The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza Read Online Free PDF Page B

chocolate between the layers to make an entire high school class break out. I filled two mugs with coffee and two small snifters with tawny Armagnac that was older than we were. Abel came back, visibly pleased to see us eating, and announced that the retail price of the watch was $4,950. That was a little higher than I’d thought.
    “I can pay fifteen hundred,” he said. “Because I can turn it over so quickly and easily. Satisfactory?”
    “Satisfactory.”
    “That’s twenty-five hundred so far. You said three items, Bernard? The first two are nice merchandise, but I hope they don’t represent too great an investment of time and effort on your part. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to keep them? Ears can be pierced readily enough, and painlessly, I’m told. And wouldn’t the watch grace your wrist, Carolyn?”
    “I’d have to keep taking it off every time I washed a dog.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that.” He grinned widely. “What I should do,” he said, “is put aside both of thesearticles and make you a present of them when the two of you get married. I’d have to find something suitable for you as well, Bernard, though wedding presents are really for the bride, don’t you think? What about it, Carolyn? Shall I put these away?”
    “You’d have a long wait, Abel. We’re just good friends.”
    “And business associates, eh?”
    “That too.”
    He chuckled heartily and sat back and folded his hands once again on his belly, an expectant look on his face. I let him wait. Then he said, “You said you had three items.”
    “Two earrings and a watch.”
    “Ah, my mistake. I thought the earrings counted as a single unit. Then the total sum is twenty-five hundred dollars.”
    “Well, there is something else you might want to look at,” I said carelessly, and from the attaché case I produced a brown kraft envelope two inches square. Abel shot me a look, then took the envelope from me. Inside it was a hinged Plexiglas box just small enough to fit into the envelope, and inside that was a wad of tissue paper. Abel opened the tissue paper very deliberately, his fingers moving with the precision of one accustomed to handling rare coins. When a nick or a scratch can reduce a coin’s value substantially, when a finger mark can begin the hateful process of corrosion,one learns to grasp coins by their edges and to hold them gently but securely.
    The object Abel Crowe held gently but securely between the thumb and index finger of his left hand was a metallic disc just under seven-eighths of an inch in diameter—or just over two centimeters, if you’re into metrics. It was, in short, the size and shape of a nickel, the sort of nickel that’s the price of the good cigar this country is purported to need. It was the color of a nickel, too, although its frosted features and mirrorlike field were a ways removed from anything you’d be likely to have in your pocket.
    By and large, though, it looked like a nickel. And well it might, for that was precisely what it was.
    All it lacked was Thomas Jefferson’s head on the one side and his house on the other. The side Abel looked at first showed a large V within a wreath open at the top, the word Cents inscribed directly beneath the V. Circling the wreath were the issuing nation’s name and motto— United States of America above, E Pluribus Unum below.
    Abel flicked me a glance from beneath upraised eyebrows, then deftly turned the coin in his fingers. Its obverse depicted a woman’s head facing left, her coronet inscribed Liberty. Thirteen stars circled Miss Liberty, and beneath her head was the date.
    “Gross Gott!” said Abel Crowe. And then he closed his eyes and said another long sentence that I didn’tunderstand, possibly in German, possibly in some other language.
    Carolyn looked at me, her expression quizzical. “Is that good or bad?” she wanted to know.
    I told her I wasn’t sure.

CHAPTER
Four
    H e didn’t say anything else until he’d looked