Read The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) for Free Online Page B

Side of Paradise, ” I said. “Fitzgerald’s first novel, and not an easy book to find. I keep it in back, for safety’s sake. If you’d like a look at it—”
    He shook his head. “I’m not interested in Scott Fitzgerald,” he said.
    “You’re not interested in Fitzgerald.”
    “No, not really. There’s nothing like an early death from alcoholism to enhance a writer’s reputation. Stir in good looks and early success, season with a beautiful wife in the nuthouse, and the result is irresistible.”
    “Juneau Lock,” I said.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “It’s nothing. I gather you don’t think The Great Gatsby is—”
    “The Great American novel? No, hardly that. The puzzle of Gatsby is how so many otherwise perceptive people can find so much to admire in it. Do you know why Jay Gatsby is such an enigma? It’s because Fitzgerald himself never had a clue who the fellow was. An arriviste, a parvenu, an upstart if you will, a man who made big money in a hurry and got his hands just a little dirty in the process. Hardly a rarity at the time, and there was a fellow in Boston with a similar story who got his son elected to the White House. Fitzgerald didn’t know what to make of Gatsby, and the literary establishment has responded by enshrining his bafflement. So no, I don’t think much of Gatsby , or your Mr. Fitzgerald.”
    I chose silence as preferable to stammering.
    “Besides the first edition copy, with its original dust jacket, I own as well an inexpensive hardcover reprint edition. It bears a different title, and that’s why I added it to my collection. Do you know the title?”
    I didn’t.
    “ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Other Stories. Perhaps you’ve seen a copy.”
    “If I have, it was years ago.”
    “But you’ve read the title story?”
    I nodded. “But that was quite some time ago as well. I did see the Brad Pitt film when it came out.”
    The thin lips gave me a thin smile. “Fitzgerald’s agent sold development rights to a producer named Ray Stark,” he said, “who never did figure out how to make it filmable. He died in 2004, and the estate sold the rights to somebody else, and the movie released four years later retained the story’s title and premise and hardly anything else. It was an improvement on the original, but it would almost have had to be. You know where the premise came from?”
    I didn’t.
    “An observation of Mark Twain’s, that the best of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end. Thus Fitzgerald’s conceit that his protagonist should be born an old man who grows younger every year he lives. Fitzgerald was born in 1897, which put him in his early twenties when he wrote the story. Not surprisingly, it reflects the degree of insight and maturity you would expect of a stripling.”
    “You sound—”
    “Contemptuous of the story? Are you a collector, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”
    “A collector?”
    “Of anything at all. Books, coins, stamps? Barbie dolls?”
    “No, none of those things. I collected books in a very small way before I bought the bookshop, but you can’t really collect something and deal in it at the same time, so my collection became part of my store stock. I have a wall of books at home, but just for reading and looking things up. They’re dust collectors themselves, but that’s not enough to make them a collection. Where did Barbie dolls come from?”
    “The Mattel Company, I believe. I just mentioned them as something some people collect, but you don’t and neither do I.”
    “A common bond.”
    “Indeed. I collect The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , Mr. Rhodenbarr, and not because I’m an extravagant admirer of either that story or its author. Would it be enough to say I have my reasons?”
    “Of course.”
    “I own the books I’ve told you about, and quite a few others besides. The story has been widely anthologized over the years, and of course I haven’t attempted to amass all of them, but I’ve chosen a