The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

by Lawrence Block

  “You stole the key, right?”

  I nodded. “You’d be surprised how often people keep the key to a locked drawer in one of the neighboring unlocked drawers. Well, it makes sense. Where else would you keep it? I don’t usually hunt for the key, because those locks are so easy to open, but I happened to come across it the other night and I figured it would be better theater if Nugent had to say he couldn’t open the drawer. It made it look as though he had something to hide. And, much to his own surprise, he did.”

  “Why put back the eighty-three fifty?”

  “I figured there could only be so many jokers in the deck. By the time we left last night, Nugent was beginning to recall moving the jewelry from his wife’s dresser to the desk. Since there was no other possible explanation, his memory was obligingly filling in the gaps. Poor bastard.”

  “Well, he killed a guy, Bern.”

  “And Doll stole a man’s baseball card collection, and how can we let such actions go unpunished? Well, the fact of the matter is that they did go unpunished. It didn’t cost either of them a dime. Doll walked out of there with her head held high, and Nugent gets to pay off Ray with money from an insurance company.”

  “It was his money originally, Bern.”

  “Right, and then it was mine for a while.” I shrugged. “I knew there was no point to this. That’s why I tried to get out of it. But between Ray’s nudging and your nagging, what chance did I have?”

  “That wasn’t nagging, Bern. That was the advice of a caring friend.”

  “Well, it had all the earmarks of nagging,” I said, “and it worked, so you can take the credit.”

  “It wasn’t me, Bern. It was Raffles.”

  I looked at her.

  “Remember, Bern? Raffles leaped up in the air and arched his back and did all those weird things that he did, and it came to you in a flash.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I mean, let’s give credit where it’s due, huh?” She waved to Maxine for another round. “Couple of things I’m not completely clear on, Bern. How’d you know Joan Nugent was drugged and unconscious when her husband came home? I never would have thought of that.”

  “Neither would I.”

  “Huh?”

  “What I thought,” I said, “was that she and Luke were having an affair, and that they were going at it when Harlan stuck his key in the door. But wouldn’t they have been in the master bedroom? And if so, wouldn’t Luke have gone in the other bathroom?”

  “Unless they started out posing, and one thing led to another, and they got carried away.”

  “Or unless she had some compunctions about committing adultery in the very bed she shared with her husband. Still, it became clear that she didn’t have a clue how that corpse wound up in her bathroom. And Luke had a whole storehouse of pills in his apartment, and she had the abstracted air of someone who just might have ingested a mood-altering substance sometime or other in the course of her life, and it all came together.”

  “What a scumbag Luke must have been.”

  “Well, I don’t think he was ever on the short list for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award,” I said, “but he wasn’t here to give us his side of the story, either. The incident came out sounding like the next best thing to necrophilia, but maybe it didn’t start out that way. Maybe he got her stoned and they started necking, and she took off her clothes and they were, uh, embracing, and then the full force of the drug kicked in and she slipped out of consciousness.”

  “And it didn’t occur to him to stop? I suppose he thought she was English. Believe me, Bern, the man was an insect. Look how he betrayed Doll Cooper. She left Marty’s cards with him, and he lifted them out from under her.”

  “That was me, Carolyn. The attaché case full of cards was still under the bed when Luke got shot upstairs.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “So you’re the insect.”

  “I guess so.”

  “There was something else I was wondering about. Oh, right. The gun. Couldn’t they ever recover it?”

  “From a storm drain? Have you got any idea how many guns get tossed down storm drains?”

  “Lots, huh?”

  “Put it this way,” I said. “If there really are alligators in the New York sewers, half of them are armed. Want to get rid of a gun? Just slip it down a storm drain. It’s like hiding a needle in a haystack.”

  “I’d never hide a needle in a haystack,” she said. “It’s the first place they would look. Bern, why didn’t he leave the gun with Luke? I know he couldn’t get his arm through, but what if he tossed the gun so it landed in the tub?”

  “And it would look like suicide.”

  “Right.”

  “Except it wouldn’t,” I said. “Not if you looked closely. Even if he managed to get his own prints off the gun, how was he going to get Luke’s on it? And if they ran a paraffin test on Luke they wouldn’t find any nitrate particles on his hand, nothing to indicate he’d fired a gun.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know what kind of gun it was, so I can’t say whether it would have fit through the hole. Even if it would, if I’d just shot a guy and he’d fallen where I couldn’t get a good look at him and I had no way of knowing for sure whether he was alive or dead, I don’t think I’d be in a big rush to throw him a loaded gun.”

  “I guess it was a bad idea,” she said. “Oh, well. Gotta drink up and go, Bern.”

  “Already?”

  “Got a date.”

  “Oh? Anybody I know?”

  “It’s no big deal,” she said defensively. “Just a quick drink, a little conversation.”

  “That’s how Borden Stoppelgard described his pursuit of Doll.” I looked at her. “It is somebody I know, isn’t it? Who is it, Carolyn?”

  “Somebody I just met the other night.”

  “Not Doll,” I said. “It can’t be.”

  “Jesus, no. Marty would kill me.”

  “He did seem quite taken with her, now that you mention it. Considering that she stole his baseball cards. Well, he’s a patron of the theater. Maybe he’ll wind up taking a fatherly interest in her career.”

  “Or a sugar daddily interest, Bern. Anyway, she’s not my type.”

  “Not Patience. Joan Nugent? What are you going to do, have her paint a portrait of you in a clown suit?”

  “Nice, Bern.”

  “Well—”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’s Lolly Stoppelgard.”

  “Lolly Stoppelgard.”

  “Didn’t you think she was nice?”

  “Very nice, but—”

  “But she’s married. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You didn’t see the looks she was giving me, Bern.”

  “No, that’s true.”

  “And you didn’t hear what she said to me on the way downstairs. ‘Call me,’ she said.”

  “So you called her.”

  “Uh-huh, and in the long run I’ll get my heart broken, but that’s what hearts are for, and mine’s getting used to it. She’s really nice, isn’t she? Pretty and sharp and funny.”

  “It’s a shame to think of all that wasted on Borden Stoppelgard.”

  “Well, I look at it this way,” she said. “I figure he’ll be an easy act to follow.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-four

  A day or two later I was on the phone with Wally Hemphill when the front door opened. “That’s great,” I told my lawyer. “So I’ll see you then. Listen, I’ve got to go now, I’ve got a customer.”

  It was Borden Stoppelgard.

  “I got your message,” he said, “and I’d have to say you’ve got your nerve, asking me to stop by. That was some little show you put on the other night. By the time we got out of there, my marriage was hanging by a thread.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Well, it’s all right now. Things blow over, you know? She’s a lot calmer
the past couple of days. Now what’s this item you got that I might be interested in? Early Sue Grafton? Marcia Muller? What?”

  I took an acetate-wrapped card from my breast pocket and laid it on the counter.

  “You know,” he said, “when you talked about finding the Chalmers Mustard card in that schmuck Santangelo’s apartment, I wanted to ask whatever became of it, whether you or Wendy wound up with it. But it didn’t seem like the right time or place.”

  “Probably not.”

  “So you want to sell it? ‘A Stand-up Triple!’—right? That’s one of the later ones, so it’s worth a few bucks. What do you want for it?”

  “Take a closer look, Mr. Stoppelgard.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “ ‘That Home Run Swing.’ Card #40. This is the key card of the whole set. Where the hell did you get this?” Even as I was plucking the card from his fingers, light dawned. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You got Marty’s cards!”

  “It looks that way,” I admitted. “So now all you have to do is draw up that lease we talked about, the one that gives me a thirty-year extension at the current rent.”

  “Shit.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, hell. This is embarrassing, all right? I sold the building.”

  “What?”

  “When you’re in the real estate game,” he said, “you don’t marry buildings, you just buy and sell them. Anything’s on the block if the price is right. A few days ago I got an offer that was too good to turn down. So I took it.”

  “But—”

  “You should be getting a notice in the mail, where to send the check every month and like that. Your new landlord’s something called Poulson Realty. They’ll be in touch.”

  “I hope they like baseball cards.”

  “Maybe they won’t even notice the lease is ready to expire,” he said, which didn’t strike me as very likely. “Or maybe they’ll give you a break in order to keep the space rented to somebody reliable. Of course, the way they came to me and sought out the building, my guess is they want the space for their own purposes. But you’re a resourceful guy. You can work something out.”

  “You sold the building,” I said. “Sold it out from under me.”

  “Dammit, why didn’t you say something? How was I supposed to know you had the cards?”

  “I didn’t want to announce it in front of everybody.”

  “No, but—”

  “And you must have already said yes to the deal on the building by then, anyway.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So that’s that,” I said, and put the Splendid Splinter in my pocket.

  “Listen,” he said, “I still want to buy those cards. The only thing is I’m a little short right now. If you could hold on to them for a couple of months—”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I guess that’s a no. What would you say to a straight exchange of equity? There’s any number of things I could let you have. Could you use a very nice two-bedroom condominium on the Rego Park side of Forest Hills? Look, you could just say no. You don’t have to make that kind of face at me.”

  “If I’m going to have to renegotiate my lease,” I said, “or find a place to relocate my store, what I need is cash.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And it’s not as though baseball cards are hard to move. I offered them to you first because it was a way to save the store, but with you out of the picture I won’t have any trouble finding a buyer.”

  “Sell me the mustard set,” he said.

  “You just said—”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of the cards. I’m only really interested in Ted Williams. We’re talking about forty cards. The book value’s what, three grand?”

  “Closer to five.”

  “Really? That sounds high, but screw it. I’ll give you five thousand cash. Why not?”

  “I’d rather move everything at once.”

  “Why, for God’s sake? Look, forget five. I’ll pay a premium, because I really want these cards. I’ll give you six thousand dollars.”

  “Ten.”

  “That’s ridiculous. That’s double what they’re worth. For Christ’s sake, a man buys stolen goods, he expects to get them at a discount. I can’t pay ten, that’s out of the question.”

  “Then forget it.”

  “Seven. I’ll hate myself tomorrow, but I’ll give you seven.”

  “Ten.”

  “ ‘Ten, ten, ten.’ Is that all you know how to say?”

  “Eleven?”

  “Ten, for God’s sake. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I don’t care. I don’t suppose you want a check, either. I have to go to the bank. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’ll have the cards ready?”

  What can I say? He talked me into it.

  Borden Stoppelgard wasn’t back in twenty minutes, but he was back in twenty-five, and ten minutes later he was on his way, having exchanged a hundred pieces of green paper for forty pieces of cardboard. I went off to flush the toilet—Raffles had used it during our transaction—and I came back to find Wally Hemphill bending over to retie his sneaker. He straightened up, unclasped his briefcase, and handed me an envelope.

  “This is what you wanted,” he said, “and it took some doing and cost you a ton of money, so I hope you’re happy. You’re now master of all you survey, and that includes the upstairs and the air rights.”

  “This is the deed?”

  “Indeed it is. You’re not just a schmuck with a bookstore, Bernie. Now you’re a schmuck with a building.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Your friend Gilmartin was very helpful. How we worked it, Hearthstone Realty, which is Stoppelgard’s company, sold the land and structure to Poulson, which is a shell we set up. Then the title changed hands three or four times, bang bang bang, just like that. The current owner of record is Winesap Enterprises.”

  “And that’s me?”

  “It is,” he said, “but the way things are set up, it would be a hell of a job to find that out. The whole thing cost you a hell of a lot of money, my friend. I won’t even ask where it came from.”

  “Good.”

  “You overpaid for the building. I told you that, but you didn’t want to hear it. At the price you paid, you’d have to raise your own rent through the roof to make the thing pay. The florist next door has ten years to go on his lease, and the residential tenants upstairs are all rent-controlled, so what they pay doesn’t cover what it costs you to heat their apartments for them. So unless you’re planning to try to get some of them to move—”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “I didn’t think so. Bernie, the building won’t even cover expenses. It’s going to cost you money.”

  “I know that.”

  “If you’d taken the same cash and put it in a good balanced mutual fund, do you know what kind of a yield you’d get?”

  “I could have put it in baseball cards,” I said. “Wally, suppose you took the hours you spend running and did billable work instead. Wouldn’t you make more money that way?”

  “Well, yeah, I see your point.”

  “Money’s not everything. I get to keep the store, and that’s what’s important to me.”

  “Still,” he said, “the building is going to lose money, and your store barely breaks even. How are you going to cover the deficit?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll think of something.”

  When Carolyn came in Raffles was sitting on my lap. “Just an employee,” she said. “Not a pet at all, right, Bern?”

  “Stroking a cat’s fur is an aid to thought,” I said. “It’s a well-known relaxation technique. There doesn’t have to be any affection involved.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “But here’s the big news,” I said, and I told her about Wally’s delivery of the deed. “So I get to keep the store,” I said. “I’ll be a landlord, but nobody ever has
to know that outside of you and me and Wally. The tenants will just send in their measly checks every month, same as always. And you and I can go on having lunch together and going over to the Bum Rap together after work. And as far as making up the buildings annual deficit, well, I got a little installment on that today from Borden Stoppelgard.”

  I told her about our transaction. “I took pity on him,” I said, “and sold him the Ted Williams set for two or three times its value, and of course it was all I had to sell to him or anybody else, because the rest of Marty’s good material was gone before Doll lifted it. I was planning on jerking his chain a little more, but I found myself feeling sorry for the man.”

  “Well, the two of you have something in common, Bern. You’re both landlords.”

  “Don’t ever call me that, even in jest. But I looked at the poor slob, doomed to spend his life being outclassed by his brother-in-law—”

  “And by everybody else he happens to meet.”

  “—and trying to cheat on his wife, and screwing that up, and having her cheat on him, and, well, I gave him a break.”

  “Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “C’est moi,” I agreed.

  She reached to pet the cat. “Bernie,” she said, “I’ve been trying not to ask you this, because I’m sure it’s obvious, and when you tell me I’m gonna feel like an idiot. How did Raffles solve the case?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember, because I know you do. We were right here, talking about The Cat Who Lived Forever, and Raffles jumped up in the air and arched his back and chased an imaginary tail or something. I don’t know what he did exactly, but it triggered something and the next thing I knew we were all at the Nugents and you were telling everybody who did it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now how did Raffles solve it?”

  “Carolyn,” I said, “Raffles didn’t solve the case.”

  “Well, I know that, Bern. I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know Raffles is just a cat.”

  “Right.”

  “And I don’t know what he did, or why he did it, but I know he’s not the reincarnation of Nero Wolfe. But whatever he was doing, it made some connection for you and—why are you shaking your head?”