Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

She wanted more details, but I don’t think she paid very much attention to them. I was in the middle of a sentence when she picked up the phone and made a plane reservation to Miami.

“They’ve got me on a ten-twenty flight,” she said. “I’ll get these right into the office and we’ll get a check out to you as soon as they’re developed. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t think I want a check,” I said. “And I don’t want to give you the film without getting paid.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can trust us, for God’s sake.”

“Why don’t you trust me instead?”

“You mean pay you without seeing what we’re paying for? Bernie, you’re a burglar. How can I trust you?”

“You’re the Weekly Galaxy, ” I said. “ Nobody can trust you.”

“You’ve got a point,” she said.

“We’ll get the film developed here,” I said. “I’m sure there are some good commercial photo labs in Memphis and that they can handle infrared film. First you’ll call your office and have them wire cash here or set up an interbank transfer, and as soon as you see what’s on the film you can hand over the money. You can even fax them one of the prints first to get approval, if you think that’ll make a difference.”

“Oh, they’ll love that,” she said. “My boss loves it when I fax him stuff.”

“And that’s whathappened,” I told Carolyn. “The pictures came out really beautifully. I don’t know how Lucian Leeds turned up all those Egyptian pieces, but they looked great next to the 1940s Wurlitzer jukebox and the seven-foot statue of Mickey Mouse. I thought Holly was going to die of happiness when she realized the thing next to Mickey was a sarcophagus. She couldn’t decide which tack to take — that he’s mummified and they’re keeping him in it or he’s alive and really weird and uses it for a bed.”

“Maybe they can have a reader poll. Call a nine hundred number and vote.”

“You wouldn’t believe how loud helicopters are when you’re inside them. I just dropped the ladder and pulled it back in again. And tossed an extra sneaker on the roof.”

“And wore its mate when you saw Holly.”

“Yeah, I thought a little verisimilitude wouldn’t hurt. The chopper pilot dropped me back at the hangar and I caught a ride down to the Burrell house in Mississippi, I walked around the room Lucian decorated for the occasion, admired everything, then turned out all the lights and took my pictures. They’ll be running the best ones in the Galaxy. ”

“And you got paid.”

“Twenty-five grand, and everybody’s happy, and I didn’t cheat anybody or steal anything. The Galaxy got some great pictures that’ll sell a lot of copies of their horrible paper. The readers get a peek at a room no one has ever seen before.”

“And the folks at Graceland?”

“They get a good security drill,” I said. “Holly created a peach of a diversion to hide my entering the building. What it hid, of course, was my not entering the building, and that fact should stay hidden forever. Most of the Graceland people have never seen Elvis’s bedroom, so they’ll think the photos are legit. The few who know better will just figure my pictures didn’t come out, or that they weren’t exciting enough so the Galaxy decided to run fakes instead. Everybody with any sense figures the whole paper’s a fake anyway, so what difference does it make?”

“Was Holly a fake?”

“Not really. I’d say she’s an authentic specimen of what she is. Of course her little fantasy about a hot weekend watching the ducks blew away with the morning mist. All she wanted to do was get back to Florida and collect her bonus.”

“So it’s just as well you got your bonus ahead of time. You’ll hear from her again the next time the Galaxy needs a burglar.”

“Well, I’d do it again,” I said. “My mother was always hoping I’d go into journalism. I wouldn’t have waited so long if I’d known it would be so much fun.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Bern.”

“Come on. What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wish, you know, that you’d gone in there and got the real pictures. He could be in there, Bern. I mean, why else would they make such a big thing out of keeping people out of there? Did you ever stop to ask yourself that?”

“Carolyn—”

“I know,” she said. “You think I’m nuts. But there are a lot of people like me, Bern.”

“It’s a good thing,” I told her. “Where would the Galaxy be without you?”

I was gearingup to poke the bell a second time when the door opened. I’d been expecting Karl Bellermann, and instead I found myself facing a woman with soft blonde hair framing an otherwise severe, high-cheekboned face. She looked as if she’d been repeatedly disappointed in life but was damned if she would let it get to her.

I gave my name and she nodded in recognition. “Yes, Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said. “Karl is expecting you. I can’t disturb him now as he’s in the library with his books. If you’ll come into the sitting room I’ll bring you some coffee, and Karl will be with you in—” she consulted her watch “—in just twelve minutes.”

In twelve minutes it would be noon, which was when Karl had told me to arrive. I’d taken a train from New York and a cab from the train station, and good connections had got me there twelve minutes early, and evidently I could damn well cool my heels for all twelve of those minutes.

I was faintly miffed, but I wasn’t much surprised. Karl Bellermann, arguably the country’s leading collector of crime fiction, had taken a cue from one of the genre’s greatest creations, Rex Stout’s incomparable Nero Wolfe. Wolfe, an orchid fancier, spent an inviolate two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon with his plants, and would brook no disturbance at such times. Bellermann, no more flexible in real life than Wolfe was in fiction, scheduled even longer sessions with his books, and would neither greet visitors nor take phone calls while communing with them.

The sitting room where the blonde woman led me was nicely appointed, and the chair where she planted me was comfortable enough. The coffee she poured was superb, rich and dark and winy. I picked up the latest issue of Ellery Queen and was halfway through a new Peter Lovesey story and just finishing my second cup of coffee when the door opened and Karl Bellermann strode in.

“Bernie,” he said. “Bernie Rhodenbarr.”

“Karl.”

“So good of you to come. You had no trouble finding us?”

“I took a taxi from the train station. The driver knew the house.”

He laughed. “I’ll bet he did. And I’ll bet I know what he called it. ‘Bellermann’s Folly,’ yes?”

“Well,” I said.

“Please, don’t spare my feelings. That’s what all the local rustics call it. They hold in contempt that which they fail to understand. To their eyes, the architecture is overly ornate, and too much a mixture of styles, at once a Rhenish castle and an alpine chalet. And the library dwarfs the rest of the house, like the tail that wags the dog. Your driver is very likely a man who owns a single book, the Bible given to him for Confirmation and unopened ever since. That a man might choose to devote to his books the greater portion of his house — and, indeed, the greater portion of his life — could not fail to strike him as an instance of remarkable eccentricity.” His eyes twinkled. “Although he might phrase it differently.”

Indeed he had. “The guy’s a nut case,” the driver had reported confidently. “One look at his house and you’ll see for yourself. He’s only eating with one chopstick.”