“A tip,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Get out of the business.”
He looked at me.
“Find another line of work. Quit lifting things. You’re not terribly good at it and I’m afraid you’re temperamentally unsuited to the life that goes with it. Are you in college?”
“I dropped out.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“Few things are, but why don’t you see if you can’t get back in? Pick up a diploma and find some sort of career that suits you. You’re not cut out to be a professional thief.”
“A professional-” He rolled his eyes again. “Jesus, I ripped off a couple of books. Don’t make a life’s work out of it, huh?”
“Anybody who steals things for resale is a professional criminal,” I told him. “You just weren’t doing it in a very professional manner, that’s all. But I’m serious about this. Get out of the business.” I laid a hand lightly on his wrist. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but the thing is you’re too dumb to steal.”
CHAPTER Two
After he’d left I tucked his forty dollars into my wallet, where it promptly became my forty dollars. I marked the Steinbeck down to fifteen dollars before shelving it and its companions. While doing this I spotted a few errant volumes and put them back where they belonged.
Browsers came and went. I made a few sales from the bargain table, then moved a Heritage Club edition of Virgil’s Eclogues (boxed, the box water-damaged, slight rubbing on spine, price $8.50). The woman who bought the Virgil was a little shopworn herself, with a blocky figure and a lot of curly orange hair. I’d seen her before but this was the first time she’d bought anything, so things were looking up.
I watched her carry Virgil home, then settled in behind the counter with a Grosset amp; Dunlap reprint of Soldiers Three. I’d been working my way through my limited stock of Kipling lately. Some of the books were ones I’d read years ago, but I was reading Soldiers Three for the first time and really enjoying my acquaintance with Ortheris and Learoyd and Mulvaney when the little bells above my door tinkled to announce a visitor.