Lawrence Block: The Burglar in the Rye

“Then she left the hotel and called the police. They were already on their way when Carl called them after Isis reported her encounter with me in the hallway. That’s how they got there so fast. Erica figured that would do it-Karen Kassenmeier, a known thief who was handy with a knife, was right there on the premises, and her knife with her prints on it was planted in the victim’s chest, and her purse was a few yards away. The cops would be on Kassenmeier like buzzards on roadkill, and if she got a good lawyer she might see the sidewalk again in twenty years or so. If she got a bad one she could figure on life without parole, or a needle in her arm.

“What you didn’t figure on,” I said to Erica, “was that Carl would get to the room before the cops did. By the time they got there, there was no knife in the corpse, no purse on the chair, and nothing that would lead anybody to your old friend Karen. But she wasn’t exactly sitting pretty, either. She didn’t have the letters that had brought her to New York in the first place, and the jewelry she’d picked up along the way had somehow gotten out of her grasp.

“But that wasn’t enough for you. You told her Carolyn had let something slip-you knew I had the rubies, and I might even have the letters, too. And you knew exactly where in my apartment I had hidden them.

“You had her wait at your apartment. You went out for dinner, went home to Carolyn’s place instead of your own, and slipped out as soon as Carolyn was sound asleep. Then you dropped by your place to pick up Kassenmeier and the two of you went up to Seventy-first and West End. Once the two of you were inside my apartment, you just waited for your opportunity-first to get the knife from her handbag, then to use it on her the way you’d used it on Anthea Landau. This time your victim was conscious, so it wasn’t quite as easy. The two of you made enough noise to get my neighbor Mrs. Hesch’s attention, but not enough to make her call the cops right away. Then you let yourself out and went home.”

“How’d they get in?” It was the uniformed cop, and he seemed interested now. “You said Kassenmeier didn’t have burglar’s tools. Is this dame a burglar?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So how’d she get in?”

“She had a key,” I said. “Carolyn’s my best friend. We have keys to each other’s apartment and place of business. She used her bookstore key the other day to feed my cat.”

“And she gave the key to this dame?”

“The dame’s name is Erica,” I said. “Erica Darby, and you’ll want to get it right when you write up the arrest for double homicide. She took Carolyn out for a night on the town, and for once she didn’t show any concern about the way Carolyn was drinking. In fact she encouraged it.”

“It was supposed to be a celebration,” Carolyn said.

“Earlier, she’d shown some uncharacteristic interest in me. Asked you where I lived, and other questions about me. So she knew the address, and she knew you had keys, and she made sure you had enough to drink and enough, uh…”

“Stimulation,” Carolyn supplied. “And I passed out and slept like I’d been clubbed. Then what? How did she know where to find the keys?”

“Where do you keep them?”

“On a hook on the bulletin board next to the front door.”

“And what does the little tag on the key ring say?”

“Bernie’s Keys,” she said. “I guess they wouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“What about the doorman?” the cop demanded. “You got twenty-four-hour doorman service in your building, don’t you?”

“Twenty-hour service is more like it,” I said. “They don’t always man their post every minute of the shift, and sometimes they doze off. But even if he was on the spot and wide awake, so what? Two well-dressed middle-class white women? Getting out of a cab and walking into the lobby together like they belong there?”

“In like Flynn,” the cop said.

“Exactly. Then Erica closes the door on Kassenmeier’s corpse, locks up, cabs back down to Arbor Court, and puts my keys back on the hook where she found them. She would have taken your keys, too, so she could get back in, and she puts them back, too. Then she goes home and sleeps the sleep of the unjust.”

“And that’s that?”

“That’s that,” I said. “End of story. She killed two people because one of them did something a long time ago that really pissed her off. I suppose the DA’ll find out what it is by the time the case gets to court, but I kind of like the fact that we don’t know. It makes the whole thing seem as senseless as it was.”

“It’s quite a story,” Erica said.

“I’m proud of it,” I admitted. “There are probably a few undotted i ’s and uncrossed t ’s in it, but it stands up.”

“The only thing I’m going to say,” she said, “is that there’s not a shred of proof for anything you’ve said.”

“I thought you’d say that. It’s funny, but innocent people don’t start hollering about lack of proof. They just say they didn’t do it. But the fact of the matter is that there’s plenty of proof, and there’ll be more when the police start looking. There’ll be people who know of your history with Karen Kassenmeier, for example. The cabbie who drove you and Karen to my place will probably remember you, once pictures of the two of you get shown around. Someone will turn up who saw you in the hotel on the night of Anthea Landau’s murder, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the police find your fingerprints, once they’ve got a set for comparison and know what they’re looking for.

“Meanwhile, of course, there’s the knife.”

“What knife?”

“The one you used to kill two people, the stiletto with the four-inch blade. What do you want to bet it’s in your apartment?”

“That is absolute nonsense.”

“I have a hunch that’s where the cops’ll find it,” I said. “Soaking in a bowl of Clorox, right on the counter under the Virginia Slims calendar. I guess that’s to get rid of the blood traces, and that’s not a bad idea, but why not ditch the knife altogether? Throw it down a storm sewer, say, or drop it in a trash can?” I looked at her. “A souvenir? Well, I guess it’s better than the kind Jeffrey Dahmer kept, but it still strikes me as a risky thing to hang on to.”

“There’s no knife in my apartment.”

“I guess I was misinformed. What did you do with the knife, then?”

“I never…How do you know there’s a Virginia Slims calendar in my kitchen?”

“Carolyn must have mentioned the great picture of Martina.”

“You bastard! You planted the knife. But-”

“But how did I get in?”

“I know how you got in. You’re a burglar. But where did you get the knife? It can’t be the same knife. It’s a different knife. You planted a different knife in my apartment!”

“If you think about it,” I said, “you’ll figure out what everybody else in the room already realizes. There’s only one way you could know that.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” Ray Kirschmann intoned. He’d said all this before, to the whole room, but now he was saying it to her, and the boy in blue was fastening handcuffs to her wrists. He had already moved over to her side while I was running it all down for them, and he had plenty of room, because Carolyn had been drawing away.

Then the two cops led her out of the room, and the door swung shut behind them.

Ihave to say the fresh air was welcome. Isis Gauthier’s room was larger than the one I’d had, and it was a help having the window open, but all the same it got a little close in there. A little cross-ventilation didn’t hurt a bit.