in my burglar days when I could have used their help. For that matter, I didn’t know about St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of seekers of lost objects.”

“So if you couldn’t find what you were looking for…”

“Precisely. You’re laughing. That means I should give thanks to St. Vitus.”

“The patron saint of dancers?”

“Comedians, actually. Dancers have somebody else, but don’t ask me who.”

“What about dog groomers?”

“I’ll have to consult more sources.”

“And lesbians. You honestly couldn’t find anything about lesbians?”

“Well, there’s somebody who comes to mind. But I don’t know his name and I don’t think he was a saint.”

“Lesbians have a male saint?”

“He’s probably not a saint anyway.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who is he?”

“That little Dutch boy.”

“What little Dutch boy?”

“You know. The one who put his finger-”

“Nobody likes a smartass, Bernie. Not even St. Vitus.”

The afternoon sped by without further reference to patron saints. I racked up a string of small sales and moved a nice set of Trollope to a fellow who’d been sniffing around it for weeks. He wrote out a check for sixty bucks and staggered off with the books in his arms.

Whenever I had a minute I called Whelkin without once reaching him. When he didn’t answer the page at the Martingale Club, I left a message for him to call Mr. Haggard. I figured that would be subtle enough.

The phone rang around four. I said, “Barnegat Books?” and nobody said anything for a moment. I figured I had myself a heavy breather, but for the hell of it I said, “Mr. Haggard?”

“Sir?”

It was Whelkin, of course. And he hadn’t gotten my message, having been away from home and club all day long. His speech was labored, with odd pauses between the sentences. An extra martini at lunch, I figured.

“Could you pop by this evening, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

“At your club?”

“No, that won’t be convenient. Let me give you my address.”

“I already have it.”

“How’s that?”

“You gave me your card,” I reminded him, and read off the address to him.

“Won’t be there tonight,” he said shortly. He sounded as though someone had puffed up his tongue with a bicycle pump. He went on to give me an address on East Sixty-sixth between First and Second avenues. “Apartment 3-D,” he said.

“Ring twice.”

“Like the postman.”

“Beg pardon?”

“What time should I come?”

He thought it over. “Half past six, I should think.”

“That’s fine.”

“And you’ll bring the, uh, the item?”

“If you’ll have the, uh, cash.”

“Everything will be taken care of.”

Odd, I thought, hanging up the phone. I was the one running on four hours’ sleep. He was the one who sounded exhausted.

I don’t know exactly when the Sikh appeared. He was just suddenly there, poking around among the shelves, a tall slender gentleman with a full black beard and a turban. I noticed him, of course, because one does notice that sort of thing, but I didn’t stare or gawp. New York is New York, after all, and a Sikh is not a Martian.

Shortly before five the store emptied out. I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand and thought about closing early. Just then the Sikh emerged from the world of books and presented himself in front of the counter. I’d lost track of him and had assumed he’d left.

“This book,” he said. He held it up for my inspection, dwarfing it in his large brown hands. An inexpensive copy of The Jungle Book, by our boy Rudyard K.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Mowgli, raised by wolves.”

He was even taller than I’d realized I looked at him and thought of What’s-his-name in Little Orphan Annie. He wore a gray business suit, a white shirt, an unornamented maroon tie. The turban was white.

“You know this man?”

Punjab, I thought. That was the dude in Little Orphan Annie. And his sidekick was The Asp, and-

“Kipling?” I said.

“You know him?”

“Well, he’s not living now,” I said. “He died in1936.” And thank you, J. R. Whelkin, for the history lesson.

The man smiled. His teeth were very large, quite even, and whiter than his shirtfront. His features were regular, and his large sorrowful eyes were the brown of old-fashioned mink coats, the kind Ray Kirschmann’s wife didn’t want for Christmas.

“You know his books?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You have other books, yes? Besides the ones on your shelves.”

An alarm bell sounded somewhere in the old cerebellum. “My stock’s all on display,” I said carefully.

“Another book. A private book, perhaps.”

“I’m afraid not.”

The smile faded until the mouth was a grim line hidden at its corners by the thick black beard. The Sikh dropped a hand into his jacket pocket. When he brought it out there was a pistol in it. He stood so that his body screened the pistol from the view of passers-by and held it so that it was pointed directly at my chest.

It was a very small gun, a nickel-plated automatic. They make fake guns about that size, novelty items, but somehow I knew that this one wouldn’t turn out to be a cigarette lighter in disguise.

It should have looked ridiculous, such a little gun in such a large hand, but I’ll tell you something. Guns, when they’re pointed at me, never look ridiculous.

“Please,” he said patiently. “Let us be reasonable. You know what I want.”