The Burglar on the Prowl (27 page)

So I walked over to Barnegat Books on East Eleventh Street for a word with my favorite bookseller, Bernie Rhodenbarr. He was behind the counter with his nose in a book while his cat lay in the window, soaking up the sun. The store’s sole customer was a young woman with multiple piercings who was reading a biography of St. Sebastian.

“I understand the used-book business is hot these days,” I said. “;You must be making money hand over fist.”

He gave me a look. “Every now and then,” he said, “somebody actually buys a book. It’s a good thing I don’t have to depend on this place to keep body and soul together.”

He doesn’t have to pay rent, either, having bought the building with the profits from his other career as the last of the gentleman burglars. Seriously, I told him, lots of people were making big bucks selling books on the Internet. Couldn’t he do the same?

“I could,” he agreed. “I could list my entire stock on eBay and spend my time wrapping books and shlepping them to the Post Office. I could close the store, because who needs a retail outlet when you’ve got a computer and a modem? But I didn’t open this store to get rich. I opened it so I could have a bookstore, and have fun running it, and occasionally meet girls. See, I’m not greedy.”

“But you steal,” I pointed out.

He frowned, and nodded toward St. Sebastian’s biggest fan. “Not to get rich,” he said. “Only enough to get by. I don’t want to get rich, see, because it would turn me into a greedy pig.”

“You’re saying the rich are greedy?”

“They don’t necessarily start out that way,” he said, “but that’s how it seems to work. Look at all the CEOs with their eight-figure salaries. The more you pay them, the more they want, and when the company goes down the tubes they float down on their golden parachute and look for another corporation to sink. Or look at baseball.”

“Baseball?”

“America’s pastime,” he said. “The players used to have off-season jobs so they could make ends meet. The owners were always rich guys, but they were in it for the sport. They didn’t expect to make money.”

“And?”

“And now the players average something like two million dollars a year, and the owners have watched their investments increase in value by a factor of five or ten, and everybody’s rich, so everybody’s greedy. And that’s why we’re going to have a strike this fall. Because they’re all pigs, and all they want is more.”

“In other words,” I said, “success turns men to swine.”

“And women,” he said. “Success is an equal-opportunity corrupter. And it seems to be inevitable nowadays. Nobody’s happy just running a business and making a living. Everybody wants to grow the business, and either franchise it or sell it to a huge corporation. Luckily, I’m safe. Nobody’s aching to franchise Barnegat Books, and no multinational corporation’s trying to buy me out.”

“So you’ll go on selling books.”

“Every now and then,” he said, as the young woman put St. Sebastian back on the shelf and walked away empty-handed. “I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing I’m a thief. It keeps me honest.”

—
Lawrence Block

I think New York works superbly well as a setting in fiction. One reason so many writers have chosen it as a setting is that so many of us have lived at least part of our lives here. One reason that it works very well for readers, I believe, is that so many people, wherever they live, have at least a surface acquaintance with New York. Even if they haven’t been here, they’ve seen the iconography of the skyline in innumerable films; they’ve seen television programs set here; so there’s an immediate identification even for those who have not been here.

New York’s certainly thought of as a dark setting for fiction; it’s also a setting for some of the lightest, most effervescent work—that of Damon Runyon, for example, and
Guys and Dolls
.

New York is so rich and so varied that you can find the dark and the light here easily. I do two New York series myself, the Matt Scudder novels and the Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, and occasionally I get someone asking could Matt and Bernie ever meet in a single book and I say, No—because they live in two very different universes. They both live in a city named New York, but in one, Scudder’s, it’s a very dark place and in the other, Bernie’s, it’s a very light one.

So many writers have written about the city and have done it so well that it’s almost impossible to develop a short list of favorites. The Library of America recently brought out a book called Writing New York, and the list of contributors was virtually a Who’s Who of American letters—from O. Henry and Damon Runyon; Ed McBain and Evan Hunter—two sides of the same coin. The volume reprints E.B. White’s brilliant essay “This Is New York.”

The city permeates the work of a tremendous number of writers—it’s present very vividly, it seems to me, in the work of writers who are not that much associated with the city. We think of Isaac Bashevis Singer, for example, of writing stories of shtetl life in Poland, yet his books set in the city where he lived the latter portion of his life are very evocative of Second Avenue café society. Garcia Lorca, the great Spanish poet—some of his finest work is in a book called
Poeta en Nueva York
, with some extraordinary poems set in Harlem.

I don’t know that New York is particularly an ideal canvas for crime writers as opposed to fiction writers in general, except insofar as the city has an extraordinary intensity. This may be true of the largest city in any country, but it’s certainly true of New York. Things happen rapidly; they happen vividly; and the energy of the city, it seems to me, tends to inform the fiction written about it. It’s an extraordinarily rich place and one finds people of all sorts here, including some who I’m sure would remind you of people you’ve encountered in fiction.

New Yorkers in the main don’t notice this—one of the most extraordinary things is the extent to which passers-by take no notice of the human dramas which play out right in front of them. I remember one time about fifteen or twenty years ago I was walking down a street in Greenwich Village and a Sikh in full military regalia, wearing a sword and about six-feet-eight tall, was
striding down the street. And what was remarkable, even more remarkable than the man’s presence, was that no one took a second look at him!

“I know who you are,” she said. “Your name is Bernie Rhodenbarr. You’re a burglar.”

I glanced around, glad that the store was empty save for the two of us. It often is, but I’m not usually glad about it.

“Was,” I said.

“Was?”

“Was. Past tense. I had a criminal past, and while I’d as soon keep it a secret I can’t deny it. But I’m an antiquarian bookseller now, Miss Uh—”

“Danahy,” she supplied. “Holly Danahy.”

“Miss Danahy. A dealer in the wisdom of the ages. The errors of my youth are to be regretted, even deplored, but they’re over and done with.”

She gazed thoughtfully at me. She was a lovely creature, slender, pert, bright of eye and inquisitive of nose, and she wore a tailored suit and flowing bow tie that made her look at once yieldingly feminine and as coolly competent as a Luger.

“I think you’re lying,” she said. “I certainly hope so. Because an antiquarian bookseller is no good at all to me. What I need is a burglar.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“You can.” She laid a cool-fingered hand on mine. “It’s almost closing time.

Why don’t you lock up? I’ll buy you a drink and tell you how you can qualify for an all-expenses-paid trip to Memphis. And possibly a whole lot more.”

“You’re not trying to sell me a time-share in a thriving lakeside resort community, are you?”

“Not hardly.”

“Then what have I got to lose? The thing is, I usually have a drink after work with—”

“Carolyn Kaiser,” she cut in. “Your best friend, she washes dogs two doors down the street at the Poodle Factory. You can call her and cancel.”

My turn to gaze thoughtfully. “You seem to know a lot about me,” I said.

“Sweetie,” she said, “that’s my job.”

“I’m a reporter,”
she said. “
For the Weekly Galaxy
. If you don’t know the paper, you must never get to the supermarket.”

“I know it,” I said. “But I have to admit I’m not what you’d call one of your regular readers.”

“Well, I should hope not, Bernie. Our readers move their lips when they think. Our readers write letters in crayon because they’re not allowed to have anything sharp. Our readers make the Enquirer’s readers look like Rhodes scholars. Our readers, face it, are D-U-M.”

“Then why would they want to know about me?”

“They wouldn’t, unless an extraterrestrial made you pregnant. That happen to you?”

“No, but Bigfoot ate my car.”

She shook her head. “We already did that story. Last August, I think it was. The car was an AMC Gremlin with a hundred and ninety-two thousand miles on it.”

“I suppose its time had come.”

“That’s what the owner said. He’s got a new BMW now, thanks to the
Galaxy
. He can’t spell it, but he can drive it like crazy.”

I looked at her over the brim of my glass. “If you don’t want to write about me,” I said, “what do you need me for?”

“Ah, Bernie,” she said. “Bernie the burglar. Sweetie pie, you’re my ticket to Elvis.”

“The best possible picture,”
I told Carolyn, “would be a shot of Elvis in his coffin.
The Galaxy
loves shots like that but in this case it would be counterproductive in the long run, because it might kill their big story, the one they run month after month.”

“Which is that he’s still alive.”

“Right. Now the second-best possible picture, and better for their purposes overall, would be a shot of him alive, singing ‘Love Me Tender’ to a visitor from another planet. They get a chance at that picture every couple of days, and it’s always some Elvis impersonator. Do you know how many full-time professional Elvis Presley impersonators there are in America today?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I have a feeling Holly Danahy could probably supply a figure, and that it would be an impressive one. Anyway, the third-best possible picture, and the one she seems to want almost more than life itself, is a shot of the King’s bedroom.”

“At Graceland?”

“That’s the one. Six thousand people visit Graceland every day. Two million of them walked through it last year.”

“And none of them brought a camera?”

“Don’t ask me how many cameras they brought, or how many rolls of film they shot. Or how many souvenir ashtrays and paintings on black velvet they bought and took home with them. But how many of them got above the first floor?”

“How many?”

“None. Nobody gets to go upstairs at Graceland. The staff isn’t allowed up there, and people who’ve worked there for years have
never set foot above the ground floor. And you can’t bribe your way up there, either, according to Holly, and she knows because she tried, and she had all the
Galaxy
’s resources to play with. Two million people a year go to Graceland, and they’d all love to know what it looks like upstairs, and the
Weekly Galaxy
would just love to show them.”

“Enter a burglar.”

“That’s it. That’s Holly’s masterstroke, the one designed to win her a bonus and a promotion. Enter an expert at illegal entry, i.e., a burglar. Le burglar,
c’est moi
.

Name your price, she told me.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars. You know why? All I could think of was that it sounded like a job for Nick Velvet. You remember him, the thief in the Ed Hoch stories who’ll only steal worthless objects.” I sighed. “When I think of all the worthless objects I’ve stolen over the years, and never once has anyone offered to pay me a fee of twenty-five grand for my troubles. Anyway, that was the price that popped into my head, so I tried it out on her. And she didn’t even try to haggle.”

“I think Nick Velvet raised his rates,” Carolyn said. “I think his price went up in the last story or two.”

I shook my head. “You see what happens? You fall behind on your reading and it costs you money.”

Holly and I
flew first class from JFK to Memphis. The meal was still airline food, but the seats were so comfortable and the stewardess so attentive that I kept forgetting this.

“At the
Weekly Galaxy
,” Holly said, sipping an after-dinner something-or-other, “everything’s first class. Except the paper itself, of course.”

We got our luggage, and a hotel courtesy car whisked us to the Howard Johnson’s on Elvis Presley Boulevard, where we had
adjoining rooms reserved. I was just about unpacked when Holly knocked on the door separating the two rooms. I unlocked it for her and she came in carrying a bottle of scotch and a full ice bucket.

“I wanted to stay at the Peabody,” she said. “That’s the great old downtown hotel and it’s supposed to be wonderful, but here we’re only a couple of blocks from Graceland, and I thought it would be more convenient.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

“But I wanted to see the ducks,” she said. She explained that ducks were the symbol of the Peabody, or the mascot, or something. Every day the hotel’s guests could watch the hotel’s ducks waddle across the red carpet to the fountain in the middle of the lobby.

“Tell me something,” she said. “How does a guy like you get into a business like this?”

“Bookselling?”

“Get real, honey. How’d you get to be a burglar? Not for the edification of our readers, because they couldn’t care less. But to satisfy my own curiosity.”

I sipped a drink while I told her the story of my misspent life, or as much of it as I felt like telling. She heard me out and put away four stiff scotches in the process, but if they had any effect on her I couldn’t see it.

“And how about you?” I said after a while. “How did a nice girl like you—”

“Oh, Gawd,” she said. “We’ll save that for another evening, okay?” And then she was in my arms, smelling and feeling better than a body had a right to, and just as quickly she was out of them again and on her way to the door.

“You don’t have to go,” I said.

“Ah, but I do, Bernie. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. We’re going to see Elvis, remember?”

She took the scotch with her. I poured out what remained of my own drink, finished unpacking, took a shower. I got into bed, and
after fifteen or twenty minutes I got up and tried the door between our two rooms, but she had locked it on her side. I went back to bed.

Our tour guide’s
name was Stacy. She wore the standard Graceland uniform, a blue-and-white-striped shirt over navy chinos, and she looked like someone who’d been unable to decide whether to become a stewardess or a cheerleader. Cleverly, she’d chosen a job that combined both professions.

“There were generally a dozen guests crowded around this dining table,” she told us. “Dinner was served nightly between nine and ten p.m., and Elvis always sat right there at the head of the table. Not because he was head of the family but because it gave him the best view of the big color TV. Now that’s one of fourteen TV sets here at Graceland, so you know how much Elvis liked to watch TV.”

“Was that the regular china?” someone wanted to know.

“Yes, ma’am, and the name of the pattern is Buckingham. Isn’t it pretty?”

I could run down the whole tour for you, but what’s the point? Either you’ve been there yourself or you’re planning to go or you don’t care, and at the rate people are signing up for the tours, I don’t think there are many of you in the last group. Elvis was a good pool player, and his favorite game was rotation. Elvis ate his breakfast in the Jungle Room, off a cypress coffee table. Elvis’s own favorite singer was Dean Martin. Elvis liked peacocks, and at one time over a dozen of them roamed the grounds of Graceland. Then they started eating the paint off the cars, which Elvis liked even more than he liked peacocks, so he donated them to the Memphis Zoo. The peacocks, not the cars.

There was a gold rope across the mirrored staircase, and what looked like an electric eye a couple of stairs up. “We don’t allow tourists into the upstairs,” our guide chirped. “Remember, Graceland is a private home and Elvis’s aunt Miss Delta Biggs still
lives here. Now I can tell you what’s upstairs. Elvis’s bedroom is located directly above the living room and music room. His office is also upstairs, and there’s Lisa Marie’s bedroom, and dressing rooms and bathrooms as well.”

“And does his aunt live up there?” someone asked.

“No, sir. She lives downstairs, through that door over to your left. None of us have ever been upstairs. Nobody goes there anymore.”

“I bet he’s
up there now,” Holly said. “In a La-Z-Boy with his feet up, eating one of his famous peanut-butter and banana sandwiches and watching three television sets at once.”

“And listening to Dean Martin,” I said. “What do you really think?”

“What do I really think? I think he’s down in Paraguay playing three-handed pinochle with James Dean and Adolf Hitler. Did you know that Hitler masterminded Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands? We ran that story but it didn’t do as well as we hoped.”

“Your readers didn’t remember Hitler?”

“Hitler was no problem for them. But they didn’t know what the Falklands were. Seriously, where do I think Elvis is? I think he’s in the grave we just looked at, surrounded by his nearest and dearest. Unfortunately, ‘Elvis Still Dead’ is not a headline that sells papers.”

“I guess not.”

We were back in my room at the HoJo, eating a lunch Holly had ordered from room service. It reminded me of our in-flight meal the day before, luxurious but not terribly good.

“Well,” she said brightly, “have you figured out how we’re going to get in?”

“You saw the place,” I said. “They’ve got gates and guards and alarm systems everywhere. I don’t know what’s upstairs, but it’s a more closely guarded secret than Zsa Zsa Gabor’s true age.”

“That’d be easy to find out,” Holly said. “We could just hire somebody to marry her.”

“Graceland is impregnable,” I went on, hoping we could drop the analogy right there. “It’s almost as bad as Fort Knox.”

Her face fell. “I was sure you could find a way in.”

“Maybe I can.”

“But—”

“For one. Not for two. It’d be too risky for you, and you don’t have the skills for it. Could you shinny down a gutterspout?”

“If I had to.”

“Well, you won’t have to, because you won’t be going in.” I paused for thought.

“You’d have a lot of work to do,” I said. “On the outside, coordinating things.”

“I can handle it.”

“And there would be expenses, plenty of them.”

“No problem.”

“I’d need a camera that can take pictures in full dark. I can’t risk a flash.”

“That’s easy. We can handle that.”

“I’ll need to rent a helicopter, and I’ll have to pay the pilot enough to guarantee his silence.”

“A cinch.”

“I’ll need a diversion. Something fairly dramatic.”

“I can create a diversion. With all the resources of the
Galaxy
at my disposal, I could divert a river.”

“That shouldn’t be necessary. But all of this is going to cost money.”

“Money,” she said, “is no object.”

“So you’re a
friend of Carolyn’s,” Lucian Leeds said. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she? You know, she and I are the next-closest thing to blood kin.”