Burglars Can't Be Choosers

by Lawrence Block

  “Wes,” I cut in, “the purpose of our call wasn’t entirely social.”

  “I’d guess not. You’re up to your neck in it, aren’t you? Killing old J. Francis. That really surprised her because she said you never impressed her as violent. I told her it must have been self-defense. Although I don’t suppose the law calls it self-defense when it happens in the middle of a burglary.”

  “The law calls it first-degree murder.”

  “I know. It doesn’t seem entirely fair, does it? But the big question, Bernie, is, have you got the box?”

  “The box.”

  “Right.

  I closed my eyes for a minute. “You never actually saw the box yourself,” I said. “Because you described it very precisely but you didn’t know what color blue it was. And you didn’t make up an answer when I asked.”

  “Why would I make up an answer?”

  “You’d make one up if there was no box in the first place. But there really is a box, isn’t there?”

  He peered intently at me and his forehead developed a single vertical line just above the nose like the one David Janssen has in the Excedrin commercial, the one that makes you certain he really does have one rat bastard of a headache.

  “The box exists,” I said.

  “You mean you thought—”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Which means you don’t—”

  “Right. I don’t.”

  “Shit,” he said, pronouncing the word as emphatically as if he’d just stepped in it. Then he remembered that the little lady was present. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  She told him not to worry about it.

  There really was a box. In fact he’d been waiting for me in Pandora’s that first night, sitting in a back booth with four thousand dollars on his hip, stretching out his drinks until they closed the place. It wasn’t until the following day that he found out what had gone wrong.

  “And you didn’t kill Flaxford,” he said, after I’d done some recapping on my own.

  “And neither did you.”

  “Me? Kill the man? I never even met him. Oh, I see what you mean. You thought I set you up. But if you didn’t kill Flaxford—”

  “Somebody else did. Because beating your own head in with a blunt instrument is no way to commit suicide.”

  “I wish I knew more about this,” he said. “I’m not really in the center of things. There’s a lot happening I don’t know about.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “All I am is an actor, really. And that career’s not going too well. One thing leads to another, and I had this drinking situation that’s over with now, thank God, but I reached a point where I couldn’t remember lines. I still have trouble. I can improvise, which is what I was doing the two times I saw you, building a role around a framework, but you can’t do that in the movies unless you’re directed by Robert Altman or something. The jobs stopped coming, and this agent I’m with now, I’d have to say he’s more pimp than agent.”

  “I know. I was in his office.”

  “You met Pete?”

  “I was in his office,” I repeated, “but he wasn’t. Last night. To get your address.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked for a moment at his own door, no doubt reflecting on its failure to keep us out of his room. “The point is, I’m in this because I’m an actor. I used to play a lot of heavies and that’s what she hired me for, to hire you to get the box and then to pay you off and take the box to her.”

  “How did you know to hire me?”

  “She told me to.”

  “Right, sure,” I said. “She told you to hire a burglar. But how did you happen to know that I happened to be one?”

  He frowned. “She told me to hire you,” he said. “You specifically, Bernard Rhodenbarr. I’m an actor, Bernie. How would I go about finding a burglar on my own? I don’t know any burglars. I can play crooks but that doesn’t mean I hang around with them.”

  “Oh.”

  “I used to know a bookie but since off-track betting came in I couldn’t tell you if he’s alive or dead. As far as burglars are concerned, well, I now know one burglar, or—” with a nod to Ellie “—or possibly two, but that’s all.”

  “The woman who hired you,” Ellie said. “She knew Bernie was a burglar.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And she knew where he lived and what he looked like, is that right?”

  “Well, she took me over there and pointed him out to me.”

  “How did she know him?”

  “Search me.”

  Loren the cop would have frisked him. I just said, “What’s her name, Wes?”

  “I’m supposed to keep her name out of this.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “That’s why she hired me in the first place.”

  Ellie’s eyes flashed. “Now you just wait a damned minute,” she said. “Don’t you think Bernie has a right to know who got him into this mess? He’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit and he’s taking a chance every time he sets foot outside, and he has to go around wearing a disguise—”

  “The hair,” Wes said. “I knew something was different. You dyed your hair.”

  “It’s a wig.

  “Really? It looks remarkably natural.”

  “God damn it,” Ellie said. “How can you have the nerve to tell us the woman doesn’t want her name mentioned?”

  “Well, she doesn’t.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to tell us who she is or else.”

  “Or else what?” he asked. Reasonably, I thought.

  Ellie frowned, then glanced at me for help. But I was getting flashes and the tumblers were beginning to drop. Brill hadn’t known me, hadn’t even known I was a burglar. But this woman had hired him to rope me in, selecting him because he was an actor who had made a career out of playing underworld types. She didn’t know any real underworld types, nor did she know any real burglars except for me, but she did know who I was and where I lived and what I looked like and how I kept the wolf away from my door.

  I said, “Wait a minute.”

  “You can’t let him get away with it, Bernie.”

  “Just hold it for a minute.”

  “You can’t. We found him and we trapped him and now he’s supposed to tell us what we want to know. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”

  I closed my eyes and said, “Cool it, will you? Just for a minute.” And the last tumbler tumbled and the mental lock eased open so sweetly, so gently, like the petals of a flower, like a yielding lady. I opened my eyes and beamed at Ellie, then turned the warmth of my smile on Wesley Brill.

  “He doesn’t have to tell me a thing,” I said to Ellie. “It’s enough that he told me it was a woman. That triggered it, really. A woman who doesn’t know anything about crime except that a guy named Bernie Rhodenbarr burgles for a living. I know who she is.”

  “Who?”

  “Does she still live in the same place, Wes? Park Avenue, right? I don’t remember the address offhand but I could draw you a floor plan of the apartment. I tend to remember the layout of places where I’ve been arrested.”

  Brill was perspiring. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and he wiped them away not with his whole hand but with an extended index finger. The gesture was very familiar. I must have seen him do it dozens of times in movies.

  “Mrs. Carter Sandoval,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about the Sandovals, Ellie? Of course I did. Her husband had a monster coin collection that I’d taken an interest in. He also had a monster of a gun and his doorbell was out of order and he and his wife were home when I came a-calling. I’m sure I told you about this.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I thought so.” I grinned at Brill. “Her husband was head of CACA. That’s not a bathroom word, it stands for the Civic Anti-Crime Association or something like that. It’s a group of high-minded pests who push for everything from more foot patrolmen on the
beat to investigations of political and judicial corruption. The sonofabitch held a gun on me and I tried to buy my way out, and he was the wrong man to offer a bribe to. He even wanted to prosecute me for attempted bribery but he wasn’t a cop, for God’s sake, and there’s no law against trying to bribe a private citizen. At least I don’t think there is, but come to think of it I’m probably wrong. There’s a law against just about everything, isn’t there? Of course I didn’t know he was the head CACA person. All I knew was that he did something terribly profitable on Wall Street and thought rare coins were a hell of a hedge against inflation. Does he still have the coins, Wes?”

  Brill just stared at me.

  “I remember them well,” I said. I was enjoying this. “And they would remember me, Wes. I saw them the night I was arrested, of course, but they were also on hand when I went before the judge. They didn’t have to be. I copped a plea to a lesser charge, and don’t think that didn’t take some doing. Carter Sandoval wasn’t nuts about the idea of that. But somebody must have taken him aside and explained that the courts would never get anything done if every criminal went through the ritual of a jury trial, and he must have decided it would get more of us evildoers off the streets if the system was allowed to go along as usual, so he and his wife showed up to watch me stand up and plead guilty and get sent away to the license plate factory. I suppose he figured it would be good publicity for his cause with him there to watch justice triumph. And I think he got a personal kick out of it, too. He seemed pretty attached to those coins and thoroughly steamed at the thought of me violating the sanctity of his home.”

  “Bernie—”

  “She was a lot younger than him. She must have been around forty or close to it, so I guess she’s around forty-five now. Good-looking woman. A little too much jawline for my taste, but maybe she was just setting her jaw with determination the times I saw her. Is her hair still the same color, Wes?”

  “I never told you her name.”

  “That’s true, Wes, and I wish you would. It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s not Carla and it’s not Marla and what the hell is it?”

  “Darla.”

  Something made me glance at Ellie. Her shoulders were set and her head cocked forward. She looked to be concentrating intently. “Darla Sandoval,” I said. “Right. That ring any kind of a bell for you, Ellie?”

  “No. I don’t think you mentioned her name before. Why?”

  “No reason. Why don’t you call her, Wes?”

  “She calls me. I’m not supposed to call her.”

  “Call her and see if she wants the box back.”

  “But you don’t have the box, Bernie.” He eyed me in his oblique fashion. “Or do you? I’m getting more confused by the minute. Do you have the box or don’t you?

  “I don’t.

  “I didn’t think so because you didn’t even believe there was a box. You didn’t get the box from Flaxford’s apartment, then. Did you see it there and—”

  “No.”

  “You went through the desk? There was a desk there, wasn’t there? A large rolltop?”

  “There was, and I went through it pretty carefully. But I couldn’t find any kind of blue box in it.”

  “Shit,” he said, and this time he didn’t think to apologize to Ellie. I don’t think she minded. I’m not even sure she heard him. She seemed to have something else on her mind.

  “That means they got it,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever killed him. You didn’t commit the murder or steal the box, so somebody else did both those little things and that’s why the box was gone when you got there. So that’s the end of everything.”

  “Call Darla.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I know where the box is,” I said. “Call her.”

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  Her hair was still blond, and if she had changed much in any other respect I didn’t notice it. She was still slim and elegant, with strength in her face and assurance in her carriage. Wes and I met her as arranged over the phone at a brownstone apartment a few blocks from the one I’d been caught burgling a few years back. She opened the door, greeted me by name, and told Wes his presence would not be necessary.

  “You run along, Wesley. It’s quite all right, Mr. Rhodenbarr and I will work things out.” It was the dismissal of a servant, and whether he liked it or not he took it without a murmur. She was swinging the door shut even as he was turning. She bolted it—with the burglar already inside, I thought—and favored me with a cool and regal smile. She asked if I’d like a drink and I said Scotch would be fine and told her how to fix it.

  While she made the drinks I stood around thinking of Ellie. She’d decided rather abruptly that she wouldn’t come along to meet Darla Sandoval. A quick glance at her watch, a sudden realization that it was much later than she’d thought, an uncertain bit of chatter about an unspecified appointment for which she was already late, a promise to meet me back at Rodney’s apartment later on, and away she went. I’d see her later, after her appointment had been kept, after her legendary cats had been fed, after her legendary stained-glass sculpture had been assembled…

  I was running various thoughts through my mind when Darla Sandoval came back with drinks for both of us. Hers was a darker shade of amber than mine. She raised her glass as if to toast, failed to hit on a suitable phrase, and looked slightly less than certain for the first time in our acquaintance. “Well,” she said, which was toast enough, and we took sips of our drinks. It was excellent Scotch and this did not much surprise me.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  “Oh, this? I borrowed it from a friend.”

  “Still live at the same spot? Where we met?”

  “Oh, yes. Nothing’s changed.” She sighed. “I want you to know I’m sorry about all this,” she said, sounding apologetic if not devastated. “I never expected to get you involved in anything so complicated. I thought you’d do a very simple job of burglary for me. I remembered how skillfully you opened our locks that night—”

  “That was skill, all right. Hitting the place with you two in it.”

  “Accidents do happen. I thought you’d do perfectly, though, and of course you’re the only person I know who could possibly do the job. I remembered you, of course, your name, and I just glanced through the telephone book on the chance that you might be in it, and there you were.”

  “There I was,” I agreed. “They charge extra for an unlisted number and I’ve always considered it a waste of money. The idea of paying them for an unperformed service. Goes against the grain.”

  “I never thought Fran would be home that night. There was an opening downtown.”

  “An opening?”

  “An experimental play. He was supposed to be in the audience and at the cast party afterward. Carter and I were there, you see, and when Fran didn’t turn up I got very nervous. I knew you were going to be burgling his apartment and I didn’t know where he could be, whether he’d gone somewhere else or stayed home or what. Wesley says you didn’t kill him.”

  “He was dead when I got there.”

  “And the police—”

  I gave her a quick summary of what had happened in Flaxford’s apartment. Her eyes widened when I mentioned how I’d arranged to buy my way out. Here her husband was battling police corruption and she didn’t seem to know that cops took money from crooks. I guess civilians just don’t understand how the system works.

  “Then someone else actually killed him,” she said. “I don’t suppose it could have been accidental? No, of course it couldn’t. But you did look in the desk before the police came? I saw Fran put the box in the desk. It was a deep blue, a little darker than royal blue, and the box itself was about the size of a hardcover novel. Maybe larger, perhaps as big as a dictionary. And I saw him put it in the desk.”

  “Where in the desk? Under the rolltop?”

  “One of the lower drawers. I don’t know which one.
”

  “It doesn’t matter. I went through those drawers.”

  “Thoroughly?”

  “Very thoroughly. If the box was there I would have found it.”

  “Then someone else got it first.” Her face paled slightly beneath her make-up. She drank some more of her drink, sat down in a straight chair with a needlepoint seat. “Whoever killed Fran took the box,” she said.

  “I don’t think so. That desk was locked when I found it, Mrs. Sandoval. Desk locks are always easy to open but you have to know what you’re doing.”

  “The killer could have had a key.”

  “But would he have bothered to lock up afterward? With a corpse in the bedroom? I don’t think so. He’d have thrown things all over the place and left a mess behind him.” I thought of my own ravaged apartment. “Besides,” I went on, “somebody’s still looking for the box and you don’t go on looking for something you already have. I went back to my own place a couple of hours ago and it looked as though Attila had marched his Huns through it. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, you could have hired someone. No hard feelings if you did, but you’d better tell me or we’ll be wasting our time chasing wild geese.”

  She assured me she had had nothing to do with looting my place and I decided she was telling the truth. I hadn’t really figured she’d been involved in the first place. It was more logical to assume it had been tossed by the same person who had scrambled Flaxford’s brains.