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

old baby in Roda’s story turned up in a basket on the steps of the local church.”
    “Like Moses in the bulrushes,” she said, “unless Pharaoh’s daughter made up that part. Hey, wait a minute, Bern! Wasn’t Benjamin Button a foundling himself?”
    “In the movie,” I said. “Not in the story. The way Fitzgerald had it, he was the son of one Roger Button, who owned a wholesale hardware business.”
    “Oh. Well, maybe the people who made the movie read Roda Roda’s story, even if Fitzgerald didn’t. And you say Smith read it? Did he say if it was any good?”
    “He called it less than wonderful, but better than Fitzgerald’s.”
    “In other words, still mediocre enough to belong in his collection. If he doesn’t much care for either story, why the hell is he collecting them?”
    “He has his reasons,” I said, “that reason knows nothing of. With Roda, he couldn’t track down the original magazine appearance, but the following year it was included in a book called Die sieben Leidenschaften, and he owns a copy, as well as the manuscript from the files of the Viennese publisher, with the editor’s notations and Roda Roda’s own emendations.”
    “That must be a scarce item.”
    “Well, it’d have to be unique. It might even be expensive, if anybody much cared about Alexander Roda Roda.”
    “Still, a manuscript. What about Benjamin Button, Bern? I bet he’d like to have Fitzgerald’s original manuscript.”
    I didn’t say anything, but I guess something showed in my face. She said, “We’re gonna be a while, aren’t we, Bernie?” and raised her hand, making circles in the air until she caught Maxine’s eye. We were at the Bum Rap, where we tend to meet up after work, and Maxine has been bringing us drinks for enough years to have grown adept at picking up Carolyn’s signals. She raised her eyebrows in response, whereupon Carolyn held up two fingers. Maxine nodded, and another round was on its way. Scotch for both of us, Carolyn’s on the rocks, mine with soda.

    I told the story as Smith had told it to me. Princeton, Fitzgerald’s ivy-covered alma mater, was the repository of the author’s papers, where they’d served no end of scholars writing no end of doctoral theses on the man and his work. It took a letter of reference from someone with good academic credentials to get access to the papers, and Smith had found someone to write him a letter, and took a train to Princeton Junction and a taxi to the campus. He’d phoned ahead, and a graduate student with a nose ring and an attitude led him to a desk and got him started.
    They had two copies of the story, one from Collier’s files, the other from Scribner’s. There were galleys and page proofs, and a good deal of correspondence concerning the story. Fitzgerald’s Hollywood agent, a man named Swanson, was on hand with half a dozen terse notes.
    They’d allowed him to make photocopies of both manuscripts, and several of the letters.
    “No kidding,” Carolyn said. “I didn’t think they let you do that.”
    I’d said as much to Smith, and reported his reply: “ ‘If you expect a graduate student to enforce a rule like that, you really ought to pay her a living wage.’ ”
    “He bribed her, huh?”
    “I think it would be less judgmental to say he compensated her handsomely for the performance of a task that lay outside the bounds of her job description.”
    “So he’s got copies,” she said. “But the originals are still at Princeton.”
    “Where they shall remain.”
    “Oh?”
    “He was quite candid about it. He’d love to have either or both of them, but he recognizes that they’re where they ought to be. The university’s serious about its custodial role, and if he’s enough of a collector to desire the manuscripts, he’s sufficiently respectful of scholarship to feel that their collection ought to be preserved intact. And his Benjamin Button collection, including the Roda Roda material, will go to Princeton