Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

Wrong room.

I reached for the doorknob, turned it ever so gently, opened it a crack and paused to listen for signs of life in the hallway, then got out of there and closed the door. I played a little mental game of eeny meeny miney mo, trying to guess which of the remaining doors concealed Elvis on black velvet. I wondered, too, what version of Elvis the painting showed-Elvis Young or Elvis Old? Elvis lean and hungry or Elvis puffed up with too many peanut butter and banana sandwiches? Elvis bright-eyed and bushytailed or Elvis with a pharmaceutical glaze? I hadn’t seen the painting myself, and-

Of course I hadn’t. I’d heard it described by Marty Gilmartin, and he’d seen it in Isis Gauthier’s room up on Six. So why was I looking for it down here on Three?

I’ll tell you, a mind is a terrible thing to have, especially when it doesn’t work any better than mine did. I had a killer hangover, and that explained a lot, but I wondered if there might not be a little more to it than that. Could I still be drunk? Was that possible?

It didn’t seem the least bit fair. One or the other, okay, fair enough, I’d earned it. But both at once? Wasn’t it like lightning and thunder? They were both the result of the same phenomenon-in this case, strong drink and plenty of it-but the lightning got there first, and had disappeared by the time the thunder came rolling in.

It occurred to me that I ought to go back to bed and sleep this off, whatever it was. But opportunity had knocked, hadn’t it? And wasn’t it my job to open the door?

In this case, the door to 302. I’d already opened it, and now I opened it again. This time I didn’t actually enter the room. I stood at the door, using my pocket flash to supplement the light that slanted through the opening I’d created, and looked around for something familiar.

I saw something unfamiliar, and that was just as good. When I’d come in from the fire escape, heading for the door to the hallway, the dresser had been on my right, the bed on my left. And the layout in this room was the mirror opposite. I went over it in my mind, like the guy in the tower of the Old North Church- Let’s see now, did Mr. Revere say one if by land and two if by sea, or was it the other way around? -and decided I had it right. This wasn’t the room where I’d found the rubies.

I closed the door a second time. I thought of doing what Sleeping Beauty had neglected to do-i.e., fasten the chain lock to keep out people like me. That’s not hard if you have the tools for it, and I did, but it’s not the sort of task to undertake unnecessarily when you’re either drunk or hungover, or possibly both.

Next I cracked 301, and the door moved only a couple of inches before the chain lock stopped it. I could have unlocked it-it’s slightly easier on balance than relocking the thing, and there’s more point to it-but I knew the room was occupied, so why barge in if I didn’t have to?

I saw what I could through the narrow opening. The layout was as I remembered it, but this room had twin beds, and I realized now that the room I’d entered from the fire escape had a double. So this wasn’t it.

That left Room 303, and it was the one lock that gave me a hard time. Don’t ask me why. It was the same basic mechanism as all the others, and it should have been every bit as easy to pick. But it wasn’t, lending further credence to my drunk-and-hungover-both-at-once hypothesis.

I’d have been embarrassed if anyone had seen me fumbling with the damned lock, and the chances of being embarrassed in just that fashion increased with every minute I spent standing there in the hallway. There’d been no one coming or going-it was, after all, the middle of the goddam night-but it seemed to me I was pushing my luck.

The lock was old, and some of its pins and tumblers were worn, and sometimes the result is a lock that just about falls open if you give it a hard look. In this case, though, my picks kept slipping around inside, and at one point I gave up and tried my room key. There was a chance it would work, albeit a slim one, but long shots do come in every once in a while, and wouldn’t it be nice if this was one of those times?

Dream on…

I put the key back in my pocket, got back to business, and had better luck this time around. I cracked the door and let my flashlight do the walking, and there was a double bed right where it was supposed to be, and no one was in it. I slipped in, drew the door shut, and collapsed into a chair.

I used my flash again, less hurriedly this time, and was able to say with certainty that this was the room I’d been in the other night. I hadn’t been paying attention, and thus couldn’t consciously remember the room and its furnishings, but it turned out I was able to recognize them when I saw them. The litter on top of the highboy dresser was familiar, too. I opened a couple of drawers, and I was in the right place. The second drawer held feminine undergarments, but this time there was no jewelry stashed there.

I could put the rubies back where I’d found them. If the room’s occupant hadn’t yet noticed their absence, I’d have concealed my actions entirely. If she’d realized they were gone, she’d find them and wonder if she was losing her mind.

But was I losing mine? Why on earth would I want to put the jewels back? I wasn’t sure who the rightful owner was, or if the rubies had one. Cynthia Considine? Her husband, John? Isis Gauthier? I didn’t see that any of the three had anything approaching a moral equivalent of clear title. Ms. 303 had as good a claim as they did, and wasn’t my own claim every bit as good as hers?

I decided it was, and the jewelry case stayed in my pocket.

But another question arose. What exactly was I doing here?

I had to sit down to think about that one. I’d never stopped to question the impulse to come to this room, and then I’d been so caught up in the process of finding the right room and picking my way past its lock that I hadn’t had time to wonder what I’d do once I was inside.

And it was a logical place to be, wasn’t it? Now that I’d located the room, now that I was in it, I could look around until I learned whose room it was. And then I’d very likely know who had taken Isis Gauthier’s rubies, and then I’d know-

What?

I’d probably know the name of some morally bankrupt friend of Isis ’s who’d cast a greedy eye on the rubies and seized an opportunity for theft when it presented itself. There wasn’t much I could do with that information, unless I wanted to convey it to Isis, in the hopes of getting back on a first-name basis with her.

Would it bring me any closer to Gulliver Fairborn’s letters? Would it help me learn who killed Anthea Landau? I’d had eight questions on the little list I hadn’t written down, and the only one it might answer was How did the jewels get into that room on the third floor?

Still, I couldn’t get away from the idea that everything was tied together. Otherwise coincidence played too large a role. And, if everything was indeed intertwined, then any bit of data I picked up might lead to something else.

I put on my gloves-I’d already left no end of prints in this room, but that didn’t give me a reason to leave still more-and I got busy. There was a lamp on the little desk-brass, with a green glass shade, and now that I saw it I remembered it from my first visit. I switched it on and went around the room, looking at things, trying to find something that would identify the occupant.

It would have been easier if I’d happened to be a cop. I’m sure some of the clothing had labels or laundry marks that could have been traced back to the purchaser. For that matter, all a cop would have had to do was flash his badge at the desk clerk and demand the name of the person registered in Room 303. That wasn’t foolproof, it might lead only to an alias in the Peter Jeffries mode, but it was yet another option that cops have and burglars don’t. (When you look at all their advantages, it’s amazing we ever get away with anything.)