Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian

“Forget that one. The one I’m talking about is still in a private collection, because I saw it last night.”

She looked at me. “I know you went out last night.”

“Right.”

“But you didn’t tell me what you did.”

“Well, you can probably guess. But what I did first, what got me into the building, is I appraised a man’s library. A nice fellow named Onderdonk, he paid me two hundred dollars to tell him what his books were worth.”

“Were they worth much?”

“Not compared to what he had hanging on his wall. He had a Mondrian, among other things.”

“Like the one in the Hewlett?”

“Well, who knows? It was about the same size and shape and I think the colors were the same, but maybe they’d look completely different to an expert. The thing is, if I could get in there and steal his Mondrian-”

“They’ll know it’s not the right one because it’ll still be on the wall at the Hewlett.”

“Yeah, but will they want to argue the point? If we can hand them a genuine Mondrian worth whatever it is, a quarter of a million is the figure they came up with-”

“Is it really worth that much?”

“I have no idea. The art market’s down these days but that’s about as much as I know. If we can give them a Mondrian in exchange for a stolen cat, don’t you think they’d go for it? They’d have to be crazy to turn it down.”

“We already know they’re crazy.”

“Well, they’d also have to be stupid, and they couldn’t be too stupid if they managed to swipe the cat.” I grabbed her phone book, looked up Onderdonk’s number, dialed it. I let it ring a dozen times and nobody answered it. “He’s out,” I said. “Now let’s just hope he stays out for a while.”

“What are you gonna do, Bern?”

“I’m going home,” I said, “and I’m going to change my clothes and put some handy gadgets into my pockets-”

“Burglar’s tools.”

“And then I’m going to the Charlemagne, and I’d better get there before four or someone’ll recognize me, the doorman or the concierge or the elevator operator. But maybe they won’t. I was wearing a suit last night and I’ll dress down this time around, but even so I’d rather get there before four.”

“How are you going to get in, Bern? Isn’t that one of those places that’s tighter than Fort Knox?”

“Well, look,” I said, “I never told you it was going to be easy.”

I hurried uptown and changed into chinos and a short-sleeved shirt that would have been an Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why.

I added a pair of rundown running shoes, filled my pockets with burglar’s tools-an attaché case wouldn’t fit the image I was trying to project. I got out a clipboard and mounted a yellow pad on it, then set it aside.

I dialed Onderdonk’s number again and let it ring. Nobody answered. I looked up another number and no one answered it, either. I tried a third number and a woman answered midway through the fourth ring. I asked if Mr. Hodpepper was in, and she said I had the wrong number, but that’s what she thought.

I stopped at a florist on Seventy-second and picked up an assortment for $4.98. It struck me, as it has often struck me in the past, that flowers haven’t gone up much in price over the years, to the point where they’re one of the few things left that give you your money’s worth.

I asked for a small blank card, wrote Leona Tremaine on the envelope, and inscribed the card Fondly, Donald Brown. (I thought of signing it Howard Hodpepper but sanity prevailed, as it now and then does.) I paid for the flowers, taped the card to the wrapping paper, and went outside to hail a cab.

It dropped me on Madison Avenue around the corner from the Charlemagne. A florist’s delivery boy does not, after all, arrive by taxi. I walked to the building’s front entrance and moved past the doorman to the concierge.

“Got a delivery,” I said, and read from the card. “Leona Tremaine, it says.”

“I’ll see she gets them,” he said, reaching for the bouquet. I drew it back.

“I’m supposed to deliver ’em in person.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll get ’em.”

“Case there’s a reply,” I said.

“He wants his tip,” the doorman interposed. “That’s all he wants.”

“From Tremaine?” the concierge said, and he and the doorman exchanged smiles. “Suit yourself,” he told me, and picked up the intercom phone. “Miz Tremaine? Delivery for you, looks like flowers. The delivery boy’s bringing them up. Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and shook his head. “Go on up,” he said. “Elevator’s over there. It’s apartment 9-C.”

I glanced at my watch in the elevator. The timing, I thought, could not have been better. It was three-thirty. The doorman, the concierge and the elevator operator were not the crew who’d seen me enter last night, nor had they been around when I left with Appling’s stamps in my attaché case. And in half an hour they’d go off duty, before they’d had a chance to wonder why the kid with the flowers was spending so much time in Ms. Tremaine’s apartment. The crew that relieved them wouldn’t realize I’d come delivering flowers and would assume I’d had legitimate business with some other tenant. Anyway, they don’t hassle you as much on the way out, assuming you must have been okay to get past their security the first time around. It’s different if you try to carry out the furniture, of course, but generally speaking getting in’s the hard part.

The elevator stopped on Nine and the operator pointed at the appropriate door. I thanked him and went and stood in front of it, waiting for the sound of the door closing. It didn’t close. Of course it didn’t. They waited until the tenant opened the door. Well, she was expecting the flowers anyway, so what was I waiting for?

I poked the doorbell. Chimes sounded within, and after a moment the door opened. The woman who answered it had improbable auburn hair and a face that had fallen one more time than it had been lifted. She was wearing a sort of dressing gown with an oriental motif and she had a look about her of someone who had just smelled something unseemly.

“Flowers,” she said. “Now are you quite sure those are for me?”

“Ms. Leona Tremaine?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then they’re for you.”

I was still listening for the sound of the elevator door, and I was beginning to realize I wasn’t going to hear it. And why should I? He wasn’t going anywhere, he’d wait right there until she’d taken the flowers and given me my tip, and then he’d whisk me downstairs again. Terrific. I’d found a way to get into the Charlemagne but I still needed a way to stay there.

“I can’t think who’d send me flowers,” she said, taking the wrapped bouquet from me. “Unless it might be my sister’s boy Lewis, but why would he take a notion of sending me flowers? There must be some mistake.”

“There’s a card,” I said.

“Oh, there’s a card,” she said, discovering it for herself. “Just wait a moment. Let me see if there hasn’t been some mistake here. No, that’s my name, Leona Tremaine. Now let me open this.”

Didn’t anyone else in the goddamned building want the elevator? Would nothing summon this putz out of his reverie and float him away to another floor?

“‘Fondly, Donald Brown,’” she read aloud. “Donald Brown. Donald. Brown. Donald Brown. Now who could that be?”

“Uh.”