The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (25 page)

A
day or two later I was on the phone with Wally Hemphill when the front door opened. “That’s great,” I told my lawyer. “So I’ll see you then. Listen, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got a customer.”

It was Borden Stoppelgard.

“I got your message,” he said, “and I’d have to say you’ve got your nerve, asking me to stop by. That was some little show you put on the other night. By the time we got out of there, my marriage was hanging by a thread.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, it’s all right now. Things blow over, you know? She’s a lot calmer the past couple of days. Now what’s this item you got that I might be interested in? Early Sue Grafton? Marcia Muller? What?”

I took an acetate-wrapped card from my breast pocket and laid it on the counter.

“You know,” he said, “when you talked about finding the Chalmers Mustard card in that schmuck Santangelo’s apartment, I wanted to ask whatever became of it, whether you or Wendy wound up with it. But it didn’t seem like the right time or place.”

“Probably not.”

“So you want to sell it? ‘A Stand-up Triple!’—right? That’s one of the later ones, so it’s worth a few bucks. What do you want for it?”

“Take a closer look, Mr. Stoppelgard.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “ ‘That Home Run Swing.’ Card #40. This is the key card of the whole set. Where the hell did you get this?” Even as I was plucking the card from his fingers, light dawned. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You got Marty’s cards!”

“It looks that way,” I admitted. “So now all you have to do is draw up that lease we talked about, the one that gives me a thirty-year extension at the current rent.”

“Shit.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, hell. This is embarrassing, all right? I sold the building.”

“What?”

“When you’re in the real estate game,” he said, “you don’t marry buildings, you just buy and sell them. Anything’s on the block if the price is right. A few days ago I got an offer that was too good to turn down. So I took it.”

“But—”

“You should be getting a notice in the mail, where to send the check every month and like that. Your new landlord’s something called Poulson Realty. They’ll be in touch.”

“I hope they like baseball cards.”

“Maybe they won’t even notice the lease is ready to expire,” he said, which didn’t strike me as very likely. “Or maybe they’ll give you a break in order to keep the space rented to somebody reliable. Of course, the way they came to me and sought out the building, my guess is they want the space for their own purposes. But you’re a resourceful guy. You can work something out.”

“You sold the building,” I said. “Sold it out from under me.”

“Dammit, why didn’t you say something? How was I supposed to know you had the cards?”

“I didn’t want to announce it in front of everybody.”

“No, but—”

“And you must have already said yes to the deal on the building by then, anyway.”

“Yes, but—”

“So that’s that,” I said, and put the Splendid Splinter in my pocket.

“Listen,” he said, “I still want to buy those cards. The only thing is I’m a little short right now. If you could hold on to them for a couple of months—”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I guess that’s a no. What would you say to a straight exchange of equity? There’s any number of things I could let you have. Could you use a very nice two-bedroom condominium on the Rego Park side of Forest Hills? Look, you could just say no. You don’t have to make that kind of face at me.”

“If I’m going to have to renegotiate my lease,” I said, “or find a place to relocate my store, what I need is cash.”

“I suppose.”

“And it’s not as though baseball cards are hard to move. I offered them to you first because it was a way to save the store, but with you out of the picture I won’t have any trouble finding a buyer.”

“Sell me the mustard set,” he said.

“You just said—”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of the cards. I’m only really interested in Ted Williams. We’re talking about forty cards. The book value’s what, three grand?”

“Closer to five.”

“Really? That sounds high, but screw it. I’ll give you five thousand cash. Why not?”

“I’d rather move everything at once.”

“Why, for God’s sake? Look, forget five. I’ll pay a premium, because I really want these cards. I’ll give you six thousand dollars.”

“Ten.”

“That’s ridiculous. That’s double what they’re worth. For Christ’s sake, a man buys stolen goods, he expects to get them at a discount. I can’t pay ten, that’s out of the question.”

“Then forget it.”

“Seven. I’ll hate myself tomorrow, but I’ll give you seven.”

“Ten.”

“ ‘Ten, ten, ten.’ Is that all you know how to say?”

“Eleven?”

“Ten, for God’s sake. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I don’t care. I don’t suppose you want a check, either. I have to go to the bank. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’ll have the cards ready?”

What can I say? He talked me into it.

Borden Stoppelgard wasn’t back in twenty minutes, but he was back in twenty-five, and ten minutes later he was on his way, having exchanged a hundred pieces of green paper for forty pieces of cardboard. I went off to flush the toilet—Raffles had used it during our transaction—and I came back to find Wally Hemphill bending over to retie his sneaker. He straightened up, unclasped his briefcase, and handed me an envelope.

“This is what you wanted,” he said, “and it took some doing and cost you a ton of money, so I hope you’re happy. You’re now master of all you survey, and that includes the upstairs and the air rights.”

“This is the deed?”

“Indeed it is. You’re not just a schmuck with a bookstore, Bernie. Now you’re a schmuck with a building.”

“That’s great.”

“Your friend Gilmartin was very helpful. How we worked it, Hearthstone Realty, which is Stoppelgard’s company, sold the land and structure to Poulson, which is a shell we set up. Then the title changed hands three or four times, bang bang bang, just like that. The current owner of record is Winesap Enterprises.”

“And that’s me?”

“It is,” he said, “but the way things are set up, it would be a hell of a job to find that out. The whole thing cost you a hell of a lot of money, my friend. I won’t even ask where it came from.”

“Good.”

“You overpaid for the building. I told you that, but you didn’t want to hear it. At the price you paid, you’d have to raise your own rent through the roof to make the thing pay. The florist next door has ten years to go on his lease, and the residential tenants upstairs are all rent-controlled, so what they pay doesn’t cover what it costs you to heat their apartments for them. So unless you’re planning to try to get some of them to move—”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t think so. Bernie, the building won’t even cover expenses. It’s going to cost you money.”

“I know that.”

“If you’d taken the same cash and put it in a good balanced mutual fund, do you know what kind of a yield you’d get?”

“I could have put it in baseball cards,” I said. “Wally, suppose you took the hours you spend running and did billable work instead. Wouldn’t you make more money that way?”

“Well, yeah, I see your point.”

“Money’s not everything. I get to keep the store, and that’s what’s important to me.”

“Still,” he said, “the building is going to lose money, and your store barely breaks even. How are you going to cover the deficit?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll think of something.”

When Carolyn came in Raffles was sitting on my lap. “Just an employee,” she said. “Not a pet at all, right, Bern?”

“Stroking a cat’s fur is an aid to thought,” I said. “It’s a well-known relaxation technique. There doesn’t have to be any affection involved.”

“Is that a fact?”

“But here’s the big news,” I said, and I told her about Wally’s delivery of the deed. “So I get to keep the store,” I said. “I’ll be a landlord, but nobody ever has to know that outside of you and me and Wally. The tenants will just send in their measly checks every month, same as always. And you and I can go on having lunch together and going over to the Bum Rap together after work. And as far as making up the buildings annual deficit, well, I got a little installment on that today from Borden Stoppelgard.”

I told her about our transaction. “I took pity on him,” I said, “and sold him the Ted Williams set for two or three times its value, and of course it was all I had to sell to him or anybody else, because the rest of Marty’s good material was gone before Doll lifted it. I was planning on jerking his chain a little more, but I found myself feeling sorry for the man.”

“Well, the two of you have something in common, Bern. You’re both landlords.”

“Don’t ever call me that, even in jest. But I looked at the poor slob, doomed to spend his life being outclassed by his brother-in-law—”

“And by everybody else he happens to meet.”

“—and trying to cheat on his wife, and screwing that up, and having her cheat on him, and, well, I gave him a break.”

“Mr. Nice Guy.”

“C’est moi,”
I agreed.

She reached to pet the cat. “Bernie,” she said, “I’ve been trying not to ask you this, because I’m sure it’s obvious, and when you tell me I’m gonna feel like an idiot. How did Raffles solve the case?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember, because I know you do. We were right here, talking about The Cat Who Lived Forever, and Raffles jumped up in the air and arched his back and chased an imaginary tail or something. I don’t know what he did exactly, but it triggered something and the next thing I knew we were all at the Nugents and you were telling everybody who did it.”

“Oh.”

“Now how did Raffles solve it?”

“Carolyn,” I said, “Raffles didn’t solve the case.”

“Well, I know that, Bern. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know Raffles is just a cat.”

“Right.”

“And I don’t know what he did, or why he did it, but I know he’s not the reincarnation of Nero Wolfe. But whatever he was doing, it made some connection for you and—why are you shaking your head?”

“I had already figured it all out,” I said. “I just didn’t want to do anything about it, because I couldn’t see the point. Then we got into that nutty conversation about the cat, and he picked up his cue and acted as if he was on a hot tin roof, and I just couldn’t help myself. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Bern. I knew I’d feel stupid for asking, and I was right.”

“Well, cheer up. This is a special day. I get to keep the store, Carolyn. And we get to go on—”

“Having lunch together,” she chimed in, “and having drinks after work, and having doomed relationships with inappropriate people. I was gonna see Lolly tonight, but she had to cancel. She’s doing something with Borden.”

“He probably wants to show her his new cards. So let me take you out to dinner instead. We’ll celebrate.”

“I thought I’d go home and reread Sue Grafton. It’s been a while since I last read the one about the topless dancer who gets poison injected into one of her implants.”

“
‘D’ Is for Cup.
”

“Right. Bern, you know what I wish? I wish she didn’t have to stop at twenty-six. When the alphabet’s used up, what happens to Kinsey?”

“Are you kidding? She goes straight into double letters.
‘AA’ Is for Drunks, ‘BB’ Is for Gun, ‘CC’ Is for Rider.
There was a whole list in
Publishers Weekly
a few months back.
‘PP’ Is for Golden Showers, ‘ZZ’ Is for Topp
—I can’t remember them all, but it looks as though she can go on forever.”

“Bern, that’s wonderful news.”

“You’ll be reading about Kinsey fifty years from now,” I told her. “
‘AAA’ Is for Motorists, ‘MMM’ Is for Scotch Tape.
You’ll never have to stop. You’ll keep on washing dogs and Raffles will keep on playing shortstop. And I’ll keep on doing what I was born to do, selling books and breaking into people’s houses.”

“And we’ll live happily ever after, huh, Bern?”

“Happily ever
now,
” I said, and reached to pet my cat.

A Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, LAWRENCE BLOCK is a four-time winner of the Edgar® and Shamus awards, as well as a recipient of prizes in France, Germany, and Japan. He also received the British Crime Writers’ Association’s prestigious Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in crime writing. The author of more than fifty books and numerous short stories, he is a devout New Yorker and enthusiastic world traveler. You can visit his website at www.lawrenceblock.com.

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