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."
Eighteen
Okay," Ray said. "Let's go over it one more time."
We were in the bookstore, and it wasn't quite three o'clock yet, for all that it felt like three in the morning. I'd had a rough night with not much sleep in it, and an easy day until the shooting started, and since then I'd been behind my counter with Ray in front of it. He kept asking questions, and I'd have answered more of them if I knew more of the answers.
"So this guy comes in," he said now, "an' you never saw him before in your life."
"Never."
"Big fat guy, all dressed up in a suit an' tie, an' you never set eyes on him before."
"That's what I just told you."
"He never wandered in here before, lookin' to pick up somethin' for a friend in the hospital?"
"If he had," I said, "I'd have remembered him. But it's hard to remember something that never happened."
"Oh, I dunno," he said. "Some people do it all the time. It's called tellin' lies, Bernie, an' over the years I've known you to be a master of it."
"I'm not lying now," I said. "He came in and played with my cat and told me I had something for him."
"An' you gave him a book."
"Right."
"You never saw him before, an' yet you knew just what book to give him."
"Oh, God. How many times do I have to tell you the same damned thing?"
"Till I understand it, Bernie. So tell me again."
"I had a phone call."
"From the fat guy."
"No, not from the fat guy. From some customer, I think, who asked if I had a copy of a particular book."
"By this Conrad guy. What was his last name?"
"Conrad. His first name's Joseph. He was Polish, and spent a good many years at sea, and ultimately he taught himself English and became a great novelist."
"That's a Polish name, Conrad?"
"He changed it."
"Can't blame him," he said. "Probably full ofZ s andY s, and you'd have to be Polish yourself to pronounce it, an' even then you might have your hands full. So you said you had this book, an' you put it aside for the guy."
"Right."
"An' when this other guy came in, the fat guy, you gave it to him instead of keepin' it for the guy who called you."
"I assumed the caller had sent the fat man."
"You ask him what book he was lookin' for?"
"I said the title and he couldn't have been happier. I handed him the book and he held it like the Holy Grail. He asked how much and I told him the price and he couldn't wait to put the money in my hand."