Lawrence Block
The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling
A book in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series
for Cheryl Morrison
When from ’ouse to ’ouse you’re ’untin’ you must always work in pairs-
It ’alves the gain, but safer you will find-
For a single man gets bottled on them twisty-wisty stairs.
An’ a woman comes and clobs ’im from be’ind.
When you’ve turned ’em inside out, an’ it seems beyond a doubt
As if there weren’t enough to dust a flute
(Cornet: Toot! toot!)-
Before you sling your ’ook, at the ’ouse-tops take a look,
For it’s underneath the tiles they ’ide the loot.
(Chorus.) ’Ow the loot!
Bloomin’ loot!
That’s the thing to make the boys git up an’ shoot!
It’s the same with dogs an’ men,
If you’d make ’em come again
Clap ’em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu!
Loot!
Whoopee! Tear ’im, puppy! Loo! loo! Lulu!
Loot! loot! Loot!
– Rudyard Kipling
“Loot”
CHAPTER One
I suppose he must have been in his early twenties. It was hard to be sure of his age because there was so little of his face available for study. His red-brown beard began just below his eyes, which in turn lurked behind thick-lensed horn-rims. He wore a khaki army shirt, unbuttoned, and beneath it his T-shirt advertised the year’s fashionable beer, a South Dakota brand reputedly brewed with organic water. His pants were brown corduroy, his running shoes blue with a gold stripe. He was toting a Braniff Airlines flight bag in one ill-manicured hand and the Everyman’s Library edition of The Poems of William Cowper in the other.