Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

“Does it work?”

“I guess so. Of course Patience is a poet, too, besides being a poetry therapist.”

“Do people realize she’s crazy?”

“Crazy? Who said she was crazy?”

“Never mind,” she said. “Look, Bern, I think I’d better call her.”

“What for?”

“To break the date.”

“To break the date?” I stared at her. “Wait a goddam minute here,” I said. “You mean to say you’ve got a date with her? I thought I was the one who had a date with her.”

“You do.”

“This isn’t gonna be another Denise Raphaelson affair, is it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Remember Denise Raphaelson?”

“Of course I remember her.”

“She was my girlfriend,” I said, “and then one day she was your girlfriend.”

“Bern—”

“Just like that,” I said. “Poof. Just like that.”

“Bern, focus for a minute, okay? Pull yourself together.”

“Okay.”

“I want to call Patience to break your date because you’re drunk and it wouldn’t be a great idea for you to see her tonight. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve just started seeing her, it’s still early in the relationship, and you’d be making the wrong impression.”

“I might fart,” I said.

“Well—”

“Or mention farting, or something. So I’d better not see her.” I took a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right, Carolyn. I’ll call her right now.”

“No, I’ll call.”

“Would you do that? Would you really do that for me?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a wonderful person, Carolyn. You’re the best friend any man ever had. Or any woman. You’re an equal-opportunity friend, Carolyn.”

“Just let me have her number, Bern.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

She went away, and a few minutes later she was back again. “All taken care of,” she said. “I told her you had a nasty case of stomach flu and the doctor thought it was probably food poisoning. I said it looked as though you got a bad burrito at lunch.”

“And we know what that’ll do, don’t we?”

“She was very sympathetic, Bern. She seems like a nice person.”

“They all seem nice,” I said darkly. “And then you get to know them.”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it. Bernie, where did these drinks come from? We never ordered them.”

“It must be a miracle.”

“You ordered them,” she said. “You ordered them while I was on the phone.”

“It’s still a miracle.”

“Bern—”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” I said. “If you can’t handle yours, I’ll drink ’em both.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “I don’t think…Bern, what’s that music?”

I cocked an ear. “Galway Bay,” I said. “That’s The Late Great Bing Crosby singing. I played it.”

“No kidding.”

“It turns out Maxine had quarters,” I said, “with Washington on one side and a bird on the other. She let me have four of them for a dollar.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Well, I don’t know. How’s she gonna make a living that way? Be like selling ‘B’ Is for Burglar for eighty-six sixty. How’s she gonna pay the rent? God, don’t you just love ‘Galway Bay’?”

“No.”

“Well, you’ll like the next one. ‘Mother Machree.’ ”

“Oh, God,” she said.

“The rent’s only part of it,” I said. “There’s more to it than that. I miss breaking and entering. Sometimes I forget how much I miss it, but the minute something comes along to raise the old anxiety level, well, this old burglar remembers in a hurry.”

“What is it you miss, Bern?”

“The excitement. There’s a thrill I get when I let myself into somebody else’s home that’s unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. You tickle a lock and tease it into opening, you turn a knob and slip through a half-open door, and then at last you’re inside and it’s as if you’re trying another person’s life on for size. You’re Goldilocks, sitting in all the chairs, sleeping in all the beds. You know, I never understood the end of that story. Why did the bears get so angry? Here’s this sweet little blond girl sleeping like a lamb. You’d think they’d want to adopt her, and instead they’re royally pissed. I don’t get it.”

“Well, she wasn’t a very good houseguest, Bern. She ate their food, remember? And she broke the baby bear’s chair.”

“One lousy bowl of porridge,” I said. “And when she ate it it was Just Right, remember? So by the time the bears got home it would have been Too Cold, just like the mama bear’s. And I’ve always wondered about that chair, now that you mention it. What kind of chair supports a husky young bear but buckles under the weight of a little slip of a girl?”

“How do you know she was such a little slip of a girl, Bern? Maybe she was a real porker. Look how she tucked into that porridge.”

“She was never chubby in any of the illustrations I ever saw. If you ask me, there was something wrong with the chair. It was ready to collapse the minute anybody sat on it.”

“So that’s your take on ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ Bern? The chair was defective?”

“Must have been.”

“I like that,” she said. “It adds a whole new dimension to the story. Sounds to me as though she’d have a damn good negligence case.”

“I suppose she could have filed suit, come to think of it.”

“Maybe that’s why she ran all the way home. She wanted to call her lawyer before he left the office. I’ll tell you one thing, Bernie. You proved your point.”

“What point was that?”

“That you’ve still got burglary in your soul. Who else but a born burglar would see the story that way?”

“The negligence case was your idea,” I said, “and only a born lawyer —”

“Watch it, Bern.”

“The thing is,” I said, “I’m pretty honest in ordinary circumstances. I call people back when they walk off without their change. When a waiter forgets to charge me for dessert I generally call it to his attention.”

“I’ve seen you do that,” she said, “and I’ve never understood it. What do you do when a pay phone gives you an extra quarter back? Send it to them in stamps?”

“No, I keep it. But I never shoplift, and I pay my taxes. I’m really only a crook when I’m out burgling. So I’m not a born thief, but I guess you’re right, I guess I’m a born burglar. ‘Born to Burgle.’ That would be the perfect tattoo for me.”

“Don’t get a tattoo, Bern.”

“Hey, not to worry,” I said. “I’m not that drunk.”

“Yes you are,” she said. “But don’t do it.”

Truth to tell, I was barely drunk at all. We were in a no-nonsense Italian restaurant in a basement of Thompson Street two blocks south of Washington Square. We had ruled out Indian and Thai food because I didn’t think my stomach could handle it, not after the attack of stomach flu Carolyn had invented for me. (Mexican, of course, was out of the question.) The fresh air on the way over from the Bum Rap had cleared my head considerably, and now, after a big plate of spaghetti marinara and two cups of espresso, I was pretty close to sober.

It was 9:17 when Carolyn waved at the waiter and made a scribbling motion in the middle of the air. I know this because I immediately glanced at my watch. “It’s still early,” I told her. “You want to have another espresso?”

“I didn’t want the last one,” she said. “No, I want to get home and check the cats and feed the mail. What’s the matter?”

“Check the cats and feed the mail?”