The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

7

At noon I did something I’m rarely called upon to do. I actually shooed customers out of the store, promising them I’d be open again in an hour or so. Then I stopped in my back room for a few minutes, but this time I left Mowgli’s books unexamined.

It was close to twelve-thirty by the time I got to the Poodle Factory, lunch in hand, and Carolyn made a show of looking at her watch and clearing her throat.

“If you hear something growling,” she said, “it’s not that sweet Sussex Spaniel in the cage on the left, Bern. It’s my tummy.”

“Sorry. It was an unusual morning.”

“Well, it’s an unusual world,” she said. “Bernie, I Googled Orrin Vandenbrinck. I thought you were exaggerating when you said he was one of the world’s worst human beings.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No, you weren’t. He did a hostile takeover of this up-and-coming pharmaceutical firm, Gantrex, when they developed a drug with a name I can’t remember that does something I don’t understand, but it turns out millions of people need it.”

“Right.”

“And if you need it that means you have to take it for life, and the manufacturer was retailing a month’s supply for just under a thousand dollars, which most people could find a way to afford if they gave up everything they enjoyed in life. And, since the production cost of a month’s supply was maybe a buck ninety-eight, the little company was in good shape.”

“Right again.”

“Making a hefty profit, most of which was supposed to go right back into research and development, so that maybe they could get lucky again and come up with another wonder drug.”

“There you go.”

“So the first thing Vandenbrinck did was boost the price a little, and all of a sudden a month’s supply of this crap, and why can’t I remember the name of it?”

“Nobody can.”

“I bet he can,” she said. “Orrin Vandenbrinck, and I’m pretty sure he can remember the price, too, because even I can remember it. He made it easy to remember, Bern.”

“Twelve thousand, three hundred and forty-five dollars,” I said.

“And sixty-seven cents. One two three four five,” she said, counting on her fingers, “and six and seven. ‘How did you set the price, Mr. Vandenbrinck?’ ‘I was counting out loud one morning, Senator, and I liked the way it sounded.’”

“Senator?”

“There was an investigation. Nothing came of it. Because this is a free country, Bern, and if I own something I can charge whatever I want for it.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, a company like Gantrex needs to make what look like excessive profits on its successful drugs in order to finance the ongoing research required to come up with the next medical miracle.”

“That does sound logical,” I admitted.

“What it sounds like to me,” she said, “is Michael Douglas in that movie, explaining that greed is good. But what it turned out to be was flat-out crap, because instead of plowing back his profits, Vandenbrinck fired a few dozen people and shut down his entire research and development department. Guess why, Bern.”

“So that Gantrex could concentrate all its resources on producing its one successful drug and saving human lives?”

“You must have read the same article I did. But isn’t it comforting that he found a use for his runaway profits? He bought a home in the Hamptons and another on the French Riviera, and then he decided he needed a pied-a-terre in New York and bought the penthouse at the Innisfree. He tried to buy a football team, but all of the NFL owners banded together to block the sale.”

“I guess they must have their standards,” I said. “Who knew?”

“So the next thing he bought was the Kloppmann Diamond. You know what he paid for that?”

I did: Sixty million dollars, plus Sotheby’s ten percent bidder’s premium. But I let her go on, powered by indignation, and she kept it up even as she was dishing out the food I’d brought.

The food won. “This smells terrific,” she said, abandoning Orrin Vandenbrinck and all his offenses. “Where’s it from, Bern?”

“Two Guys.”

“This is Laotian? It looks and smells completely different from anything we ever had from there.”

“That’s because it’s Tajiki.”

“Tajiki?”

“As in Tajikistan.”

“Why would a Laotian restaurant start serving — say the word again, Bern?”

“Tajiki.”

“Why would they start serving Tajiki food?”

“Because they’re not a Laotian restaurant anymore,” I said. “Two Guys From Luang Prabang is history. Hey, we knew it wouldn’t be there forever. It’s the restaurant’s karma, for heaven’s sake. Great ethnic food, reasonable prices, service with a smile unless they’re from a country where smiling is impolite, and then in six months or a year or two years at the outside they’re gone, and whoever takes their place repaints the sign and changes the menu and takes one more shot at the American Dream.”

“And the sign’s been repainted again?”

“Just the part that used to say Luang Prabang.”

“What does it say now? Tajikistan?”

“Dushanbe,” I said.

“Dushanbe?”

“That’s the capital of Tajikistan.”

“So it’s Two Guys From Dushanbe?”

“That’s what it says. Right there on the sign.”

“I have to admit this is delicious. Lamb?”

“Probably. Unless it’s goat.”

“Or some other animal I’d just as soon not know about.” She frowned, and not because she didn’t like what she was eating. “Bern, the Luang Prabangers were there yesterday. I know that for a fact, because I bought lunch yesterday, and—”

“I know.”

She thought about this, and I could tell she was trying to make the pieces fit, and finding out that they wouldn’t.

“They were there yesterday.”

“Right.”

“I couldn’t begin to guess how many versions of Two Guys we’ve seen. Fast turnover is the rule. Whether the two guys are from Abidjan or Managua or Antananarivo—”

“Antananarivo,” I remembered. “Madagascan cuisine. Tasty, but they didn’t last long, did they?”

“Too many syllables, Bern.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, the story at Two Guys is here today and gone tomorrow. And the turnover’s quick, but it’s not instantaneous. They’re always closed for a month between incarnations, but the Laotians were there yesterday and the Tajiks are there today, and how can that be?”

“Carolyn,” I said, “let me ask you a question. Do you have a Metrocard?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Do you?”

“A Metrocard? Like to get on a bus or subway? Well, of course I do. Doesn’t everybody?”

“Do you have it with you?”

“It lives in my purse,” she said, “and I hope it doesn’t get lonesome, because God knows I don’t use it all that much. My world’s nice and small, Bern. The Poodle Factory, my apartment, Henrietta Hudson’s, and the Cubby Hole. Everything’s pretty much within walking distance of everything else, and walking’s the only exercise I get, so I walk everywhere. Unless it’s raining when I leave the apartment to come here, though even then I’ll usually grab an umbrella and take my chances.”

“Right.”

“But if it’s too windy for an umbrella I’ll sometimes walk two blocks and take the Tenth Street crosstown bus. Except unless the bus turns up right away, which it never does, I give up and hail a cab. To tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I actually used my Metrocard.”

“Well,” I said, “check and see if you’ve still got it, will you?”

“Why wouldn’t I still have it?”

“Just check, okay? Humor me.”

“A SubwayCard,” she said, turning the thing this way and that. “How did it get in my bag, and what did it do with my Metrocard, and just what the hell is a SubwayCard anyway?”

“Think of it as the MTA’s equivalent of Two Guys From Dushanbe.”

“Huh?”

“Sit down,” I said. “Relax. And let me tell you about my morning.”