The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online

dozen or so volumes that struck my fancy. Some months before Scribner’s brought out Tales of the Jazz Age, Collier’s Magazine published it. I daresay there are fewer copies around of that issue of Collier’s than there are of the book, but there are also fewer collectors vying for them.”
    “I assume you have a copy.”
    “I own two,” he said. “I bought one in only good condition, with some damage to the front cover. The pages are all there and all undamaged, and James Montgomery Flagg’s illustration of Benjamin as an aged baby is both awful and wonderful. Those two words once had the same meaning, by the way.”
    “I know.”
    “Then I caught wind of a copy in pristine condition, essentially mint, and the price wasn’t that much more than I’d had to give for the one with the coffee stains on the cover. So I bought it, and that’s more copies than anybody needs, so I could probably turn around and sell it. But I wouldn’t get all that much for it, and it’s not as though I need the money.”
    “So why not keep it?”
    “Exactly my thought. It might be different for a collector of, say, steam locomotives. One might not have the room to keep duplicates on hand. But an old magazine doesn’t take up much space.”
    “I don’t suppose it does.”
    “With a highly specialized collection like mine, Mr. Rhodenbarr, space is not a likely problem. But can you guess what is?”
    It didn’t take much thought. “Finding something to buy,” I said.
    “You may not be a collector yourself, sir, but you have ample insight into the complaint. And of course you’re quite correct. I’m told that a shark must keep swimming forward all its life. If it stops, it dies. Do you suppose that’s true?”
    “I don’t know much about sharks.”
    “Had you heard that before? About their need to keep forever advancing? You hadn’t? In that case you now know one thing more about sharks than you did a moment ago. Except that this new kernel of information may not be accurate.”
    “Still, it’ll be something to drop into conversations.”
    “Yes, and hasn’t it already served me admirably in that respect? Still, the collector shares this aspect with the shark, along with a reputation for unthinking rapacity. For how can one maintain interest in a collection if one is no longer able to add to it? And when one’s collecting interest is centered upon a single short story, how can one continue to find new material to collect?”
    How indeed?
    “One finds oneself branching out,” he said. “Do you know Roda Roda?”
    “That’s a name I haven’t heard in years.”
    “You actually know it?”
    “If they’re still around. I’ll tell you, it takes me back to my boyhood days in Ohio. There was this big old weeping willow in the yard next to ours, and its roots would grow into our sewer line. So my mom would call the Roto-Rooter man, and their truck would come by, and they’d do something. Cut out the roots and open the sewer line, I guess, and our drains would stop backing up, at least until the willow tree gathered its strength for another assault.”
    I shook my head at the memory. I remembered the logo on their truck, even as their radio jingle forced itself upon me. “ ‘And away go troubles, down the drain,’ ” I said. “If only. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Roto-Rooter truck. I don’t suppose you get much call for them in New York.”
    The look on his face brought me back.
    “But I don’t suppose you’re talking about the Roto-Rooter man,” I said. “Are you?”

 

    “Alexander Roda Roda,” I told Carolyn. “He was born in 1872 in an unpronounceable town in Moravia, which is now a part of the Czech Republic, but back then it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family moved to Osijek—”
    “Speaking of unpronounceable towns.”
    “—which seems to be in Croatia now, but used to be in Slavonia. Don’t ask me what happened to Slavonia.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of