Tsarnoff said, “Charles, this is Wilfred. Wilfred, this is Charles Weeks. Mark him well.”

Weeks did a double take. “‘Mark him well,’ eh? Whatever could you mean by that, Gregorius?” To Wilfred he said, “My pleasure, son,” and extended his hand. Wilfred just looked at the hand and made no move to take it.

“For Christ’s sake,” Weeks said, disgusted. “Shake hands like a man, you wretched toad-sucking little maggot. That’s better.” He wiped his hand on his pants leg and turned to me. “Weasel,” he said warmly. “Introduce me to these nice people.”

I made the introductions. Weeks bowed over Carolyn’s hand, brushing it with his lips, then shook hands with Mowgli and asked him if he’d really been raised by wolves. First raised, then lowered, Mowgli told him.

I said, “Have a seat, Charlie.”

“Why, thank you,” he said. “Yes, I think I will.” He took a moment to make his choice, finally selecting the chair two to the left of Tsarnoff, placing his hat on the chair that separated them. “Mowgli’s from Kipling’s Jungle Book, but of course you would know that, wouldn’t you, Gregorius?” Tsarnoff rolled his eyes at the question. “Were your parents great Kipling fans, son? Or did you choose the name yourself?”

We weren’t to find out, because the door opened before Mowgli could answer. I knew who it was, I’d caught a glimpse of her as she’d crossed the sidewalk in front of the store, and I didn’t want to watch her come in. I wanted to watch them watching her, but I couldn’t help myself. When she was in a room, that’s where my eyes went.

And she did it again.

So I said it again, and out loud for a change. “Of all the bookstores in all the towns in all the world,” I said, “she walks into mine.”

CHAPTER Twenty-one

Of course she remembered the line. Her eyes brightened with recognition, and she smiled that smile of hers, the one that made her look like the Mona Lisa who swallowed the canary. “Bernard,” she said, except of course that wasn’t how she said it. “Bear-naard”-that’s how she said it.

I said, “It’s good to see you, Ilona. I’ve missed you.”

“Bear-naard.”

“Are you alone? I thought you’d be in company.”

“I wanted to come in alone first,” she said. “To make sure that…that the right people are here.”

“Look at these people,” I said. “Don’t they look right to you?”

Now I managed a look at the rest of them, and they were a sight to see. Charlie Weeks, already bareheaded, sprang to his feet and smiled his little smile. Tsarnoff didn’t stand, but snatched off the black beret and held it with both hands in his lap. He looked at Ilona as if trying to decide the best way to prepare her for the table. Rasmoulian took his hat off, held it for a moment, then put it back on his head. His eyes were full of hopeless longing, and I knew just how he felt.

I couldn’t read Wilfred’s look. His hard little eyes took her in, sized her up, and didn’t show a thing.

God knows what Ilona thought looking at that crew, but she evidently found nothing to put her off stride. “I will be right back,” she said, and ducked out the door, returning moments later with Michael Todd in tow. He was wearing a gray sharkskin suit and, while he was bareheaded, his tie sported a dozen or more colorful hats floating on a red background.

“Michael,” she said (it came out as a sort of cross between Michael and Mikhail), “this is Bernard. Bernard, I would like you to meet-”

“But we have met,” Michael cut in. “Only the name was not Bernard. It was-” He searched his memory. “Bill! Bill Thomas!”

“Thompson,” I said, “but that’s still pretty impressive. I didn’t think you were paying any attention.”

“He came to the door,” he told her. “The other morning. He was collecting for a charity.” His eyes narrowed. “He said he was collecting for a charity.”

“The American Hip Dysplasia Association,” I said, “and that’s where your money went, so don’t worry about it. It’s a hell of a worthy cause, and if you’d like I’m sure Miss Kaiser would be happy to tell you more than you could possibly want to know about it.”

“But you are not Mr. Thompson? You are Mr. Bernard?”

“Mr. Rhodenbarr,” I said, “but you can call me Bernie. Why don’t you have a seat, Your-” I stopped myself. “And you too, Ilona. I thought a third person would be coming along with the two of you. Actually he was supposed to pick the two of you up, and I’m a little surprised that you happened to get here without him. I hate to start before he gets here, so perhaps we can-”

“Perhaps we can,” Ray Kirschmann said from the doorway. He shouldered his way into the store, cast a cold eye on the assembled company, and propped an elbow on a convenient bookshelf. He was wearing another costly if ill-fitting suit, and damned if he didn’t have a hat on, and a fedora at that. I happen to think all plainclothes policemen should wear hats, just like in the movies, but they mostly don’t in real life, and I couldn’t recall ever seeing Ray in a hat before. It looked good on him.

“What I am,” he said, “is I’m touched, Bernie. The idea you’d wait for me. You want to innerduce me to these folks?”

I went around the circle, naming names, and then I got to Ray. “And this is Raymond Kirschmann,” I said, “of the New York Police Department.”

There were some interesting reactions. Charlie Weeks’s eyes brightened and his smile took up a little more of his face. Tsarnoff looked unhappy. Rasmoulian had an air of resignation; the introduction couldn’t have come as a surprise to him, since he’d already met Ray twice before, and even Ray’s presence was probably something less than a shock, given Ray’s propensity for turning up whenever Tiggy paid a visit to Barnegat Books.

Wilfred didn’t seem surprised, either, and I figured it was because he’d made Ray the minute he walked in. Wilfred struck me as the sort of fellow who could spot a cop a block away. On the other hand, I don’t suppose his face would have changed expression if I’d introduced Ray as a first vice president at Chase Manhattan, in charge of repairing broken automatic teller machines. Wilfred wasn’t much on changing expressions, or of showing one in the first place.

Anyway, the big reaction came from Ilona and Mike, who mumbled and stammered something to the effect that they’d thought Ray was affiliated not with the police at all but with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“Now that’s innarestin’,” he allowed, “an’ I can see where you would get the impression, an’ maybe I even went an’ made a slip of the tongue, sayin’ INS when I meant NYPD. It’s one batch of initials or another, an’ it coulda come out AFLCIO just as easy. But Bernie here is right, what I am is a cop, an’ just for form I prob’ly oughta read you all this here.” He held up a little wallet-size card and read, “‘You have the right to remain silent,’” and went all the way to the end, Mirandizing the hell out of everybody.

“I don’t understand,” Tsarnoff said. “Am I to take it, sir, that we have been placed under arrest?”

“Naw,” Ray said. “Why’d I wanna go an’ arrest anybody? I don’t see nobody breakin’ no laws. An’ even if I did, I ain’t in no hurry to make an arrest. You arrest somebody nowadays, you’re lookin’ at twelve, fifteen hours of paperwork by the time you’re done. Why, on my way in here I saw a young fellow take a book off of Bernie’s outside table, an’ do you think I was gonna arrest him for that?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“Of course not. So if anybody in this room should happen to be carryin’ a concealed weapon, with or without you got a permit for it, as long as it don’t see the light of day you got nothin’ to worry about. Or if there’s a person here with outstandin’ warrants, well, put your mind at rest. That ain’t what I’m here for.”

“And yet you read us our rights,” Tsarnoff persisted.