Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian

“It sounds as though she was trying to comfort you.”

“Well, it worked, Bern. I feel a lot better about the cat. I still don’t know if I’m ever gonna see him again, but I’m not crazy the way I was. Talking with Alison about it last night helped a lot, and now the phone call. Just so I know nothing terrible’s gonna happen to the cat-”

I barely heard the door, but I did look up and see him, and as he approached I sshhhed Carolyn, and she broke off in the middle of a sentence and turned to see why I was interrupting her.

“Shit,” she said. “Hello, Ray.”

“Hello, yourself,” said the best cop money can buy. “You know, you find out who your friends are in this business. Here’s a couple of people I know for years, and all I gotta do is walk in the room and one says sshhh and the other says shit. What’s gonna happen to the cat, Carolyn?”

“Nothing,” she said. Years ago she’d heard somewhere that the best defense is a good offense, and she’d never forgotten it. “The real question is what’s gonna happen to Bernie if his so-called old friends keep arresting him every time he turns around. You ever hear of police harassment, Ray?”

“Just be grateful I never heard of police brutality, Carolyn. Whyntcha take a hike, huh? Stretch your legs. They could use it.”

“If you’re gonna do short jokes, Ray, I’ll do asshole jokes, and where’ll that leave you?”

“Jesus, Bern,” he said. “Can’t you get her to act like a lady?”

“I’ve been working at it. What do you want, Ray?”

“About three minutes of conversation. Private conversation. If she wants to stick around, I suppose we could go in your back room.”

“No, I’ll go,” Carolyn said. “I gotta use the bathroom anyway.”

“Now that you mention it, so do I. No, you go ahead, Carolyn. Bernie an’ I’ll talk, so you take your time in there.” He waited until she had left the room, then laid a hand on the art book that Elspeth Peters had left on my counter. It was closed now, no longer open to the Mondrian reproduction. “Pictures,” he said. “Right?”

“Very good, Ray.”

“Like the one you lifted from Onderdonk’s place?”

“What are you talking about?”

“A guy named Mondrian,” he said, except he pronounced it Moon-drain. “Used to hang over the fireplace and covered by $350,000 insurance.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It is, isn’t it? Far as they can tell so far, that’s the only thing that was stolen. Pretty good-sized paintin’, white background, black lines crisscrossin’, a little color here an’ there.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“Oh? No kiddin’.”

“When I appraised his library. It was hanging over the fireplace.” I thought for a moment. “I think he said something about sending it out for framing.”

“Yeah, it needed a new frame.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ll tell you how it is, Bernie. The picture frame from the Moondrain was in the closet with Onderdonk’s body, all broken into pieces. There was the aluminum frame, pulled apart, and there was what they call the stretcher that the canvas is attached to, except it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t? It wasn’t what?”

“Attached. Somebody cut the paintin’ off the stretcher, but there was enough left so that a guy from the insurance company only had to take one look to know it was the Moondrain. To me it didn’t look like much. Just about an inch-wide strip of canvas all the way around, white with black dashes here and there like Morse code, and I think one strip of red. My guess is you rolled it and wore it out of the buildin’ under your clothes.”

“I never touched it.”

“Uh-huh. You musta been in some kind of rush to cut it out of the frame instead of takin’ the time to unfasten the staples. That way you coulda got the whole canvas. I don’t figure you killed him, Bern. I been thinkin’ about that, and I don’t think you did it.”

“Thanks.”

“But I know you were there and you musta got the paintin’. Maybe you heard somebody comin’ and that’s why you rushed and cut it outta the frame. Maybe you left the frame hangin’ on the wall an’ left Onderdonk tied up, and somebody else stuck the frame in the closet and killed him while they were at it.”

“Why would anybody do that?”

“Who knows what people’ll do? This is a crazy world with crazy people in it.”

“Amen.”

“The point is, I figure you got the Moondrain.”

“Mondrian. Not Moondrain. Mondrian.”

“What’s the difference? I could call him Pablo Fuckin’ Picasso and we’d still know who we were talkin’ about. I figure you got it, Bern, and if you haven’t got it I figure you can get it, and that’s why I’m here on my own time when I oughta be home with my feet up and the TV on.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because there’s a reward,” he said. “The insurance company’s a bunch of cheap bastards, the reward’s only ten percent, but what’s ten percent of $350,000?”

“Thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“Bookstore goes under, Bern, you can always become an accountant. You’re gonna need some cash to get out from under this murder rap, right? Money for your lawyer, money for costs. The hell, everybody needs money, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t have to go out stealin’ in the first place. So you come up with the paintin’ and I haul it in for the reward and we split.”

“How do we split?”

“ Bern, was I ever greedy? Fifty-fifty’s how we split an’ that way everybody’s happy. You wash my hand, I’ll scratch your back, you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“So we’re talkin’ seventeen-five apiece, and I’ll tell you, Bern, you’re not gonna beat that. All this publicity, a murder and all, you can’t run out and find a buyer for it. And forget about workin’ a deal where you sell it back to the insurance company, because these bastards set traps and all you’ll wind up with is your tit in a wringer. Of course maybe you stole it to order, maybe you got a customer waitin’, but can you take a chance with him? In the first place he could cross you, and in the second place you can take some of the pressure off your own self if the insurance company gets the picture back.”

“You’ve got it all worked out.”

“Well,” he said, “a man’s got to think for himself. Another thing is maybe you already fenced it, stole it to order and turned it over the same night.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Say, what’s she doin’ in there, Bernie?”

“Answering a call of nature, I suppose.”

“Yeah, well, I wish she’d shit or get off the pot. My back teeth are floatin’. What I was sayin’, if you already offed the Moondrain, what you got to do is steal it back.”

“From the person I sold it to?”

“Or from the person he sold it to, if it passed on down the line. I’m tellin’ you, Bernie, this case’ll quiet down a lot if the Moondrain gets recovered. That’ll tend to separate the burglary aspect from the murder aspect, and maybe it’ll get people lookin’ elsewhere than yourself for the killer.”

“It’ll also put half of thirty-five thousand dollars in your pocket, Ray.”

“And the other half in yours, and don’t forget it. What the hell happened to Carolyn? Maybe I better go see if she fell in.”

Whereupon my favorite dog groomer burst breathless into the room, hitching at the belt of her slacks with one hand, holding the other up with the palm facing toward us.

She said, “Bernie, there’s been a disaster. Ray, don’t go in there, don’t even think about it. Bernie, what I did, I flushed a bloody tampon. I thought it’d be all right, and everything blocked up and backed up and there’s shit all over the floor and it’s still running. I tried to clean up but I only made it worse. Bernie, can you help me? I’m afraid it’s gonna flood the whole store.”