Highbinders by Ross Thomas

much.”
    “You sure you’ve got my name right?” I said.
    “I’m really dreadful with names. St. Ives, isn’t it? Philip St. Ives?”
    “Eddie Apex didn’t mention me to you?”
    “Oh, you’re that, Philip St. Ives. I don’t mean that, of course. I mean that you’re the American that Eddie told me about. I don’t think he ever mentioned your name.”
    “Yeah. Well, I’m the American he told you about.”
    “The go-between, so to speak.”
    “So to speak.”
    “Well, I say, that is jolly good, isn’t it?”
    I sighed. “I was kind of hoping you’d find it so.”
    Of all the myths that continue to flourish in England in the face of modern scientific investigation, no myth remains quite so healthy as the one that envelops the English breakfast. This myth cunningly acknowledges that while lunch in England might be a failure and dinner a disaster, the typical English breakfast is fit for, if not a king, at least a fairly solvent duke.
    I have eaten English breakfasts in quaint country inns, in sleek hotels, on once crack trains, and in hearty restaurants from Land’s End to John O’Groats. In the interest of science, I have always ordered the same breakfast, a high cholesterol number consisting of two fried eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.
    Although price and ambience might vary, the quality has remained steadfastly the same. Awful. The eggs are all fried in an inch or two of old grease. The bacon is underdone. The toast is stone cold. The coffee is unspeakable. But the myth of the English breakfast endures, indeed flourishes, and I have reluctantly concluded that it will long outlive Arthur and his round table. On second thought, I really shouldn’t say anything about the toast. It’s supposed to be cold. The natives like it that way. If it’s hot, it might soak up the butter. And the butter isn’t bad.
    It had taken a healthy bribe to have the Hilton deliver two breakfasts up to my room at five in the morning, but they eventually arrived and I sat there looking at mine and making another mental footnote for the exposé that I would write some day. Robin Styles was happily chewing away on his and washing it down with large swallows of straight Scotch.
    “Nothing quite like an English breakfast, is there?” he said.
    “Nothing.”
    “The Hilton does it quite well, for an American hotel, I mean.”
    “They haven’t missed a trick,” I said.
    He forked the last morsel of a hard-fried egg into his mouth and took another swallow of Scotch. “You’re in a rather curious sort of business, aren’t you?”
    “Sort of,” I said and began eating my own breakfast on the theory that it might possibly be good for me.
    “You don’t limit yourself to purloined swords, I take it?”
    “No. I’m available for almost anything that can be ransomed. People, jewels, incriminating documents, rare artifacts, missing evidence, old love letters.”
    “How fascinating. What’s the strangest item that you had to do whatever it is that you do to get back?”
    I thought about it. “A ferris wheel, I guess.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “No. A guy once stole a ferris wheel just outside of Baltimore. He couldn’t sell it so he offered to ransom it back for a few thousand. There wasn’t much money in it for me, but then it didn’t take much time.”
    “You could play poker for a living.”
    I shook my head. “Poker’s hard work, if you want to make a living at it. I don’t much care for hard work.”
    “I don’t play very well, you know.”
    “I know.”
    “You think I could learn?”
    I studied him for a moment. “If you learned how to play well, you probably wouldn’t like it, and you’d quit.”
    He took another swallow of Scotch. “I’ve tried to quit.”
    “Couldn’t?”
    He shook his head. “Compulsion, I suppose.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I should take your advice and learn how to play well so I could quit.”
    “It’s hard work, as I said. You have to learn the odds, learn to memorize