The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

by Lawrence Block

  “Come on,” I said. “How am I going to see anything in there? You need the right kind of lighting, and one of those little mirrors on the end of a stick. Anyway, I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “It’s a lunar crater,” she said. “It’s the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, two hours from now it’ll be history. My dentist’s gonna fit me in during lunch hour.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Uh-huh.” She leaned a hip against the counter, sent an appraising glance my way. “So?”

  “So what?”

  “So how’d it go last night?”

  “Well, the movies were pretty good,” I said. “The first one was made in 1937, and—”

  “I’m not talking about the movies, Bern. How’d it go with Ilona?”

  “Oh,” I said. “It went all right.”

  “All right?”

  “It went fine.”

  She went on studying me, then broke into a smile that lit up her whole face.

  “Cut it out,” I said.

  “Cut what out? I didn’t say a word.”

  “Well, neither did I, so what the hell are you grinning about?”

  “Beats me. Where’d you wind up, Bern? Your place or hers?”

  I stared at her, stubbornly silent, and she stared right back at me. “Hers,” I said finally.

  “And?”

  “And what? I had a good time, okay? You happy now?”

  “I’m happy for you. She’s beautiful, Bern.”

  “I know.”

  “And obviously crazy about you.”

  “I don’t know about that part,” I said. “And what makes you so sure of it? For that matter, how come you’re telling me she’s beautiful? Are you just feeding my own words back to me?”

  She pursed her lips and whistled soundlessly, like Ilona blowing out cigarette smoke. “It was just the sheerest coincidence,” she said.

  “What was? I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and already I don’t believe you.”

  “I just happened to be in front of the Musette,” she said, “when the show let out last night.”

  “You just happened to be there.”

  “Everybody’s gotta be someplace, Bern.” Raffles had long since abandoned the paper I’d tossed him, and was now rubbing himself against Carolyn’s ankle, in the manner of his tribe. “Hey, look what he’s doing. Did you forget to feed him this morning, Bern?”

  “He ate enough to glut a python,” I said. “Quit changing the subject. How did you happen to be there last night?”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she said. “Sue Grafton’s got a new book out, and I went up to Murder Ink to pick it up.”

  “You went all the way up there for it?”

  “Partners and Crime was sold out, and Three Lives didn’t have it in yet. So I hopped on the subway.”

  “Murder Ink’s at Broadway and Ninety-second.”

  “I know, Bern. I was just there last night.”

  “That’s twenty-some blocks from the theater.”

  “Well, I hadn’t had dinner.”

  “So?”

  “So I was headed downtown, looking for a restaurant, and nothing appealed to me. I finally settled for a coffee shop around Seventy-ninth Street. You know, I think we may have been overdoing it with ethnic foods lately. I sat in a booth and had a bacon cheeseburger and french fries and cole slaw and a piece of apple pie for dessert, and I drank two cups of ordinary American coffee with cream and sugar, and the whole meal struck me as wildly exotic.”

  “And after your meal—”

  “I felt stuffed, so I figured I’d walk a few blocks.”

  “And the next thing you knew you were in front of the Musette Theater.”

  “All right, so I planned it. Is that a crime?”

  “No.”

  “I got there a few minutes before the show let out and stood where I could keep an eye on the entrance. For a minute there I thought I’d missed you. The two of you were just about the last people out.”

  “We like to stay and watch the credits.”

  “She’s a real beauty, Bern. And the way she was holding your arm, and the looks she was giving you. Forget Humphrey Bogart. I figured you were in like Flynn.”

  “How long were you spying on us, anyway?”

  “I don’t see why you have to call it spying,” she said. “I was just acting on some perfectly justifiable friendly concern. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “If I lurked around a dyke bar like that I’d get arrested.”

  “Not true, Bern. Beat up, maybe, but not arrested. Anyway, I didn’t lurk for very long. As soon as the two of you went across the street for coffee I went home.”

  “And read the new Sue Grafton.”

  She shook her head. “I’m saving it until my tooth is filled. I lost the filling toward the end of the cheeseburger. I think I must have swallowed it. It won’t poison me, will it?”

  “It’s probably better for you than the cheeseburger.”

  “That’s what I figured. I read the blurbs on the new book, and I think it’s going to be great, but I’ll wait and read it over the weekend. In the meantime I’m rereading one of her early books. I’m about halfway through it. It’s the one with the horticultural background.”

  “I don’t think I read it.”

  “Really? I thought you read them all. This one’s about the Chinese landscape architect who gets strangled with his own pigtail.”

  “I’d remember that. I must have missed it. What’s the title?”

  “‘Q’ Is for Gardens. I’ll lend it to you when I’m done with it. I gotta run, I got a springer spaniel coming any minute for a wash and set. Did she cook you breakfast or did you take her out?”

  “I didn’t stay over.”

  “Probably a good move. You know me, one flop in the feathers and I want us to go pick out drapes together. You called her, though, right?”

  “No answer. I don’t think she spends much time around the apartment. If you were ever there you’d know why.”

  “What’s on the program for tonight? More Bogart?”

  “What else?”

  “So afterward you’ll take her to your place.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Bernie? Look at me, Bern. Are you in love?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think it does.”

  The rest of the morning passed without incident. With Carolyn off getting a tooth filled, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of lunch. I ducked around the corner and ate a slice of pizza standing up (I was standing up, the pizza was essentially horizontal). I wasn’t away from the store for more than ten minutes, but that was long enough for Ray Kirschmann to make his appearance. I found him leaning against my bargain table, thumbing a Fodor guide to West Africa.

  “Some security system you got here,” he said. “I wasn’t as honest as the day is warm, I coulda walked off with all of these here.”

  “You’d get yourself a hernia before you hurt me much financially,” I pointed out. “The books on that table are three for a dollar.”

  “Even this here?”

  “It’s four years old.”

  “You got books a lot older than that an’ charge ten, twenty bucks for ’em. Sometimes more’n that.”

  “What you’ve got is a guidebook for travelers,” I explained, “and they don’t improve with age. They actually depreciate pretty rapidly, because people planning trips generally want up-to-date information. How would you like to fly all the way to Gabon and find out your hotel went out of business a year ago?”

  “You’d never get me there in the first place,” he said. “You gotta be crazy to go someplace like that. You’re layin’ on the beach there, drinkin’ somethin’ with fruit in it, and the next thing you know they’re havin’ theirselves a cootie tah.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, where they
overthrow the government. Before you know it you’re the main course at a cannibal banquet.” He tossed Fodor back on my table, where it glanced off Vol. II of The Life and Letters of Hippolyte Taine—God alone could tell you what had become of Vols. I and III—and skidded the length of the table before dropping to the pavement.

  “Don’t know my own strength,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

  I had the door unlocked and stood there holding it open, gazing pointedly at the book on the sidewalk. After a moment he went over, bent down, grunted, straightened up, and placed the book on the table.

  Inside, I asked him how the Candlemas investigation was coming.

  “Movin’ right along,” he said. “There’s a team of investigators workin’ right now, tryin’ to find out what Cap Hob means.” That’s how he pronounced it. “They got a computer that’s like havin’ every phone book in America lined up, only it can go through ’em in seconds. If Caphob’s somebody’s name, they’ll know it in nothin’ flat.”

  “If Mr. Caphob’s got a phone.”

  “Just so he’s got a pulse. There’s city directories in the computer, too, an’ everything else you can think of. You wouldn’t believe all the things they can do with their computers.”

  “Science is wonderful,” I said.

  “Ain’t it the truth.” He made a show of consulting his watch, then leaned forward confidentially and planted an elbow on my counter. “Might need a little help from you, though, Bernie.”

  “Don’t tell me you locked yourself out of your car again.”

  “Might ask you to come down to the morgue and make a formal ID of the guy.”

  I’d been waiting for him to ask me a favor. I knew it was coming the minute he took the trouble to pick up the book.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I barely knew the man.”

  “I thought he was such a good customer.”

  “I wouldn’t call him a regular. I saw him once in a while.”

  “You knew him well enough to loan him your sashay case.”

  “Attaché case.”

  “You know what I meant. You gave it to him to carry home a book he paid five bucks for, or at least that’s your story.” He straightened up. “Speakin’ of which, we could go over that story a few more times if you don’t want to cooperate and ID the poor dead son of a bitch. Put in a couple of hours down at the station house, takin’ a statement from you, lettin’ you tell your story to a few different cops so’s we can all get the whole picture.”

  “It’s nice to know I have a choice in the matter.”

  “Damn right you got a choice,” he said. “You can do the right thing, or you can suffer the consequences. Up to you.”

  “Naturally I want to cooperate with the police,” I said, with all the sincerity of a game show host. “But what do you need me for, Ray? The man had neighbors. They must have known him better than I did.”

  He shook his head. “Way it’s shapin’ up,” he said, “they didn’t know him at all. I’ll take that back, the woman on the ground floor knew him, said he was a very nice man. Trouble is she’s blind, spends most of her time listening to books on tape. One flight up you got a couple named Lehrman on the second floor, except you don’t at the moment because they left ten days ago to spend the next four months in the south of France. They’re college professors and they swapped their apartment in some kind of triangular deal. The Frenchman’s in Singapore for the spring an’ summer, an’ there’s a businessman with a Chinese name in the Lehrmans’ apartment, so I guess he’s from Singapore. Wherever he’s from, he’s only been here a little over a week an’ he says he never met Candlemas. We showed him a photo the lab boys took an’ it didn’t refresh his memory none.

  “Who else we got? A couple of gays in the basement apartment, also new in the building, an’ they got a separate entrance all their own. They never met Candlemas. The super lives next door, he takes care of three or four buildings, an’ he’s only had the job for a couple of months. Candlemas never asked him to do anything for him, so they never met. The guy says he went lookin’ to introduce hisself once or twice, just in the interest of makin’ contact, an’ if you ask me in the interest of settin’ Candlemas up for a decent tip come Christmas. But Candlemas wasn’t around the time or two he went lookin’ for him. No way in the world he could ID him.”

  “What about the third floor?”

  “The third floor?”

  “The gay couple’s in the basement,” I said, “and the blind woman’s on the ground floor, with the Lehrmans directly above her.”

  “Except they’re not there,” he said, “seein’ as they’re in France. Go on.”

  “Candlemas was on the fourth floor,” I said. “So who’s on three?”

  “Now that’s a real interestin’ question,” he said. “You know, if I was what’s-his-name, the guinea with the raincoat, I’d save this for when I got one foot out the door. ‘Oh, by the way…’ But who’s got the fuckin’ patience?”

  “What are you talking about, Ray?”

  “What I’m talkin’ about is how you happen to know there’s four floors and Candlemas lived up on four. That ain’t a detail I ever mentioned.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Then he must have.”

  “Who, Candlemas?”

  “Who else?”

  “What I think,” he said, “is you’re full of crap, but I thought that all along. What did I say yesterday? I knew you were up there at one time or another. Bernie, tell me the truth. You got any idea at all who killed this guy?”

  “No.”

  “You want to cooperate and make the formal identification? And the hell with who lives on the third floor. They’re like everybody else, they don’t know shit. Be a pal, Bernie. Do us both a favor.”

  I frowned. “I hate looking at dead bodies,” I said.

  “Be glad you’re not a mortician. How about it? All I care, you can keep your eyes closed when they bring the body up. Just so you swear it’s him.”

  “No, I’ll look,” I said. “If I’m going to do it the least I can do is keep my eyes open. When do you want to go over there?”

  “How about right now?”

  “What, during business hours?”

  “Yeah, an’ I can see how much business you’re doin’. It won’t take but a few minutes an’ then it’ll be out of the way.” He shrugged. “Or, if you’d rather, I’ll pick you up at closing time. You close around six, right?”

  “That’s no good,” I said. “I’m meeting somebody at a quarter to seven. But if I go now I have to close up and reopen and…I’ll tell you what. Come by for me around a quarter to five and I’ll close an hour early. How’s that?”

  As the afternoon wore on, I began wishing I’d locked up then and there and gone straight to the morgue. It was Friday and the weather was great, and as a result everybody who could manage it was leaving town early and getting a jump on the weekend. And they weren’t stopping to buy books on their way, either.

  The morgue would have been livelier than where I was. At times like that I’m glad I have a cat for company, but on this particular occasion he was no company at all. He slept on the windowsill for a while, and then when the sun got too strong for him he found a perch he liked on a high shelf in Philosophy & Religion. I couldn’t even see him from where I sat.

  I called Ilona a couple of times. No answer. I sat down with that week’s copy of AB Bookman’s Weekly and looked through the listings to see if anybody was hunting for something I happened to have in stock. I check now and then, and sometimes I’ve actually got something that some dealer somewhere is searching for, but I rarely follow through and do anything about it. It just seems like too much trouble to write out a postcard with a price quote and put it in the mail and then hold the book in reserve until the person does or doesn’t order it. And then you have to wrap the damn thing, and stand in line at the post office.

  And all for what, two dollars profit? Or five,
or even ten?

  Not worth it.

  Of course, if you do it regularly, and develop a system for quoting and packing and shipping, it can be a profitable element of the business. At least that’s what various articles have assured me, and I have to assume that they’re right.

  But it still seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

  See, that’s how thieving spoils a man.

  There was a time a while back when the store began to turn a small but steady profit. What I’d begun as a combination of a respectable front and a cultured pastime was supporting itself, and looked as though it might even support me in the bargain. Before I knew it I had stopped burgling.

  Well, I got over that. Prompted by a rapacious landlord, I’d saved the business by stealing myself solvent. Flush with ill-gotten gains, I’d gone and bought the building. Barnegat Books was secure, and I could run it for good or ill as long as I wanted.

  And I didn’t have to pinch pennies, either, or send postcards full of price quotations to dealers in Pratt, Kansas, and Oakley, California. I could leave the bargain table where it was while I trotted around the corner, and I didn’t have to have an apoplectic fit if someone walked off with a water-damaged second printing of a Vardis Fisher novel. And when I cover expenses that’s fine, and when I don’t, well, I can always flimflam my way into a building and pick my way past a lock and pick up a quick five grand for my troubles.

  Of course I hadn’t received anything for my recent night’s efforts.

  And who said my troubles were over?

  That happy thought sent me to the telephone, to try Ilona’s number again. No answer. I put the phone down and thought about the question Carolyn had asked me, and the answer I had given. I didn’t know if it was true, but it was close enough to be disturbing.

  Reverie carried me back to that grotty little top-floor room on East Twenty-fifth Street. I found myself thinking about the man in the photograph. Where the hell had I seen him before?

  He wasn’t the same man as the fellow in the stiff family portrait. I was pretty sure of that. For one thing, the guy with his arm around the huge-haired lady would never be that rigid, not even after rigor mortis had set in. He was used to having his picture taken. The way he was beaming, he looked as though he thrived on it.