The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) Read Online Free PDF

lighter.
    “And five.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “You’ll want to count them.”
    I lifted the flap of the third envelope and established that it was full of bills, all of them evidently used hundreds. There was a thick wad of them, and I was willing to believe there were fifty of them, even as I was willing to believe the other envelopes held a hundred bills each, and that all of the bills were genuine.
    I told him I’d count them later.
    “You’ll want to add these to the count,” he said, and passed me a fourth envelope, which seemed to be the same thickness as the third. “Five more,” he said.
    “Oh?”
    “A bonus.”
    “That’s very generous of you.”
    “Do you think so? I wonder. It’s the same twenty percent I’d leave for a waitress, and I’d do so with no expectations. I’d probably never sit at her table again, and might not even return to that restaurant. Whereas in the present instance I have an ulterior motive.”
    “Oh?”
    “Indeed, Mr. Rhodenbarr. I expect to pay you another visit before too long. We’ll be doing more business, you and I.”

 

    It was two weeks earlier when Mr. Smith first showed up, all dressed up in his three-piece suit. He turned up in mid-afternoon, and he was a long way from being the day’s first customer. That honor belonged to Mowgli.
    I’ve known Mowgli for years, although I didn’t know his real name any more than I knew Smith’s. The name (Mowgli, not Smith) comes from The Jungle Book, but don’t ask me whether Kipling made it up or came across it somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. However it found its way to my Mowgli, it seems to suit him. There’s a feral quality to him, partnered with a gentle nature.
    Early in our acquaintance he brought books to me. I was at first reluctant to buy from him, thinking he might have lifted them from other shops, but came to know that he was a legitimate book scout, scooping up bargains at flea markets and urban yard sales and wholesaling them to dealers like me.
    Then the Internet came along, and transformed Mowgli from supplier to customer. Or maybe he’d stayed essentially the same, and Barnegat Books had morphed into a bargain basement. He now had a website and an eBay store, and I never saw him without selling him six or ten or a dozen books. At first I’d give him a volume discount, but it didn’t take me long to stop that, and he didn’t seem to mind, paying the marked price without argument. He didn’t even balk at the sales tax, until the day he informed me that he had acquired a resale number, and was now tax-exempt.
    Wonderful.
    He came in that morning with an empty tote bag, one that I recognized from the days when he’d brought it in loaded with books for me. It was loaded now when he walked out, and I had money in my cash register that I hadn’t had earlier, so why was I in a bad mood?
    Carolyn asked me that very question a couple of hours later, when I showed up at the Poodle Factory after a stop at Two Guys. “That smells great,” she said, “and you look awful. What’s the matter, Bern?”
    “Mowgli,” I said.
    “You used to like him, Bern.”
    “I still like him. I just can’t stand the sight of him.”
    “He’s a regular customer now.”
    “Exactly.”
    “And he pays full price.”
    “And then he marks everything up and sells it to somebody online, some yutz in Antwerp or Anaheim with a PayPal account and a thirst for literature. You know what I think he does? I think he checks my stock and lists everything that looks good to him, so he’s actually selling the books while they’re still mine.”
    “But don’t his sales lists have photos along with the descriptions? I think you’re being paranoid, Bern.”
    “Maybe.”
    “I think he makes you feel guilty, because you know you ought to be selling books online yourself.”
    “I don’t want to do that.”
    “I know.”
    “I want to run a bookshop,” I said. “The old-fashioned kind, where people come in looking