The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

by Lawrence Block

  “When was that?”

  “Sometime in June. I was in a showcase presentation of an early P. J. Barry play. You know how that works, don’t you? Nobody gets paid, but you can try to get people to come and see your work. Agents and people like that. Of course, ninety percent of the audience consists of the friends and relatives of the different members of the cast. But it’s good experience, especially if the plays any good, and this one was excellent.”

  “And Marty brought the whole family?”

  “He brought his wife,” she said, “and he brought Borden and his wife. He gets a block of four patron tickets to every production at this particular theater, because he’s one of their angels.” She started to look away, then met my eyes. “That may have had something to do with my getting the part,” she said levelly.

  “Oh.”

  “I had dinner with the four of them after the show, along with a couple of other members of the cast. So I had a chance to form an opinion of Borden, and I already told you what it was.”

  “Pond scum, I think you said.”

  “I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. It would be just my luck to sound off like this and then have him turn out to be your best friend, but of course he’s not, is he? He’s your landlord.”

  “Right, and pond scum’s the nicest thing anybody ever said about him. You said you were involved with somebody besides Gilmartin.”

  “I was,” she said. “But I broke it off.”

  “When you started sleeping with Marty.”

  “No.”

  “When he started paying your rent.”

  “A little later than that, actually.”

  “When?”

  “This past Monday.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or was it Tuesday? No, it was Monday night. I threw his keys at him and I stormed out the door. It was a great exit, but I should have held on to the keys. Bernie, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you take Marty’s cards? Look, in case you’re afraid I’m wearing a wire, don’t answer out loud. Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

  “I don’t care if you’re wearing a wire,” I said. “The answer’s no. No one else has believed me, so I hardly expect you to, but that’s the answer.”

  “I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  “I never thought you took them in the first place. I had a pretty good idea who took them the minute Marty mentioned they were gone, and before your name even came up. I think Luke took them.”

  “Good old Luke.”

  “I can’t believe this. You know Luke?”

  “Nope. Never heard of him. But I can probably guess who he is. Your boyfriend, right?”

  “Not since Monday.”

  “That’s when you threw the keys in his face.”

  “Actually I threw them across the room.”

  “Tell me about Luke,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know where to start. He’s an actor. He came to New York fresh out of high school and he’s spent the past fifteen years trying to get a break. He’s had some commercials and bit parts in a couple of soaps, and he had two lines in Sidney Lumet’s last film, and he toured for three months in the road company of Sour Grapes. He pays the rent by tending bar and working for a couple of unlicensed moving companies. Gypsy movers, they call them.” She frowned. “And he likes to see himself as a romantically shady character. One time he jumped out of bed in the middle of the afternoon and put on a suit and tie. I asked him where he was going. The supermarket, he told me. I said, you’re dressing like that for D’Agostino’s? You get more respect, he said, and he grabbed his attaché case and went out the door.

  “Twenty minutes later he came back with a bag of groceries. A head of lettuce, a couple of potatoes, I forget what else. A couple of dollars’ worth of groceries. Then he goes, Duh-dah! and opens the attaché case, and inside he’s got two gorgeous strip sirloins an inch thick. You just have to know how to shop, he said.”

  “Isn’t that how Jesse James used to do it?”

  “At the time,” she said, “I have to admit I thought it was pretty cool. And then when I started seeing Marty, the contrast between the two of them was kind of interesting.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He’s sort of a crook. I tried not to know very much about the various hustles he was working, but I know he’s been doing a little small-time drug dealing. He takes a lot of pills himself, uppers and downers, and he pays for them by selling some of them to people he knows.”

  “Safer than selling to people you don’t know.”

  “At first he thought it was really neat that Marty was paying my rent. He figured I had a hustle of my own going and that made us birds of a feather. He would refer to Marty as ‘the old guy’ or ‘your meal ticket.’ It started to bother him when he began to realize that I really cared for Marty, that the relationship was important to me emotionally.”

  “So he was jealous.”

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “And then you had a fight and broke up with him.”

  “On Monday, and when Marty looked for his baseball cards Thursday night they were gone. I’m sure Luke took them. And it’s all my fault.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I told him about Marty’s apartment, and the things he had in it. Marty took me there one afternoon last month. He and his wife were spending the week with friends in East Hampton, and he had come in for the day, and we went out to lunch and then he said he’d like to show me where he lived. It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “Huh?”

  “We didn’t…do anything,” she said. “I couldn’t, not in his wife’s house. I felt funny enough just being there. But it’s a beautiful apartment, with a spectacular river view and gorgeous furnishings. When I was with Luke that night I couldn’t stop myself from going on and on about what I saw.”

  “Including the baseball cards.”

  “They were in his office,” she said, “in a polished rosewood chest lined with cedar. Marty used to keep cigars in it back when he still smoked, and when you opened it there was still a faint trace of the aroma of a good Havana cigar. The box wasn’t even locked, and he kept it right on top of his desk. It was still there Thursday, Bernie, but when he lifted the lid it was empty.”

  “Somebody took the cards and left the box.”

  “I’m sure it was Luke. He got a lot more excited hearing about the baseball cards than when I told him about the bridges you could see from the living room window. He started talking about how valuable baseball cards were, and how easy it was to sell them. It seems he used to collect them as a kid, and—”

  “Everybody did.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Anyway, Marty’s collection stirred up feelings of greed and nostalgia both at once. And when he had a chance to lash out at me and Marty, and make himself a bundle in the process—”

  “He jumped at it.”

  “Right.”

  I thought about it. “All right,” I said. “That’s how you fit in, and Marty, and Luke. At least I’ve got a scorecard now, and everybody knows you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The thing is, there’s no mirror handy. If I can’t look in the mirror, how can I tell what number I’m wearing?”

  “You lost me, Bernie.”

  “I’m the one who’s lost. Why am I here? Why did you call me? What am I supposed to do?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “You’re going to help me get Marty’s cards back.”

  “I know what they say about coincidence,” I said. “It’s just God’s way of remaining anonymous. But I can only swallow so much of it. Let’s go back to Thursday night, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Marty Gilmartin and his wife and Borden Stoppelgard and his wife—what’s she like, by the way?”

  “Nothing special. I just met her that one time, and I barely noticed her. I don’t think she opened her mouth all evening.”

 
“Anyway, the four of them went off to see If Wishes Were Horses. Did they like the play, incidentally? I asked Marty, but I might as well have asked Mary Lincoln what she thought of Our American Cousin.” I shrugged. “Never mind. They went to the play, and they finally came home, and I made an ill-considered phone call to the Gilmartin residence. That was just after midnight.”

  “Where does the coincidence come in?”

  “It comes in about the time I get off the IRT a block from here and stop to buy a paper. And an extremely attractive young woman in corporate drag and a red beret singles me out and asks me to walk her home.”

  “That sort of thing must happen to you all the time, Bernie.”

  “It never happens,” I said. “I’ve been buying the Times on the way home for years, and it never once happened in the past.”

  “I guess you were overdue.”

  “This woman,” I went on, “just happens to be Martin Gilmartin’s girlfriend. And, in her free time, she’s also the girlfriend of the fellow who seems to have stolen Marty’s baseball cards.”

  “I see what you mean about coincidence.”

  “If God really wants to keep his name out of it,” I said, “he ought to wear gloves, because this one’s got fingerprints all over it. But here’s what I can’t understand. How did you find out about the cards in time to pick me up at the corner newsstand? And how did you even know it was me, considering that nobody knew that until the cops checked the NYNEX records and found out the call had come from my friend Carolyn’s apartment? And how could you know I’d be coming home by subway? I’d have taken a cab if a couple of rubes hadn’t beaten me to it. How would you even recognize me? I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it, and…wait a minute, Doll. Where are you going?”

  She was halfway out of the booth. “To get the check,” she said. “I told you I’d buy the coffee, remember?” She put her hand on mine. “You’ll see,” she said. “I can explain everything.”

  Outside, we walked a long crosstown block to Broadway and stood on the corner watching people buy newspapers. “I didn’t know about the baseball cards when I saw you,” she told me. “And I didn’t know who you were, and I didn’t particularly care. All I knew was that you didn’t look like an ax murderer. And I gave you a character test. I waited to see what paper you bought.”

  “Suppose I’d taken the Post instead?”

  “If you’d picked up the Post,” she said, “I’d have picked up somebody else. But I was perfectly sure you’d turn out to be a Times kind of guy. What I told you that night was the truth. I’d been to an acting class, I’d just gotten off a bus, and I didn’t like the way it felt on the street. I never feel comfortable on the West Side, anyway. I know it’s as safe as anywhere else but it just doesn’t feel safe to me.”

  “Then why do you live over here?”

  “I don’t. I live on Seventy-eighth Street between First and Second.”

  “Who lives at 304 West End?”

  “Lucas Santangelo.”

  “Alias Luke the boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend.”

  “You wanted a New York Times kind of guy to walk you to Luke’s place. Why? To make him jealous?”

  “I told you. I was scared to walk by myself.”

  “And out of all the guys around—”

  “Bernie,” she said, “look around, will you? And bear in mind that it was an hour later and in the middle of the week. There were fewer people out and most of them looked like…well, like that panhandler over there, and those two creeps in army jackets, and—”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “I left some clothes at Luke’s,” she said, “and I’d been calling him for a couple of days, trying to make arrangements to get my stuff back. But all I ever got was his machine. That didn’t necessarily mean he was out, because sometimes he’ll let the machine pick up and wait until he knows who it is before answering. So I finally decided to go over there. If he was home, maybe he’d be enough of a gentleman to let me have my things.”

  “And if he wasn’t home?”

  “Maybe I could get in anyway. Most of the time he doesn’t bother to double-lock his door. I thought I might be able to open it with a credit card.”

  “That’s not always as easy as they make it look on television.”

  “Now he tells me,” she said, clapping her hand theatrically to her forehead. “It turned out to be impossible. I tried all three of my credit cards, and then I tried my ATM card, and that was a mistake because I must have crimped it a little. When I tried to get cash yesterday morning, the machine ate my card.”

  “Bummer.”

  “They gave me a new card. It was an inconvenience, that’s all. Believe me, it was more frustrating standing in front of Luke’s door with no way to get in. Why did I have to throw the keys? Why couldn’t I have thrown an ashtray instead?”

  “Or a tantrum. After you gave up trying to open the door, then what did you do?”

  “I went home.”

  “Straight home?”

  “Absolutely. I said good night to Eddie and off I went.”

  “Who walked you to the bus stop?”

  “Nobody. I took a cab.”

  “Why didn’t you take one in the first place?”

  “I did.”

  “I thought you said you took a bus.”

  “I telescoped things a little. I took a bus home from acting class, and I tried Luke’s number and got his machine again, and then I changed clothes to look ultrarespectable and took a cab from my apartment right through the park. I got off right in front of Luke’s building and had the doorman ring his apartment. There was no answer. ‘Well, I’ll just go on up,’ I said, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  “Eddie stopped you? I’m surprised he even noticed you were there.”

  “He wasn’t there. I got there a few minutes after midnight because that’s when his shift starts, but he was running late. The fellow on duty was a young Haitian who’s a real stickler for the rules. And I don’t think he was too happy about having to stay late. He wouldn’t let me in the building, so I walked over to Broadway to get a cup of coffee—the other coffee shop closes at midnight—”

  “I know.”

  “—and I got a real creepy feeling on the way over there, as if someone was stalking me. I guess I was nervous about breaking into Luke’s apartment. Then you turned up and walked me to my door, or to Luke’s door, actually, and then I went in and then I came back out again and then I went home. The next day I found out Marty’s baseball cards were missing. ‘They even know who took them,’ he said. ‘The insolent son of a bitch called to brag about it and they were able to trace the call.’ I couldn’t believe Luke had been so stupid. And then I found out it was you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t mean you were stupid. You had your own reasons for making the call, and why not make a joke out of it? You had no way of knowing Marty’s cards would turn out to be missing.”

  “You’re right about that. I didn’t even know he had them in the first place.” We had been walking back toward West End as we talked, and when we reached the corner we turned uptown as if by pre-arrangement, heading toward 304. “The way you tell it,” I said, “there’s hardly any coincidence operating at all. Just that Eddie happened to be late for work, and Luke happened to be away from his apartment, and I happened to be the first guy to come along and pick up the Times.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wish I knew how much of your story to believe. Is your name really Doll Cooper?”

  “It is now, but you and I are the only people who know it. You gave me the name, remember? Before that I told you my name was Gwendolyn Cooper, and it is.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  She fished in her bag and produced a couple of plastic cards. “Here,” she said. “A brand-new ATM card from Chemical. It was Manufacturers Hanover before the merger, and I loved going to a bank that you could call Manny Hanny for short. And here, my Visa c
ard. It got crimped, too. See that corner? I tried to straighten it out but I think I only made it worse. I guess it’ll be all right as long as I don’t put it in any machines.”

  I gave the cards back to her. “You gave me the right name,” I said. “How come?”

  “The same reason you told me your name. We were two ships passing in the night. What reason would I have to lie to you?” She grinned. “Besides, Bernie, I wanted you to be able to get in touch with me.

  “How? You’re not in the phone book.”

  “I certainly am. G Cooper on East Seventy-eighth Street.”

  “But I wouldn’t know to look there, would I? Because I was somehow under the impression that you lived at 304 West End Avenue.”

  “You could have called me at work.”

  “Where, at Faber Faber?”

  “Haber Haber,” she said, “and Crowell.”

  “You don’t work there anymore, remember?”

  “I sometimes get calls still at the office. They take messages for me. I said I was a paralegal because that’s a lot more impressive than being a receptionist, and since I’m not either one, well, why not pick the one that sounds good?”

  “You could have said you were a lawyer.”

  “I almost did,” she said, “but I was afraid that might put you off. Some people don’t like lawyers.”

  “Really?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe. Bernie, I fibbed a little, okay? At the beginning I treated it all as an acting exercise. Improv, you know? We do scenes like that all the time in class. But I wasn’t really lying, any more than you lied to me by not mentioning that you’re a burglar.”

  We had stopped walking now, half a block from Number 304. She nodded meaningfully at the building. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve got a great idea. We could go there right now. I’m sure we can bluff our way past the doorman.”

  “Unless it’s your Haitian friend.”

  “I could have sailed right past him, too, but I wanted him to ring the apartment first. We wouldn’t have to do that this time. We could just walk in as if we lived there.”