When I first saw him on his way through the door I thought he was a kid wearing his father’s clothes. He couldn’t have been more than five-three, and judging by the way he walked he already had lifts in his shoes. He had a very narrow face, as if it had gotten in the way when Mother Nature clapped her hands. His nose was long and narrow, his lips thin. His hair and eyebrows were black and his skin was very pale, almost translucent. There were patches of color on his cheeks, but they were more suggestive of consumption than radiant good health.
He was wearing a lime-green sport shirt with flowing collar points and he’d buttoned it all the way up to the neck. His pants were of high-gloss blue gabardine, and his shoes were wing-tip slip-ons of woven brown leather. He was wearing a hat, too, a straw panama with a feather in its band, and I think it must have been the hat that made him look like an overdressed child. It was the crowning touch, all right.
“Name your price,” he said.
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m afraid it’s not for sale.”
The first thing I thought-the only thing I thought-was that he was looking to buy my store. I didn’t delude myself that he’d made a study of Barnegat Books and concluded that it was a gold mine. On the contrary, I figured he saw it as the commercial real estate equivalent of a teardown; he’d buy me out so that he could take over my lease, sell my whole stock en bloc to Argosy or the Strand, and establish in Barnegat’s stead a Thai restaurant or a Korean nail shop, something that would be a great cultural asset to the neighborhood. I get offers like that all the time, strange as it may seem, and I don’t bother explaining that I own the building, and that consequently I’m the landlord as well as the tenant. For one thing, that part’s a secret; for another, it would simply invite further inquiry. I just tell them all the business is not for sale, and sooner or later they believe me and go away.
But not this fellow. Damned if he didn’t reach into his pocket and come out with a gun.
It was a very small gun, a flat nickel-plated automatic with pearl grips, small enough to carry in his pants pocket, small enough to fit in his very small hand. I don’t know what caliber bullet it held-.22 or.25, I suppose-but either one will kill you if it hits you in the right place, and he was right across the counter from me, close enough to put a bullet wherever he wanted it.
If I’d thought it over I’d have been terrified. He was just the right size to be one of those sawed-off psychopaths you used to see on the screen all the time, those little reptilian hit men who seem to kill without hesitation, and certainly without any change of expression. And here he was in my store and pointing a gun at me.
“You idiot!” I snapped. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Put that away this minute.”
Well, see, it looked like a toy. Like a cap gun, say, or like a cunningly disguised cigarette lighter. I’m not saying that’s what I thought it was, I knew it was a real gun, but I can’t think of anything else that would explain my reaction. Instead of reacting sensibly in fear and trembling, I was pissed off. Where did this, this kid, get off coming into my store and waving a gun around? And didn’t the little punk need a stern talking-to?
“Right this minute!” I said when he hesitated. “Don’t you realize you could get in trouble with that thing? Do you know what time it is?”
“Time?”
“It’s four-thirty,” I said. “And there’s a policeman who’s due here any minute, and how would you feel standing there with that thing in your hand and having a cop walk in on you? How’d you like to try explaining that?”
“But-”
“God damn it, put it away!”
And damned if he didn’t do just that. “I…I am sorry,” he said, the spots of color on his cheeks darkening even as the rest of him seemed to grow paler still. He glanced at the gun as if it were something shameful, hiding it in his hand as he lowered it and tucked it back where it had come from. “I did not mean…I would not wish…I deeply regret…”
“That’s better,” I said graciously. “Much better. Now tell me what I can do for you. Is there a book you’re looking for?”
“A book?” He looked at me, his eyes as wide as they could get. “You know what I am looking for. And please, I regret the gun. I only meant to impress you.”
“There are better ways to make an impression,” I said.
“Yes, of course, of course. You are of course correct.”
He had a foreign inflection to his speech, and he hissed his S’s. I hadn’t noticed this earlier; it was the sort of subtlety that slides right past me when I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.
“I will pay,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I will pay an excellent price.”
“How much?” And for what, I wondered.
“How much do you want?”
“As much as I can get.”
“You must understand that I am not a rich man.”
“Then perhaps you cannot afford it.” Whatever it was.
“But I must have it!”
“Then I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
He thrust his narrow face forward, aimed his sharp chin at me. “You must assure me,” he said, “that he does not have it.”
“Who are we talking about?”
He grimaced. “Must I say his name?”
“It would help,” I said.
“The fat man,” he said. “Tsarnoff.”
“Sarnoff?”
“Tsarnoff!”
“Tsorry,” I said.
“He is dangerous. And you cannot trust him. Whatever he tells you, it is a lie.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really. And I will tell you something else. Whatever he will pay, I will pay more. Tell me he does not already have it!”
“Well,” I said honestly, “I can tell you he didn’t get it from me.”
“Thank God.”
“Just to clear the air,” I said carefully, “and to make sure we’re not at cross-purposes here, suppose you tell me what it is.”
“What it is?”
“That you’re seeking from me. You want it and Tsarnoff wants it. Well, why don’t you come right out and say what it is?”
“You know what it is.”
“Ah, but how do I know that you know what it is?”
“No!” he cried, and doubled up his fists and pounded my counter. I hate it when people do that. “Please, I beg of you,” he said. “I am very high-strung. You must not tease me.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
“I need the documents. You may retain the rest, I want only the documents, and I will pay well, whatever you ask if only it is within reason. I am a reasonable man, and I believe you are a reasonable man yourself, yes?”
“Reason,” I said, “is my middle name.”
He frowned. “I thought ‘Grimes.’ Is it not so?”
“Well, yes. You’re quite right. It was my mother’s maiden name.”
“And Rhodenbarr? This is your name also?”
“That too,” I agreed. “It was my father’s maiden name. But what I just said, about Reason being my middle name, that’s an idiom, an expression, a figure of speech. It’s a way of saying that I’m a reasonable man.”
“But I am just saying this myself, yes?” He shrugged. “It confuses me, this language.”
“It confuses everybody. Right now I’m confused, because I don’t know your name. I like to know a man’s name if I’m going to do business with him.”
“Forgive me,” he said, and reached into his pocket. I braced myself, but when his hand came out the only thing in it was a leather card case. He extracted a card, glanced dubiously at it, and presented it to me.
“Tiglath Rasmoulian,” I read aloud. In response he drew himself up to his full height, if you want to call it that, and clicked his heels.
“At your service,” he said.
“Well,” I said brightly, “I’ll just hang on to this, and if I ever come across these mysterious documents, I’ll certainly keep you in mind. In the meanwhile-”
The red patches blazed on his cheeks. “You are treating me like a child,” he said. There’s not a single S in that sentence, so I don’t see how he could have hissed it, but I swear that’s what he did. “That is not a wise thing to do.”
And his hand went into his pocket.
It stayed there while his eyes swung toward the door, which had just opened. “Ah,” I said, “just the man I’ve been waiting for. Ray, I’d like you to meet Tiglath Rasmoulian. Mr. Rasmoulian, this is Officer Raymond Kirschmann of the New York Police Department.”
I didn’t get the impression that this was what Rasmoulian had been hoping to hear. He took his hand out of his pocket but did not offer it to Ray. He nodded formally to Ray, then to me. “I will go now,” he said. “You will keep it in mind, what we discussed?”
“Definitely,” I said. “Have a good weekend. Oh, don’t forget your book.”
“My book?”
I turned around and grabbed a book off the shelf behind me. It was the Modern Library edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, with slight foxing and the binding shaky. I checked the flyleaf, where I’d priced it reasonably enough at $4.50. I picked up a pencil, casually added a two to the left of the 4, and smiled at him. “It’s twenty-four fifty,” I said, “but your discount brings it down to twenty dollars even. And of course there’s no sales tax, since you’re in the trade.”
He went into his pocket again, but it was the other pocket this time, and he came out with a money clip instead of a gun, which struck me as a vast improvement. He peeled off a twenty while I wrote out a receipt, carefully copying his name from his card. I took his money, slipped his receipt inside the book’s loose front cover, and slid the book into a paper bag. He took it, gave me a look, gave Ray a look, started to say something, changed his mind, and scuttled past Ray and out the door.
“Odd-lookin’ bird,” Ray said, reaching for the card. “‘Tiglath Rasmoulian.’ What kind of name is Tiglath?”
“An unusual one,” I said. “At least in my experience.”
“No address, no phone number. Just his name.”
“It’s what they call a calling card, Ray.”
“Now why in the hell would they call it that? You want to try callin’ him, I’d say you’re shit out of luck, bein’ as there’s no number to call. He in the book business?”
“So he says.”
“An’ that’s his business card? No phone, no address? An’ on the strength of that you gave him a discount and didn’t charge him the tax?”
“I guess I’m a soft touch, Ray.”
“It’s good you’re closin’ early,” he said, “before you give away the store.”
Twenty minutes later I was standing in a gray-green corridor looking through a pane of glass at someone who couldn’t look back. “I hate this,” I said to Ray. “Remember? I told you I hated this.”
“You’re not gonna puke, are you, Bernie?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m not. Can we leave now?”
“You seen enough?”
“More than enough, thank you.”
“Well?”
“Well what? Oh, you mean-”
“Yeah. It’s him, right?”
I hesitated. “You know,” I said, “how many times did I actually set eyes on the man? Two, three times?”
“He was a customer of yours, Bernie.”
“Not a very frequent one. And you don’t really look at a person in a bookstore, at least I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really. What usually happens is we both wind up looking at the book we’re discussing. And if he’s paying by check I’ll look at the check, and at his ID, if I ask him for ID. Of course Candlemas paid me in cash, so I never had any reason to ask to see his driver’s license.”
“So instead you looked at his face, like you just did a minute ago, and that’s how you’re able to tell it’s him.”
“But did I really look at his face?” I frowned. “Sometimes we look without seeing, Ray. I looked at his clothes. I could swear he was a sharp dresser. But now all he’s wearing is a sheet, and I never saw him on his way to a toga party.”
“Bernie…”
“Think about the man you just met in my store. That was no more than half an hour ago, Ray, and you looked right at him, but did you really see him? If you had to do it, could you furnish a description of him?”
“Sure,” he said. “Name, Tignatz Rasmoolihan. Height, five foot two. Weight, a hundred an’ five. Color of hair, black. Color of eyes, green.”
“Really? He had green eyes?”
“Sure, matched his shirt. Probably why he picked it, the vain little bastard. Complexion, pale. Spots of rouge here an’ here, only it ain’t rouge, it’s natural. Shape of face, narrow.”
He went on, describing the clothes Rasmoulian was wearing down to an alligator belt with a silver buckle, which I certainly hadn’t noticed. I must have seen it but it didn’t register. “That’s amazing,” I said. “You barely looked at him and you got all that. You fluffed the name a little, but everything else was picture-perfect.”
“Well, I’m what you call a trained observer,” he said, clearly pleased. “I’ll screw up a name now an’ then, but I get the rest of it right most of the time.”
“Now that just shows you,” I said. “I’m the other way around. I guess I’m just more verbal than visual. I’ll get the names right every time, but the faces are another story.”
“I guess it comes from hangin’ around books all the time.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Instead of gettin’ out and mixin’ with people.”
“That must be it.”
“So?”
“How’s that, Ray?”
“So are you gonna ID this poor dead son of a bitch or what?”
“Just hypothetically,” I said. “Suppose I wasn’t a hundred percent certain.”
“Aw, Jesus, why’d you have to go an’ say a thing like that?”
“No, let me finish. I get the impression that my identifying the body is really nothing more than a formality.”
“That’s exactly what it is, Bernie.”
“You’ve probably already identified him from fingerprints and dental records. You just need somebody to eyeball the deceased and confirm what you already know.”
“So far we didn’t get any kind of a bounce from the prints or the dental records. But we sure as hell know who he is.”
“So it’s just a formality.”
“Didn’t I just say that, Bernie?”
I made up my mind. “All right,” I said. “It’s Candlemas.”
“Way to go, Bern. For the record, you’re formally identifying the man you just saw as Hugo Candlemas, right?”
If this had been a movie there’d have been an ominous chord right about now, so that you’d know the hero was about to put his foot in it. No, you’d want to cry. No, you fool, don’t do it!
But would he listen?
“Ray,” I said, “there’s no question in my mind.”