Burglars Can't Be Choosers

by Lawrence Block

“So you’ll just wait for him here?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll go back to where I’m staying downtown. I didn’t want to complicate things by having him meet me there. I’d just as soon he didn’t know where I’m staying.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t show up, Bernard? Then what?”

  “He’ll show. He’ll even make sure he’s on time because he doesn’t want anything to go wrong. He’ll bring Loren and I’ll equip myself with all of Loren’s paraphernalia, the badge and the cap and the gun and the nightstick and the cuffs, all that crap, and Loren’ll curl up here with an astrology magazine while Ray and I go and do the dirty deed. Then Ray’ll drop me back here and pick up Loren and that’s the end of it.”

  “But suppose he keeps the ten thousand dollars and forgets all about you?”

  “Oh,” I said, “he won’t do that.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He’s honest,” I said, and when she stared at me I explained. “There’s all kinds of honest. If a cop like Ray makes a deal he’ll stick with it. He’s that kind of honest. And you heard him carry on when I showed some doubt about his giving Loren an even split. He was genuinely offended at the implication. What’s so funny?”

  “I was thinking of Carter. He wouldn’t understand a syllable of this.”

  “Well, he’s a different kind of honest.”

  “He certainly is. Bernard, I think I can have one more drink without harming myself any. Can I get you one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “More coffee, then?”

  I shook my head. She went back to the kitchen and returned with drink in hand. She sat down on the sofa, sipped her drink, set it down on the coffee table and noticed the pair of hundred-dollar bills I’d convinced Ray to leave behind. “I guess these are yours,” she said.

  “Well, one of us counted wrong, Mrs. Sandoval.”

  “Darla.”

  “Darla. Why don’t we each take one of them?”

  That struck her as fair. She kept a bill and passed its brother to me. Then she said, “You said he was honest. That policeman. But he would have kept the extra two hundred dollars.”

  “Oh, sure. He was steamed when I called him on it.”

  “There really are all kinds of honesty, aren’t there?”

  “There really are.”

  It was time to change back into mufti, time to pack up the uniform and cart it downtown. But for the moment I didn’t feel much like moving. I sat in a chair across from Darla and watched her nibble at her drink.

  “Bernard? I was thinking that it’s a waste of time for you to chase downtown and back. And it’s an added risk, isn’t it? Being out on the street that much?”

  “I’ll take cabs both ways.”

  “Even so.”

  “A small risk, I suppose.”

  “You could stay here, you know.”

  “I’d like to drop my suitcase at the place where I’m staying.”

  “Oh?”

  “And there’s someone I’ll want to see before I meet Ray this evening. And a stop or two I’ll want to make.”

  “I see.”

  Our eyes met. She had a lot of presence, this lady did. And something more than that.

  “You really look effective in that uniform,” she said.

  “Effective?”

  “Very effective. I’m just sorry I won’t be able to be here tonight when you have all the accessories. The nightstick and the handcuffs and the badge and the gun.”

  “Well, you can imagine how I’ll look with the props.”

  “Yes, I certainly can.” She ran the tip of her tongue very purposefully over her lips. “Costumes can be very useful, you know. I sometimes think that’s what I like most about theater. Not that the actors wear costumes physically, although they often do, but that the whole character which an actor puts on is a sort of costume.”

  “Do you do any acting yourself, Darla?”

  “Oh, no, I’m just a dabbler. I told you that, didn’t I? Why should you think I might have acted?”

  “The way you were using your voice just then.”

  She licked her lips again. “Costumes,” she said, and ran her eyes over my uniform. “I think I told you that I used to consider myself a very conventional person.”

  “I think you did.”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure I said that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Conventional in sexual matters.”

  “Yes.”

  “But in recent years I’ve found out otherwise. I may have told you that.”

  “Uh, yes, I think you did.”

  “In fact I’m positive I did.”

  “Yes.”

  She got to her feet and stood in such a way as to make me very much aware of the shape of her body. “If you were to wear that uniform,” she said, “or one rather like it, and if you were to have handcuffs and a nightstick, I think I would find you quite irresistible.”

  “Uh.”

  “And we might do the most extraordinary things. Imaginative persons could probably find interesting things to do with handcuffs and a nightstick.”

  “Probably.”

  “And with each other.”

  “Very probably.”

  “Of course you might be too conventional for that sort of thing.”

  “I’m not all that conventional.”

  “No, I didn’t really think you were. Do you find me attractive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope you’re not saying that out of politeness.”

  “I’m not.”

  “That’s good. I’m older than you, of course. That wouldn’t bother you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “I’ve no idea. It wouldn’t?”

  “No.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “This is not the right time for us,” she said.

  “And I don’t have the cuffs or the stick.”

  “No, you don’t. But as an experiment, why don’t you come kiss me?”

  It was a stirring kiss. We were standing, her arms around my neck, and midway through the kiss I dropped my hands to her buttocks and took hold of them and squeezed with all my strength, whereupon she made some extraordinary sounds and quivered a bit. Eventually we let go of each other and she stepped backward.

  “After all of this is over, Bernard—”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “The uniform wouldn’t even be all that important. Or the other paraphernalia.”

  “No, but it might be fun.”

  “Oh, it would definitely be fun.” She licked her lips again. “I want to wash up. And you’ll want to change, or do you plan to wear the uniform downtown?”

  “No, I’ll change.”

  I was in my own clothes by the time she returned from the bathroom, the heat flush gone from her face, the lipstick replenished on her mouth. I put on my silly yellow wig and fixed my cap in place over it. She gave me keys for the front door and the door to the apartment so that I would be able to let myself in when I returned. I didn’t remind her that I could manage without them.

  She said, “Bernard? That two hundred dollars the policeman was going to keep?”

  “What about it?”

  “Would he have divided it with his partner?”

  I had to think about it, and finally I told her I just didn’t know.

  She smiled. “It’s a good question, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s a very good question.”

  I got back to Rod’s place before Ellie did. While I waited for her I tried my cop suit on again and frowned at my shoes. Did cops wear scotch-grain loafers? It seemed to me that they always wore square-toed black oxfords, occasionally switching to black wing tips. But did they ever wear loafers?

  I decided it didn’t matter. Nobody was going to be staring at my feet.

  When Ellie walked in my outfit gave her a giggling fit. This didn’t do wonders for my self-c
onfidence. “But you can’t be a cop,” she said. “You’re a crook!”

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “You just don’t look like a cop, Bernie.”

  “Cops don’t look like cops anymore,” I pointed out. “Oh, older bulls like Ray still look the part, but the younger generation’s gone to hell. Ray’s partner’s a good example. Bumping his nightstick into his knee, asking me what my sign was, then collapsing in a dead faint. I look as much like a cop as he does. Anyway, the only person I have to convince is a doorman. And I’ll be with Ray and he’ll do all the talking.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

  “I suppose so. You really think it’s still there? The blue box?”

  “If it was there in the first place it’s there now. I think I know who turned my apartment inside out. I think it was a couple of people from Michael Debus’s office.” Probably the two men I’d seen going into my building two nights ago, I thought. While I’d stood on the corner looking up at my lighted windows they’d been busy turning order into chaos. “He’s a D.A. in Brooklyn or Queens and he was connected to Flaxford.”

  “Flaxford was blackmailing him, too?”

  “I don’t think so, I think he was Debus’s fixer. Carter Sandoval was making things hot for Debus, and Flaxford was putting pressure on Mrs. Sandoval to call her husband off. Debus must have been worried that something incriminating was left on the premises. But he probably didn’t know it was in a blue box or anything like that, just that Flaxford had it and he couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. At any rate, he sent over a pair of oafs to toss my place. If he did that, then he didn’t get the box himself. And that means no one did.”

  “What about the killer?”

  “Huh?”

  “Flaxford had a visitor at his apartment that night. Someone he knew. Probably someone else he was blackmailing. Who knows how many people he had his hooks into? And he could have kept all the evidence in that box of his.”

  “Keep talking.”

  She shrugged. “So he met with his victim and the victim demanded to see the evidence and Flaxford showed it to him, and then the victim killed Flaxford, smashed his head in, and scooped up the box and ran like a thief.”

  “Like a murderer, too.”

  “Exactly. Seconds later you went in—it’s a miracle you and the killer didn’t bump into each other in the hallway, actually—and meanwhile someone heard the struggle and called the police, and while you were riffling desk drawers they came through the door and there you were.”

  “There I was,” I agreed.

  “This Debus would still think the box was either at Flaxford’s apartment or at your place. Because he wouldn’t know about X.”

  “About who?”

  “X. The killer.” I looked at her. “Well, that’s how they always say it on television.”

  “I hate seeing my whole life reduced to an algebraic equation.”

  “Well, call him whatever you want. Just because Debus thinks you have the box doesn’t mean a third person couldn’t have it, so if you don’t find it in the apartment it may be because it isn’t there in the first place.”

  I felt slightly angry, the way people must have felt a few centuries back when Galileo started making waves. I said, “The box is in Flaxford’s apartment.” And the earth is flat, you bitch, and heavy objects fall faster than light ones, and quit raining on my parade, damn you.

  “It’s possible, Bernie, but—”

  “The killer may have panicked and ran out of the apartment without the box. Maybe Flaxford never showed him the box in the first place.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe the blue box has been in Flaxford’s safe deposit box all along. Safe in the bowels of some midtown bank.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe Michael Debus killed Flaxford. He got the box and then Darla Sandoval and Wesley Brill ransacked my apartment.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “No, I don’t. Maybe Brill killed Flaxford because he couldn’t remember his lines. He gave the box to Carter Sandoval to keep his coin collection in. That’s not what I think, either. I’ll tell you what I think. I think the blue box is in Flaxford’s place.”

  “Because you want it to be there.”

  “That’s right, because I want it to be there. Because I’m a fucking intuitive genius who plays his hunches.”

  “Which is largely responsible for the fantastic success you’ve made of your life.”

  We were by this point managing the neat trick of screaming at each other without raising our voices. In a portion of my mind—the portion that wasn’t screaming—I wondered just what we were really mad about. I knew that on my part there was at least a little sexual agitation involved. Darla Sandoval had started fires that had not yet been properly extinguished.

  Ultimately the fighting died down as pointlessly as it had started. We looked at each other and it was over. “I’ll make coffee,” she offered. “Unless you’d rather have a drink.”

  “Not when I’m working.”

  “But you’ll have keys, won’t you? And you’ll be with an authorized representative of the law.”

  “It’s still burglary as far as I’m concerned.”

  “So just coffee for you. Fair enough. He’s picking you up at her place? Are you going uptown dressed like that?”

  “Don’t you think I’ll be warm enough? Sorry. I don’t know if I’ll change or not. Frankly I’m getting sick of putting this uniform on and taking it off. But with my luck somebody’ll stop me en route uptown and expect me to shoot it out with a holdup man.”

  “Or investigate a burglary.”

  “Or that. And without the cap the uniform looks incomplete. I guess I’ll change.”

  “After you take your uniform off,” she said, “would you have to put your other clothes on right away?”

  “Huh?”

  She turned toward me, gave me a slow smile.

  “Oh,” I said, and began undoing buttons.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  I beat the cops to Darla’s place, but not by more than a few minutes. I had barely finished changing into my basic blue when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to admit Ray and Loren. Ray looked sour, Loren uncertain. Ray came in first, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “He’s been driving me nuts, Bernie,” he said. “You want to tell him why he can’t come along with us?”

  I looked at Loren, who in turn looked at my scotch-grain loafers, not because he disapproved of them but because they were where he wanted to point his eyes. “I just think I should go, too,” he said. “Suppose something happens. Then what?”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen,” Ray said. “Me and Bernie, we’re gonna visit a place, then we’re gonna leave the place, then we come back here and Bernie gives you your stuff back and you and me, we get the hell outta here and go home and count our money. You bring some magazines along?”

  “I brought a book.”

  “So you sit on the couch there and read your book. It’s a nice comfortable couch. I sat on it earlier myself. You usually pick up this kind of dough reading a book?”

  Loren breathed in and out, in and out. “Suppose something happens. Suppose this Gemini here pulls something and you and I are on opposite ends of town, Ray. Then what?”

  “Flaxford’s apartment’s on the East Side,” I pointed out. “Just like this one.”

  No one responded to this. Loren began describing things that could go wrong, from traffic wrecks to sudden civil defense alerts. Ray replied that having three cops along, two legitimate and one not, was more awkward than having one real one and one ringer.

  “I don’t like this,” Loren said. “I’m not nuts about it, if you want to know the truth.”

  “If you came along, you and Bernie’d only have one gun between the two of you. And one badge and so on. Just one hat, for Chrissakes.”

  “Th
at’s another thing. I’m going to be sitting here without my badge, without my gun. Jesus, I don’t know, Ray.”

  “You’ll be sittin’ behind a locked door in an empty apartment, Loren. What in the hell do you need a gun for? You scared of cockroaches?”

  “No roaches,” I said. “This is a class building.”

  “There you go,” Ray said. “No roaches.”

  “Who cares about roaches?”

  “I thought maybe you did.”

  “I just don’t know, Ray.”

  “Just sit down, you asshole. Give Bernie your stuff. Bernie, maybe a drink would help him unwind, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “You got any booze around?”

  I went into the kitchen for the Scotch. I brought the bottle and a glass and some ice. “I better not,” Loren said. “I’m on duty.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ray said.

  I said, “Well, it’s here if you want it, Loren.” He nodded. I buckled on his gun belt and made sure the holster was snapped shut so that the gun wouldn’t fall out and embarrass us all. I reached back, patted the cold steel on my hip, and thought what a horrible thing it was. “Damned thing weighs a ton,” I said.

  “What, the gun? You get used to it.”

  “You’d think it’d be hard to walk straight, all that weight.”

  “No time at all you get used to it. You get so you feel naked without it, you know.”

  I took the shiny black nightstick from Loren and gave it an experimental whack against my palm. The wood was smooth and well-polished. Ray showed me how to hook it to my belt and fix the stick so it wouldn’t swing loose and wallop me in the shin. Then I pinned on my badge, set my cap on my head and straightened it. I went to the bedroom and looked at myself in the mirrored door, and this time I decided that I really did look like a cop.

  The cap helped, certainly, and I think the badge and gun and stick and cuffs made a subtle difference too, changing my own attitude, making me feel more comfortable in my role. I took the nightstick from its grip, giving it a tentative twirl, then tucking it back where it belonged. I even considered practicing getting the gun out of the holster but rejected the idea, confident that I would only succeed in shooting off a toe. Miraculous enough that I’d pinned my badge to my uniform blouse, I thought, and not to my skin.