The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (4 page)

O
f all the bookstores in all the towns in all the world, she walked into mine.

She did so exactly two weeks earlier, at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. I was behind the counter with my nose in a book. The book was
Our Oriental Heritage,
the first of eleven volumes of Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization. Over the years the Book-of-the-Month Club has been distributing the books as if it were the Gideons and they were the Bible, and it’s a rare personal library that doesn’t include a complete set, usually in pristine condition, the dust jackets intact, the spines uncracked, and the pages untouched by human eyes.

There had been a set in inventory when I acquired Barnegat Books from old Mr. Litzauer, and over the years I had bought a set every now and then, and occasionally sold one. I hadn’t sold quite
as many as I’d bought, and so I generally had a few sets on hand, one on the shelves and a couple in cartons in the back. On this particular Wednesday I had four sets in stock, because I’d bought one the previous afternoon, not out of a mad passion to corner the market but because it was part of a lot that included some eminently resalable Steinbeck and Faulkner firsts. By the time I closed the store Tuesday I’d recovered my costs by placing
To a God Unknown
and
In Dubious Battle
with a regular customer, and I was thus feeling well disposed toward the Durants, so much so that I decided I might as well find out what they had to say about the sum total of human history.

So that’s what had my attention when she walked into my store, and into my life.

It was a perfect spring day, the kind of magical New York afternoon that makes you wonder why anyone would voluntarily live anywhere else. My door was wide open, so the little bell attached to it did not tinkle at her entrance. My cat, Raffles, often greets customers, rubbing against their ankles in a shameless bid for attention; on this occasion he lay on the windowsill in a patch of sunlight, doing his famous impression of a dishrag.

Even so, I knew I had a visitor. I got the merest glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, then caught a whiff of her perfume as she crossed in front of the counter and disappeared behind a row of bookshelves.

I didn’t look up. I was somewhere in the second
or third chapter, reading about cannibalism. Specifically, I was reading about some tribe—I forget who, but you could look it up, I’ll give you a good price on the books—some tribe that never held funerals, never had to make the hard choice between burial and cremation. They ate their dead.

I tried to read on, but my mind was awhirl with a vision of a modern world in which the practice had become universal. Frank Campbell, I realized, would be a society caterer. Walter B. Cooke would own a great chain of fast-food restaurants. In Queens, the Long Island Expressway would be lined not with graveyards but with hotdog stands, and—

“I beg your pardon.”

The first thing I noticed about her was her voice, because I heard it before I actually looked up and saw her. Her voice was low in pitch, husky, and her accent was European.

It got my attention. Then I looked across the counter at her. I don’t suppose my heart actually stood still, or skipped a beat, or did any of those things that give cardiologists the jimjams, but it certainly took notice.

How do you describe a beautiful woman, short of littering the page with tiresome adjectives? I could tell you her height (five-seven), her hair color (light brown with red highlights), her complexion (light, clear, and flawless). I could inventory her features, striving for clinical detachment (a high, broad forehead, a strong brow line, large well-
spaced eyes, a straight and slender nose). Or I could let my inventory reveal that I was smitten (skin like ivory that had learned to blush, brown eyes deep enough to drown in, a mouth made for kissing). Sorry, I can’t do it. You’ll have to imagine her for yourself.

Of all the bookstores in all the towns in all the world, she walked into mine.

“I did not want to disturb you,” she said. “You seemed so deep in thought.”

“I was reading,” I said. “Nothing important.”

“What are you reading?”

“The history of civilization.”

She raised her perfect eyebrows. “Nothing important?”

“Well, nothing that can’t wait. The Sumerians have been waiting for thousands of years. They can wait a little longer.”

“You are reading about the Sumerians?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “They’re the first civilization in the book, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. I’m still back there in prehistory.”

“Ah.”

“Early Man,” I said. “His hopes, his fears, his dreams of a better tomorrow. His endearing customs.”

“His endearing customs?”

I couldn’t seem to help myself. “This one tribe in particular,” I said. “Or maybe it was more than one.”

“What did they do?”

“They ate their dead.” For God’s sake, why was I talking like this? She didn’t say anything, and my eyes dropped to the page, where a sentence caught my eye. “The Fuegans,” I reported, “preferred women to dogs.”

“As companions?”

“As dinner. They said that dogs tasted of otter.”

“And that is bad, otter?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it tastes of fish.”

“Fuegans. I have never heard of them.”

“Until now.”

“Well, yes. Until now.”

“I never heard of them, either,” I said. “I gather Darwin wrote about them. They lived in Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America.”

“Do they live there still?”

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you, though, if I ever go visit them I’m taking my own lunch.”

“And your own woman?”

“I don’t have a woman,” I said, “but if I did I don’t think I would take her to Tierra del Fuego.”

“Where would you take her instead?”

“It would depend on the woman. I might take her to Paris.”

“How romantic.”

“Or I might take her to the movies.”

“Also romantic,” she said. A smile played on her lips. “I want to buy a book. Will you sell me a book?”

“Not this one?”

“No.”

“Good,” I said, and closed
Our Oriental Heritage,
and set it on the shelf behind me. She’d been holding a book, and she placed it on the counter where I could see it. It was Clifford McCarty’s
Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart,
the hardcover edition published thirty years ago by Citadel Press. I checked the penciled price on the flyleaf.

“It’s twenty-two dollars,” I said. “And, because I’m honest to a fault, I’ll tell you that there’s a paperback edition available. The title’s slightly different but it’s the same book.”

“I have it.”

“It’s around fifteen dollars, if memory serves, and sometimes it does.” I blinked. “Did you just say you have it?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s called
The Complete Films of Humphrey Bogart,
and your memory serves you quite well. The price is fourteen ninety-five.”

“And you already own it.”

“Yes. I want a hardcover copy.”

“I guess you’re a fan.”

“I love him,” she said. “And you? Do you love him?”

“There’s never been anybody quite like him,” I said, which, when you come right down to it, could be said of just about anyone. “He was one of a kind, wasn’t he? He had—”

“A certain something.”

“That’s just what I was going to say.” The tips
of my fingers rested on the book, scant inches from the tips of her fingers. Her nails were manicured, and painted a rich scarlet. Mine were not. I fought to keep my fingers from reaching out for hers, and I said, “Uh, I have a copy of the Jordan Manning biography. At least I did the last time I looked.”

“I saw it.”

“It’s out of print, and difficult to find. But I guess you already have a copy.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”

“Oh? It’s supposed to be good, but—”

“I don’t care,” she said. “What do I care about his life? I don’t care where he was born, or if he loved his mother. I don’t give a damn how many wives he had, or how much he drank, or what he died of.”

“You don’t?”

“What I love,” she said, “is what you see on the screen.
That
Humphrey Bogart. Rick in
Casablanca.
Sam Spade in
The Maltese Falcon.
”

“Dixon Steele in
In a Lonely Place.
”

Her eyes widened. “Everyone remembers Rick Blaine and Sam Spade,” she said. “And Fred Dobbs in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
and Philip Marlowe in
The Big Sleep.
But who remembers Dixon Steele?”

“I guess I do,” I said. “Don’t ask me why. I remember titles and authors a lot, that’s natural in this business, and I guess I remember character names, too.”

“
In a Lonely Place.
He’s a screenwriter, Dixon
Steele, do you remember? He has to adapt a novel but he can’t bear to read it, and he gets a hat-check girl to come tell him the story. Then she’s murdered, and he is a suspect.”

“But there’s another girl,” I said.

“Gloria Grahame. She’s a neighbor and gives him an alibi, and then she falls in love with him and types his manuscript and prepares his meals. But she sees the violence in him when his car is in an accident and he beats up the other driver, and again when he beats his agent for taking his script before it was finished. She thinks he must have killed the hat-check girl after all, and she is going to leave him, and he finds out and starts choking her. Do you remember?”

Vaguely, I thought. “Vividly,” I said.

“And there is a phone call. The hat-check girl’s boyfriend has confessed to the murder. But it’s too late for them, and Gloria Grahame can only stand there and watch him walk out of her life forever.”

“You don’t need the book,” I said. “Not in hardcover or in paperback. You’ve got the whole thing memorized.”

“He is very important to me.”

“I can see that.”

“I learned English from his films. Four of them, I played them over and over on the VCR. I would say the lines along with him and the other actors, trying to pronounce them correctly. But I still have an accent, don’t I?”

“It’s charming.”

“You think so? I think you are charming.”

“You’re beautiful.”

She lowered her eyes, drew a wallet from her purse. “I want to pay for the book,” she announced. “It is twenty-two dollars, yes? And then there is the sales tax.”

“Forget the tax.”

“Oh?”

“And forget the twenty-two dollars. Please, I insist. The book is my gift to you.”

“But I cannot accept it.”

“Of course you can.”

“I want to pay for it,” she said. She put a five and a twenty on the counter. “Please,” she said.

I slipped the book into a paper bag, handed it to her, and gave her three dollars change. I didn’t ring the sale and I didn’t collect the tax. Don’t tell the governor.

“You are very sweet,” she said. “But how can you make money if you give your books away?” She put her hand on mine. “I think there is more to you than shows on the surface. Do you know what I think? I think you are like him.”

“Like—?”

“Humphrey Bogart. Has anyone told you that?”

“No,” I said. “Never.”

She cocked her head, studying me. “It is not physical,” she said. “You do not look like him. And your voice is nothing like his. But there is something, yes?”

“Well, uh—”

“Do you have a secret life?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “Are you secretly violent, like Dixon Steele?” She cocked her head, took a long look at me. “I don’t think so. But there is something, isn’t there? It is a very romantic quality, I can tell you that much.”

“It is?”

“Oh, yes. Very romantic.” A knowing smile played on those lips. “Take me out this evening.”

“Wherever you say.”

“Not to Paris,” she said. “That would be romantic, wouldn’t it? If we were to meet like this, and tonight we flew to Paris. But I don’t want you to take me to Paris, not yet.”

“Paris can wait.”

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll always have Paris. Tonight you may take me to the movies.”

After she left, I went over and touched Raffles to make sure he was alive. He hadn’t changed position during her visit, and it was hard to imagine he could have ignored her. I scratched him behind the ear and he swung his head around and gave me a look.

“You missed her,” I told him. “Go back to sleep.”

He yawned and stretched, then sprang lightly down from the sill and hurried to check his water dish. He is a gray tabby, and Carolyn Kaiser, my best friend in all the world, has assured me that he
is a Manx. I’ve since given the matter some study, and I’m not so sure. As far as I can tell, the only thing Manxlike about him is the tail he doesn’t have.

Manx or no, he’s a good working cat, and since he took up residence in my store I haven’t lost a single volume to mice. It struck me that I owed him a lot. Suppose a mouse had gnawed the spine of
Bogey: The Films of Humphrey Bogart,
so that I’d had to toss it in the trash or consign it to the three-for-a-buck table? Just as she had walked into my store, so would she have walked on out of it, and I’d have gone on reading Will Durant, as unaware of the whole business as Raffles.

I reached for the phone and called the Poodle Factory, where Carolyn spends her days making dogs beautiful. “Hi,” I told her. “Listen, I’m not going to be able to join you at the Bum Rap tonight. I’ve got a date.”

“That’s funny, Bern. I asked you at lunch if you had anything on for tonight, and you said you didn’t.”

“That was then,” I said.

“And this is now? What happened, Bern?”

“A beautiful woman walked into my store.”

“You’ve got all the luck,” she said. “The only person who walked into my store all afternoon was a fat guy with a saluki. Why do people do that?”

“Walk into your store?”

“Buy inappropriate dogs. He’s bandy-legged
and barrel-chested and he’s got an underslung jaw, so what the hell is he doing with a dog built like a fashion model? He ought to have an English bulldog.”