Lawrence Block - The Burglar In The Closet

I felt lousy, full of booze I hadn’t wanted in the first place, my brain numb and my body shaky and my spirit sagging. But I was homing in on my own turf and there’s a comfort in getting back home, even when home is an overpriced couple of rooms designed to give you a good case of the lonelies. Here, at least, I knew where I was. I could stand on the corner of Seventy-first and West End and look around and see things I recognized.

I recognized the coffee shop on the corner, for instance. I recognized the oafish Great Dane and the willowy young man who was walking or being walked by the beast. Across the street I recognized my neighbor Mrs. Hesch, the inescapable cigarette smoldering in the corner of her mouth, as she passed the doorman with a sandwich from the deli and a Daily News from the stand on Seventy-second Street. And I recognized the doorman, Crazy Felix, who tried so hard all his life to live up to the twin standards of his maroon uniform and his outsized mustache. And in earnest conversation with Felix I recognized Ray Kirschmann, a poor but dishonest cop whose path has crossed mine on so many occasions. And near the building’s entrance I recognized a young couple who seemed to be stoned on Panamanian grass twenty hours out of twenty-four. And diagonally across the street-

Wait a minute!

I looked again at Ray Kirschmann. It was him, all right, good old Ray, and what on earth was he doing in my lobby, talking to my doorman?

A lot of cobwebs began to clear from my mind. I didn’t get struck sober but it certainly felt as though that was what had happened. I stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on, and then I realized I could worry about that sort of thing when I had the time. Which I didn’t just now.

I moved back across the sidewalk to the shelter of shadows, glanced back to make sure Ray hadn’t taken notice of me, started to walk east on Seventy-first, keeping close to the buildings all the while, glanced back again a few times to see if there were any other cops around, reminded myself that this business of glancing back all the time simply gave me the appearance of a suspicious character, and what with looking back in spite of this realization, ultimately stepped smack into a souvenir left on the pavement by the galumphing Great Dane or another of his ilk. I said a four-letter word, a precise description indeed of that in which I had stepped. I wiped my foot and walked onward to Broadway, and a cab came along and I hailed it.

“Where to?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Drive downtown a little ways, it’ll come to me.” And then, while he was saying something I felt no need to attend to, I dug out my wallet and managed to find the little card she’d given me.

“My appointment’s with Keith,” I said. “But what good is this? It was almost two weeks ago.”

“You okay, Mac?”

“No,” I said. I turned the card over and frowned at what was written on it. “RH-sevenone-eight-oh-two,” I read. “Let’s try that, all right? Drive me there.”

“Mac?”

“Hmmm?”

“That’s a phone number.”

“It is?”

“Rhinelander seven, that’s the exchange. My phone is all numbers, but some people still got letters and numbers. I think it’s more classy, myself.”

“I agree with you.”

“But I can’t drive you to a phone number.”

“The address is right under it,” I said, squinting. “Right under it.” The letters, I did not add, were squirming around before my very eyes.

“Wanta read it to me?”

“In a minute or so,” I said, “that’s just what I’m going to do.”

She lived in a renovated brickfront on East Eighty-fourth, just a block and a half from the river. I found her bell and rang it, not expecting anything to happen, and while I was preparing to let myself in she asked who I was via the intercom. I told her and she buzzed me in. I climbed three flights of stairs and found her waiting in the doorway, clothed in a blue velour robe and a frown.

She said, “Bernie? Are you all right?”

“No.”

“You look as if-did you say you’re not all right? What’s the matter?”

“I’m drunk,” I said. She stepped aside and I walked past her into a small studio apartment. A sofa had converted itself into a bed and she had evidently just emerged therefrom to let me in.

“You’re drunk?”

“I’m drunk,” I agreed. “I had olive oil and white wine and soda and Scotch and rocks. The soda water gave me the bends and the ice cracked my stomach.”

“The ice-?”

“Cracked my stomach. It also shrinks the blood vessels, the veins and the arteries. Crème de menthe gives you diabetes but I stayed the hell away from it.” I took off my tie, rolled it up, put it in my pocket. I took off my jacket, aimed it at a chair. “I don’t know what the olive oil does,” I said, “but I don’t think it was a good idea.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting undressed,” I said. “What does it look like I’m doing? I found out a lot about Crystal. I just hope I remember some of it in the morning. I certainly can’t remember it now.”

“You’re taking your pants off.”

“Of course I am. Oh, hell, I better take my shoes off first. I usually get the order right but I’m in rotten shape tonight. Wine’s made out of grapes and it poisons the blood. Brandy’s distilled so that purifies it.”

“Bernie, your shoes-”

“I know,” I said. “I’ve got a cop in my lobby and something even worse on my shoe. I know all that.”

“Bernie-”

I got into bed. There was only one pillow. I took it and put my head on it and I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes and shut out the world.

After six or seven hours’ sleep, after the fourth aspirin and the third cup of coffee, the fog began to break up and disperse. I looked over at Jillian, who sat in a sling chair balancing a coffee cup on her knee. “I’m sorry,” I said, not for the first time.

“Forget it, Bernie.”

“Bursting in on you like that in the middle of the night. Jumping out of my clothes and diving into your bed. What’s so funny?”

“You make it sound like rape. You had too much to drink, that’s all. And you needed a place to stay.”

“I could have gone to a hotel. If I’d had the brains to think of it.”

“You might have had trouble finding one that would rent you a room.”

I lowered my eyes. “I must have been a mess.”

“Well, you weren’t at your best. I cleaned off your shoe, incidentally.”

“God, that’s something else for me to apologize for. Why do people keep dogs in the city?”

“To protect their apartments from burglars.”

“That’s a hell of a reason.” I drank some more coffee and patted my breast pocket, looking for a cigarette. I quit a few years ago but I still reach for the pack now and then. Old habits die hard. “Say, where did you, uh, sleep last night?”

“In the chair.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Bernie, stop it.” She smiled, looking remarkably fresh for someone who had spent the night in a sling chair. She was wearing jeans and a powder-blue sweater and she looked sensational. I was wearing last night’s outfit minus the tie and jacket. She said, “You said you found out some things about Crystal. Last night.”

“Oh. Right.”

“But you didn’t seem to remember what they were.”

“I didn’t?”

“No. Or else you were just too exhausted to think straight. Do you remember now?”

It took me a few minutes. I had to sit back and close my eyes and give my memory little nudges, but in the end it came through for me. “Three men,” I said. “I got most of my information from a woman named Frankie who was evidently a pretty good drinking buddy of Crystal ’s. Frankie was drunk when I met her and she didn’t exactly sober up as the night wore on but I think she knew what she was talking about.