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“This is go
“She’s married,” I said. “We’ve had to sneak around and grab moments when we can. Last night was one of those moments.”
“I’m ashamed of you, Bernie.”
“Well, I’m not proud of it myself, Ray, but—”
“Ashamed of you, trottin’ out an oldie like that. You wouldn’t want to give me her name, would you?”
“Ray, you know I can’t do that.”
“Too much of a gentleman, huh?”
“Ray, common decency requires—”
He held up a hand. “Spare me,” he said. “You didn’t go visit no woman last night, married or single. What you did, leavin’ your place on the sly in the middle of the night, is you took the baseball cards you already stole from Martin Gilmartin—”
“See?” I demanded. “It is a silly name, drunk or sober.”
“—an’ you took ’em to a fence, an’ you sold ’em. As far as when you broke into the Gilmartin place to steal ’em, my guess is it was sometime last night, because it was yesterday you had the argument with your landlord.” He made a face. “Don’t sputter like that, Bernie. If you got somethin’ to say, go ahead an’ say it. You go
“We had a heated discussion about books,” I said. “But you expect that sort of thing in a literary saloon. Anyway, his name is Stoppelgard.”
“Borden Stoppelgard.”
“So what has he got to do with Marty Gilmartin and baseball cards?”
“Gilmartin’s married.”
“Well, I swear it wasn’t his wife I was in bed with last night.”
“His wife’s name is Edna.”
“That’s an okay name,” I said. “Edna Gilmartin. Nothing the least bit fu
“How about Edna Stoppelgard? What’s that do for your fu
When Cornwallis was about to surrender his troops to George Washington at Yorktown, he ordered the band to play a tune called “The World Turned Upside Down.” If I’d had a tape of it lying around I would have played it.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Gilmartin’s wife used to be married to Stoppelgard?”
“Couldn’t happen,” he said. “There’s a law against it. Although I suppose there’s ways of gettin’ around it, don’t you figure?”
“Ways of getting around what?”
“The law against marryin’ your own sister, but why would you want to? The only plus I can see is you wouldn’t be arguin’ every year about do you spend Christmas with your parents or hers.” He shook his head. “Borden Stoppelgard is Martin Gilmartin’s brother-in-law.”
“You’re making this up.”
“All news to you, huh, Bernie? Nice try. Here’s more news. Last night the Stoppelgards an’ the Gilmartins all went to the theater together, to see something about wishin’ for horses. Then they all went out for supper, an’ your name came up. Seems Stoppelgard was crowin’ about the good deal he got on a rare book you sold him, an’ how the prices’d be even better when you had your Goin’-Outta-Business sale.”
“He said that, did he?”
“Then Gilmartin an’ his wife went home, an’ he got the call from you, but at the time he didn’t know who it was. Even without knowin’ it was you, first thought he had was somebody broke in, and the first thing he went an’ looked for was his baseball card collection, an’ it was gone.”
“So he called the police.”
“That’s just what he did, an’ the desk sent a couple of blue uniforms over, an’ they took a report. It landed on my desk this mornin’, an’ I mighta let it lay there except he called up, an’ the call got routed to me, an’ I smelled somethin’ fu
“Somebody got a bad burrito,” I suggested.
“He told me about the phone call,” he said, “an’ I figured any burglar’d be smart enough to make a call like that from a phone where it couldn’t be traced back to him. But you learn to check these things out, because a burglar who’s dumb enough to make that kind of call in the first place might be just stupid enough to make it from a friend’s apartment, especially if the friend in question’s a sawed-off little dyke who spends her life givin’ poodles a shave an’ a haircut.”
“It’s fu
“The big deal is I tried out your name on Gilmartin, an’ he recognized it right away from his talk with his brother-in-law. ‘I know who that is,’ he says. ‘He’s a bookseller, an’ not a very good one, either.’ I tell him I know you, too, an’ that ain’t all you are. ‘He’s also a burglar,’ I say, ‘and there I’d have to say he’s one of the best in the business.’ ”
“Thanks for the endorsement, Ray.”
“Well, credit where credit’s due.”
“But if I’m such a high-level burglar—”
“One of the best, Bern. You always were.”
“—then why would I waste my talents on a cigar box full of baseball cards?”
“More like a shoe box, according to Gilmartin.”
“I don’t care if it was a packing crate. For God’s sake, Ray, these are little pieces of cardboard smelling of bubble gum. We’re not talking about the Elgin Marbles.”
“Marbles,” he said. “That’s what my mom got rid of, God rest her soul. I had a huge sack of ’em, too. I don’t know if I had any Elgins, but I had a real nice collection.”
“Ray—”
“Baseball cards aren’t kid stuff anymore, Bernie. Grown-ups buy ’em an’ sell ’em. They’re hot with investors these days.”
“Like Sue Grafton.”
“Does she collect ’em? I just read one book of hers, an’ it wasn’t bad. It was set on an army base durin’ war game maneuvers.”
“ ‘K’ Is for Rations.”
“Somethin’ like that, yeah.”
“I know some of the scarce cards are worth money,” I said. “There’s one famous one. Honus Wagner, right? And the card’s worth a thousand dollars, maybe more.”
“A thousand dollars.”
“In perfect shape,” I said. “If it’s all beat up from flipping it against the wall, well, it would be worth a lot less.”
He looked at the notebook again. “Honus Wagner,” he a
“But he didn’t smoke,” I recalled. “And he didn’t want to have a bad influence on kids.”
“So he made ’em withdraw the card, an’ that’s why it’s so scarce today. You’re a little low, though, when you peg it at a thousand bucks.”
“Well, I was low on ‘B’ Is for Burglar, too. What’s it worth?”
“They auctioned one a couple of years back,” he said, “an’ it went for $451,000. Accordin’ to Gilmartin, it’d bring well over a million in today’s market. You honestly didn’t know that, Bernie?”
“I didn’t,” I said, “and I’m not sure I believe it. A million dollars? For a baseball card?”
“The T-206 card. There’s other Honus Wagner cards, not advertisin’ cigarettes, an’ they’re not worth anythin’ like that kind of dough.”
“And Gilmartin had a T-206?”
“No.”
“He didn’t? Then who cares? Ray—”
“But he had lots of other good cards,” he said. “He had the Topps 1952 set, with Mickey Mantle’s rookie card. An’ he had a lot of Ted Williams an’ Babe Ruth an’ Joe DiMaggio cards. I wouldn’t mind havin’ a card with Joe D on it, I got to admit it.”
“If I ever get one,” I said, “I’ll swap you straight up for the Elgin Marbles.”
“You got a deal, Bern. But the point is, Gilmartin didn’t have Honus Wagner, but what he had was probably worth a lot more than what your mother gave to the sisterhood rummage sale. He had the whole lot insured for half a million dollars.”
“Half a million dollars.”
“An’ he says it’s worth more than that. That’s why I was hopin’ you took his cards, Bernie. We could do a little business, do us both some good. An’ you took ’em all right, you poor sap, but you didn’t know what you had. You took ’em sometime between eight o’clock an’ midnight, an’ you went out in the middle of the night to visit one of those wide receivers you know an’ sold ’em cheap. You an’ me, Bernie, we coulda done a deal with the insurance company an’ split a hundred grand between us. I’ll bet you didn’t bring home a tenth of that last night.”