The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,1

said. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I can assure you—”

“Try stratospheric,” I suggested.

“—that it’s very much in line with the market.”

“All I know,” I said, “is that it’s completely out of the question. You want me to pay more each month than I’ve been paying for an entire year. That’s an increase of what, twelve hundred percent? Ten-five a month is more than I gross, for God’s sake.”

He shrugged. “I guess you’ll have to move.”

“I don’t want to move,” I said. “I love this store. I bought it from Mr. Litzauer when he decided to retire to Florida, and I want to go on owning it until I retire, and—”

“Perhaps you should start thinking early retirement.”

I looked at him.

“Face it,” he said. “I’m not raising the rent because I’m out to get you. Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Your rent’s been a steal since before you even bought the store. Some idiot gave your buddy Litzauer a thirty-year lease, and the escalators in it didn’t begin to keep pace with the realities of commercial real estate in an inflationary economy. Once I get you out of here I’ll rip out all that shelving and rent the place to a Thai restaurant or a Korean greengrocer, and do you know what kind of rent I’ll get for a nice big space like this? Forget ten-five. Try fifteen a month, fifteen thousand dollars, and the tenant’ll be glad to pay it.”

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“Not my problem. But I’m sure there are places in Brooklyn or Queens where you can get this kind of square footage at an affordable rent.”

“Who goes there to buy books?”

“Who comes here to buy books? You’re an anachronism, my friend. You’re a throwback to the days when Fourth Avenue was known throughout the world as Booksellers’ Row. Dozens of stores, and what happened to them? The business changed. Paperback books undermined the secondhand market. The general used-book store became a thing of the past, with the owners retiring or dying off. The few who are left are on the tail end of long-term leases like yours, or they’re run by canny old codgers who bought their buildings outright years ago. You’re in a dying business, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Here we are on a beautiful September afternoon and I’m the only customer in your shop. What does that say about your business?”

“I guess I ought to be selling kiwi fruit,” I said. “Or cold noodles with sesame sauce.”

“You could probably make this enterprise profitable,” he said. “Throw out ninety-five percent of this junk and specialize in high-ticket collector items. That way you could make do with a tenth the square footage. You could get off the street and run the whole operation out of an upstairs office, or even out of your home. But I don’t want to tell you how to run your business.”

“You’re already telling me to get out of it.”

“Am I supposed to support you in a doomed enterprise? I’m not in business for my health.”

“But,” I said.

“But what?”

“But you’re a patron of the arts,” I said. “I saw your name in the Times last week. You donated a painting to a fund-raising auction to benefit the New York Public Library.”

“My accountant advised it,” he said. “Explained to me how I’ll save more in taxes than I’d have made selling the painting.”

“Still, you have literary interests. Bookstores like this one are a cultural asset, as important in their own way as the library. You can hardly fail to appreciate that. As a collector—”

“An investor.”

I pointed at “B” Is for Burglar. “An investment?”

“Of course, and a hell of a good one. Women crime writers are a hot item right now. Alibi was less than fifteen dollars when it was published a dozen or so years ago. Do you know what a mint copy with dust jacket will bring now?”

“Not offhand.”

“Somewhere around eight-fifty. So I’m buying Grafton, I’m buying Nancy Pickard, I’m buying Linda Barnes. I have a standing order at Murder Ink for every first novel by a female author, because how can you tell who’s going to turn out to be important? Most of them won’t ever amount to much, but this way I don’t have to worry about missing the occasional book that jumps from twenty dollars to a thousand in a few years’ time.”

“So you’re just interested in investment,” I said.

“Absolutely. You don’t think I read this crap, do you?”

I pushed his credit card across the counter, followed it with his drivers