“That’s great, Bern.”

“I guess so. I never actually decided to give it up. I just kept putting it off, and then one day I realized it had been over six months since my last burglary, and then the next thing I knew it was a year. And I thought, well, maybe I’ve reformed, maybe the good moral upbringing I had as a child has finally taken hold, or maybe it’s just adulthood creeping up on me, but whatever it was I seemed ready to be a decent law-abiding citizen. Then I found out what my new landlord wanted in the way of rent and I suddenly couldn’t see the point of it all.”

“I can imagine.”

“The rent increase was on my mind all the time, and I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Believe me, there’s no way to pick up an extra ten grand a month selling more books. What am I going to do, hike the price of the books on my three-for-a-buck table? So I found myself thinking, well, maybe I could cover the increase by stealing a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year.”

“To plow back into the business.”

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I just hate the thought of giving up the store. Still, I was all right until ten days ago.”

“What happened ten days ago?”

“Maybe it was nine days.”

“So what happened nine days ago?”

“No, I was right the first time. Ten days.”

“Jesus, Bernie.”

“I’m sorry. What happened was I was standing in line to get tickets for If Wishes Were Horses. I picked up a pair for the following night’s performance, but the woman in front of me was getting tickets ten days in advance. She was wearing fur and a lot of jewelry, and she was having a very la-di-da conversation with another similarly pelted and bejeweled woman, and it struck me that I knew her name and address and that she and her husband would be away from the apartment on a particular September evening.”