“I never stole that much, Ray. I never lived that high. I got a small apartment on the Upper West Side, I stay out of night clubs, I do my own wash in the machines in the basement. The store’s steady. You want to give me a hand with this?”

He helped me drag the bargain table in from the sidewalk. He said, “Look at this. A cop and a burglar both doin’ physical work. Somebody should take a picture. What do you get for these? Forty cents, three for a buck? And that’s keepin’ you in shirts and socks, huh?”

“I’m a careful shopper.”

“Look, Bern, if there’s some reason you don’t wanna help me out on this coat thing-”

“Cops,” I said.

“What about cops?”

“A guy rehabilitates himself and you refuse to believe it. You talk yourselves hoarse telling me to go straight-”

“When the hell did I ever tell you to go straight? You’re a first-class burglar. Why would I tell you to change?”

He let go of it while I filled a shopping bag with hardcover mysteries and began shutting down for the night. He told me about his partner, a clean-cut and soft-spoken young fellow with a fondness for horses and a wee amphetamine habit.

“All he does is lose and bitch about it,” Ray complained, “until this past week when he starts pickin’ the ponies with x-ray vision. Now all he does is win, and I swear I liked him better when he was losin’.”

“His luck can’t last forever, Ray.”

“That’s what I been tellin’ myself. What’s that, steel gates across the windows? You don’t take chances, do you?”

I drew the gates shut, locked them. “Well, they were already here,” I said stiffly. “Seems silly not to use them.”

“No sense makin’ it easy for another burglar, huh? No honor among thieves, isn’t that what they say? What happens if you forget the key, huh, Bern?”

He didn’t get an answer, nor do I suppose he expected one. He chuckled instead and laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I guess you’d just call a locksmith,” he said. “You couldn’t pick the lock, not bein’ a burglar anymore. All you are is a guy who sells books.”