Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

I shook my head. “He left the toilet seat up,” I said.

“The pig,” Isis said.

“I never really heard his voice,” I went on, “except in an undertone, and I certainly didn’t recognize it. But I recognized her voice, and it wasn’t Kassenmeier’s.”

“How could you tell? You said you never met Kassenmeier.”

“I never did,” I said, “so if I recognized this voice-”

“Then you knew who the person was,” Marty said. “The woman.”

“Yes. She was the person who got me interested in Anthea Landau and her file folder full of letters. And now she turned up in a room where I’d found some stolen jewelry, and then she left and I checked the luggage tag and read the name Karen Kassenmeier. So my first thought was that this was her room, and that she and Kassenmeier were the same person, even if I had met her under another name. One of the names was an alias, and they were both the same person.”

“Maybe you were right,” Alice Cottrell said levelly. “How can you be sure they weren’t the same person?”

Because Karen Kassenmeier’s dead, I thought, and you’re sitting here trying to look innocent. But what I said was, “I saw Karen Kassenmeier at the morgue, and she wasn’t anyone I’d seen before. But even before then, I had the feeling the woman I overheard wasn’t the same person whose room it was.”

Ray said, “Why’s that, Bern?”

“The bed was made.” That put a puzzled look on every face in the room, so I explained. “The two visitors made love in Room 303, and then they left, and when I saw the bed it had been made up.”

The man from Sotheby’s, Victor Harkness, cleared his throat. “All that would seem to establish,” he said, “is that they’re neat.”

“I couldn’t see how they’d had time to make the bed,” I said, “and it was very professionally made, as if the chambermaid had done it. In fact it looked the same as it had looked before they got there, and there was a reason for it. They’d never unmade the bed in the first place.”

“You mean they…”

“Had sex on top of the bedspread,” Isis Gauthier finished for him, and made a face. “That’s even worse than leaving the toilet seat up.”

“I suppose they were in a hurry,” I said, “and they probably wanted to avoid leaving evidence of their visit to the room, evidence Karen Kassenmeier might notice when she returned to it. But they did leave some evidence, and it enabled me to determine who the man was.”

“DNA,” the uniformed cop said. “But how would you get samples for comparison, and when did you have time to run tests, and-”

“Not DNA,” I said, “and that wasn’t the kind of evidence that was left behind. Maybe they practiced safe sex.”

“I hope so,” Isis said. “Everybody ought to.”

“Who was the man?” Carolyn asked. “And what was the evidence that pointed to him?”

“It was a black mark.”

“On his record?” Victor Harkness suggested. “A blot on his copybook?”

“Don’t forget his escutcheon,” I said. “But this was a black mark on the bedspread. At the top, over the pillow. Right where his head would be.” While they thought about it, I added, “Remember what I said earlier, about hearing a key in the lock? That was one of the reasons I assumed it was the room’s occupant coming home. But it wasn’t, yet it was somebody with a key. Of the two people in that room, I knew the woman, and I couldn’t think of any reason she would have a key to another person’s hotel room. But maybe the man had access to a key. A key to Room 303, say, or a master key, a key that would open any room in the hotel.”

“A key to the door,” Carolyn said, “and a black mark on the bedspread.”

“A picture begins to emerge,” I said. “A picture of a hotel employee. Someone who could put Karen Kassenmeier in a room without officially registering her. Someone who would thus know what room she was in, and would be able to get in and out with no trouble. Someone whose hair is as black as the telltale mark on the bedspread, and not because that’s the way Mother Nature made it. Carl, you’ve been at the Paddington for years. Is there anyone you know of who fits that description?”

Everyone looked at Carl Pillsbury, and I have to hand it to him-he was as cool and as bold as a brass cucumber. He frowned in thought, took his chin between his thumb and forefinger, pursed his lips, and emitted a soundless whistle. “Someone who works for the Paddington and dyes his hair,” he said. “Now a couple of years ago we had a fellow who wore a toupee, but that’s not the same thing, is it? But I can’t think of anyone who uses hair coloring.”

“Then somebody musta turned you upside down,” Ray said, “an’ stuck your head in the inkwell, ’cause that mop of yours looks about as natural as Astroturf.”

“Me?” he said, his eyes widening. “You actually think I color my hair?”

“Everybody knows you do, Carl,” Isis said.

“Everybody?”

“Everybody in the tristate area.”

“It’s obvious?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I have a pretty good idea what happened,” I said, “although there are a few gaps here and there. I know you’re from the Midwest originally, and so was Karen Kassenmeier. The two of you aren’t that far apart in age. I think you knew each other way back when, or else you met here in New York.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I suppose it’s possible she approached you cold when she got here,” I said, “but that’s hard to believe. She must have known you.”

“That would explain something,” Hilliard Moffett said. “I certainly never suggested anything criminal when I met that woman in Seattle -”

“Whether you did or not,” Ray assured him, “we got bigger fish to fry. An’ whatever you did you did in Seattle, an’ this here’s New York, an’ I don’t see no Seattle cops in this room. So just say whatever you got to say.”

“All right,” Moffett said, and stuck out his jaw. “She had an interesting reaction when I mentioned the name of the hotel. Until then she’d seemed noncommittal, lukewarm to the whole notion, but then she brightened. ‘The Paddington,’ she said. ‘I wonder if he’s still there.’ I asked her what she meant, and she just shook her head and pressed me for more details.”

“That proves nothing,” Carl said. “She once knew someone who once worked or lived at the hotel. So what?”

“You’d be surprised what good police work can turn up,” Ray said. “Once we take a good long look at both your backgrounds, don’t you think we’re gonna find somethin’ puts you an’ her in the same place at the same time? You could cop to it right now an’ save everybody some trouble.”

“Even if I knew her once,” he said, “it still proves nothing.”

“Here’s what I think happened,” I said. “She showed up at the hotel and told you she wanted to check in under a false name. You had an even better idea: she wouldn’t register at all, and you’d stick her in a room. That would save her upwards of a hundred and fifty dollars a night.”

“What makes you think I would do anything like that?”

“It’s not exactly unheard-of in the business,” I said. “It’s a good way for a desk clerk to make a few dollars for himself. Like a bartender forgetting to charge for drinks, with the understanding that the customer will show his appreciation with an oversize tip. But Karen Kassenmeier was offering you more than the chance to knock down a few dollars on an off-the-books rental, wasn’t she? She could afford to, because you could provide more than a place to stay. You could get her into Anthea Landau’s room.”