The Burglar on the Prowl

by Lawrence Block

  “Just four photos,” she said. “Two for each subject. I asked before if you had a clue who they were, and I don’t remember what you said.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Oh.”

  “Your computer working?”

  “Is my computer working? Of course it’s working. I was just online, and I checked my buddy list, and guess who else was online? GurlyGurl, so we IM’d back and forth for a while. We’ve got a date for Tuesday night, unless she has to work late.” She grinned. “She was bitching about one of the lawyers who keeps piling work on her, says she’s a real ovary-buster. I bet I know who she means.”

  “Maybe we’d better not go on any double dates just yet.”

  “My thought exactly. She likes me, Bern. Isn’t that neat?”

  “Very.”

  “Why’d you ask about my computer?”

  “Because you’re better on it than I am,” I said, “and I thought maybe you’d like to do a little research.”

  Ray had brought along a fresh roll of CRIME SCENE tape, and after he’d used it to reseal the apartment he offered to drop me at Carolyn’s. He got as far as Sheridan Square and told me I was on my own, claiming that he always got lost in the crooked little streets. He may just have been in a hurry to get home. It was still raining, so I was glad I had my umbrella.

  Before I got out of the car I reached in my pocket and remembered what I’d been carrying around ever since I spoke to him hours ago. “You could do me a favor,” I said. “Do you think you’d be able to run a print for me?”

  He looked at me and made me repeat the question. Then he said, “Could I run a print? Nothin’ to it. Could I run a print for you? Now that’s somethin’ else again. Whose print and where’d it come from?”

  “If I knew whose print it was,” I said reasonably, “I wouldn’t ask you to identify it for me. As for the rest, you don’t want to know.”

  “Meanin’ you don’t want to tell me. I dunno, Bernie. I’m bendin’ a whole lotta rules today.”

  “Rules were made to be bent.”

  “Well, you’re right about that,” he said, and held out his hand, and I filled it, and he looked at what he was holding and then at me. “I dunno, Bern,” he said. “This yours? Could be you’re as light on your feet as Valdi Berzins.”

  Now, while Carolyn settled in at her computer, I made a few calls on her phone. I reached Marty Gilmartin at home, asked him a couple of questions to which he gave guarded responses, and made a date for lunch the following day. He asked if The Pretenders was all right, and I said it was always fine with me. I might be pressed for time, I said, in which case we could make it a drink or a cup of coffee instead of a full meal, but it would be good to get together.

  I hung up and called Barbara Creeley, and when I’d said hello she said she was hoping I’d call. “I called you about half an hour ago,” she said, “but I got your machine.”

  “I was out,” I said. “Still am.”

  “I’m home.”

  “I figured that,” I said, “right about the time you picked up the phone.”

  “Oh, right, of course. That was dumb of me, saying I’m home. I mean, you called me, so of course I’m home.”

  “I wouldn’t say it was dumb.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  She sounded shaky. I asked her if she was all right.

  “I guess so. Do you still want to have dinner?”

  “That’s why I was calling. I was hoping you’d be home, and that I could take you out someplace for something nice.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, sure. I mean, I’m home. And yes, dinner would be nice.”

  “Great. What time’s good?”

  “What time? I don’t know. You say.”

  “Uh, seven?” That would give me plenty of time to go home and change. “Is that good?”

  “Seven’s fine.”

  “Should we pick a place? It’s Sunday, so not everybody’s open. Do you have someplace you particularly like? Or do you want to meet at Parsifal’s, and we can figure out where to go from there?”

  There was a pause, as if two questions at once was too much to deal with. Then she said, “Could you just come over here?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “That would be good, Bernie. You’ll come over here at seven?”

  “I will.”

  “You know the address?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll see you at seven, then. Or earlier, if you’d like. Whenever you’re ready, just come over. I’ll be right here.”

  She hung up. I sat there holding the phone for a long moment, and then did the same myself.

  “I’ve got to run home,” I told Carolyn. “I need a shave and a shower. I’ve got a date.”

  “With Barbara? That’s great.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said.

  Twenty-Nine

  It was a little before seven when I mounted the half flight of steps at the brownstone on East 36th Street. I rang and she buzzed me in, and when I got to her floor she was waiting in the doorway. She wore a dress with a bold geometric print, the kind of thing Mondrian might have done if he hadn’t been so firmly committed to the right angle.

  I told her I liked her dress. I’d noticed it before, actually, and had admired it then, but it did more for her figure than for a hanger in the closet, which is where I’d seen it. She said she’d taken it to Long Island, to wear at the Sunday brunch, but an informal poll indicated that most of the other women would be wearing jeans or a skirt, so the dress went back in the suitcase. She didn’t know where we’d go tonight, but she could put on something else if I thought she was over-or under-dressed.

  I was wearing a blazer and gray slacks, and I had a tie in my pocket, so I figured we were all right for just about any setting. I said she looked great, and she did, but there was an uncertain air about her that matched what I’d heard over the phone. She led me into the apartment, and there was a touch of awkwardness, the to-kiss-or-not-to-kiss moment. We’d been to bed two nights ago, but we really didn’t know each other, so would it be presumptuous for either of us to expect the other to fall into a clinch? I hesitated, and she hesitated, and I reached for her and she came into my arms and we kissed.

  It was a nice embrace, and a lingering one, but when we drew apart she still seemed troubled, and I asked her if everything was all right.

  “Yes,” she said, and thought about it, and said, “No,” and thought about that, and then frowned. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m a little scared.”

  “I can tell. Of what?”

  She’d been avoiding my eyes, but now she met them. “Bernie,” she said, “have you ever had the feeling that you could be losing your mind?”

  “Sometimes I’m not sure I ever had one in the first place,” I said. I glanced at her bed, and thought about the time I’d spent not in it but under it. “Sometimes I know I’m doing something that’s really nuts, but I can’t seem to keep myself from doing it.”

  “You mean like eating dessert when you’d decided earlier not to have dessert, and you really don’t even want it, but there it is and you eat it?”

  “Something like that,” I said, “but on a grander scale. Like it’s a really rich dessert, and I’m a diabetic, and I eat it anyway.”

  “You’re diabetic?”

  “No, that’s just an illustration of the relative degree of craziness I’m capable of.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I wanted to make sure. Everybody has that sometimes, don’t they? But this is different. I really think I might be losing it. First that blackout when I only had two drinks, which can’t be a good sign. And then this. Can I tell you what happened?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? There’s different kinds of soda, or I could make you a cup of tea. Or coffee, but it’ll have to be instant.�
�

  “I’m fine.”

  “I wish I could say the same. Bernie, when I woke up Saturday morning I thought about what we’d talked about, about how I brought someone home the night I had the blackout, and how he’d gone through my things but didn’t take anything, except for my Lady Remington. And I thought about my missing class ring, and I went through my jewelry more carefully. All my good stuff was there, but I was definitely missing a pair of earrings, and a couple of silver bangle bracelets.”

  “More souvenirs.”

  “And nothing I couldn’t live without, but it was still disturbing.”

  “Of course.”

  “And then I remembered the money.”

  “In your wallet? You said it was all still there.”

  She shook her head. “The other money,” she said. “I never keep cash in the house, there’s no need, not with an ATM two blocks away. But for a week or so I’d had a lot of cash on hand. Well, not a fortune, but I think you could call it a substantial amount. It was over twelve hundred dollars.”

  “That’s substantial. In cash, anyway.”

  “That’s what I mean. It was enough so that I found a place to hide it. I put it in the icebox, in the freezer compartment. I don’t know, maybe that’s the first place a burglar would look.”

  Not the first place, I thought, but right up there.

  “Why I had the cash in the first place,” she said, “is that Alison Harlowe’s wedding was coming up, and she was one of the last of our crowd to get married. And she and Scott were torn between a big wedding and a honeymoon in Europe, they couldn’t really afford both without going into debt. So word got around, and we all agreed that the gifts would be cash, but not individual gifts from individual friends, because that would feel like the opening scene in The Godfather, with everybody coming around with envelopes.

  “So I volunteered to take the collection, and I got in touch with everybody, and people gave what they wanted, and the average gift was a hundred dollars, and by the time everybody was present and accounted for, the honeymoon fund came to almost nine thousand dollars.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  “Most people gave me checks,” she said, “but more people than I would have guessed gave me cash, and the cash amounted to over twelve hundred. I put the checks in the bank, and I don’t know why I didn’t do the same with the cash, but there’s something about cash, do you know what I mean?”

  “Definitely.”

  “It’s like having a secret, or a concealed weapon, or something. It fit neatly into this brown envelope, and I tucked it away in the freezer, and I liked having it there.”

  “It beats Pop Tarts.”

  “And it’s less of a temptation in the middle of the night than a pint of Häagen-Dazs. I suppose I would have put it in the bank eventually, but for the time being I figured it was fine where it was. And I sort of forgot about it. When I first started checking things to see what was missing, when I checked my wallet and counted the cash in it, I didn’t even think of the money in the freezer. Maybe that’s a sign all by itself that there was something wrong with me.”

  “Doesn’t sound alarming to me. It slipped your mind, that’s all.”

  “Or maybe it was my mind that was doing the slipping. Anyway, yesterday after I checked my jewelry drawer I thought about the wedding. The way we worked it, I was supposed to write one big check to cover everybody’s contribution, and I’d done that, and mailed it in plenty of time so that they’d have it in the bank before the wedding and honeymoon. But getting packed for the wedding made me think about the check, and that made me think of the cash, and I got this sinking feeling in my stomach and went to the freezer.”

  “I guess it wasn’t there, or you wouldn’t be telling me about it.”

  “I took everything out of the freezer, including a beef brisket I never get around to cooking, and it’s probably like frozen mastodon meat, it’s been in there so long. I really searched, because I so much wanted the money to be there. I mean, I was probably ready for a new electric shaver anyway, and when am I ever going to wear a class ring from Bennett High? But twelve hundred dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “And I felt really stupid for keeping it there in the first place. I’d put the checks in the bank right away, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to do the same with the cash. But no, I had to hang on to it. Cold cash, frozen assets—God, I was so damn stupid.”

  “Cut it out,” I said. “You know what you’re doing? You’re blaming the victim. You didn’t do anything wrong. Some unprincipled son of a bitch”—Bernie by name, I thought—“stole something from you, and you think it’s your fault. It’s not. It’s his.”

  “If the money hadn’t been there—”

  “But it was, and it had every right to be, and he had no right to take it. If you’d left it in plain sight on the kitchen table you could blame yourself, maybe, but you didn’t. You put it in the freezer where he had no business looking, and he poked around and found it and took it. Barbara, it’s really not your fault, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re losing your grip on reality.”

  “I know,” she said, and swallowed. “There’s more.”

  “Oh?”

  “When I got home this afternoon,” she said, “I opened the freezer. Don’t ask me why.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, I know why. I had the harebrained thought that maybe it would be there this time. So I opened the freezer.”

  “And?”

  “And there it was.”

  Right where I’d left it the previous afternoon, while she was out on Long Island. “You’re kidding,” I said. “So it had been there all along, huh?”

  “Bernie, I swear I took everything out of the freezer. Everything.”

  “Even the mastodon meat.”

  “Everything. I stood there looking into this completely empty compartment, and it even crossed my mind that it would be a good time to defrost it, but instead I put everything back. That money wasn’t there, Bernie.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Sure.”

  “And it’s there now. Do you want to see it?”

  “No, why would I want to see it?”

  “So you’ll know I’m not crazy. Except you’ll know the opposite, that I am crazy. Here, I want to show you. See? Do you want to count it?”

  I put a hand on her arm to steady her. “Put it away,” I urged.

  “It comes to exactly twelve hundred and forty dollars. Are you sure you don’t want to count it?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “It must have been there all along. It couldn’t go away and come back. But how could I have missed it?”

  There were, I told her, any number of logical explanations. She challenged me to name one.

  “The money could have dematerialized,” I said. “Then it reappeared.”

  “Something like that could happen?”

  “Who’s to say it couldn’t? Look at it this way, Barbara. If you hadn’t checked yesterday, it could have dematerialized and reappeared without your knowing anything had happened.”

  “But things don’t dematerialize. Nothing ever dematerialized before.”

  “I had a pint of Häagen-Dazs do just that once. It was gone, and I swear I didn’t touch it.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well, don’t be,” I said. “I’ll tell you what most likely happened. You were preoccupied and panicky when you looked for the money yesterday. It was there, and you took it out of the freezer along with the rest of the food, and it just didn’t register that that’s what it was. And when you put everything back, it was still just another Stouffer’s TV dinner for all the notice you gave it. It was right in front of your eyes, but you didn’t see it, and that happens all the time.”

  “And it’s not a sign of Alzheimer’s? Or a brain tumor?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I kno
w you’re right,” she said. “That must be what happened. Although I sort of like your first theory, about dematerialization and all. Poof! It’s gone. Poof! Poof! It’s back.”

  “Ricky Jay does stuff like that all the time. It’s just magic.”

  “Well, that explains it. You know what? I feel better now. Where should we eat?”

  We ate at a French place, where she put away a big dish of cassoulet while I had the steak frites. We each had a dry Rob Roy first—I ordered one, and she thought it sounded like a good idea. We decided our dishes called for a robust red, and agreed on a Nuits St.-Georges that turned out to be a splendid choice. It may not have been the meal I’d envisioned in the imaginary weekend in Paris I’d suggested to Carolyn, but there was nothing wrong with it.

  I grabbed the check, but she insisted we split it, and sounded as though she really meant it. She got out a credit card. I had plenty of cash, so I let her charge the whole thing and gave her my half in green.

  She brandished the bills before putting them away. “I’m a little nervous,” she said. “Are you sure they’re not going to dematerialize on me?”

  “Always a risk.”

  Back on 36th Street, she led the way up the two flights of stairs and had a little trouble getting the key into the uppermost lock. Let me, I might have said, and taken the keys from her, and unlocked the locks for her. But of course I didn’t do that, and the key slipped in and the lock turned.

  And she had no trouble at all getting the second key into the bottom lock. It went right in as if drawn by a magnet, or an irresistible impulse. But then it wouldn’t turn.

  “Damn,” she said, and forced it, and of course it snapped in the lock.

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “Look what I did? Shit piss fuck. Pardon my Latvian, but what a stupid thing to do.” She looked at the lock, looked at what was left of the key. “I don’t believe this. We’ll have to call a fucking locksmith. God fucking dammit.”

  A curious calm settled over me, though I’ll be damned if I know why. I took hold of her shoulders, said “Easy, easy” with the certitude of a horse whisperer, and moved her gently to one side. I drew my tools from my pocket, selected a small pair of needlenose pliers of the finest German steel, and extracted the broken-off bit of key from where it was lodged. I presented it for inspection like a dentist with a drawn molar, dropped it into my outside breast pocket, and bent to the all too familiar task of opening her lock.