Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Rye

The best pause I ever heard was Jack Benny’s, when a holdup man said, “Your money or your life.” Carl was almost as eloquent, standing there with his mouth hanging open.

“Well,” I said, “that’s saying a mouthful. But there’s no rush. You’ll have plenty of time to work up a story.”

“Wait,” he said. “I shouldn’t be saying anything, but I shouldn’t have said anything from the beginning, should I? For God’s sake, I’ve been on Law amp; Order. I know how you people work.”

“That just about makes you law enforcement personnel,” Ray said. “Which is why we’re givin’ you a chance to go on record.”

Carl rolled his eyes. “Spare me,” he said. “I know this is a trick, and I don’t care. I’ll tell you the truth, if only to get it clear in my own mind. It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to believe me.”

“I have a feeling you’re right about that,” I said, “but let’s hear it.”

“It was the way you said,” he told us. “Up to the time when I was on the desk and Karen called from Miss Landau’s room. She was hysterical, and all I could make out was that she’d been shot. I left the desk unattended and raced up there, and found her bleeding from a shoulder wound and Miss Landau unconscious on the floor. She was alive, though. One side of her face was bruised, I guess where Karen hit her with the Scotch tape.”

“She hit her with Scotch tape?”

“Miss Landau kept it in a heavy brass desktop dispenser, and that’s what Karen hit her with. She just picked it up and threw it, and it evidently hit Miss Landau and knocked her cold. It weighed a ton.”

“I know the thing he’s talkin’ about,” Ray confirmed. “We found it on the desk in the front room.”

“That’s where I put it,” Carl said, “when I was tidying up. Maybe that’s where Karen found it. Does it matter?”

“Not to me it don’t,” Ray said, “and not to Kasimir either, bein’ as nothin’ does at this point. Keep talkin’.”

“I moved Miss Landau,” he said. “I know you’re not supposed to, but I couldn’t just leave her lying on the floor like that. She was a little old lady, you know, and light as a feather. I picked her up and put her in the bed.”

“Which is where she was when I got there,” I said, “but there was a difference. She was dead.”

“I know,” he said. “She was dead when I went back. First I went to my room, with Karen, who was at least able to walk. I had first-aid supplies in my room, as you guessed, and I cleaned the wound and put on a sterile dressing. I had three weeks’ work a few years ago on General Hospital , so I’m not entirely without experience in such matters. I don’t know if any of you watch the show, but I was the lupus patient who wasn’t expected to live. I surprised everybody.”

“Not for the last time,” I said. “I suppose you put her to bed, too.”

“Of course. And then I rushed back down to the lobby, just to make sure prospective guests weren’t rushing the desk. It was quiet, so I went right back to the sixth floor and into Miss Landau’s apartment. I didn’t even look at her right away, because I knew I’d have to call an ambulance and get her looked at, and before I did that I had to straighten up the place. I wiped off the Scotch tape dispenser and put it back on the desk, I closed the drawers Karen had left open, I found the gun where it had fallen and found Karen’s purse where she’d put it down. And, incidentally, she did take it with her when she entered the apartment, so that she could stuff the letters in it before she left. It was a big purse, large enough to accommodate a thick nine-by-twelve envelope.”

“Sounds like the one she had with her when she got killed,” Ray said. “She didn’t have no thick envelopes in there, but there was a handy little gun, and it coulda been the one she got shot with.”

“I did everything I could think of,” Carl said, “and then I went for a look at Miss Landau, and she was in the bed, right where I’d left her. And she was dead, stabbed in the heart with Karen’s knife.”

“How do you know it was Kassenmeier’s knife?”

“Because it was the kind she carried, a folding stiletto with mother-of-pearl sides and a four-inch blade. And it was sticking out of her chest.”

“I didn’t see a knife,” I said. “Of course the bedclothes might have covered it.”

“There was no knife stickin’ out of her when we got to the scene,” Ray said.

“I took the knife away,” Carl said. “I know you’re not supposed to do that, but-”

“For Chrissake,” the uniformed cop said, “you’re not supposed to do any of the shit you did.”

“I know.”

“Like taking the knife’s the least of it.”

“I know.”

“Well, go on,” the cop said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on. You took the knife.”

“And washed the blood off it,” he said, “although I know there would have been traces that would have showed up under forensic examination. I know that.”

“Well, sure,” Ray said. “You were on Law amp; Order. ”

“But it still seemed a worthwhile precaution.”

“After you took the knife-”

“I put it back in her purse.”

“Along with the gun,” I said.

“Well, yes.”

“What else was in there?”

“In the purse?”

“Right. There wasn’t a thick nine-by-twelve manila envelope by any chance, was there?” I shrugged. “I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? How else would you have been so sure it would fit?”

“I looked for the envelope,” he said, “because she’d told me that she had had a chance to find the letters before Miss Landau confronted her. But I couldn’t find them, and I thought whoever had used the knife had found the letters at the same time. But the purse was heavier than it should have been, and I looked again, and there was a zippered section tucked away behind a flap. And that’s where the envelope full of letters was.”

“So you didn’t have to go through the files.”

“No. I got in and out as quickly as I could.”

“And what did you do with the letters?”

“I took the purse back to my room,” he said, “where Karen was resting. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what had happened. Who stabbed Miss Landau? I was sure she was alive the first time I saw her, and I know she was dead when I went back, and I swear to God it wasn’t me who stabbed her.” He stopped himself, frowned. “I,” he said. “It wasn’t I who stabbed her.”

“Well, it wasn’t me either,” Ray told him. “So keep talkin’.”

“You took the purse back to the room,” I said.

“Yes.”

“With the knife still in it.”

“Yes.”

“And the gun, of course. Landau’s gun.”

“Yes.”

“And what about the letters?”

“What about them?”

“What did you do with them? Because you couldn’t have given them to Kassenmeier or she’d have been out of there like a shot, mission accomplished. Where did you stash them, Carl?”

He sighed. “In the other room.”

“Which room? Room 303?”

“Yes. Karen was in my room, and I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t really have time to think.”

“And you stashed them there before you went back to your room.”

“Well, on my way. It wasn’t on my way, not literally, but…”

“I get the picture. I’ll be a son of a bitch. You must have been tucking them away while Isis and I were getting on a first-name basis in the sixth-floor corridor. You got the letters out of Landau’s room a few minutes before I let myself into it, and then you stashed them three floors below just before I came into that room off the fire escape. Why couldn’t you have put that envelope in the underwear drawer? Look what a lot of trouble you’d have saved me.”