Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian

“A sign that somebody tampered with the locks. I don’t see any fresh scratches. Have you got a match?”

“I don’t smoke. Neither do you, remember?”

“I wanted better light. My penlight’s home. It doesn’t matter.” I got to my feet. “Let me have your keys.”

I unlocked all the locks, and when we were inside I examined them, especially the Fox lock. While I was doing this, Carolyn walked around calling for Ubi. Her voice got increasingly panicky until the cat appeared in response to the whirr of the electric can opener. “Oh, Ubi,” she said, and scooped him up and plopped herself down in a chair with him. “Poor baby, you miss your buddy, don’t you?”

I went over to the little window and opened it. Cylindrical iron bars an inch thick extended the length of the window, anchored in the brick below and the concrete lintel above. All the window needed was a few similar bars running horizontally and a few squares of color and it could be a Mondrian. I took hold of a couple of bars and tugged them to and fro. They didn’t budge.

Carolyn asked me what the hell I was doing. “Someone could have hacksawed the bars,” I said, “and fitted them back into place afterward.” I tugged on a couple more. They made the Rock of Gibraltar seem like a shaky proposition in comparison. “These aren’t going anyplace,” I said. “They’re illegal, you know. If there’s ever a fire inspection they’ll make you take them out.”

“I know.”

“Because if there’s ever a fire, that’s the only window and you’d never get out it.”

“I know. I also know I’m in a ground floor apartment facing out on an airshaft and the burglars would trip over each other if I didn’t have bars on the window. I could get those window gates that you can unlock in case of fire but I know I’d never find the key if I had to, and I’m sure burglars can get through those gates. So I think I’ll just leave well enough alone.”

“I don’t blame you. Nobody got in this way unless he’s awfully goddamn skinny. People can get through narrower spaces than you’d think. When I was a kid I could crawl through a milk chute, and I could probably still crawl through a milk chute, come to think of it, because I’m about the same size I was then. And it looked impossible. It was about ten inches wide by maybe fourteen inches high, but I made it. If you can get your head through an opening, the rest of the body will follow.”

“Really?”

“Ask any obstetrician. Oh, I don’t suppose it works with really fat people.”

“Or with pinheads.”

“Well, yeah, right. But it’s a good general rule. Nobody got in this window, though, because the bars are what? Three, four inches apart?”

“You can leave the window open, Bern. It’s stuffy in here. They didn’t get in through the window and they didn’t pick the locks, so what does that leave? Black magic?”

“I don’t suppose we can rule it out.”

“The flue’s blocked on my fireplace, in case you figured Santa Claus pulled the job. How else could they get in? Up from the basement through the floor? Down through the ceiling?”

“It doesn’t seem likely. Carolyn, what did the place look like when you came in?”

“Same as it always looks.”

“They didn’t go through the drawers or anything?”

“They could have opened drawers and closed them again and I wouldn’t have noticed. They didn’t mess anything up, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t even know I’d had anybody here until I couldn’t find the cat. I still didn’t know somebody’d been in here, not until I got the phone call and realized somebody stole the cat. He didn’t just disappear on his own, Bernie. What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe somebody hooked my keys out of my purse. It wouldn’t be that hard to do. Somebody could have come in while I was at the Poodle Factory, got ahold of my key ring, had a locksmith copy everything, then dropped the keys back in my bag.”

“All without your noticing?”

“Why not? Say they swipe the keys while they’re inquiring about getting a dog groomed, and then they come back to make an appointment and return the keys. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“You leave your bag where anybody can get at it?”

“Not as a general rule, but who knows? Anyway, what the hell difference does it make? We’re not just locking the barn after the horse has been stolen. We’re checking the locks and dusting the bolt for fingerprints.” She frowned. “Maybe we should have done that.”

“Dusted for prints? Even if there’d been any, what good would they have done us? We’re not the cops, Carolyn.”

“Couldn’t you get Ray Kirschmann to run a check on a set of fingerprints?”

“Not out of the goodness of his heart, and you can’t really run a check on a single print unless you’ve already got a suspect in hand. You need a whole set of prints, which we wouldn’t have even if whoever it was left prints, which they probably didn’t. And they’d have to have been fingerprinted anyway for a check to reveal them, and-”

“Forget I mentioned it, okay?”

“Forget you mentioned what?”

“Can’t remember. Well, let’s just- shit, ” she said, and moved to answer the phone. “Hello? Huh? Hold on, I just-shit, they hung up.”

“Who?”

“The Nazi. I’m supposed to look in the mailbox. I looked, remember? All I got was my Con Ed bill and that was enough bad news for one day. And there was nothing in the slot at the Poodle Factory except a catalog of grooming supplies and a flier from one of the animal cruelty organizations. There won’t be another delivery today, will there?”

“Maybe they put something in the box without sending it through the mail, Carolyn. I know it’s a federal offense but I think we’re dealing with people who’ll stop at nothing.”

She gave me a look, then went out to the hall. She came back with a small envelope. It had been folded lengthwise for insertion through the small slot in the mailbox. She unfolded it.

“No name,” she said. “And no stamp.”

“And no return address either, and isn’t that a surprise? Why don’t you open it?”

She held it to the light, squinted at it. “Empty,” she said.

“Open it and make sure.”

“Okay, but what’s the point? For that matter, what’s the point of stuffing an empty envelope into somebody’s mailbox? Is it really a federal offense?”

“Yeah, but they’ll be tough to prosecute. What’s the matter?”

“Look!”

“Hairs,” I said, picking one up. “Now why in-”

“Oh, God, Bernie. Don’t you see what they are?” She gripped my elbows in her hands, stared up at me. “They’re the cat’s whiskers,” she said.

“And you’re the cat’s pajamas. I’m sorry. That just came out. Are they really? Why would anybody do that?”

“To convince us that they mean business.”

“Well, I’m convinced. I was convinced earlier when they managed to get the cat out of a locked room. They’ve got to be crazy, cutting off a cat’s whiskers.”

“That way they can prove they’ve actually got him.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. One set of whiskers looks a lot like another one. I figure you’ve seen one set, you’ve seen ’ em all. Jesus Christ.”

“What’s the matter?”

“We can’t get the Mondrian out of the Hewlett.”

“I know that.”

“But I know where there’s a Mondrian that I could steal.”

“Where, the Museum of Modern Art? They’ve got a couple. And there are a few in the Guggenheim too, aren’t there?”

“I know one in a private collection.”

“The Hewlett’s was in private hands, too. Now it’s in public hands, and unless it gets to be in our hands soon-”