The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

35

When I got to the bookshop Wednesday morning, my bargain table was still right where I’d left it. Only a single book remained, and I wish I could tell you it was Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, but would you believe me if I did?

I didn’t think so.

I fed Raffles, then left the door locked and the lights off and spent the rest of the morning in the back room. I shifted a bookcase and accessed my designated hiding place, making deposits and withdrawals and generally taking inventory.

It was odd. All my life, I’ve never felt more at home than when I’m all by myself in somebody else’s house or apartment, wholly caught up in the commission of a felony. And now I was in my own store and felt for all the world like a trespasser.

I told myself to get over it, and while the sensation lingered, it didn’t keep me from doing what I was there to do. I spent most of my time at my desk, on the phone or the computer or both. Amazon and eBay were nowhere to be found. (Yes, I checked, even as I’d greeted the dawn by looking for my orange and blue Metrocard and finding instead — with a mix of relief and disappointment — my green and white SubwayCard.) But Google and Wikipedia were both alive and well, thank God, and I’d never been more grateful for their existence.

Online, I walked up one virtual street and down another in the comforting anonymity the medium affords. You may recall the cartoon of a hound at a computer: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” I’m sure I left cyber-paw prints all over the place, one always does, but that prospect was way down on my list of Things to Worry About.

I spent the whole day in my office. I’d told Carolyn we’d be on our own for lunch, and I wound up missing that meal altogether. I never did open for business, so all I had to do when I left was put out dry food and fresh water for Raffles and lock up after myself.

By then it would have been time to meet Carolyn at the Bum Rap. My body found the idea of a drink very appealing, but my plans for the evening limited me to Perrier, and I didn’t want to spend the next hour or so in conversation, not even with my best friend. I had things to do.

“‘Let us then be up and doing,’” I said. I spoke the words aloud, because I’d had only myself for company all day, and sooner or later a stretch of solitude will have me talking to myself.

I walked along, trying to pull the rest of Longfellow’s quatrain out of my memory. I got the next line, With a heart for any fate, but then I came up empty. I kept trying, saying the first two lines over and over, and there was a time when an otherwise unexceptional fellow declaiming to himself in trochaic tetrameter might have had people glancing at him, or pointedly not glancing at him, but times had changed, and no one took any apparent notice of me.

Because what do you think when you see a man in animated conversation with an invisible friend? That the city’s really becoming overrun with ambulatory psychotics? That the last thing you want to do is make eye contact with this joker, and might it not be a good idea to, um, cross the street?

Not at all. You assume he’s on a hands-free cell phone.

I took the subway here and there, and a cab or two as well, and sometime a couple of hours after midnight I put an actual key in a lock and opened a door without committing a felony. It was my own apartment on West End Avenue, and I had to remind myself that I had every right to be there.

I needed a shower, and had one. I needed a sandwich, and made myself one. I got in bed and stretched out and closed my eyes, and after a few minutes I sat up and opened them.

And got out of bed, and got dressed, and caught a cab downtown.

That was Wednesday, and the next few days weren’t all that different. I got around a lot, sometimes on foot, more often by cab or subway. I had to remind myself to eat and sleep, but I managed to do enough of both to get through the days and nights.

And then it got to be Saturday.

I was in the Zone, that magical Eden of effortless concentration, wherein all one’s attention is precisely focused and productively directed. A sunbeam thus mobilized through a magnifying glass will start a fire, and I felt just that sort of warmth building within me, and the gaze I fixed on a spot sixty feet away was just that perfectly aimed, and—

And my phone rang.

“Hell,” I said aloud, and put down what I was holding, and dug my phone from my pocket, and saw who it was. “I’d better take this call,” I announced, and while there were people around, I don’t know that anyone was actually within earshot.

“You’re talking to yourself again,” I told myself, and pressed the button and took the call.

Ray Kirschmann said, “There you are, Bernie.”

“Here I am,” I agreed.

“I came by the store,” he said, “and it was darker than the inside of a cow, and locked up just as tight, and I figured you had to be in back. So I called and the phone rang but you didn’t pick up.”

“I couldn’t,” I said, “because I wasn’t there. I’m here.”

“And where you are,” he said, “is someplace noisier than any bookstore I ever been in. You in the subway, Bernie?”

“Close enough,” I said.

“Well, hop on a train, will you? It took some doin’, but I got everybody lined up, and at half past six they’re all gonna start turnin’ up at a certain bookstore we both know, and—”

“Carolyn has a key,” I told him. “She’ll help you open up. I may be a few minutes late.”

It took a few more sentences to reassure him. I ended the call and retrieved my sixteen pound sphere of ebonite from the rack and resumed my original position.

That was easy enough. But could I get back in the Zone?

Three steps...

Release...

Impact... with my ball a little too flush on the head pin, the sort of placement that can leave the seven and ten pins standing in an unmakeable split.

But not this time. When you’re in the Zone, the bowling gods cut you some slack. Flush hit or no, all ten pins went flying.

Nice.

But for the evening’s agenda, I’d have happily lingered at Bowl-Mor for hours — or as long as the Zone held me in its embrace. But I had people waiting, and more important concerns than strikes and spares. I paid up, put my own shoes on again, and walked to my store.

Where the whole world was waiting.

Well, not the whole world, but enough of its population to fill the available space. There was room for me behind the counter, but I paused on my way there to check out the crowd.

I saw Carolyn, of course, and Ray, and four police officers, two of them in uniform and the others no less identifiable for wearing plainclothes. I saw Orrin Vandenbrinck, bookended by his two bodyguards, the NBA-sized chap in the turban and his ninja-like companion. I recognized a florid-faced gentleman whom I’d never met, and a man who’d been wearing a Norfolk jacket the last time I’d seen him.

I saw Peter-Peter, and I saw two women who’d bought books from me, and—

Well, I saw a whole roomful of people.

I stopped at the counter, retrieved a thing or two from the shelf beneath it, found room for them in a pocket. I walked among my guests, bumping into this one and apologizing to that one, managing to keep a smile on my face, even for those souls who were glaring at me. I said things like “Good to see you” and “Lovely evening” and “I had one grunch but the eggplant over there,” and it wasn’t long before I was once again back behind the counter, seated on my stool.

Was I still smiling? Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is that my pocket was empty now.

Showtime.

A bell would have been nice. Or a wine glass, say, to tap with a spoon. Something to get their attention.

What I had was my Scotch Tape dispenser, and what I did was tap it against the side of my cash register. It wasn’t quite the sound I might have wanted it to be, but it did the job. The conversations, none of them all that spirited, died in mid-sentence. Heads turned, and eyes met mine.

I didn’t know what the hell to say to them. But I knew how to begin.

“Good evening,” I said. “I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here.”