The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr)

by Lawrence Block

  “Makes it easier.”

  “It does. And then he stepped off the curb and held his hand up, and a taxi pulled up right away, and I finally got my chance to say it.”

  “ ‘Follow that cab!’ ”

  “Yeah. My driver was this Jamaican guy with dreads and an earring, and I guess he grew up watching the same movies we did, because he thought this was the neatest thing ever. ‘Don’t lose him now,’ I said, and he hooted at the very idea.”

  “And it worked?”

  “He got a funny look when we were coming up on the Brooklyn Bridge. That old ‘I don’t go to Brooklyn’ look. I showed him a fifty and told him I didn’t expect change, and he just smiled and smiled. Anyway, we didn’t go all that far into Brooklyn. You got a pencil, Bern? Write this down.”

  I had a memo pad with a batch of notes already on it, and I added a new address to my list. “I’m across the street right now,” she said, “in a pizza parlor, sitting by the window so I can keep an eye on his front door. I’ve been here for a little over an hour.”

  “And he hasn’t come out?”

  “Not through the front door. I kept the cab for five minutes, just in case he ducked in and ducked out again. That cost me another ten bucks.”

  “Well worth it.”

  “What I thought. But he didn’t, and I let the guy go. I think he’s in for the night.”

  “I think you’re probably right. He’s home, and looking at his spoon. You can probably head home yourself.”

  “Well, I’m like three short blocks from the Number Two train, and then the One’s right across the platform at Chambers Street. I think I’ll stick around another fifteen or twenty minutes. I mean, another slice of pizza wouldn’t kill me.”

  I decided a slice of pizza wouldn’t kill me, either, and I got one on Second Avenue and chomped away at it as I continued east. It lasted me across First Avenue and halfway down the block to York, where I turned right and found Deirdre Ostermaier’s building.

  It was one of those white brick buildings that went up all over the city in the 1960s, with tiny terraces for all but the smallest studios, and all the charm of an industrial park on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Her apartment was 17-J, and it would help to know whether or not she was home.

  I had a phone number for her, but it started with 917, which meant it was a cell phone. She didn’t seem to have a landline. I used my burner and called her cell phone, just to see if I could learn anything that way, and it went straight to Voice Mail.

  So what I’d just learned was that either she was home or she wasn’t.

  Well, I’d already known that much, hadn’t I? And I could find out simply enough by asking for her at the front desk. She didn’t need a landline for the attendant to reach her on the intercom. If she didn’t pick up, she was out.

  And either way I was screwed. If she was home, what was I going to do, tell the doorman I’d changed my mind? And if she was out, how was I going to sneak past him, having already called attention to myself?

  Okay. Plan B:

  I walked to the corner and stood with my cell phone to my ear, having a spirited conversation with myself. “Is that right?” I said. “Yes, that’s exactly what I told him . . . You think so? . . . I suppose that’s not a bad idea.”

  And so on.

  I bided my time, keeping an eye on passersby and weighing the possibilities, until I made my choice and fell into step with a fortyish woman carrying a sack of groceries. “Oh, hi,” I said. “I guess we’re not getting that rain after all.”

  She had the guarded look of a person trying to decide whether I was an unrecognized acquaintance or an ambulatory psychotic.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We nod and smile at each other all the time in the lobby and the elevator, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually exchanged names. I’m Don Farber.”

  She relaxed, and told me her name, which I didn’t quite catch, but what difference does it make? We chatted about the weather, and speculated on the scheduled redecoration of the lobby, and all of that carried me past the concierge and into the unattended elevator. When the elevator stopped at Twelve we urged one another to have a good night, and I rode on alone to Seventeen.

  I’d already narrowed the possibilities to two: either Deirdre was home or she wasn’t. Well, if she was home, she’d open her door to a stranger who’d apologize for having got off the elevator at the wrong floor. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I wanted Eighteen-J,” the fellow would say, shaking his head at his own stupidity, and heading for the elevator.

  If she was out, she wouldn’t open the door. The stranger would.

  And that’s what happened. I listened, heard nothing but my own shallow breathing, rang the bell, heard nothing but the bell, knocked briskly, breathed a little more deeply, and picked the lock.

  Nothing to it, really. The lock was the building’s original equipment. It locked by itself when you closed the door, and she hadn’t bothered to use the key to turn the bolt. And why should she? She lived in a building with a doorman, so what did she have to worry about?

  I didn’t know where she was, or how long she’d be gone, so it wouldn’t do to dawdle. Nor did I. Fifteen minutes later I was back on the ground floor, giving the attendant a nod and a wave on my way out.

  A cab was just pulling up to let someone out. I grabbed it.

  Rrrring!

  “Hello, Boyd?”

  “No, sorry, this is Stephen.”

  “Oh, hi! This is Elliott. You remember, we met at, um—”

  “Cappy and Susan’s do?”

  “Yes! You do remember!”

  “How could I forget?”

  How indeed? “I suppose Boyd’s working.”

  “Of course he is. After all, this is one of those days that ends in a Y.”

  “Oh, that’s nice, Stephen. I’ll have to remember that one. And I suppose afterward it’ll be a quiet evening at home for the two of you.”

  “Perish the thought. I’m meeting him at the Butcher’s Hook at eleven.”

  “Always a nice venue on a Thursday.”

  “Isn’t it? But I’ve a feeling he’ll be a few minutes late. He so often is. I, on the other hand, am always early.”

  “Just a few minutes early, Stephen?”

  “What time is it? Getting on for nine. Good grief, how time flies.”

  “Whether or not one’s having fun.”

  “So true, Elliott. You know, I might get there at ten, now that I think about it.”

  “At ten? You know, Stephen, you just might see me there.”

  “Oh? That would be nice, Elliott.”

  I rang off, returned my burner to my pocket. “Change in plans,” I told the driver. “Fourth Street and First Avenue.”

  Psoriasis, a new play by Josip Szypranskowicz, was in rehearsals at the New Molnar Playhouse. An addled young woman in granny glasses and what might have been a muumuu told me that she didn’t dare disturb the director, Nils Calder, but that Meredith Ostermaier might be able to break away for a moment or two.

  I said not to bother her, that I’d come back later.

  Their apartment was five minutes away, in an old-law tenement on Sixth Street just east of Avenue B. Rents may have climbed and crime slackened in recent years, but the building still had a raffish look. In the entrance hall, I rang the bell marked Calder, gave it a couple of minutes, and then pushed three or four other buttons. A burst of static came over the intercom. I replied in kind, and someone buzzed me in.

  I had three flights of stairs to climb, and a beefy guy in a wifebeater undershirt and cutoff jeans was waiting for me. “From the theater,” I called out cheerfully, and showed him a key. “Calder gave me this but forgot about the lock downstairs.”

  “Sounds like him,” the fellow said, and went back to his own apartment, even as I hurried up two more flights of stairs.

  All I did with the key was put it back in my pocket. It was the key to my apartment on West End Avenue, and I couldn’t really expect it to
work this far from home.

  Like most people who live in buildings without security cameras or doormen, Nils and Meredith had made an effort to bolster their door’s ability to keep burglars out. They’d gone in big for decals and locks. There were three of the former, one showing the canine winner of the Winston Churchill look-alike contest; Caution—Attack Dog! the legend advised. Protected by Smith & Wesson, said what looked to be a trimmed-down bumper sticker. A third boasted about a burglar alarm, and cautioned me to expect an armed response from Acme Security Corp. That might have scared the daylights out of Wile E. Coyote, but I remained undaunted.

  A single decal might have had a slight deterrent effect, but a kind of reverse synergy operated; the whole amounted to less than any of its parts. A similar more-is-more strategy had led them to attach six locks to the poor beleaguered door, but instead of Rabson and Poulard and Medeco they’d bought these off-brand beauties at the bargain counter.

  Still, they’d used them wisely. If they’d locked all six, I could simply have unlocked all six and been done with it. But they’d done what so many resourceful New Yorkers have learned to do. They locked three and left three unlocked, and when you use your burgling skill upon an unlocked lock, what do you suppose you do? You lock it.

  There’s a way to work this out, and it’s simpler than getting all those cannibals and Christians across that crocodile-infested river in Africa, but barely.

  And once inside I had to wonder why they’d gone to all that trouble. If I’d been bent on burglary for profit, I’d have had a hard time finding anything to steal. One closet held a cardboard carton packed with well-read swinger magazines, with enough of the personal ads circled to suggest a more than academic interest in the subject. One couple’s picture bore notations in two different hands; “What do you think?” he’d wondered, to which she’d replied, “Ooh, yummy!!!”

  There was a laptop, a Mac that looked to be four or five years old, and isn’t that a couple of decades in dog years? I suppose a search of their old email might have made fascinating reading, but I left the thing untouched.

  I like to leave an apartment as I found it, and that includes locking up after myself. But how could I do that when I couldn’t say which of the locks had been engaged when I started out? If I left them all open, anyone passing could turn the knob and walk in. If I locked three at random, I might pick one they never locked, and to which they’d long since lost the key.

  Well, all you can ever do is the best you can, right? I locked the top lock, and one other, and left them to work it all out.

  I never noticed the vibration, but I’d evidently missed a call from Carolyn. By the time I discovered this I’d grabbed a taxi on Sixth Street and let it drop me at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 22nd Street. I could see the bar Stephen had mentioned a block away on the other side of Ninth, and I could have gone over to see if he was there, but how could I tell?

  Easier to call the number I’d called earlier, the landline in the apartment he shared with Boyd. I took out a phone, but it was my personal one, not the temporary burner, and something made me check it before I put it back in my pocket, and that’s when I saw Carolyn had called.

  I called her back, and she answered on the first ring. “There you are,” she said. “I can’t be absolutely positive, Bern, but from the looks of things he’s still in his house, and he’s still awake.”

  “And you know this because—”

  “The lights. The parlor floor’s all lit up, and the other three floors are dark. Same as before.”

  “You’re still in Brooklyn Heights?”

  “No, I’m home, Bern.”

  “Then how can you possibly—”

  “I just got here. I know, I said one more slice of pizza and I was going to call it a night.”

  “That was hours ago. If you’ve been eating pizza since I talked to you—”

  “Just that one slice.”

  “That’s good, because an oregano overdose is no laughing matter. What happened?”

  “Well, this woman walked in. She’d had a horrible fight with her girlfriend.”

  “And the only thing that would make her feel better was pizza.”

  “No, she was on her way to get a drink. But she saw me in the window, and somehow she knew I was somebody she could talk to about this, and that I’d understand.”

  “It’s the haircut, Carolyn.”

  “Well, according to her it was my eyes. You know, knowing and sensitive and sympathetic, all at once.”

  “That sounds like your eyes, all right.”

  “If it was bullshit,” she said, “it was the kind of bullshit I didn’t mind hearing. So I said, ‘Okay, sit down, let’s hear it,’ and we sat there and talked.”

  “And watched the house across the street.”

  “Off and on. The lights didn’t change, and nobody went in or out. And then she said she felt tons better, and the least she could do was buy me a drink, and we went around the corner.”

  “For a drink.”

  “Two of them.”

  “And then you dragged her home to Arbor Court, and the cats accepted her immediately, and that means a lot.”

  “It’s good you’re my best friend,” she said, “or I’d rip your chest open and tear your heart out. We had two drinks apiece, and she went home, and I went back and had another look at his house.”

  “And the lights hadn’t changed, but somehow they seemed brighter now. But then even the stars seemed brighter, and—”

  “How do I put up with you? The lights were the same. Still home and still awake, that’s my guess.”

  I had her stay on the line while I called Boyd’s apartment on my other phone. A machine picked up, a piano played the first few bars of “Send In the Clowns,” and a voice—not Stephen’s, so I guess it was Boyd’s—said, “Oh, drat! We’re out. Leave us a message.”

  Why not? “It’s Elliott,” I said. “Something came up. I’ll be in touch.”

  Then I went and broke into their apartment. It was one flight up from the street, over a travel agency with a Spanish name, and inside it was as neat and uncluttered as one could possibly wish.

  Easy.

  Years and years ago, when Brooklyn was so far from being a desirable address that the Dodgers hadn’t even left yet, the Status Police made an exception for that elevated portion of the borough just across the bridge. Brooklyn Heights, with its elegant brownstones and its fruity street names, has never been less than acceptable, and the Great Brooklyn Revival, a tide that lifts all boats clear out to Bushwick and beyond, has not neglected the pleasure yachts of the Heights.

  The brownstone house Carolyn had been watching was on Willow Street between Cranberry and Orange. When I emerged from the Clark Street subway stop, it took me a minute or two to get my bearings, but then I found the address quickly enough, and spotted her pizza place across the street at the end of the block. It was dark and shuttered now, and dark too was the parlor floor of . . . well, what to call it?

  The Button House, I decided. Forget Smith, and never mind the Burton Bartons, all five generations of them.

  Light showed in the third-floor windows. I stood in the shadows for a while, walked around the block, stood in the shadows some more.

  Maybe he was asleep, I thought. Maybe he felt safer sleeping with the lights on.

  I waited, and the lights went out.

  I stood there and waited for them to come back on again. When they didn’t, I checked the time.

  2:33.

  I gave it a few more minutes, then found my way back to Clark Street. There was a tavern I’d passed near the subway entrance, quiet and dimly lit, that had struck me as a likely venue for serious drinking. Not every bar holds out until the legal closing hour of 4:00 am, but I’d had a feeling this one would, and they were still open when I got there.

  Three men sat well apart at the bar. Another man read a newspaper at a table. I stood at the bar, ordered whiskey with water on the side, and carried both gl
asses to a table in a darkened corner.

  If I’d ordered a Perrier, or anything non-alcoholic, in that joint at that hour, the bartender might have called the police. So the booze in the shot glass was camouflage, and I made sure no one was looking when I spilled it on the floor.

  I took a few sips of the water. I used the restroom, came back. Sat down, had a few more sips of the water.

  It was clear I could sit there until four, with or without buying another drink, but somewhere around 3:20 I left. The bartender was the only person who’d taken any notice of me at all, and his interest had ceased once I’d paid for my drink. He was watching TV with the sound off, and he didn’t look up when I left.

  I went straight back to the Button House. The lights were still off.

  You have to be out of your mind to be a cat burglar. And, from what I’ve heard, most of them are.

  If that strikes you as an unlikely observation for me to be making, that may result from widespread misapplication of the term. The media are apt to hang the label on any burglar with a modicum of talent and a soupçon of sangfroid. Slip in from a fire escape, work your magic on a pickproof lock, and some journalist is sure to call you a cat burglar.

  Wrong.

  A cat burglar, properly speaking, creeps like Carl Sandburg’s cat, on little fog feet. He makes his illegal entries not when an abode is conveniently and safely vacant, but when its occupants are home. They may be entertaining guests on the first floor while he’s scooping up jewelry on the second; they may be sleeping in an upstairs bedroom while he’s cracking a safe in the den.

  Burglary, you should realize, is never without its risks. Something can always go wrong, and often does. I’m never entirely carefree when I’m unlawfully present in some stranger’s home, and what worries me most is not that I’ll trip a burglar alarm, or that some passerby will wonder why the lights are on, or that the cop on the beat is a disguised superhero with x-ray vision and psychic powers.