Burglar on the Prowl

by Lawrence Block

  "A cup of coffee," he said, helpfully. "S¡, como no?"

  There were two of them, although he only got a look at one, and not a very good look at that. The way they worked it was simple enough. He'd come on duty at ten, and maybe twenty minutes later the first man, taller and heavier than Edgar-a description that fit the greater portion of the adult male population-came up to him, asking for me. He was wearing dark trousers and a zip-front jacket in tan suede, and he had a blue Mets cap pulled down over his forehead. And a shirt, but Edgar didn't get enough of a look at the shirt to remember it.

  He rang my apartment, and when I didn't answer he reported the fact to my caller, who hefted the briefcase he'd been carrying. He wanted to leave this for Mr. Rhodenbarr, he told Edgar, but it was important, and he wanted to make sure it was safe. Was there a room for parcels? Something with a lock on the door?

  There was, Edgar assured him, and he'd put it there. The man said he wanted him to put it there now, just to be on the safe side, and that he'd make it worth Edgar's while. He'd accompanied this last phrase by rubbing his thumb across the tips of his index and middle fingers, a gesture that, north or south of the border, meant some money would sweeten the deal.

  It struck Edgar as an unusual way to earn a tip, but then America was an unusual country, with ways he hadn't entirely figured out yet. So he got the parcel room key from the drawer of the lobby desk, and led the man into the corridor beyond the bank of elevators and unlocked the parcel room door.

  He'd no sooner accomplished this task than the man reached around and slapped him across the face, which seemed wholly gratuitous but turned out to have a purpose behind it, as he learned when he tried to cry out and discovered that his mouth was taped shut. The man gave him a shove, and he stumbled into the parcel room, and moments later another man came in, and the next thing he knew he was as I'd found him, secured to the chair with his hands taped behind his back. Well, not quite as I'd found him, because the chair was still upright at that point, and remained so until his efforts to escape sent it crashing to the floor a while later.

  And that was that.

  A team of cops might have found more questions to ask him. At the very least, they'd have asked him the same questions over and over. But they'd have wanted to make sure he wasn't hiding anything, and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I was also willing to give him coffee, of which he drank three cups in less time than it took me to drink one, and the use of my bathroom, which seemed only fair after I'd loaded him up with all that coffee.

  After a few minutes I heard a little cry of shock and dismay, and a moment later he came out of the bathroom looking absolutely horrorstruck. I wondered if there was another of those damned water-bugs in the bathtub. They come up through the pipes, and they're huge and disgusting, but he'd grown up in a tropical country, for God's sake. He must have seen worse.

  Then, shaking, he touched his finger to his upper lip.

  "Oh, right," I said. "I didn't realize you hadn't seen it yet. I can't see any way to save it, Edgar. Let me lend you a razor and you can shave it off."

  He looked questioningly at me, and I mimed the act, scraping away the mustache I didn't have with the razor I wasn't holding. He looked crestfallen, and rattled off a burst of rapid-fire Spanish. I don't know what it meant, but if I had to guess it would have been something along the lines ofBut then I will resemble an idiot child and no one will ever take me seriously.

  I shook my head firmly. "You're better off without it," I insisted. "You can always grow it back, but the first step is to shave it."

  I gave him a fresh disposable razor and a can of shaving cream, and he closed the door, and when he opened it again he looked about seventeen years old, which was only about six months younger than he'd looked before any of this happened.

  I told him he looked fine and asked him if there was anything else he could use-an aspirin, a bite to eat, maybe a quick shower-but all he wanted was to get back downstairs and resume his post. He'd been away from it for far too long, he said, and it would be bad if he got reported to the super, who, while married to Edgar's sister's husband's cousin, could only cut him so much slack.

  Besides, he said, the lobby was unattended, and that wasn't safe. Anyone could walk right in. The tenants paid a lot of rent, and they had a right to have him on duty, watching out for their interests.

  And off he went, grateful for the coffee, grateful I hadn't insisted on calling the cops, and eager in spite of all he'd been through to get back to work. You can see why the INS would want to send a guy like that back where he came from.

  Sixteen

  Since my clean-shaven doorman had put himself back to work, I felt I could do no less myself, and resumed work on my apartment. While I was at it I called a twenty-four-hour locksmith and told him what replacement parts he'd need to make my lock sound again. While he was at it, I said, he could bring an extra Rabson cylinder and a Fox police lock. It took him fifteen minutes to get there and the better part of two hours to install everything, and the price he charged me added a little more injury to the insult and injury I'd already sustained. I wrote him a check and went to bed, fully expecting to sleep until noon, but at eight o'clock my eyes popped open of their own accord and I started a day I didn't have a great deal of hope for.

  But a shower and a shave helped, and breakfast didn't hurt, either, and by the time I opened up the bookstore I felt almost human. I fed Raffles and flushed the toilet for him-he uses it, but not even Carolyn can figure out how to teach him to flush it-and dragged my bargain table outside, and sat behind the counter waiting for the world to beat a path to my door. When it failed to do so, I looked around for something to do, and remembered I had a box of books in the back room that needed to be shelved.

  I walked halfway there, then spun around and returned to my stool behind the counter. I'd done enough shelving lately, I decided, and I picked up a book that had come in with the others, but that I'd set aside to read first before I gave my customers a crack at it. It was the new John Sandford novel, and I was about fifty pages into it, and with minimal interruptions I figured I could manage another fifty pages by lunchtime.

  The cops in Sandford's books are apt to tell each other jokes, and one of them was funny enough so that I was chuckling over it when the phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Barnegat Books," and a voice that I recognized but couldn't place wished me a good morning, and asked if I happened to have a copy ofThe Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad.

  "Hold on," I said. "I think so, but let me check."

  I went to the fiction section, and there was the book, right where the miracle of alphabetical order had led me to place it. I carried it to the counter and told my caller I did indeed have a copy.

  "It's not a first," I said, "but it's a nice clean reading copy. Twelve dollars takes it home."

  "Put it aside," he said. "I'll pick it up sometime today."

  I could have asked his name, but that might have been awkward, since there was something in his manner that led me to believe he thought I already knew who he was. Besides, what difference did it make? If he didn't show up, I'd put the book back on the shelf in a day or two. I had a lot more to worry about than a twelve-dollar sale.

  "I've got a lot more to worry about," I told Carolyn, "than a twelve-dollar sale."

  "I'll say."

  "I wonder what they were looking for. They took my money, but that's not what brought them there in the first place. What do you suppose they wanted?"

  "I don't know, Bern. What have you got?"

  "Eight thousand dollars less than I used to have. Closer to nine thousand, if you count what I had to pay the locksmith. Aside from that, nothing. If these are the same jokers who robbed the Rogovins, and they'd pretty much have to be, then I don't get it at all. There's nothing on earth that connects me to the Rogovins. I never even heard of the Rogovins until."

  "Until Ray walked in and arrested you."

  I nodded slowly. "That's got to be t
he connection," I said. "They committed a crime, and I was arrested for it. The cops made a mistake when they arrested me, but the newspaper story didn't mention that part, so the guys who committed the crime don't know that."

  "They don't know they committed the crime? What do you figure their problem is, Bern? Short-term memory loss?"

  "They know what they did," I said. "What they don't know is that I didn't do anything, that I was picked up because I happened to be lurking in the neighborhood for another purpose altogether. All they know is I got picked up, and that means there may be a connection between me and the Rogovins."

  "Like what?"

  "Like somehow I got to the Rogovins' safe before they did, and whatever they were looking for and didn't find, well, maybe I've got it."

  "What do you figure it was?"

  I shook my head. "Haven't got a clue," I said.

  It was lunchtime, and I'd actually done a little business during the morning. I'd sold eight or ten books, including a gorgeous coffee table volume of photos of the Bronx in its heyday, which, alas, has long since come and gone. And Mickey Tolleris, my magazine guy, had come in empty-handed and staggered out with a carton full of back copies ofNational Geographic andPlayboy. I don't put magazines on the shelves, you never sell them unless you're a specialist with a deep stock of back issues, but there are certain magazines I hang on to when they come into the store. Collectible pulps, of course, and all the genre magazines, mystery and science fiction and westerns, but alsoPlayboy (if the centerfold's intact) andNational Geographic, which enough people collect so that a fellow like Mickey can maintain a market in them. He gave me cash, and so did the folks who bought books, but I was still a long way from recouping the previous night's losses.

  I'd picked up our lunch-hamburgers and fries, I wasn't feeling very imaginative-and we were at the Poodle Factory, and I'd brought Carolyn up to speed. If you wanted to call it that; it felt more to me as though I was spinning my wheels.

  "What I think," I said, "is that it may not matter what they were looking for."

  "How can that be?"

  "Well, it matters to them," I said, "and it probably matters to the police, who'd like to find someone to hang the case on, since they're not going to be able to hang it on me. But the important thing is that those guys-I wish I knew what to call them, incidentally."

  "The perps," she suggested.

  "The perps," I agreed. "The important thing is the perps came looking for the-shit, I don't know what to callthat, either."

  "The McGuffin."

  "Thank you. The perps came looking for the McGuffin, just on the off chance that I had it, since my name had been dragged into the affair. And they looked, and they didn't find it, and-you know what? It's a good thing they found my hidey-hole. Because they saw right away that that's where I keep stuff, and the McGuffin-the McGuffin?"

  "That's the word for it, Bern."

  "They saw that the McGuffinwasn't there, and that's where I would have stashed it if I had it, so obviously I don't have it. Which means that they can leave me the hell alone."

  "And you think they will?"

  "I don't see why not."

  "And you don't think you ought to go to the cops?"

  "What for? Look, I promised Edgar I'd keep the INS away from him, and all I know that they don't is that one of the perps-the perps?"

  "Bern."

  "That one of the perps is taller and heavier than Edgar, which doesn't narrow things down much. Oh, and either he likes the Mets or he beat up some Mets fan and took his cap. If I don't share that with them, do you figure I'm withholding valuable information?"

  "I guess not. Bern, you know what's a good thing? That you weren't home when they showed."

  I thought of the Rogovins, and gave a nod and a shudder.

  "If you had been-"

  "But I wasn't," I said, and figured it was a good time to change the subject. "No drinks at the Bum Rap tonight, right? Because you've got a first date with GurlyGurl, and after that you've got a date with me."

  "It's still on?"

  "Now more than ever," I said. "After last night, I've got the best possible reason to run up to Riverdale. I need the money."

  Seventeen

  Itook less than an hour for lunch, and was behind the counter and ready for business a few minutes before one. When I thought about it later, I decided that the fat man must have been perched in a doorway down the block or across the street, waiting for me to come back and open up, because I'd no sooner reached for the John Sandford novel and found my place in it than the bell tinkled to proclaim his arrival.

  That didn't mean I had to stop reading. I gave him a welcoming smile and a little nod and left him to browse my shelves, which is what just about everybody does upon arrival, unless they've got books to sell me, or they want directions to Grace Church. His hands were empty, so any books he wanted to sell were still on his shelves, and I didn't get the feeling he had the urge to seek out a moment of peace and quiet among the Episcopalians around the corner, so I closed my book and waited to find out what he wanted.

  I'm sure it's politically incorrect to call him a fat man, on the general PC principle that the last thing you should do is call a spade a spade. There's probably an acceptable euphemism for it, but I've thus far been spared knowing what it is, so I'll go on calling him fat in the hope that you won't object, and the certain knowledge that he won't.

  And he was fat, all right. You see people who are uncomfortable in their fatness, as though all this extra weight just happened to them while they were thinking of something else, and now that they've got it they don't know what to do with it. Well, he wasn't like that. One look at him, the way he held himself, the way he moved, and you somehow knew he'd been fat all his life, a fat baby who'd blossomed into a fat little boy, gone through the awkward years as a fat teenager, and emerged at last as a fat grownup. He didn't have one of those pot bellies that look as though you're trying to smuggle a beach ball through Customs, didn't have skinny arms and legs sticking out of a fat torso like a potato imbedded with toothpicks. No, he was fat all over, and I got the feeling it was fine with him.

  He was wearing a blue suit, and if it hadn't been made to measure then it had at the very least been tailored to fit him, and by a tailor who knew what he was doing. It didn't make him look thin, nothing could have, but it did make him look fit and natty and prosperous, and what more can you ask of a few yards of wool?

  His shirt was white, with a spread collar, and his tie was this year's width, with regimental stripes of navy and scarlet. I can't tell you about his shoes because I didn't notice them when he walked in, and by the time I looked him over he was standing too close to the counter for his feet to show. But I'll bet they were good shoes. I've never yet known a fat man who didn't spend good money on shoes, and put a lot of care into their selection.

  "Mr. Rhodenbarr," he said, making it not a statement but not quite a question, either. When I nodded, confirming his identification, he gave me a smile that showed a lot of teeth. They were perfectly white and perfectly even, so much so that one could hardly avoid the suspicion that they were not perfectly real. But then you could have said much the same thing about the smile.

  "A pleasure," he said firmly, and stuck out his hand, which, it will not surprise you to learn, was fleshy. I shook his hand. If there's a way to avoid shaking a hand that's thrust at me, I've yet to figure it out, and I always wind up taking the proffered hand before I have time to wonder whether or not it's something I really want to do. In this case, though, I was perfectly willing to shake hands with the man. He was probably a customer, and even if he wasn't he was cheerful and pleased to see me, so why would I want to leave him standing there with his arm hanging out?

  While we were shaking hands, Raffles seized the moment to leap down from his spot in my sunny window and come over to the counter, where he began circling the fat man's feet, rubbing against his ankles in the process. He goes through this routine with me when I open up
in the morning, it's his way of letting me know he wants to be fed, as though it would never occur to me without this daily reminder. But he'd been fed already today, and couldn't logically expect a stranger, however well-fed himself, to do the honors.

  This would have been a good time for me to check out his shoes, while I was looking down to watch Raffles polish them, but I was too busy noting the cat's uncharacteristic behavior to notice what he was rubbing up against. Anyway, I'll bet they were expensive shoes, and that he had a dozen pairs every bit as good in his closet.

  He released my hand and looked down at Raffles. "A pussy cat!" he cried, with evident delight. "I love pussy cats. But what happened to his tail?"

  "He was born without it," I said, wondering if I was telling the truth. "He's a Manx."

  "Ah, of course. From the Isle of Man."

  "Well, not personally-or do I mean cattily? His forebears were from Man, but Raffles was born right here in New York."