The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart

by Lawrence Block

  “The American Hip Dysplasia Association,” I said, “and that’s where your money went, so don’t worry about it. It’s a hell of a worthy cause, and if you’d like I’m sure Miss Kaiser would be happy to tell you more than you could possibly want to know about it.”

  “But you are not Mr. Thompson? You are Mr. Bernard?”

  “Mr. Rhodenbarr,” I said, “but you can call me Bernie. Why don’t you have a seat, Your—” I stopped myself. “And you too, Ilona. I thought a third person would be coming along with the two of you. Actually he was supposed to pick the two of you up, and I’m a little surprised that you happened to get here without him. I hate to start before he gets here, so perhaps we can—”

  “Perhaps we can,” Ray Kirschmann said from the doorway. He shouldered his way into the store, cast a cold eye on the assembled company, and propped an elbow on a convenient bookshelf. He was wearing another costly if ill-fitting suit, and damned if he didn’t have a hat on, and a fedora at that. I happen to think all plainclothes policemen should wear hats, just like in the movies, but they mostly don’t in real life, and I couldn’t recall ever seeing Ray in a hat before. It looked good on him.

  “What I am,” he said, “is I’m touched, Bernie. The idea you’d wait for me. You want to innerduce me to these folks?”

  I went around the circle, naming names, and then I got to Ray. “And this is Raymond Kirschmann,” I said, “of the New York Police Department.”

  There were some interesting reactions. Charlie Weeks’s eyes brightened and his smile took up a little more of his face. Tsarnoff looked unhappy. Rasmoulian had an air of resignation; the introduction couldn’t have come as a surprise to him, since he’d already met Ray twice before, and even Ray’s presence was probably something less than a shock, given Ray’s propensity for turning up whenever Tiggy paid a visit to Barnegat Books.

  Wilfred didn’t seem surprised, either, and I figured it was because he’d made Ray the minute he walked in. Wilfred struck me as the sort of fellow who could spot a cop a block away. On the other hand, I don’t suppose his face would have changed expression if I’d introduced Ray as a first vice president at Chase Manhattan, in charge of repairing broken automatic teller machines. Wilfred wasn’t much on changing expressions, or of showing one in the first place.

  Anyway, the big reaction came from Ilona and Mike, who mumbled and stammered something to the effect that they’d thought Ray was affiliated not with the police at all but with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

  “Now that’s innarestin’,” he allowed, “an’ I can see where you would get the impression, an’ maybe I even went an’ made a slip of the tongue, sayin’ INS when I meant NYPD. It’s one batch of initials or another, an’ it coulda come out AFLCIO just as easy. But Bernie here is right, what I am is a cop, an’ just for form I prob’ly oughta read you all this here.” He held up a little wallet-size card and read, “‘You have the right to remain silent,’” and went all the way to the end, Mirandizing the hell out of everybody.

  “I don’t understand,” Tsarnoff said. “Am I to take it, sir, that we have been placed under arrest?”

  “Naw,” Ray said. “Why’d I wanna go an’ arrest anybody? I don’t see nobody breakin’ no laws. An’ even if I did, I ain’t in no hurry to make an arrest. You arrest somebody nowadays, you’re lookin’ at twelve, fifteen hours of paperwork by the time you’re done. Why, on my way in here I saw a young fellow take a book off of Bernie’s outside table, an’ do you think I was gonna arrest him for that?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Of course not. So if anybody in this room should happen to be carryin’ a concealed weapon, with or without you got a permit for it, as long as it don’t see the light of day you got nothin’ to worry about. Or if there’s a person here with outstandin’ warrants, well, put your mind at rest. That ain’t what I’m here for.”

  “And yet you read us our rights,” Tsarnoff persisted.

  “That’s just a contingency procedure,” Charlie Weeks said. “Figure it out, Gregorius. From this point on, anything anybody says is admissible as evidence. At least that’s the supposition. I don’t know what a lawyer would make of it, or a judge.”

  “A lawyer would make a buck,” Ray said, “bein’ as they generally do. An’ nobody ever knows what a judge’ll make of anything. An’ the real reason I read the Miranda card is so we’ll all take this seriously, even though it ain’t official an’ I’m just here to see what my old friend Bernie’s gonna pull out of his hat. He’s done this before, an’ I got to admit he generally comes up with a rabbit.”

  That was my cue, and I hopped to it. The line that came to me was I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you all here, and I’ll admit it’s one I’ve used to good effect in the past, but it didn’t really apply this time. They weren’t wondering. They knew, or at least thought they did.

  “I want to thank you all for coming,” I said. “I know you’re all busy people, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time. So I’ll get right to it.”

  I would have, too, but some clown picked that moment to stick his head in the door. “The sign says you’re closed,” he said, sounding peeved.

  “We are,” I said. “There’s a private sale going on. We’ll be keeping our usual hours tomorrow.”

  “But you got a table outside,” he said, “plus your door’s not locked.”

  “I’ll fix that,” I said, and closed it in his face, and thumbed the catch to lock it. He gave me a look and turned away, and I turned back to my guests.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Mowgli, if anybody else tries to come in—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  “Thanks. Where was I?”

  “You were getting right to it,” Charlie Weeks said.

  “So I was,” I said, and found a bookcase to lean against. “I want to tell you a story, and I may have to jump around a little, because this story starts in a few different places at a few different times. It has its roots deep in the nineteenth century, when nationalist sentiments began to stir throughout the lands administered by the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires. One of those Balkan nationalisms precipitated the outbreak of the First World War, when a young Serb shot the Austrian archduke. By the time that war ended, self-determination of nations was a catchphrase throughout the western world. Independence movements flowered across Europe. Among the presumptive nations to declare their independence was the sovereign nation of Anatruria. It was designated as a kingdom, and its monarch was to be King Vlados the First.”

  This couldn’t have been news to any of them, except for Ray and Mowgli, and possibly Wilfred. But they all paid close attention.

  “The Anatrurians did what they could to add substance to their proclamation of sovereignty,” I went on. “An extensive series of stamps was printed at Budapest, and some were actually used postally within the borders of Anatruria. Some pattern coins were struck and distributed to friends of the new nation, although a general issue was never produced for circulation. There were a few medals issued as well, bearing the new king’s likeness and presented to some men who had been the mainstay of the independence movement.”

  “Scarce as hen’s teeth, all of them,” Tsarnoff declared. “And about as eagerly sought in the collector market.”

  “Anatrurian hopes were dashed at Versailles,” I went on, “when Wilson and Clemenceau remade the map of Europe. What would have been Anatruria was parceled up among Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. King Vlados and Queen Liliana lived out the remainder of their lives in exile, still serving as a rallying point for those who continued to believe in the Anatrurian cause. But the movement died down.”

  “The flame flickered,” Ilona murmured. “But it was never extinguished.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, “but there was a time when it would have taken it a long time to bring a kettle to the boil. Then, during World War Two, the Anatrurian partisans had an active role.”

&nbs
p; “They were opportunists,” Tsarnoff put in, “switching allegiance as it served their interests. One day they’d be fighting side by side with Ante Pavelic’s Croatian Ustachi, murdering Serbs, and the next thing you knew they’d be on the Serbian side, sacking Croat villages. Were they for Hitler or against him? It depended when you asked the question.”

  “They were for Anatruria,” Ilona said. “Every day, every week, every month of the year.”

  “They were for themselves,” Tiglath Rasmoulian said. “As who is not?”

  “When the war ended,” I went on, “national borders in that part of the world remained essentially unchanged, but governments were in upheaval. The Soviet Union’s span of influence quickly took in all of Eastern Europe, and Truman had to draw a line in the sand to keep Greece and Turkey this side of the Iron Curtain. Several American intelligence agencies, at least one of them an outgrowth of the wartime OSS, sought to even the balance in that strategically vital area of the world.” I frowned, annoyed at the tone I was taking. In spite of all the films I’d seen lately, I was managing to sound like an Edward R. Murrow voice-over for a documentary.

  “Among the clandestine missions dispatched to the region”—damn, I was still doing it—“was a group of five American agents.”

  I hesitated for an instant, and Charlie Weeks read my mind. “Oh, they were all Americans, all right. Hundred percent red-blooded nephews of their Uncle Sam. No wretched refuse of your teeming shores in the Bob and Charlie Show, not on your life.”

  “Five Americans,” I said quickly. “Robert Bateman and Robert Rennick. Charles Hoberman and Charles Wood. And Charles Weeks.”

  “Charles Weeks?” Ray said. “This fellow here?”

  “This fellow here,” said Charlie Weeks.

  I told how, for convenience sake, the Roberts had become Bob and Rob respectively, the Charleses Cappy, Chuck, and Charlie. “And,” I said, “they all had animal names.”

  Mowgli said, “Animal names? I’m sorry, Bernie, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I want to make sure I heard you right.”

  “Animal names,” I said. “You heard me right. Code names, really. Bateman was the cat and Rennick was the rabbit.”

  “Actually,” Weeks put in, “it was the other way around. Not that it matters much, at this late date.”

  “I stand corrected. Cap Hoberman was the ram. Charlie Weeks was the mouse.”

  “Squeak squeak,” said Charlie Weeks.

  “And Chuck Wood’s totem, perhaps inevitably, was the woodchuck. His was the only one which was a play on words rather than a reference to some perceived personal characteristic, and I mention that because it’s relevant. I’m guessing now, but I’d say that Wood selected the name for himself.”

  “Ha!” said Weeks. He looked up and to the left, reaching for the memory. “You know,” he said, “I think you’re right, weasel.”

  Carolyn said, “Weasel?”

  I let it pass. “Five Americans,” I said, “each with an animal for a code name, undercover in the Balkans. Working together and with partisans and dissidents of every description, all with the aim of destabilizing…Yugoslavia? Romania? Bulgaria?”

  “Any one would do,” Weeks said dreamily. “Or all three. Be nice, wouldn’t it? Real feather in the collective cap for Hannibal’s Animals.” He winked at me. “Another name we had for ourselves. I didn’t tell you about that one, did I? After the old man in Adams-Morgan who was running us. His code name was Hannibal, don’t ask me why, and the name we made up for him was the elephant.” He put his fingertips together. “But don’t get me started, weasel. It’s your party, yours to tell the tale.”

  I said, “One possible lever they found was the movement for Anatrurian independence. Causes don’t die out in that part of the world, they just go dormant for a generation or two. King Vlados was well up in his seventies, a widower living on the Costa de Nada with a succession of housekeepers, his social life the same endless round of drinks and cardplaying with other once-crowned heads that had been sustaining him for the past forty years. He was a valuable symbol of Anatrurian greatness, but you couldn’t expect him to march in the van of a renewed patriotic movement. The last thing he was going to do was give up the Spanish sun for some back-room rallies in the Anatrurian hills.”

  “Mountains,” Ilona said.

  “But Vlados and Liliana had a son. L’aiglon, the French would say. The eaglet, the crown prince, the heir apparent.”

  “The colt,” Weeks put in. “We called the old man the stallion, you see. Just among ourselves, mind you. He had that mouthful of horse teeth, and then he had retired to stud, hadn’t he? So that made his son the colt.”

  “Todor was his name. Todor Vladov, because that’s how Anatrurian names work, with a Christian name and a patronym. His father was Vlados, so his last name was Vladov. Even as your name”—I nodded at Ilona—“is Ilona Markova. You father’s name would have been Marko.”

  “Except for what?” Tiglath Rasmoulian demanded. “You say the man’s name would have been Marko. What prevented it from being Marko? And what was it in fact?”

  “It is still Marko,” she said indignantly. “Marko Stoichkov. He has never changed it. He would never do such a thing.”

  We got that straightened out, though you don’t want to know how, believe me.

  “Todor Vladov was a toddler when his father accepted the Anatrurian crown. He was in his early thirties when the Bob and Charlie Show took up the cause of Anatrurian independence.”

  “Time and tide, sir,” Tsarnoff said. “They wait for no man, and the bell tolls for us all.”

  “What does he mean by that?” Rasmoulian snapped. “Why does he not speak that he may be understood?”

  “If your cognitive ability had not been arrested along with your physical development,” the fat man said, “perhaps you might be able to follow a simple sentence.”

  “You glutton,” Rasmoulian said. “You gross Circassian swine.”

  “You rug-peddling justification for the Turkish genocide.”

  “It is on such a rug that your mother lay with a camel when she got you.”

  “Yours rolled in the dirt with a boar hog, sir, for her husband ran off with the rug to sell it.”

  Then they both said several things I couldn’t make out. It sounded as though each was speaking a different language, and I don’t know that either could entirely understand what the other was saying. But they must have gotten the gist of it, because Rasmoulian’s hand went into his trench-coat pocket even as Tsarnoff’s gunsel was reaching inside his baseball jacket.

  “Let’s hold it right there,” Ray said, and damned if he didn’t have a revolver in his hand, a big old Police Special. I couldn’t guess how long it had been since he’d heard a shot fired in anger, or even for practice, and the gun he was holding might very well blow up in his hand if he ever pulled the trigger, but they didn’t know that. Tiggy tossed his head and sank deeper into his trench coat, but withdrew his hand from its pocket. Wilfred also showed an empty hand, but otherwise stayed his endearingly expressionless self.

  “Back to Anatruria,” I said quickly. “Old King Vlados may have given up dreams of a Balkan kingdom, but his son Todor found the idea intoxicating. Contacted by the American agents, he entered Anatruria surreptitiously and had a series of meetings with potential supporters. The stage was set for a popular uprising.”

  “Never would have stood a chance,” Charlie Weeks mused. “Look what the Ivans did in Budapest and Prague, for Christ’s sake. But look what a black eye they got for their troubles in the world press.” He sighed. “That was all we were after. We were getting the Anatrurians to rise up just so the Russkies could cut them down.” He flashed a rueful smile at Ilona, who looked horrified by what he’d just said. “Sorry, Miss Markova, but that was the job they handed us. Stir something up, make some mischief, embarrass the comrades. Like Werner von Braun with his rockets. His job was to get them off the ground. Where they came down was somebody else’s depar
tment. He wrote an autobiography, I Aim for the Stars.” He winked. “Maybe so, Werner, but you sure hit London a lot.”

  “The Anatrurian rising never did get off the ground,” I went on. “There was a betrayal.”

  “The woodchuck’s doing,” Weeks said. “At least that was what we always thought.”

  “The Americans scattered,” I said, “and left the country separately. Government authorities swooped down on the Anatrurians and took the heart of the movement into custody. There were some long prison sentences, a few summary executions. According to rumor, Todor Vladov got a bullet in the back of the neck and a secret burial in an unmarked grave. In point of fact he slipped through a border checkpoint just in time and never again returned to Anatruria.”

  Ray wanted to know how old he’d be now.

  “He’d be close to eighty,” I said, “but he died last fall.”

  “And the treasury,” Tsarnoff said. “What becomes of the treasury upon Todor’s death?”

  “The treasury?”

  “The war chest,” Rasmoulian said, impatient. “The Anatrurian royal treasury.”

  “Old Vlados’s backers were grabbing with both hands when the Austrian and Ottoman empires were falling apart,” Tsarnoff explained. “When they found themselves disappointed at Versailles, they packed their bags and hied themselves to Zurich, where they established a Swiss corporation and shunted everything they had into it. The corporation’s liquid assets went into a numbered account, everything else into a safe-deposit box.”

  “Much must be worthless,” Rasmoulian said, from deep within the shelter of his trench coat. “Czarist bonds, deeds to property expropriated by dictatorships of the left and right. Shares of stock in defunct corporations.”

  “The Assyrian is correct, sir. Much would indeed be worthless, but that which is not worthless could very well be priceless. Valid deeds, shares in firms which have thrived. And, while the bonds and currencies of fallen regimes would be of value only as curiosities, instruments of title to business and real property seized by the communists are worth another look now that communism has itself gone obsolete.”