The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling

by Lawrence Block

  “Instead you go out and knock off houses.”

  “Just once in a while.”

  “Special occasions.”

  “That’s right.”

  “To make ends meet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She frowned in thought, scratched her head, sipped a little brandy. “Let’s see,” she said. “You came here because it’s a safe place for you to be, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, that’s cool. We’re friends, aren’t we? I know it means I’m harboring a fugitive, and I don’t particularly give a shit. What are friends for?”

  “You’re one in a million, Carolyn.”

  “You bet your ass. Listen, you can stay as long as you like and no questions asked, but the thing is I do have some questions, but I won’t ask them if you don’t want.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  “What’s the capital of South Dakota? No, seriously, folks. Why’d you wait until the Arkwrights came home? Why not just duck in and out quick like a bunny? I always thought burglars preferred to avoid human contact.”

  I nodded. “It was Whelkin’s idea. He wanted the book to be stolen without Arkwright even realizing it was gone. If I didn’t take anything else and didn’t disturb the house, and if the book was still there when Jesse Arkwright played his bedtime game of pocket billiards, it would be at least a day before he missed it. Whelkin was certain he’d be the prime suspect, because he wants the book so badly and he’s had this feud with Arkwright, and an alibi wouldn’t really help because Arkwright would just figure he hired someone to do it.”

  “Which he did do.”

  “Which he did do,” I agreed. “But the longer it takes for Arkwright to know the book’s missing, and the harder it is for him to dope out how or when it disappeared, and the more time Whelkin has to tuck it away where it will never be found—”

  “And that’s why you just took the book and left everything else.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. That part makes sense now, I guess. But what happened to Whelkin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You figure he killed her?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? He set up the meeting. He got her to drug you, and then when you were unconscious he killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “To frame you, I suppose. To get you out of the picture.”

  “Why not just kill me?”

  “I don’t know.” She gnawed at a knuckle. “She can’t just come out of the air, this Porlock babe. Whelkin sent you to her, she doped your coffee, and she must have been after the book because she was asking you for it before you had a chance to nod out. Then she frisked you and took it herself.”

  “Or the killer did.”

  “You never heard a gunshot?”

  “I was really out cold. And maybe he used a silencer, but if he did he took it along with him. He also took the book, plus the five hundred dollars the Sikh gave me.” I shrugged. “I figured all along that was too much to charge for a reprint copy of Soldiers Three. Well, easy come, easy go.”

  “That’s what they say. Maybe the Sikh killed her.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Maybe they were working together and he double-crossed her at the end.” She shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know, Bern. I’m just spinning my wheels a little. She must have been connected with Whelkin, though, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. He did lead me straight to her apartment. But—”

  “But what?”

  “But why wouldn’t he just buy the book?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t afford it. But you’re right that would have been the easiest thing for him to do. He already paid you some of it in advance, didn’t he? How much did he still owe you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Bernie?”

  I sighed. “Just yesterday,” I said, “I told a shoplifter he was too dumb to steal. He’s not the only one.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “I didn’t get any of the money in advance.”

  “Oh.”

  I shrugged, sighed, drank. “He was a member of the Martingale Club,” I said. “Had a sort of English accent. Dressed very tweedy.”

  “So?”

  “So his front snowed me, that’s all. He finessed the whole topic of advance payment. I don’t know how, but I walked into that house with nothing in my pocket but my hands. Jesus, Carolyn, I even dipped into my own funds for gasoline and bridge tolls. I’m beginning to feel really stupid.”

  “Whelkin conned you. He set you up and she polished you off, and then he shot her and left you in the frame.”

  I thought it over. “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I don’t think so. Why use her at all? He could slip me a mickey as easily as she could. And there’s something else. That last telephone conversation I had with him, when he set up the meeting at her apartment. He sounded out of synch. I thought at the time he’d been drinking.”

  “So?”

  “I bet they drugged him.”

  “The way they drugged you?”

  “Not quite. Not the same drug, or the poor bastard wouldn’t have been able to talk at all. I wonder what she gave me. It must have been powerful stuff. It had me hallucinating.”

  “Like acid?”

  “I never had any acid.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “And this wasn’t that kind of hallucination, with animals materializing on the walls and things like that. My perceptions just got distorted there before I blacked out. The music was getting loud and soft alternately, for example. And her face seemed to melt when I stared at it, but that was just before I went under.”

  “And you said something about her hair.”

  “Right, it kept turning orange. She had really short hair, dark brown, and I kept flashing that she had a head full of bright orange curls. Then I would blink and she’d have short dark hair again. Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What is it, Bernie?”

  “I know where I saw her before. And she did have curly orange hair. It must have been a wig.”

  “The dark hair?”

  The orange hair. She came to the shop and she must have been wearing an orange wig. I’m positive it was the same woman. Squared shoulders, blocky figure, a kind of a stern square-jawed face—I’m positive it was her. She must have come to the shop three or four times.”

  “With Rudyard Whelkin?”

  “No. He only came there once. Then we had lunch in the Martingale Club that same day, and I met him once more at the club for drinks and we talked several times over the phone. She came to the shop—well, I don’t know when I first noticed her, but it must have been within the past week. Then yesterday she bought a book from me. Virgil’s Eclogues, the Heritage Club edition. It was her. No question about it.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Looking things over, I suppose. Same reason I went out to Forest Hills with a clipboard. Reconnaissance. Say, can I put the radio on?”

  “What for?”

  “Midnight news.”

  “It’s that time already? Sure, put it on.”

  I moved a cat and switched on the radio. I sat down and the cat returned to my lap and resumed purring. The news broadcast was a repeat of the eleven o’clock summary, except that the Albanian had surrendered without harming any of his hostages. He’d evidently gone bananas when he learned that his common-law wife had another common-law husband, which made them common-law husbands-in-law, or something. Madeleine Porlock was still dead and the police were still looking for one Bernard Rhodenbarr.

  I moved the cat again, switched off the news, and sat down again. Carolyn asked me how it felt to be wanted by the police. I told her it felt terrible.

  “How’d they know it was you, Bernie? Fingerprints?”

  “Or the wallet.”

  “What wallet?”

  “My wallet. Whoever fri
sked me got it—Madeleine Porlock or her killer. The book, the five hundred bucks, and the wallet. Maybe somebody stashed it where the cops would be sure to find it.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be unconscious when they arrived?”

  “Maybe the wallet was a form of insurance. Or maybe the killer took the wallet on the chance I had something incriminating in it, like the card Whelkin gave me or some notes to myself.” I shrugged. “I suppose the wallet could be anywhere right now. I suppose I should be all worked up about stopping my Master Charge card before someone charges a ton of airline tickets to my account. Somehow that’s way down on my list of priorities.”

  “I can understand that.” She put her chin in her hand again and leaned forward to fasten her blue eyes on me. “What’s at the top of the list, Bernie?”

  “Huh?”

  “The priority list. What are you going to do?”

  “Beats me.”

  “How about another drink while you think about it?”

  I shook my head. “I think I’ve had enough.”

  “I had enough two or three drinks ago but I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me.” She got the bottle and helped herself. “You can just know when you’ve had enough and then stop?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s remarkable,” she said. She sipped her brandy, looked at me over the brim of the glass. “Did you know there was anybody else in the apartment? Besides the Porlock woman?”

  “No. But I never got past the living room until she was dead. I thought it was just the two of us and we were waiting for Whelkin.”

  “The killer could have been in the other room.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Or she was alone, and she drugged you and took the book and the money and the wallet, and then she was on her way out the door and in came a man with a gun.”

  “Right.”

  “Who? The Sikh? Whelkin?”

  “I dunno, Carolyn.”

  “Why on earth would she wear a wig? I mean, she wasn’t anybody you knew to begin with, right? So why would she want to disguise herself?”

  “Beats me.”

  “How about the Sikh? Was that a disguise? Maybe the Sikh was Rudyard Whelkin.”

  “He had a beard and a turban.”

  “The beard could have been a fake. And a turban is something you can put on and then take off.”

  “The Sikh was enormous. Six-four easy, maybe more.”

  “You never heard of elevator shoes?”

  “Whelkin wasn’t the Sikh,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “All I do is trust you. But back to the other question. How do you get out of the mess you’re in? Can you go to the cops?”

  “That’s the one thing I can’t do. They’ll book me for Murder One. I could try pleading to a lesser charge, or gamble that my lawyer could find a way to addle the jury, but the odds are I’d spend the next ten or twenty years with free room and board. I don’t really want to do that.”

  “I can understand that. Jesus. Can’t you—”

  “Can’t I what?”

  “Tell them what you told me? Scratch that question, huh? Just blame it on the brandy. Because why on earth would they believe you? Nobody’d believe a story like yours except a dyke who shaves dogs. Bernie, there’s got to be a way out, but what the hell is it?”

  “Find the real killer.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. She clapped a hand to her forehead. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Just find the real killer, solve the crime, get the stolen book back, and everything’s copasetic. Just like TV, right? With everything wrapped up in time for the final commercial.”

  “And some scenes from next week’s show,” I said. “Don’t forget that.”

  We talked for a while longer. Then Carolyn started yawning intermittently and I caught it from her. We agreed that we ought to get some sleep. We weren’t accomplishing anything now and our minds were too tired to work properly.

  “You’ll stay here,” she said. “You take the bed.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll take the couch.”

  “Don’t you be silly. You’re six feet long and so’s the bed. I’m five feet long and so’s the couch. It’s good the Sikh didn’t drop in because there’s no place to put him.”

  “I just thought—”

  “Uh-huh. The couch is perfectly comfortable and I sleep on it a lot. I wind up there whenever Randy and I have a medium-level fight.”

  “What’s a medium-level fight?”

  “The kind where she doesn’t go home to her own apartment.”

  “I didn’t know she had one. I thought the two of you lived together.”

  “We do, but she’s got a place on Morton Street. Smaller than this, if you can believe it. Thank God she’s got a place of her own, so that she can move right back into it when we split up.”

  “Maybe you should stay there tonight, Carolyn.” She started to say something but I pressed onward. “If you’re at her place, then you’re not an accessory after the fact. But if you’re here, then there’s no question but that you’re harboring a fugitive, and—”

  “I’ll take my chances, Bernie.”

  “Well—”

  “Besides, it’s possible Randy didn’t go to Bath Beach. It’s possible she’s home.”

  “Couldn’t you stay with her, anyway?”

  “Not if someone else is staying with her at the same time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Uh-huh. We live in a world of infinite possibilities. You get the bed and I get the couch. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I helped her make up the couch. She went into the lavatory and emerged wearing Dr. Denton’s and scowling as if daring me to laugh. I did not laugh.

  I washed up at the kitchen sink, turned off the light, stripped down to my underwear and got into bed. For a while nobody said anything.

  Then she said, “Bern?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know how much you know about gay women, but you probably know that some of us are bisexual. Primarily gay but occasionally interested in going to bed with a man.”

  “Uh, I know.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “I didn’t think you were, Carolyn.”

  “I’m exclusively gay.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “I figured it went without saying, but it’s been my experience that a lot of things that go without saying, that you’re better off if you say them.”

  “I understand.”

  More silence.

  “Bernie? She took the five hundred dollars and the wallet, right?”

  “I had about two hundred dollars in my wallet, too. That was an expensive cup of coffee she gave me, let me tell you.”

  “How’d you pay for the cab?”

  “Huh?”

  “The cab downtown. And how did you buy that stuff at the drugstore so you could pick my lock? What did you use for money?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Do you keep a few extra dollars in your shoe for emergencies?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “Not that it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but no, Carolyn.”

  “Well?”

  “I told you about the fire escape, didn’t I? How I tried the roof and that was no good, so I went down and broke into an apartment on the fourth floor?”

  “You told me.”

  “Well, uh, since I was there and all. I, uh, took a few minutes to look around. Opened a few drawers.”

  “In the fourth-floor apartment?”

  “That’s right. There was just small change in a dresser drawer, but one of the kitchen canisters had money in it. You’d be surprised how many people keep cash in the kitchen.”

  “And you took it?”

  “Sure. I got a little over sixty dollars. Not enough to retire on, but it covered the cab and what I spent at the drugstore.”

  “Sixty dollars.”

  “More like sixty-five. Plus the
bracelet.”

  “The bracelet?”

  “Couldn’t resist it,” I said. “There was other jewelry that didn’t tempt me at all, but this one bracelet—well, I’ll show you in the morning.”

  “You’ll show me in the morning.”

  “Sure. Don’t let me forget.”

  “Jesus!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You actually committed a burglary.”

  “Well, I’m a burglar, Carolyn.”

  “That’s what I have to get used to. You’re a burglar. You steal things out of people’s homes. That’s what burglars do. They steal things.”

  “As a general rule.”

  “You took the money because you needed it. Your own money was gone and you had to get away from the police and the money was there, so you took it.”

  “Right.”

  “And you took the bracelet because—Why’d you take the bracelet, Bernie?”

  “Well—”

  “Because it was there. Like Mt. Everest. But it was a bracelet instead of a mountain, and instead of climbing it you stole it.”

  “Carolyn—”

  “It’s all right, Bernie. Honest it is. I’ll get used to it. You’ll show me the bracelet in the morning?”

  “I’ll show you right now if you want.”

  “No, the morning’s soon enough, Bernie. Bernie?”

  “What?”

  “Goodnight, Bernie.”

  “Goodnight, Carolyn.”

  CHAPTER

  Ten

  It was one of those chatty morning programs that tells you more about weather and traffic than anyone could possibly care to know. There was a massive tie-up on the Major Deegan Expressway, I learned, and a thirty-percent chance of rain.

  “Something ominous has happened to weather reports,” I told Carolyn. “Have you noticed how they never tell you what it’s going to do anymore? They just quote you the odds.”

  “I know.”

  “That way they’re never wrong because they’ve never gone out on a limb. If they say there’s a five-percent chance of snow and we wind up hip-deep in it, all that means is a long shot came in. They’ve transformed the weather into some sort of celestial crap game.”