Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

“Is that all? Well, it still seems like a lot.”

“Too hypothetical for you?”

“Call me hypothetical,” I said.

“Is that a song cue?” She braced one hand on her hip and cocked her head. To the tune of “Call Me Irresponsible” she crooned, “ Call me hypothetical. Toss in… toss in what?”

“Alphabetical,” I suggested.

She made a face. “Toss in theoretical.”

“Better.”

“Don’t leave alphabetical out.”

“I like it,” I said, “and I’m glad I was able to make a modest contribution. I think we’ve got a hit on our hands.”

“I think you changed the subject,” she said sternly, but she didn’t look as stern as she sounded. A smile was trying to play with her lips. It wasn’t getting a whole lot of encouragement, but it was hanging in there.

“You think I have your rubies,” I said. Note the possessive pronoun; it was my way of letting her know I was on her side. “Suppose you’re right.”

“I knew it!”

“Whoa,” I said. “Let’s keep it hypothetical, okay? I didn’t say you’re right, I said suppose you’re right. As a matter of fact, I never stole anything from you.”

“And that’s the truth, right?”

“Gospel.”

“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it? The word of a burglar?”

I said, “The jewels disappeared from your room, right? Well, I’ve never set foot inside your room. I don’t even know what room you’re in.”

“Then how do you know you’ve never been in it?”

“Because you’re on the sixth floor, and the only sixth-floor room I’ve been in was Anthea Landau’s.”

“Poor Anthea,” she said. “She was nasty to most of the other tenants, but she was always perfectly nice to me. ‘If you ever write a book,’ she told me, ‘you just bring it straight to me, dear.’” She fixed her gaze on me. “You just admitted it!”

“Admitted what?”

“That you were in her room.”

“It’s not much of an admission,” I said. “It’s not as though we were in court. Anyway, they found a fingerprint of mine in there. The point is I wasn’t in your room, and I never saw your Elvis on black velvet.”

“Then how do you…oh. Marty must have told you.”

“He was impressed. Can we get back to my hypothesis? Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that I have your rubies.”

“Argument’s the word for it. All right, I’ll play your little game. You don’t have the rubies, but suppose you did.”

“What would it take to make you happy?”

“To make me happy? Give me the damn rubies back and I’ll be happy as a lark.”

“Is that what it would take? The rubies themselves?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m just trying to find out what the main attraction is here,” I said. “Is it a handful of pretty red stones, or is it what they’re worth?”

“Keep talking.”

“Would you settle for what the rubies are worth?”

Her eyes flashed. They were still blue, I noted, but a little less startling. I must have been getting used to them.

“John Considine tried that on,” she said. “He told Marty to offer me five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars!”

“A veritable pittance.”

“I’d say it’s about as veritable as pittances get. An appraiser told me they’re worth eighty thousand dollars.”

“That’s more than they were insured for, but it’s probably not far off. Look, forget five thousand dollars.”

“I forgot it the moment I heard it.”

“And forget eighty thousand too, while you’re at it. Suppose you could get twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“In nice quiet cash.”

“It’s less than they’re worth.”

“Assuming they’re genuine, and assuming-”

“An expert appraiser said they were. Genuine Burmese rubies, he said.”

“It’s interesting about rubies,” I said. “The best ones come from Burma and Sri Lanka. They’re the major exporters of quality stones.”

“I know.”

“And who do you suppose are the biggest importers of synthetic rubies?”

She looked at me. “You’re going to tell me Burma and Sri Lanka, aren’t you? What’s the point?”

“Figure it out.”

“I saw a shop on the highway with a sign. ‘We Buy Junk and Sell Antiques.’ Is that what the folks in Burma and Sri Lanka are doing?”

“If they are,” I said, “and if they can get away with it because it’s virtually impossible to tell synthetic rubies from the real thing, then rubies might not be an ideal long-term investment.”

She frowned. “I wasn’t thinking about selling them,” she said. “If I did, I’d get more than twenty thousand. I wore them onstage, you know.”

“In The Play’s the Thing. ”

“You saw me? No, of course not. Marty told you.”

“I heard you were sensational.”

“You’re just making that up, but I still like the way it sounds.” She came up with a real smile this time. “I loved those rubies,” she said. “I felt wonderful wearing them. Especially because John gave them to me. But when I stopped feeling that way about John, I still felt the same way about the rubies.”

“And now?”

“Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. I’d miss the rubies. As a matter of fact I miss them already. Still, I could get a lot more use out of the money. But you’re not offering it to me, are you?”

“We’re just being hypothetical, remember?”

“Is that what we’re doing?” She arched an eyebrow. “I’d like my rubies back, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

“Bernie.”

“I’d like my rubies, Bernie. Or my twenty thousand dollars. But you don’t have the jewels or the money, and we’re just being hypocritical.”

“I think you mean hypothetical.”

“Not necessarily,” she said, and headed out the door.

The store was quieter for the absence of Isis, and a drabber place altogether. She brightened things up even when she wasn’t wearing all the colors of the rainbow. I was all alone. Henry hadn’t come back, and I didn’t know if he was going to.

I picked up the phone and tried Alice ’s number, or what I’d been given to think was Alice ’s number, and it went unanswered, as seemed to be its habit. I hung up and took a moment to Think Things Through, and I realized something.

I could wash my hands of the whole mess.

I’d gotten involved to impress a girlfriend and do a favor for a writer whose book had-oh, all right-changed my life. Nobody’s Baby may not have saved me from a life of crime, but my worldview was forever altered by it, and you couldn’t say the same for the quiz on the back of the Special K box. And so I’d tried to retrieve Fairborn ’s letters, but someone else had beaten me to it, and they were well beyond my reach by now. If you’re going to look for a needle, at the very least you ought to know which haystack to look in. And I didn’t. Anybody could have taken them, and they could be anywhere by now.

So Fairborn wouldn’t get his letters back, but he wouldn’t blame me, because he didn’t know I existed. He might or might not blame Alice Cottrell, and she could blame me if she wanted, but she’d effectively disappeared from my life, reappearing only to share her squeals of excitement with some faceless stranger. I couldn’t convince myself I owed her a thing.

I’d managed to walk in on a murder scene and get arrested for it, but I wasn’t languishing in a cell, and sooner or later the charges would be dropped. Even if they never found out who killed Anthea Landau, they didn’t have a case against me.

What did that leave? The rubies? Well, fine. I hadn’t checked lately, but I was pretty sure they were still covered with cat food and safe as houses. Whether or not John Considine was willing to pay twenty grand to get them back, and whether or not Isis decided to take the money, was not really my problem. It was Marty’s, as soon as I passed the jewelry on to him, and he could figure it out.