The Burglar on the Prowl (29 page)

Authors: Lawrence Block

Tags: #Fiction, #Library, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective, #Thrillers, #Rhodenbarr; Bernie (Fictitious character), #General, #New York (N.Y.), #Detective and mystery stories, #Thieves

BOOK: The Burglar on the Prowl

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“Yeah, I thought a little verisimilitude wouldn’t hurt. The chopper pilot dropped me back at the hangar and I caught a ride down to the Burrell house in Mississippi, I walked around the
room Lucian decorated for the occasion, admired everything, then turned out all the lights and took my pictures. They’ll be running the best ones in the
Galaxy
.”

“And you got paid.”

“Twenty-five grand, and everybody’s happy, and I didn’t cheat anybody or steal anything.
The Galaxy
got some great pictures that’ll sell a lot of copies of their horrible paper. The readers get a peek at a room no one has ever seen before.”

“And the folks at Graceland?”

“They get a good security drill,” I said. “Holly created a peach of a diversion to hide my entering the building. What it hid, of course, was my not entering the building, and that fact should stay hidden forever. Most of the Graceland people have never seen Elvis’s bedroom, so they’ll think the photos are legit. The few who know better will just figure my pictures didn’t come out, or that they weren’t exciting enough so the
Galaxy
decided to run fakes instead. Everybody with any sense figures the whole paper’s a fake anyway, so what difference does it make?”

“Was Holly a fake?”

“Not really. I’d say she’s an authentic specimen of what she is. Of course her little fantasy about a hot weekend watching the ducks blew away with the morning mist. All she wanted to do was get back to Florida and collect her bonus.”

“So it’s just as well you got your bonus ahead of time. You’ll hear from her again the next time the
Galaxy
needs a burglar.”

“Well, I’d do it again,” I said. “My mother was always hoping I’d go into journalism. I wouldn’t have waited so long if I’d known it would be so much fun.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Bern.”

“Come on. What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wish, you know, that you’d gone in there and got the
real pictures. He could be in there, Bern. I mean, why else would they make such a big thing out of keeping people out of there? Did you ever stop to ask yourself that?”

“Carolyn—”

“I know,” she said. “You think I’m nuts. But there are a lot of people like me, Bern.”

“It’s a good thing,” I told her. “Where would the
Galaxy
be without you?”

About the Author

Lawrence Block is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards. His fifty-plus books include the fifteen Matthew Scudder novels, all of which are available as e-books from HarperCollins—along with two Keller volumes,
Hit List
and
Hit Man
; the Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries,
Burglars Can’t Be Choosers
and
The Burglar on the Prowl
;
Enough Rope
, a collection of Mr. Block’s classic short stories; and
Small Town
, a novel of New York. Please visit www.lawrenceblock.com.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

By the author

Lawrence Block’s
Bernie Rhodenbarr Mysteries

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (e-book)

The Burglar in the Closet

The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling

The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian

The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

The Burglar in the Library

The Burglar in the Rye

The Burglar on the Prowl (e-book)

Available as HarperCollins e-books:

The Matthew Scudder Crime Novels

Hit List

Hit Man

Enough Rope: Collected Stories

Small Town: A Novel

Credits

Jacket design by Amy King
Jacket illustration by Paul Oakley

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE BURGLAR ON THE PROWL.
Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Block. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © MARCH 2004 ISBN: 9780061806698

FIRST EDITION

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