The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling

by Lawrence Block

  “That’s my trademark.”

  The first phone I tried was out of order. There was another one diagonally across the street but someone was using it. I wound up at a phone on the rear wall of a Blarney Rose bar that had less in common with Sangfroid than the Hotel Gresham did with the Carlyle. Hand-lettered signs over the back bar offered double shots of various brands of blended whiskey at resistibly low prices.

  I dialed the number Whelkin had given me. He must have had his hand on the receiver because he had it off the hook the instant it started to ring.

  The conversation was briefer than the one I’d had with the Maharajah. It took longer than it had to because I had trouble hearing at one point; the television announcer was delivering football scores and something he said touched off a loud argument that had something to do with Notre Dame. But the shouting subsided and Whelkin and I resumed our chat.

  I apologized for the interference.

  “It’s nothing, my boy,” he assured me. “Things are every bit as confused where I am. A Eurasian chap’s sprawled on a bench in what looks to be a drug-induced coma, a wild-eyed old woman’s pawing through a shopping bag and nattering to herself, and another much younger woman’s flitting about taking everyone’s picture. Oh, dear. She’s headed this way.”

  “She sounds harmless,” I said.

  “One can only hope so. I shall give her a dazzling smile and let it go at that.”

  A few minutes later I was back in the Pontiac studying a close-up of Rudyard Whelkin. He was showing all his teeth and they fairly gleamed.

  “Subtle,” I told Carolyn.

  “There’s a time for subtlety,” she said, “and there’s a time for derring-do. There is a time for the rapier and a time for the bludgeon. There is a time for the end-around play and a time to plunge right up the middle.”

  “There’s a Notre Dame fan in the Blarney Rose who would argue that last point with you. I wanted a drink by the time I got out of there. But I had the feeling they were out of Perrier.”

  “You want to stop someplace now?”

  “No time.”

  “What did Whelkin say?”

  I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of our conversation as I headed uptown and east again. When I finished she frowned at me and scratched her head. “It’s too damned confusing,” she complained. “I can’t tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.”

  “Just assume everybody’s lying. That way the occasional surprises will be pleasant ones. I’ll drop you at the Blinns’ place. You know what to do?”

  “Sure, but aren’t you coming in?”

  “No need, and too many other things to do. You know what to do after you’re through with the Blinns?”

  “Have a big drink.”

  “And after that?”

  “I think so. Want to run through it all for me one more time?”

  I ran through it, and we discussed a couple of points, and by then I was double-parked on East Sixty-sixth next to a Jaguar sedan with DPL plates and a shamefully dented right front fender. The Jag was parked next to a hydrant, and its owner, safe beneath the umbrella of diplomatic immunity, didn’t have to worry about either ticket or tow.

  “Here we are,” I said. “You’ve got the pictures?”

  “All of them. Even Atman Singh.”

  “You might as well take the camera, too. No sense leaving it in the car. How about the Blinns’ bracelet? Got that with you?”

  She took it from her pocket, slipped it around her wrist. “I’m not nuts about jewelry,” she said. “But it’s pretty, isn’t it? Bern, you’re forgetting something. You have to come in with me now if you want to get to the Porlock apartment.”

  “Why would I want to get to the Porlock apartment?”

  “To steal the lynx jacket.”

  “Why would I want to steal the lynx jacket? I’m starting to feel like half of a vaudeville act. Why would I—”

  “Didn’t you promise it to the cop?”

  “Oh. I was wondering where all of that was coming from. No, what Ray wants for his wife is a full-length mink, and what’s hanging in Madeleine Porlock’s closet is a waist-length lynx jacket. Mrs. Kirschmann doesn’t want to have any part of wild furs.”

  “Good for her. I wasn’t listening too closely to your conversation, I guess. You’re going to steal the mink somewhere else.”

  “In due time.”

  “I see. I heard you mention the furrier’s name and that’s what got me confused.”

  “Arvin Tannenbaum,” I said.

  “Right, that’s it.”

  “Arvin Tannenbaum.”

  “You just said that a minute ago.”

  “Arvin Tannenbaum.”

  “Bernie? Are you all right?”

  “God,” I said, looking at my watch. “As if I didn’t have enough things to do and enough stops to make. There’s never enough time, Carolyn. Have you noticed that? There’s never enough time.”

  “Bernie…”

  I leaned across, opened the door on her side. “Go make nice to the Blinns,” I said, “and I’ll catch you later.”

  CHAPTER

  Seventeen

  I called Ray Kirschmann from a sidewalk phone booth on Second Avenue. The Bulldogs had more than doubled the point spread, he informed me dolefully. “Look at the bright side,” I said. “You’ll get even tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow I got the Giants. They never got anybody even unless he started out ahead.”

  “I’d love to chat,” I said, “but I’m rushed. There’s some things I’d like you to find out for me.”

  “What am I, the Answer Man? You want a lot for a coat.”

  “It’s mink, Ray. Think what some women have to do to get one.”

  “Funny.”

  “And it’s not just a coat we’re talking about. You could get a nice collar to go with it.”

  “Think so?”

  “Stranger things have happened. Got a pencil?” He went and fetched one and I told him the things I wanted him to find out. “Don’t stray too far from the phone, huh, Ray? I’ll get back to you.”

  “Great,” he said. “I can hardly wait.”

  I got back into the car. I’d left the motor running, and now I popped the transmission in gear and continued downtown on Second Avenue. At Twenty-third Street I turned right, favored the Hotel Gresham with no more than a passing glance, turned right again at Sixth Avenue and left at Twenty-ninth Street, parking at a meter on Seventh Avenue. This time I cut the engine and retrieved my jump wire.

  I was in the heart of the fur market, a few square blocks that added up to an ecologist’s nightmare. Several hundred small businesses were all clustered together, sellers of hides and pelts, manufacturers of coats and jackets and bags and accessories, wholesalers and retailers and somewhere-in-betweeners, dealers in trimming and by-products and fastenings and buttons and bows. The particular place I was looking for was on the far side of the avenue a couple doors west on Twenty-ninth Street. There Arvin Tannenbaum occupied the entire third floor of a four-story loft building.

  A coffee shop, closed for the weekend, took up the ground floor. To its right was a door opening onto a small hallway which led to an elevator and the fire stairs. The door was locked. The lock did not look terribly formidable.

  The dog, on the other hand, did. He was a Doberman, bred to kill and trained to be good at it, and he paced the hallway like an institutionalized leopard. When I approached the door he interrupted his exercise and gave me all his attention. I put a hand on the door, just out of curiosity, and he crouched, ready to spring. I withdrew my hand, but this did not mollify him much.

  I wished Carolyn were with me. She could have given the bastard a bath. Clipped his nails, too, while she was at it. Filed his teeth down a bit.

  I don’t screw around with guard dogs. The only way I could think to get past this particular son of a bitch was to spray poison on my arm and let him bite me. I gave him a parting smile, and he growled low in his throat,
and I went over and broke into the coffee shop.

  That wasn’t the easiest thing in the world—they had iron gates, like the ones at Barnegat Books—but it was more in my line of work than doing a wild-animal act. The gate had a padlock, which I picked, and the door had a Yale lock, which I also picked. No alarms went off. I drew the gate shut before closing the door. Anyone who took a close look would see it was unfastened, but it looked good from a distance.

  There was a door at the side of the restaurant that led to the elevator, but it unfortunately also led to the dog, which lessened its usefulness. I went back through the kitchen, opening a door at the rear which led into an airless little airshaft. By standing on a garbage can, I could just reach the bottom rung of the fire escape. I pulled myself up and started climbing.

  I would have gone right up to the third floor if I hadn’t noticed an unlocked window on the second floor. It was too appealing an invitation to resist. I let myself in, walked through a maze of baled hides, climbed a flight of stairs, and emerged in the establishment of Arvin Tannenbaum and Sons.

  Not too many minutes later I left the way I’d come, walking down a flight, threading my way between the bales of tanned hides, clambering down the fire escape and hopping nimbly to earth from my perch on the garbage can. I stopped in the coffee-shop kitchen to help myself to a Hostess Twinkie. I can’t say it was just what I wanted, but I was starving and it was better than nothing.

  I didn’t bother picking the lock shut after me. The springlock would have to do. But I did draw the gates shut and fasten the padlock.

  Before returning to the Pontiac, I walked over to say goodbye to the dog. I waved at him and he glowered at me. From the look he gave me I could have sworn he knew what I was up to.

  It was Mrs. Kirschmann who answered the phone. When I asked to speak to her husband she said “Just a minute,” then yelled out his name without bothering to cover the mouthpiece. When Ray came on the line I told him my ear was ringing.

  “So?”

  “Your wife yelled in it.”

  “I can’t help that, Bernie,” he said. “You all right otherwise?”

  “I guess so. What did you find out?”

  “I got a make on the murder weapon. Porlock was shot with a Devil Dog.”

  “I just ate one of those.”

  “Huh?”

  “Actually, what I ate was a Twinkie, but isn’t a Devil Dog about the same thing?”

  He sighed. “A Devil Dog’s an automatic pistol made by Marley. Their whole line’s dogs of one kind or another. The Devil Dog’s a .32 automatic. The Whippet’s a .25 automatic, the Mastiff’s a .38 revolver, and they make a .44 Magnum that I can’t remember what it’s called. It oughta be something like an Irish Wolfhound or a Great Dane because of the size, but that’s no kind of name for a gun.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of dogs in this,” I said. “Did you happen to notice? Between the Junkyard Dog defense and the Marley Devil Dog and the Doberman in the hallway—”

  “What Doberman in the hallway? What hallway?”

  “Forget it. It’s a .32 automatic?”

  “Right. Registration check went nowhere. Coulda been Porlock’s gun, could be the killer brought it with him.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “The gun? I didn’t see it, Bern. I made a call, I didn’t go down to the property office and start eyeballin’ the exhibits. I seen Devil Dogs before. It’s an automatic, so it’s a flat gun, not too large, takes a five-shot clip. The ones I’ve seen were blued steel, though you could probably get it in any kind of finish, nickel-plated or pearl grips, anything you wanted to pay for.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to picture the gun I’d found in my hand. Blued steel, yes. That sounded right.

  “Not a big gun, Bern. Two-inch barrel. Not much of a kick when you fire it.”

  “Unless that’s how you get your kicks.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing,” I frowned. It had seemed big, compared to the little nickel-plated item I’d seen in the Sikh’s enormous hand.

  Which reminded me.

  “Francis Rockland,” I said. “The cop who was wounded outside my bookshop. What gun was he shot with? Did you find that out?”

  “You still say you weren’t there, huh?”

  “Dammit, Ray—”

  “Okay, okay. Well, he wasn’t shot with the Marley Devil Dog, Bern, because the killer left it on the floor of the Porlock apartment. Is that what you were gettin’ at?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Oh. You had me goin’ for a minute there. Rockland was shot—well, it’s hard to say what he was shot with.”

  “No slug recovered?”

  “Right. The bullet fragmented.”

  “There must have been fragments to recover.”

  He cleared his throat. “Now I’ll deny I said this,” he said, “but from what I heard, and nobody exactly spelled it out for me, but puttin’ two and two together—”

  “Rockland shot himself.”

  “That’s how it shapes up to me, Bern. He’s a young fellow, you know, and bein’ nervous and all…”

  “How bad were his injuries?”

  “Well, it seems he lost a toe. Not one of the important ones.”

  I thought of Parker, going around breaking important bones. Which toes, I wondered, were the important ones?

  “What did you find out about Rockland?”

  “Well, I asked around, Bern. The word I get is he’s young all right, which we already knew, but he’s also the kind of guy who can listen to reason.”

  “How do you translate that?”

  “I translate it Money Talks.”

  “There’s not enough money in this one to make much noise,” I said. “Unless he’ll operate on credit.”

  “You’re askin’ a lot, Bern. The poor kid lost a toe.”

  “He shot it off himself, Ray.”

  “A toe’s a toe.”

  “You just said it wasn’t an important one.”

  “Even so—”

  “Would he settle for future payment if he got a piece of the bust? If he’s the ambitious kid you say he is, he’d be crazy not to.”

  “You got a point.”

  I had more than a point. I had a whole bunch of things to tell him, some of which provoked argument, some of which did not. At the end I told him to take it easy and he told me to take care.

  It sounded like good advice for both of us.

  The owner of Milo Arms, Inc., had a commendable sense of humor. His Yellow Pages ad showed the company trademark, the Venus de Milo’s limbless torso with a holster on her hip. Who could resist?

  I make it a point to stay out of gun shops, but one thing I’ve noticed is that I don’t generally notice them. They’re almost invariably located one flight above street level. I guess they’re not that keen on the drop-in trade and the impulse shoppers.

  Milo Arms didn’t break the rule. They had the second floor of a weary red brick building on Canal between Greene and Mercer. The shop on the ground floor sold plumbing supplies and the upper floors bad been carved into residential units. I was loitering in the vestibule, reading names on doorbells, when a young couple left the building, the smell of an illicit herb trailing after them. The girl giggled infectiously while her escort held the door for me.

  The gun-shop door was a solid wooden one with the torso-cum-holster motif repeated, along with an extensive list of the death-dealing items on sale within. There was the usual run of locks, plus a padlock on the outside.

  I gave a knock and was reassured to hear neither a human response nor the guttural greeting of an attack dog. Just blessed silence. I got right to work.

  The locks weren’t much trouble. The padlock had a combination dial that looked like an interesting challenge, and if I hadn’t been out in public view and urgently pressed for time, I might have sandpapered my fingertips and tried out my Jimmy Valentine impression. Instead I tried my hacksaw blade on the thing, and when th
at didn’t work—it was a damned good lock, made of damned good steel—I took the easy way out and unscrewed the hasp from its mounting on the jamb. There’s tricks to every trade, and if you just live long enough you get to use ’em all.

  God, what a grim place! I was only inside for five minutes or so, but what an uncomfortable five minutes they were. All those guns, all close together like that, reeking of oil and powder and whatever else it is that makes them smell the way they do. Infernal machines, engines of death and destruction, killers’ tools.

  Ugh.

  I locked up carefully on my way out. The last thing I wanted to do was make it easy for some maniac to rip off a wholesale lot of guns and ammo. I even took the time to remount the padlock, leaving the hasp more tightly bolted to the jamb than I’d found it.

  Guns!

  Busy, busy, busy.

  I found Carolyn at the Poodle Factory, where she was catching up on her bookkeeping and not enjoying it much. “This is such an unpleasant business,” she said, “that you’d think there’d be money in it, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong. Well, at least there’s a big show coming up at the Armory.”

  “Does that mean business for you?”

  “Sure. You can’t win ribbons with a dirty dog.”

  “That sounds like a proverb. How were the Blinns?”

  “Their usual charming selves. I pigged out on shortbread.”

  “Beats Twinkies and Devil Dogs. Was Gert happy to see her bracelet back?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You guess so?”

  “We mainly concentrated on the photographs,” she said, all crisp efficiency now. She spread out the four snapshots on the mottled Formica counter. “Gert never saw this guy before in her life,” she said, pointing. “She’s sure about that. She doesn’t think she saw this one, either, but she can’t swear to it.”

  “But she recognized the other two?”

  Her forefinger hovered above one of the snaps. She’d been nibbling the nail again, I noticed. “This dude,” she said, “has been around a lot. No idea when she first saw him but it was a while ago. He’s been there with Madeleine and he’s also been there alone, entering or leaving the building by himself.”