Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“A girl’s name,” Carolyn said.

“Well, so’s Carolyn, and what’s that prove? They were the same envelopes the letters came in, Bern, an’ they got dusted for prints, same as everything else on the scene, an’ one of ’em had prints all over it. Some of ’em were smudged, an’ plenty of ’em were hers, but one of ’em was clear as a crystal, an’ guess whose it was?”

“Something tells me it was mine.”

“You didn’t worry about handling it,” he said, “because you figured on taking it with you, along with the rest of the letters. But I guess you dropped it. Don’t look so down in the mouth, Bern. It puts you on the scene, but I already knew you were there, so it’s no big deal.”

“If you say so.”

“You had the stack of letters. They musta been in an envelope or a file folder, and that’d be what, an inch thick? Two inches? Goat Ear didn’t mention you holdin’ nothin’, so your hands were empty, but that’s because your shirt was full.”

“My shirt?”

“Under your shirt, that’d be my guess as to where you put the letters. That’d get you past Goat Ear, but a trained observer would spot it, so you had to stash the stuff before you hit the lobby, since you know somebody’s been murdered, and you realize you might get spotted.”

“By a trained observer.”

“Or anyone who happens to recognize you for the encourageable burglar you are.”

“Incorrigible.”

“You said it. But you didn’t dump the stuff in your room, Bern, an’ you didn’t get out of the hotel with it, an’ what’s that leave?”

“Since you don’t believe I never had it in the first place-”

“Not on your life, Bern.”

“-then I must have stashed it somewhere in the hotel.”

“Uh-huh. Another room’d be my guess, an’ if I was a young hothead I’d be goin’ room to room, movin’ furniture an’ pullin’ up the carpet.”

“But you’re older and wiser.”

“You got the idea, Bern. Why make waves when we both get a chance here to do ourselves some good? What you gotta do is tell me where you stashed the stuff, an’ I’ll go in myself an’ get it, an’ we’ll wait and see.”

“We’ll wait and see what?”

“How to cash in. That’s gonna be the tricky part. The way I hear it, nobody knows what the letters are worth. An’ they ain’t worth much unless they can be sold right out in the open. You steal a rare book or a valuable coin or a painting, you got these crackpot collectors who’ll pay through the nose for it and keep it where nobody ever gets a peek at it. But your college libraries are the big buyers for letters like this Gulliver wrote, an’ they won’t pay big bucks for something unless they get to brag that they got it.”

“They want the publicity.”

“Like an old guy with a young girlfriend. Half the fun is showin’ her off to his buddies, especially since that’s about all he can still do. So this is the kind of deal where you sell the loot back to the insurance company.”

“Well, in that case…”

“Except it ain’t insured. Landau wouldn’t take out a floater policy on all her old letters, an’ they wouldn’t be covered by Sotheby’s insurance because Sotheby’s didn’t have ’ em yet. An ’ Landau can’t ransom ’em back, because she’s dead, an’ unless there’s a new will nobody knows about, the estate goes to the Authors Guild for handouts to writers who are up against it, which I guess plenty of ’em are most of the time.”

“It’s this society of ours, Ray. We don’t value the arts sufficiently.”

“Yeah, we all of us oughta be ashamed. Thing is, Bern, somebody’s gonna offer a reward, or some other way’ll open up to make a quiet dollar. An’ we’ll split.”

“Fifty-fifty,” I said.

“Only way to avoid hard feelings, Bernie. Half for you an’ half for me. Keep it all as even as Steven.”

“It seems fair.”

“Damn right it does. So? We got a deal?”

“I guess so,” I said. “But I’m going to have to retrieve the letters myself.”

“How? Your picture’s all over the papers, Bern. You’ll never get past the front desk. Lemme get ’em. I can walk in like I own the place.”

“Just lend me your badge,” I said, “and I can do the same.”

“Very funny.”

“The letters are in a safe place,” I said, “and nobody’s going to disturb them. I’ll get to them as soon as I can, but there’s no hurry. And they’d be difficult for you to get to, Ray, even if you knew where they were.”

“That don’t make sense, Bern.”

“Ray,” I said, “I could tell you everything I know about those letters and you couldn’t find them. Trust me.”

“Yeah,” he said, “you’re as good at hidin’ stuff as you are at findin’ it. Only thing is I hope you didn’t hide it right there in Landau’s apartment.”

“How could I do that? You must have searched the place from top to bottom.”

“We did,” he said, “and your room, too. Includin’ the bear.”

“The bear? Paddington Bear?”

“In your room, sittin’ on top of the fireplace.”

“And you thought he might have a two-inch-thick file of correspondence? Did he hide it under his little red jacket?”

He shook his head. “Not the letters. But he coulda been holdin’ the burglar’s tools, or even the gun, if it was a little one.”

Carolyn said, “Is that a gun in your paw, or are you just glad to see me? Ray, did you and your buddies cut open Bernie’s bear? Because if you did I think he’s got the makings of a pretty good lawsuit.”

“An’ a complaint to the SPCA,” Ray said, “but all we did was x-ray him, so put your mind at rest. All in all it was a pretty thorough search, Bernie, your room an’ hers, but it ain’t like searching for narcotics, where you can go in with dogs. How’s a dog gonna help you find letters from a particular person?”

“Maybe you could let him sniff a sample of Gully Fairborn’s handwriting.”

“Or a purple envelope. I know how cute you are, an’ I had a couple of uniforms go through her files lookin’ for anything purple. Perfect place to hide ’em, just stick ’em in the wrong file.”

“Like ‘The Purloined Letter,’” Carolyn said.

“Whatever. Purloin or sirloin, they came up empty. But we didn’t rip the desk apart, or the refrigerator door, so you coulda double-dipped back into Landau’s place an’ found some tricky spot to leave everything. Only thing, the apartment’s sealed off now as a crime scene. You can’t get in.”

“I don’t need to.”

“Good,” he said. “So it’s somewhere else, somewhere you can get to.”

“I’d say so.”

“An’ where I can’t.”

“Not without creating a disruption,” I said, “and attracting more attention than you’d be comfortable with.”

“An’ who wants that?” He shrugged. “Okay, Bern. We’ll play it your way for now. Take your time, but not too much of it, huh? There’s a lot of heat, what with a dame bumped off who’s supposed to be kind of prominent, even if nobody I know ever heard of her. You wouldn’t happen to know who knocked her off, would you?”

“If all this has been an elaborate buildup…”

“Naw, I know you didn’t kill her. But you beat us to the crime scene, so you might have seen somethin’ that gave you an idea. An’ even if you didn’t, you got a knack for steppin’ on your dick an’ coming up smellin’ like a daffodil. One minute you’re under arrest, an’ the next minute you’re tellin’ a roomful of people who the real killer is.”

“Well, I’m glad this room’s not full of people,” I said, “because for a change I’d be tongue-tied.”

“That straight, Bern?”