The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (20 page)

“I thought a thousand dollars.”

“A nice round sum. Hardly cheap for a volume no one’s ever heard of, but not unreasonable for one on which no one’s ever laid eyes. I’d want to see the book.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know what you may know about me, but I never leave my residence. I wish I could, but it’s impossible. I could send Miss Miller, but could I ask you to hand a valuable book over to her? Of course she could bring you a check, or even cash, with the understanding that the book can be returned if it turns out to be unacceptable. Though I’m sure it will be just as you describe it, and I’ll be pleased to keep it. How does that sound?”

Cumbersome, I thought, and not at all what I had in mind. I said, “I’ll bring the book to you, Mr. Leopold. I’m tied up for the rest of the afternoon, but I could come this evening. Say nine o’clock?”

After I’d ended the call, I had another look at the inscription on the book’s flyleaf.
To Hester R. Longbranch . . .

Who else but Culloden could have written those words? Well, I could, prompted by my man Smith, who’d jotted them down for me. I’d used a calligrapher’s stylus and India ink, and copied them out in the Palmer Method penmanship Miss Rukeyser had drilled into me all those years ago. Wouldn’t the woman be proud of me now?

Well, probably not, given the circumstances.

I picked up the phone, made another call. “I’m seeing him tonight,” I said.

“Oh, good. One doesn’t want these matters to drag out. Though he could hardly have said he’d be out, could he? Did he ask the price?”

“I told him a thousand dollars.”

“I rather think he’d have been persuaded to pay a bit more than that. Not that it makes any difference to me. Whatever he pays you is yours to keep. I did tell you that, didn’t I?”

Indeed he had. Among other things . . .

He asked me if I knew anything about apostle spoons.

“Unless they’re what Peter and Paul used to eat their porridge,” I said, “I haven’t got a clue. Why?”

“This may take a while,” he said, “and we wouldn’t want to be interrupted. There’s a coffee shop on University Place that’s relatively quiet at this hour.”

“It’s always quiet,” I said. “The food is lousy.”

“And are the portions small?” He drew a familiar envelope from his pocket. “To make it worth your while,” he said, “to miss an hour’s business.”

If it held hundreds, like his previous envelopes, then it felt like $5000. Even if they were singles, the next hour was well covered. I put the envelope away without checking its contents, turned the sign in the door from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
, locked up, but left the window gates open and the bargain table out on the sidewalk. Let them rob me blind for an hour. What did I care?

“May I ask you something?”

We had cups of coffee in front of us, and our slack-jawed waitress was out of hearing range. He nodded, and I asked him about the ¾-inch brass disc attached to his lapel.

“It’s a button,” he said, and tugged one edge to show me that it was sewn to the fabric.

“What’s the image?” I leaned closer. “It looks like a little house.”

“A log cabin, and I’m not wearing it to indicate membership in the Log Cabin Republicans. It’s a campaign button.”

“I’ve never seen one like it.”

“That’s because you weren’t old enough to vote in 1840. It was distributed to promote the candidacy of William Henry Harrison, hero of the battle of Tippecanoe.”

“And Tyler, too,” I said.

“John Tyler of Virginia was his running mate, and very shortly his successor. Old Tippecanoe delivered an inaugural address of which nothing was recalled later but its inordinate length. They swore in presidents in March in those days, not in January, but it was still very much winter that day in Washington, and the new president caught his death of cold.”

“That rings a bell.”

“He was born in a log cabin,” he said, “of which his Whig supporters made much. Hence the image on the button.”

“You were wearing something similar before.”

“I would think so. Which suit was I wearing, do you recall?”

I had to think. “Your suit was dark, with a chalk stripe,” I said, “but that was the first time I met you. The next time you were wearing a Norfolk jacket.”

“And each lapel bore a button. You’re an observant man, Mr. Rhodenbarr. And indeed they were different buttons.”

“I guess they’d have to be, since they’re sewn in place.”

“The one on the suit,” he said, “is the same size as this one. The image is that of a plumed knight.” I thought of the man in the Galtonbrook’s Rembrandt, until he added, “It supports the 1884 Republican candidacy of James Blaine, who lost a very close election to Grover Cleveland. His supporters called him The Plumed Knight. The Cleveland crowd disagreed. ‘Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine,’ they chanted, ‘the highfalutin’ liar from the state of Maine.’ ”

“Politics was so much kinder and gentler back then.”

“The Norfolk jacket, Mr. Rhodenbarr, is credited to an otherwise unremarkable Duke of Norfolk, although it is almost certainly his unremembered tailor whose design it was. ‘Be nice if you could make me one with a belt,’ His Grace may have mused, so perhaps it was indeed his inspiration. And the one you saw me wearing was the genuine article, in that the buttons which close the belt in the back may be undone, then refastened after the belt’s been brought around to the front.”

“I always thought the belt was just for decoration.”

“And so it is,” he said, “because all fastening the belt in front does is make one look foolish. The Duke would seem to have been a fop, and a ninny in the bargain, yet his jacket has established itself over time as a classic. Do you suppose there’s a lesson there?”

I said it wouldn’t surprise me.

“The button attached to my Norfolk jacket is also of brass, and larger than the others, almost twice the diameter of Old Tippecanoe’s log cabin. Did you note the image?”

“I couldn’t make it out.”

“It’s over two centuries old, and while it hardly circulated like a coin, I’m afraid it sustained some wear over the years. Still, at close range it’s easy enough to make out the image and lettering. The central figure is an eagle, its wings spread, a star above its head, its breast bearing the shield of the United States. The surrounding legend proclaims ‘March the Fourth 1789 Memorable Era.’ ”

“March 4, 1789 . . .”

“The inauguration of our first president at the beginning of his first term. Did I describe these curiosities as campaign buttons? That’s true of the others, but Washington never campaigned. A memorable era indeed. Politics actually was kinder and gentler back then, albeit briefly, and the presidency was Washington’s for the taking. So mine is properly described as an inauguration button.”

I said, “When I think of political buttons—”

“You picture the sort they hand out today, all bright colors and photographs, with a loop of wire at the back enabling one to pin it in place. Pin-back buttons have predominated since McKinley’s first face-off with Bryan in 1896. But political clothing buttons lasted in a small way for another half century. I own a brass button with a bear on it. You can probably guess the candidate.”

“A Teddy bear? Theodore Roosevelt?”

“Quite right, but how about a possum?”

“A possum. That was George Jones’s nickname, the country singer, but I don’t believe he ever ran for office.”

“I might have voted for him if he did,” Smith said. “But the button’s for William Howard Taft, evidently known to some of his admirers as Billy Possum.”

“He was? Do you happen to know why?”

“No idea. I have a matched set of four clothing buttons from the 1932 election, bearing photos of Herbert and Marion Hoover and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. And there’s a clothing button from 1948 with Harry Truman’s photo, and—” He stopped in mid-sentence, frowned. “I’m telling you far more than you need to know. More than anyone needs to know.”

“It’s interesting.”

“Every passion is interesting to him who suffers from it. And one sometimes feels impelled to inflict it on others.”

“Political campaign buttons you can sew on your clothes,” I said. “I never knew such things existed. Do you collect the other sort as well? With the pins?”

“Pin-back buttons. Yes, of course, and they constitute the great bulk of my collection. I’m especially fond of third-party buttons. Debs is my favorite, Eugene Victor Debs. He was the standard bearer for the Socialist Party in four consecutive elections from 1900 through 1912. A man named Benson took over in 1916, but in 1920 Debs was back again. He was serving a prison term for opposing the war, and his campaign button reads ‘For President: Convict No. 9563.’ And just under a million voters chose him over Harding and Cox.”

Something clicked.

“Buttons,” I said.

“Yes, and I can’t seem to stop nattering on about them, can I? I do apologize.”

“Benjamin Button. Well, why else would you collect that particular story? You don’t think much of its author and you’re openly contemptuous of the story itself, but you paid me handsomely to spirit the manuscript out of a museum basement. And why? All because of the character’s surname. If Fitzgerald had called him Zachary Zipper, he’d be nothing to you.”

“Or to Brad Pitt, I suspect. The name Benjamin Button does have a nice ring to it.”

“What’s the matter with Zachary Zipper? Never mind. Are political buttons the only sort you collect? They’re not, are they?”

He smiled. “I have all types of buttons, Mr. Rhodenbarr. If an article may be called a button, I’m apt to take an interest in it. Do you know of that curious subset of London Cockneys called the Pearlies? They favor clothing thoroughly festooned with pearl buttons; if those buttons were rhinestones, they could be Elvis impersonators. I own the costumes worn by the couple who reigned as King and Queen of the Pearlies in 1987.”

“Was that a particularly good year for Pearlies?”

“Vintage, I’d say. Do you like comedy albums, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

“You mean like record albums?”

“A curious phenomenon,” he said. “Pay the price and you can own in permanent form the routine you paid not a penny to watch George Carlin or Steve Martin perform on TV. So that you can repeat the experience over and over? I suppose people bought them to entertain visitors. It saves having to force conversation when you can treat your guests to somebody else’s wit and wisdom. I own one comedy album myself. Can you guess what it might be?”

I had a hunch he’d tell me.

“It’s by Bob Newhart. It was his first album, recorded during a live performance in Houston, and it went straight to the top of the Billboard chart when Warners released it in May of 1960. It’s still funny all these years later.”

“I heard it years ago,” I said. “There was a bit about a warship with an odd name.”