Lawrence Block - The Burglar who thought he was Bogart

“Huh?”

“It was a phony,” he said. “A good phony, or so they tell me, but one thing’s sure and that’s that the Belgians never heard of him.”

He started to say something else, but the recording cut in, inviting me to deposit more money or hang up.

“Gimme your number there,” Ray said, “an’ I’ll call you back.”

I gave that the only answer it required, dropping a fresh quarter in the slot.

“Now why’d you go an’ do that, Bernie? I was all set to call you back. How often do I get to call anybody in Pig’s Eye, New Hampshire?”

“How often do I get to hear about dead Belgians in boarded-up buildings?”

“You didn’t ask how he died.”

“I didn’t even ask who he was. Sooner or later I’ll get around to asking why you’re telling me all this.”

“Sooner or later you won’t need to. He died on account of bein’ shot once at close range in the side of the head. Entry was through the ear, matter of fact. Slug was a twenty-two. Very professional job, all in all.”

“Killed where you found him?”

“Probably not, but that’s inconclusive because of the mess the kids made of the crime scene. Wherever he bought it, he was a long ways from Belgium when he died. A long ways from New Hampshire, too, but aren’t we all?”

“There’s a point here somewhere.”

“There is,” he agreed, “an’ I’m gettin’ to it. Nothin’ in his pockets but lint. No keys, no subway tokens, no nail clipper, no Swiss Army knife. But he’s wearin’ this nice tweed suit, an’ it turns out there’s a secret pocket in the jacket.”

“A secret pocket?”

“I don’t know what else you’d call it, bein’ as it ain’t where you’d expect to find a pocket, down near the bottom and around in the back. An’ it’s hard to spot unless you’re lookin’ for it, and it zips open an’ shut, an’ we found it an’ unzipped it, an’ you want to take a guess what we found?”

“Another passport.”

“Mind tellin’ me how you happened to know that?”

“You mean I got it right? It was a guess, Ray. I swear it was.”

“This one’s Italian, and the name on it is Vassily Souslik.”

“That doesn’t sound Italian,” I said. “Spell it.” He did, and it still didn’t sound Italian. “Vassily’s a Russian name, or Slavic, anyway. And Souslik sounds like something you’d order at the Russian Tea Room.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said, “not goin’ to fancy places myself. Anyway, it don’t matter, on account of it’s a fake, too. The Belgians never heard of Marmotte an’ the guineas never heard of Souslik. Same likeness an’ description on both of ’em, Bern, an’ they match the dead guy to a T. Who knows, maybe it’ll remind you of somebody you know. Five-nine, one-thirty, DOB fifteen October 1926, hair white, eyes hazel. That’s off the Belgian passport, an’ the Italian’s close enough. They got his eyes as brown, but maybe they haven’t got a word for hazel. Narrow face, little white mustache-this ringing any kind of a bell for you?”

“Not yet. Why should it?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” he said. “See, once we found the one secret pocket, we checked on the other side, and wouldn’t you know there was another secret pocket to match?”

“And to think some people doubt the existence of God.”

“An’ this one’s got a passport in it, too, an’ this one’s Canadian, an’ it’s no more legit than the other two. Issued at Winnipeg, it says in good old American English, except it was never issued at all, it was made by somebody with no official standing. Same face on the photo, though, an’ whyntcha see if you can tell me the name on the passport?”

“You tell me, Ray.”

“Hugo Candlemas,” he said. “Now what do you call that if it ain’t a big coincidence? I mean, the average person lives a lifetime without ever meetin’ up with a single Hugo Candlemas, an’ here I went an’ met up with two of ’em, both in the space of a couple of days. An’ both of ’em deader’n Kelsey’s nuts, too.”

“If Ripley were still alive,” I said, “and if he were still turning out ‘Believe It or Not’…”

“This guy don’t look a bit like the Candlemas we got on ice, Bernie.”

“Not even a faint family resemblance?”

“Not even related by marriage. You want to explain it to me, Bernie? How you took a good long look at the stiff at the morgue and ID’d him as a guy who turned up dead himself the next day?”

The recording cut in again, asking me to deposit more money if I wanted to go on talking. That voice speaks those very same words thousands upon thousands of times every day of the year, and how often does its message come as welcome news? Rarely, I’d have to say, but this was one of those rare occasions.

I glanced at my handful of coins, dropped them back in my pocket. “I’m out of change,” I said. “I’ll call you back.”

“For Christ’s sake, Bernie, I know you’re not in New Fucking Hampshire. Gimme your number and I’ll call you back.”

“It’s scratched off the dial,” I said. “I can’t make it out. Stay right where you are, Ray. I’ll get back to you.”

He was saying something else, but I didn’t wait for NYNEX to cut him off. I hung up on him.

When I called again a little later I didn’t get to talk to his wife. Ray answered the phone himself, and he must have been sitting on it. “It’s about time,” he said, “you son of a bitch.”

I didn’t say anything.

Neither did he for the longest moment, and then he said, “Hello?” He said it very tentatively, and I let it hang in the air for a beat before I replied.

“Hello yourself,” I said, “and aren’t you glad to hear my voice? Isn’t it suddenly more welcome in your ear than the commissioner’s, say, or some nosy parker from the Internal Affairs Division?”

“Jesus,” he said.

“I’m sorry it took so long, Ray. You wouldn’t believe how long it took to find change of a dollar.”

“Well, Wall Street on a Sunday. I knew that’s where you were.”

“You know me too well,” I said. “But getting back to Candlemas-”

“Yeah, let’s by all means get back to him.”

“You remember I was a little uncertain at the morgue.”

“You told me goin’ in you don’t like to look at dead people. I figured that was it.”

“I only made the ID to make your life easier. I let you know I couldn’t be sure it was him.”

“Hey, Bernie, c’mon. It’d be one thing if it was close, but these two stiffs couldn’t look less alike unless one of ’em was missin’ a head. How could you look at the one and say it was the other?”

I’d given myself time to come up with an answer. That’s why I’d hung up on him earlier. “I met them both at once,” I said. “And they both told me their names at the same time. I wasn’t paying that much attention to which name went with which face. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to their names. But it was the guy you found at Pitt and Madison that I thought was Candlemas, because he was the guy who bought the book from me.”

“So at the morgue…”

“At the morgue I got a look at him and it wasn’t the guy I was expecting to see. But it was somebody I recognized, so I figured maybe I got a wire crossed. Maybe I’d been thinking the one man was Hugo Candlemas, while all along it was the other man.”

“An’ you met both of these winners at your store?”

“That’s right.”

“An’ one of ’em bought a book from you, an’ what did the other one do?”

“Nothing.”

“They walked in together?”

“I didn’t even notice. I don’t think they were together, but I could be mistaken.”