I could have gone straight to the store and opened up, but not after a night in a cell. I went home and showered and shaved and put on clean clothes. So it was past noon by the time I got downtown again, and despite the act he put on I figured Raffles had already been fed. A note on the counter removed all doubt.

I dragged the bargain table outside and called the Poodle Factory. “I just opened up,” I told Carolyn. “Thanks for feeding Raffles. And while I’m at it, thanks for calling Wally, and for getting the bail money to him, and for being a generally good scout.”

“It’s nothing, Bern.”

“And thanks for calling Patience.”

“Matter of fact,” she said, “I got Wally to call her.”

“How come?”

“I figured it would look better. Remember, I already called her once to break a date for you. If she gets two calls in a row from some woman she never met, what’s she gonna think?”

“I see what you mean,” I said, and explained the particular fashion in which Wally had canceled my presumed shrink appointment. “I’m not blaming you,” I assured her. “You had the right idea, and so did Wally. It’s just that something got lost in translation.”

“You’d think I’d have enough to do,” she said, “keeping my own love life constantly screwed up. You wouldn’t think I’d have the time or the energy to ruin somebody else’s. What can I say? I blew it, Bern.”

“You broke even,” I said. “You fed one cat and let another one out of the bag.”

“What are you gonna say to her?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. In the meantime I sent flowers.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

“Wally suggested it.”

“He did? Well, what’s the point of having a lawyer if you’re not gonna take his advice?”

“That’s what I figured.”

“What kind did you send? An assortment?”

“No,” I said. “I couldn’t decide between cut flowers and a living plant. You know, something that would last.”

“Something she’ll still have long after she’s forgotten ever having known you.”

“That’s the idea. I wound up springing for a dozen roses and a plant, an African violet in a nice little pot.”

“Red roses, I hope.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, but why?”

“And blue violets, right? Did you enclose a poem?”

“Oh.”

“Listen, I gotta go, a woman just came in with a puli. You’ll be there all afternoon, won’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Unless I get arrested again.”

An hour later it looked as though I’d spoken too soon. I was ringing up a sale for one of my regular customers, an emergency-room physician at St. Vincent’s. She drops in every Saturday and buys a dozen books at a time, all mysteries, all by hard-boiled male writers. “There’s nothing so relaxing,” she told me once, “as blood and gore that’s someone else’s responsibility.”

We were chatting about some of her favorites when Ray Kirschmann came into the shop. Normally he knows how to behave, biding his time when I’ve got a customer, but today he had a little snot from the DA’s office for company, and he bulled his way right into the middle of our transaction and slapped a piece of paper on the counter.

“ ’Scuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but this here’s a warrant authorizin’ an’ empowerin’ me to search the premises.”

“If you let me know what you’re looking for,” I said evenly, “perhaps I can save you some time.”

“Now that’s real considerate of you,” he said, “but I know what I want an’ I know where to find it, on account of I saw it here yesterday.” He led the assistant DA to the Sports section, where he pulled one book off the shelf right away, then took his time selecting two more volumes. He handed all three books to his young companion, who brought them to the counter and set them down while he wrote out a receipt in perfect parochial-school penmanship.

“ ‘Received of Bernard Grimes Rhodenbarr,’ ” Ray read aloud. “ ‘Three books as follows. Mr. Mint’s Insider’s Guide to Investing in Baseball Cards and Collectibles. Encyclopedia of Sports Card Values, third edition. Getting Started with Baseball Cards.’ I only saw the one yesterday, the Mr. Mint. You had the others stuck on the shelf below.”

“That was to confuse you, Ray. Look, if you wanted the books, wouldn’t it have been simpler to buy them? It strikes me as less trouble than getting a warrant. Price guides like that I practically give away, because by the time they get to my store they’re apt to be seriously out of date. Now if you want something a little more current, I’d recommend the Barnes & Noble at Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street. They even discount their stock, although I know it’s not quite the same as getting it for free, but—”

“These are evidence,” the young fellow said. His name, according to the receipt he handed me, was J. Philip Flynn.

“Evidence,” I said.

“Of prior knowledge,” J. Philip Flynn said. He hefted the books. “You got something to put these in?”

I suppressed an impulse and handed him a shopping bag. Ray said, “Pretendin’ you didn’t know baseball cards was worth stealin’, Bern. An’ here you got not one but three books on the subject.” He shook his head, awed by the perfidy of human nature.

“I’ve got half a shelf full of books on unarmed combat,” I said, “but I don’t know the first thing about taking a cop and a lawyer and knocking their heads together. I know this’ll come as a shock to you, Ray, but there are actually a couple of books in the store that I haven’t had time to read.”

“Well, you’ll have time soon,” he said. “Plenty of time, way it looks to me.”

And out he went, with J. Philip Flynn following in his wake. I turned to my customer and apologized for the interruption.

“Cops,” she said with feeling. “It’s Saturday. Twelve hours from now we’ll be up to our clavicles in stabbings and gunshot wounds, and those two heroes are confiscating books. I thought at first they must be looking for kiddie porn, but those were books about baseball cards, weren’t they?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I didn’t know they were illegal,” she said. “What is it, some carcinogen in the gum?” She raised a hand and waved the thought aside. “It’s all crazy,” she said. “Oh, hi, Raffles. Were you hiding from the nasty old policemen? Oh, you are a sweetie pie. Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

“Miaow,” said Raffles.

When the store’s empty, or when the browsers strike me as trustworthy types, I’m apt to pick up a book and read. There’s a little bell that tinkles when someone opens the door, but if I’m really caught up in my reading I don’t always hear it.

Which is what happened around four-thirty. I was back in prehistory, sharing the heroine’s dismay that those Neanderthals just didn’t understand her, when the deliberate clearing of a throat just across the counter from me yanked me back to present time. I looked up from the primitive brutes on the page and into the swinish little eyes of Borden Stoppelgard.

“I suppose you want your change,” I said.

“What, from the day before yesterday? No, of course not. You offered it to me then and I didn’t take it. You think I’d make a special trip here for it?”

“Probably not,” I said. “Unless you had to be in the neighborhood anyway to evict some widows and orphans.”

“You’ve got me wrong, Rhodenbarr.”

“Oh?”

“All wrong. What kind of man evicts widows and orphans in September? Christmas Eve, that’s the time for it.”

“‘Hark, the City Marshals Sing.’”

“My favorite Christmas carol,” he said, with a hearty chuckle. He stepped closer to the counter. “As a matter of fact, I did make a special trip here this afternoon, but not to buy books. What I really want to do is apologize. We got off on the wrong foot the other day and it was my fault. I had the wrong idea about you.”