The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

“N
ot a bad-looking
Burglar,
” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d happen to have a decent
Alibi?
”

I didn’t hear the italics. They’re present not to indicate vocal stress but to show that they were titles, or at least truncated titles.
“A” Is for Alibi
and
“B” Is for Burglar,
those were the books in question, and he had just laid a copy of the latter volume on the counter in front of me, which might have given me a clue. But it didn’t, and I didn’t hear the italics. What I heard was a stocky fellow with a gruff voice calling me a burglar, albeit a not-bad-looking one, and asking if I had an alibi, and I have to tell you it gave me a turn.

Because I
am
a burglar, although that’s something I’ve tried to keep from getting around. I’m also a bookseller, in which capacity I was sitting on a stool behind the counter at Barnegat Books. In fact, I’d just about managed to forsake burglary entirely in favor of bookselling, having gone over a year without letting myself into a stranger’s abode. Lately, though, I’d been feeling on the verge of what those earnest folk in twelve-step programs would very likely call a slip.

Less forgiving souls would call it a premeditated felony.

Whatever you called it, I was a little sensitive on the subject. I went all cold inside, and then my eyes dropped to the book, and light dawned. “Oh,” I said. “Sue Grafton.”

“Right. Have you got
‘A’ Is for Alibi?
”

“I don’t believe so. I
had
a copy of the book-club edition, but—”

“I’m not interested in book-club editions.”

“No. Well, even if you were, I couldn’t sell it to you. I don’t have it anymore. Someone bought it.”

“Why would anyone buy the book-club edition?”

“Well, the print’s a little larger than the paperback.”

“So?”

“Makes it easier to read.”

The expression on his face told me what he thought of people who bought books for no better reason than to read them. He was in his late thirties, clean-shaven, with a suit and a tie and a full head of glossy brown hair. His mouth was fulllipped and pouty, and he’d have to lose a few pounds if he wanted a jawline.

“How much?” he demanded.

I checked the penciled price on the flyleaf. “Eighty dollars. With tax it comes to”—a glance at the tax table—“eighty-six sixty.”

“I’ll give you a check.”

“All right.”

“Or I could give you eighty dollars in cash,” he said, “and we can just forget about the tax.”

Sometimes this works. Truth to tell, there aren’t many books on my shelves I can’t be persuaded to discount by ten percent or so, even without the incentive of blindsiding the governor. But I told him a check would be fine, and to make it payable to Barnegat Books. When he was done scribbling I looked at the check and read the signature.
Borden Stoppelgard,
he had written, and that very name was imprinted at the top of his check, along with an address on East Thirty-seventh Street.

I looked at the signature and I looked at him. “I’ll have to see some identification,” I said.

Don’t ask me why. I didn’t really think there could be anything wrong with him or his check. The lads who write hot checks don’t offer you cash in an attempt to avoid paying sales tax. I guess I just didn’t like him, and I was trying to be a generic pain in the neck.

He gave me a look that suggested as much, then hauled out his wallet and came up with a credit card and driver’s license. I verified his signature, jotted down his Amex number on the back of the check, then looked at the picture on the license. It was him, all right, if a touch less jowly. I read the name,
Stoppelgard, Borden,
and finally the penny dropped.

“Borden Stoppelgard,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Of Hearthstone Realty.”

His expression turned guarded. It hadn’t been all that open in the first place, but now it was a fortress, and he was busy digging a moat around it.

“You’re my landlord,” I said. “You just bought this building.”

“I own a lot of buildings,” he said. “I buy them, I sell them.”

“You bought this one, and now you’re looking to raise my rent.”

“You can hardly deny that it’s ridiculously low.”

“It’s eight seventy-five a month,” I said. “The lease is up the first of the year, and you’re offering me a new lease at ten thousand five hundred dollars a month.”

“I imagine that strikes you as high.”

“High?” I said. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I can assure you—”

“Try stratospheric,” I suggested.

“—that it’s very much in line with the market.”

“All I know,” I said, “is that it’s completely out of the question. You want me to pay more each month than I’ve been paying for an entire year. That’s an increase of what, twelve hundred percent? Ten-five a month is more than I gross, for God’s sake.”

He shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to move.”

“I don’t want to move,” I said. “I love this store. I bought it from Mr. Litzauer when he decided to retire to Florida, and I want to go on owning it until
I
retire, and—”

“Perhaps you should start thinking early retirement.”

I looked at him.

“Face it,” he said. “I’m not raising the rent because I’m out to get you. Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Your rent’s been a steal since before you even bought the store. Some idiot gave your buddy Litzauer a thirty-year lease, and the escalators in it didn’t begin to keep pace with the realities of commercial real estate in an inflationary economy. Once I get you out of here I’ll rip out all that shelving and rent the place to a Thai restaurant or a Korean greengrocer, and do you know what kind of rent I’ll get for a nice big space like this? Forget ten-five. Try fifteen a month, fifteen thousand dollars, and the tenant’ll be glad to pay it.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Not my problem. But I’m sure there are places in Brooklyn or Queens where you can get this kind of square footage at an affordable rent.”

“Who goes there to buy books?”

“Who comes
here
to buy books? You’re an anachronism, my friend. You’re a throwback to the days when Fourth Avenue was known throughout the world as Booksellers’ Row. Dozens of stores, and what happened to them? The business changed. Paperback books undermined the secondhand market. The general used-book store became a thing of the past, with the owners retiring or dying off. The few who are left are on the tail end of long-term leases like yours, or they’re run by canny old codgers who bought their buildings outright years ago. You’re in a dying business, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Here we are on a beautiful September afternoon and I’m the only customer in your shop. What does that say about your business?”

“I guess I ought to be selling kiwi fruit,” I said. “Or cold noodles with sesame sauce.”

“You could probably make this enterprise profitable,” he said. “Throw out ninety-five percent of this junk and specialize in high-ticket collector items. That way you could make do with a tenth the square footage. You could get off the street and run the whole operation out of an upstairs office, or even out of your home. But I don’t want to tell you how to run your business.”

“You’re already telling me to get out of it.”

“Am I supposed to support you in a doomed enterprise? I’m not in business for my health.”

“But,” I said.

“But what?”

“But you’re a patron of the arts,” I said. “I saw your name in the
Times
last week. You donated a painting to a fund-raising auction to benefit the New York Public Library.”

“My accountant advised it,” he said. “Explained to me how I’ll save more in taxes than I’d have made selling the painting.”

“Still, you have literary interests. Bookstores like this one are a cultural asset, as important in their own way as the library. You can hardly fail to appreciate that. As a collector—”

“An investor.”

I pointed at
“B” Is for Burglar.
“An investment?”

“Of course, and a hell of a good one. Women crime writers are a hot item right now.
Alibi
was less than fifteen dollars when it was published a dozen or so years ago. Do you know what a mint copy with dust jacket will bring now?”

“Not offhand.”

“Somewhere around eight-fifty. So I’m buying Grafton, I’m buying Nancy Pickard, I’m buying Linda Barnes. I have a standing order at Murder Ink for every first novel by a female author, because how can you tell who’s going to turn out to be important? Most of them won’t ever amount to much, but this way I don’t have to worry about missing the occasional book that jumps from twenty dollars to a thousand in a few years’ time.”

“So you’re just interested in investment,” I said.

“Absolutely. You don’t think I read this crap, do you?”

I pushed his credit card across the counter, followed it with his drivers license. I picked up his check and tore it in half, then in half again.

“Get out of here,” I said.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me,” I said. “I sell books to people who enjoy reading them. It’s anachronistic, I know, but it’s what I do. I also sell them to people who get satisfaction out of collecting rare copies of their favorite authors, and probably to a few visually oriented souls who just like the way good books look on the wall flanking the fireplace. I may even have a few customers who buy with an eye toward investment, although it strikes me as an uncertain way of providing for one’s old age. But I haven’t yet had a customer who was openly contemptuous of what he was buying, and I don’t think I want that kind of customer. I may not be able to pay the rent, Mr. Stoppelgard, but as long as it’s my store I ought to be able to decide whose check I take.”

“I’ll give you cash.”

“I don’t want your cash either.”

I reached for the book, but he snatched it away from me. “No!” he cried. “I found it and I want it. You have to sell it to me.”

“The hell I do.”

“You do! I’ll file suit if I have to. But I won’t have to, will I?” He got a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet, slapped it on the counter. “You can keep the change,” he said. “I’m taking the book. If you try to stop me you’ll find yourself charged with assault.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “I’m not going to fight you for it. Hold on a second and I’ll get you your change.”

“I told you to keep it. What do I care about the change? I just bought a five-hundred-dollar book for a hundred dollars. You damned fool, you don’t even know how to price your own stock. No wonder you can’t afford the rent.”