The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

5

So it was a typical morning at Barnegat Books, except that the level of in-store activity was atypically high. With Raffles fed and his water dish freshened, I lugged the bargain table outside and had barely managed to settle myself behind the counter before an older gentleman came in from the street with three of the books from that very table.

“I’ve been looking far and wide for this one,” he said, and I wondered why. It was the Lonely Planet guidebook for Indonesia, and I’m sure it had once been useful and definitive and up-to-date, but that would have been in 1984, the publication date clearly visible on the cover. An out-of-date travel guide is about as useful as a take-out menu from a restaurant that’s gone out of business, and about as much in demand. Such items come into my hands from time to time as part of a larger lot, and more often than not they go directly into the trash, but sometimes one winds up on the bargain table, and sometimes somebody decides it’s just what he has to have.

It’s a nice way to start the day. That was ten dollars I hadn’t had before, and three books I hadn’t wanted in the first place, and he was no sooner out the door with his treasures than a woman came in, and before the door could swing shut, a man came in wearing a suit and carrying a Coach briefcase.

He wanted to know where the Russian novelists were, and I refrained from replying that most of them were dead or in the Gulag. I told him instead that, while mysteries and science fiction had their own sections, all the rest of the store’s fiction was in a single section, to which I pointed him.

“The books are shelved alphabetically by author,” I said. “Is there any particular one you’re looking for?”

“I’m actually looking for a translator,” he said. “Constance Garnett.”

“She translated most of them, didn’t she? Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev—”

“And Gogol. And Goncharov, and Ostrovsky, and one other writer I can’t think of.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Herzen,” he said, thinking of him after all. “Alexander Herzen. How could I forget him?”

I could forget him with no trouble at all, I thought, and in fact couldn’t be sure I’d ever heard of him in the first place. “I don’t think I have anything by Herzen at the moment,” I said. “There’s some of most of the others, especially Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, though I’m afraid I shelved the books without bothering to take note of the translator. But why don’t you look for yourself?”

While he was doing so, I went over to the mystery section to look for something to read. I’d finished What Mad Universe before I’d gone to sleep, and among other things it had reminded me how much I liked Fredric Brown. I had half a dozen of his mysteries, none of them first editions, although Thirty Corpses Every Thursday, one of the volumes Dennis McMillan had published of Brown’s stories from the detective pulps, was certainly collectible if not very pricey. I looked it over, decided I wanted a novel rather than a batch of short stories, and decided too that it didn’t matter if it was a book I’d already read.

I chose a paperback of The Screaming Mimi, which I remembered fondly if dimly, and settled on my stool behind the counter. I hadn’t got past the first page when a woman approached carrying a copy of a late Philip Roth novel, The Plot Against America. “I think this is the one I want,” she said. “The one where Lindbergh is the bad guy. I guess after his kid was kidnapped you couldn’t blame him for having a short fuse.”

“Um,” I said. She was, one might say, a woman of an uncertain age, and whether or not she was age-appropriate for the proprietor of an antiquarian bookshop was an open question. She was certainly attractive enough to make the cut, with her honey-colored hair and her hazel eyes.

“But what I wondered,” she said, “is whether this is the one where he talks about his stamp collection.”

“Lindbergh?”

“Was Lindbergh a stamp collector? No, the narrator.” She pointed to the center of the book’s front cover, where an American stamp reposed, overprinted with an uncompromising swastika.

“It’s a stamp from the National Parks series,” she said. “It says Yosemite on it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. May I ask why this matters?”

“It’s my brother,” she said. “He’s a stamp collector. In, like, an obsessive way.”

“I suppose that’s the best way to collect anything.”

“Well, Gregory’s on the spectrum,” she said, “but at the high-functioning end of it. And I think he’d really like Philip Roth, but it’s hard to get him to read anything that isn’t about fellatio.”

“Um.”

“Philately,” she said. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I said that.”

“Um.”

“I swear I don’t know where that came from,” she said, and licked her lips, and blushed deeply when she realized what she’d just done.

“Stamp collecting,” I said, because somebody really had to say something.

“My brother,” she said, nodding gratefully.

“He collect stamps.”

“Passionately,” she said, and her blush deepened. “So I wondered, I thought you might know—”

“If the narrator of The Plot Against America, who like the author is conveniently named Philip Roth—”

“Really?”

“—also collects stamps. He does.”

“You read the book?”

“I did, and it’s not as though the plot hinges on young Philip’s stamp collection, but he does talk about it.”

“Oh, that’s great! In that case—”

“But you don’t have to take my word for it,” I said. “You can check the book description when you order it from Amazon.”

Now that was a snarky thing to say, and I couldn’t tell you what prompted me to say it. Whatever it was, her reaction wasn’t what I’d have expected. She didn’t appear to be insulted or offended. She just looked puzzled.

She said, “Amazon? You mean like the river?”

“The river that drains a continent.”

“In, like, South America? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Um—”

“Or am I turning into an Amazon myself?” She flexed a bicep. “Like, you know, putting in too many hours at the gym?”

“Um.”

“I’d like to buy this,” she said, brandishing the book. “How much is it, anyway?” She checked the publisher’s price on the cover. “Twenty-six dollars?”

“That’s what Houghton Mifflin got for it,” I said, “when it was fresh off the press.” I took the book from her, checked the flyleaf. “Fifteen dollars,” I said.

That was perfect, she told me. Could I take American Express? I could take it or leave it, I said, but yes, I assured her, I took all major credit cards. She handed me her card, and I did what one does, and so did she, and I bagged the book and handed it to her, along with her receipt.

I said I hoped her brother liked the book.

“Well, it’s a crap shoot,” she said. “Either he’ll read five pages and then never pick it up again, or he’ll read it over and over again until there’s no ink left on the pages. I, uh, wrote my phone number on the receipt. In case, you know, American Express wants it.”

“Um.”

“Or, you know, whatever.”

When the door closed behind her, I checked the slip she’d signed. Her name was there, Mallory Eckhart, along with a number that began with 917, indicating that it was a cell phone.

I copied the name and the number into my own phone. Would I ever dial it? If I did, what on earth would I say?

I ran various awkward conversations through my mind. Then I stopped, because my door opened and there was Mowgli, toting a World Wildlife Fund tote bag.

“Hey, Bernie,” he said, and took a minute to note the presence of customers in my store. There were three or four of them at that point, and that’s three or four more than you’ll usually find at that hour of a Thursday morning.

“Hey, Mowgli.”

“You got a minute? Or should I take a number and wait?”

There were indeed people in the store, but nobody looked to be in need of my attention. “Now’s as good a time as any,” I said, “but I haven’t added any stock since yesterday, so I don’t know what there is to interest you.”

He looked puzzled. I seemed to be having that effect on people this morning. Then he shrugged and began unloading his WWF bag onto my counter. “I scored,” he said, “and it was at the Sally Ann in Chelsea. The one on Eighth Avenue? I just happened to be on that block, and I was gonna walk right on by because I never find anything there. Enough other book pickers work that place on a regular basis, so that all that’s left whenever I show up are book club editions of Dan Brown and James Patterson, and maybe a beat-up copy of The Boca Raton Diet, and doesn’t that just get your heart racing?”

“But today was different?”

“What happened,” he said, “is I got an earworm. You know what that is? A song that wanders into your mind and can’t find the exit? This was just one phrase, over and over. ‘If you turn me down once more I’ll join the Salvation Army...’”

“Is that how it goes, Mowgli?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “It’s supposed to be the French Foreign Legion, but if you make it the Sally it really rocks. You can leave all the other lyrics alone. ‘If you think I won’t find romance in the Salvation Army / Think about that uniform and all its charm.’ Well, I didn’t find romance, but what I found was plenty. See?”

I saw. The books were mostly mystery and suspense, solid authors like Sandford and Connelly and Paretsky and Deaver and Burke. No paperbacks, no book club editions, all original publishers’ hardcovers, with the dust jackets in excellent shape.

“The two Andrew Vachss novels are signed,” he said. “You know he died.”

“I know.”

“I wish he hadn’t,” he said with feeling. “It’s not just the books, it’s what he did in the world.” He averted his eyes. “For, you know, abused kids.”

Who knew? I didn’t say anything and neither did he, and then he shrugged and said, “You know, I came out of it okay, but not everybody does. They’re first editions, the two Vachss novels.”

“Strega and Hard Candy.”

“Right.”

“Well,” I said. “You should do very well with these, Mowgli.”

“Huh?”

“They ought to bring a decent price on eBay.”

“What’s that, Pig Latin? I’m a little bit lost here, Bernie. Are you telling me you can’t use them?”

Tilt!

“I didn’t realize you were offering them to me,” I said.

“Are you kidding? Why else would I schlep them all the way over here?”

Why indeed? To gloat? But he hadn’t been gloating. He’d been pitching his wares.

“Of course I can use them,” I said, and grabbed a pencil and began figuring out a price.

By the time Mowgli and I had concluded our business, all his books were back in the tote bag with the panda on it. “You can keep this,” he’d said. “You wouldn’t believe how many tote bags I’ve got around the house. I swear they breed.”

“Like wire coat hangers?”

“I never thought of it that way,” he said, “but you’re right. Every closet has its own population explosion. A pleasure doing business with you, Bernie.”

Raffles was sleeping, not for the first time, in a patch of sunlight in the front window. On his way out, Mowgli stopped to give him a scratch behind the ear. Raffles likes that, but only from people he trusts. He was fine with Mowgli, and even extended his forepaws in a stretch to indicate his general contentment.

I felt the same way myself, and so evidently did Mowgli, who was whistling as he crossed the threshold. The tune was that of the French Foreign Legion song — or, now and forevermore, the Salvation Army song. “Just one more time, are you gonna be mine, or au revoir cheri / It’s the Salvation Army for me.”