Since my clean-shaven doorman had put himself back to work, I felt I could do no less myself, and resumed work on my apartment. While I was at it I called a twenty-four-hour locksmith and told him what replacement parts he'd need to make my lock sound again. While he was at it, I said, he could bring an extra Rabson cylinder and a Fox police lock. It took him fifteen minutes to get there and the better part of two hours to install everything, and the price he charged me added a little more injury to the insult and injury I'd already sustained. I wrote him a check and went to bed, fully expecting to sleep until noon, but at eight o'clock my eyes popped open of their own accord and I started a day I didn't have a great deal of hope for.
But a shower and a shave helped, and breakfast didn't hurt, either, and by the time I opened up the bookstore I felt almost human. I fed Raffles and flushed the toilet for him-he uses it, but not even Carolyn can figure out how to teach him to flush it-and dragged my bargain table outside, and sat behind the counter waiting for the world to beat a path to my door. When it failed to do so, I looked around for something to do, and remembered I had a box of books in the back room that needed to be shelved.
I walked halfway there, then spun around and returned to my stool behind the counter. I'd done enough shelving lately, I decided, and I picked up a book that had come in with the others, but that I'd set aside to read first before I gave my customers a crack at it. It was the new John Sandford novel, and I was about fifty pages into it, and with minimal interruptions I figured I could manage another fifty pages by lunchtime.
The cops in Sandford's books are apt to tell each other jokes, and one of them was funny enough so that I was chuckling over it when the phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Barnegat Books," and a voice that I recognized but couldn't place wished me a good morning, and asked if I happened to have a copy ofThe Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad.
"Hold on," I said. "I think so, but let me check."
I went to the fiction section, and there was the book, right where the miracle of alphabetical order had led me to place it. I carried it to the counter and told my caller I did indeed have a copy.
"It's not a first," I said, "but it's a nice clean reading copy. Twelve dollars takes it home."
"Put it aside," he said. "I'll pick it up sometime today."
I could have asked his name, but that might have been awkward, since there was something in his manner that led me to believe he thought I already knew who he was. Besides, what difference did it make? If he didn't show up, I'd put the book back on the shelf in a day or two. I had a lot more to worry about than a twelve-dollar sale.
"I've got a lot more to worry about," I told Carolyn, "than a twelve-dollar sale."
"I'll say."
"I wonder what they were looking for. They took my money, but that's not what brought them there in the first place. What do you suppose they wanted?"
"I don't know, Bern. What have you got?"
"Eight thousand dollars less than I used to have. Closer to nine thousand, if you count what I had to pay the locksmith. Aside from that, nothing. If these are the same jokers who robbed the Rogovins, and they'd pretty much have to be, then I don't get it at all. There's nothing on earth that connects me to the Rogovins. I never even heard of the Rogovins until…"
"Until Ray walked in and arrested you."
I nodded slowly. "That's got to be the connection," I said. "They committed a crime, and I was arrested for it. The cops made a mistake when they arrested me, but the newspaper story didn't mention that part, so the guys who committed the crime don't know that."
"They don't know they committed the crime? What do you figure their problem is, Bern? Short-term memory loss?"
"They know what they did," I said. "What they don't know is that I didn't do anything, that I was picked up because I happened to be lurking in the neighborhood for another purpose altogether. All they know is I got picked up, and that means there may be a connection between me and the Rogovins."
"Like what?"
"Like somehow I got to the Rogovins' safe before they did, and whatever they were looking for and didn't find, well, maybe I've got it."
"What do you figure it was?"
I shook my head. "Haven't got a clue," I said.
It was lunchtime, and I'd actually done a little business during the morning. I'd sold eight or ten books, including a gorgeous coffee table volume of photos of the Bronx in its heyday, which, alas, has long since come and gone. And Mickey Tolleris, my magazine guy, had come in empty-handed and staggered out with a carton full of back copies ofNational Geographic andPlayboy. I don't put magazines on the shelves, you never sell them unless you're a specialist with a deep stock of back issues, but there are certain magazines I hang on to when they come into the store. Collectible pulps, of course, and all the genre magazines, mystery and science fiction and westerns, but alsoPlayboy (if the centerfold's intact) andNational Geographic, which enough people collect so that a fellow like Mickey can maintain a market in them. He gave me cash, and so did the folks who bought books, but I was still a long way from recouping the previous night's losses.
I'd picked up our lunch-hamburgers and fries, I wasn't feeling very imaginative-and we were at the Poodle Factory, and I'd brought Carolyn up to speed. If you wanted to call it that; it felt more to me as though I was spinning my wheels.
"What I think," I said, "is that it may not matter what they were looking for."
"How can that be?"
"Well, it matters to them," I said, "and it probably matters to the police, who'd like to find someone to hang the case on, since they're not going to be able to hang it on me. But the important thing is that those guys-I wish I knew what to call them, incidentally."
"The perps," she suggested.
"The perps," I agreed. "The important thing is the perps came looking for the-shit, I don't know what to callthat, either."
"The McGuffin."
"Thank you. The perps came looking for the McGuffin, just on the off chance that I had it, since my name had been dragged into the affair. And they looked, and they didn't find it, and-you know what? It's a good thing they found my hidey-hole. Because they saw right away that that's where I keep stuff, and the McGuffin-the McGuffin?"
"That's the word for it, Bern."
"They saw that the McGuffinwasn't there, and that's where I would have stashed it if I had it, so obviously I don't have it. Which means that they can leave me the hell alone."
"And you think they will?"
"I don't see why not."
"And you don't think you ought to go to the cops?"
"What for? Look, I promised Edgar I'd keep the INS away from him, and all I know that they don't is that one of the perps-the perps?"
" Bern…"
"That one of the perps is taller and heavier than Edgar, which doesn't narrow things down much. Oh, and either he likes the Mets or he beat up some Mets fan and took his cap. If I don't share that with them, do you figure I'm withholding valuable information?"
"I guess not. Bern, you know what's a good thing? That you weren't home when they showed."
I thought of the Rogovins, and gave a nod and a shudder.
"If you had been-"
"But I wasn't," I said, and figured it was a good time to change the subject. "No drinks at the Bum Rap tonight, right? Because you've got a first date with GurlyGurl, and after that you've got a date with me."
"It's still on?"
"Now more than ever," I said. "After last night, I've got the best possible reason to run up to Riverdale. I need the money."