Lawrence Block - The Burglar who thought he was Bogart

“Less confusing for me as well,” he said. “I met you as Bill Thompson, and it’s hard to think of you as anyone else. What do they call you, anyway? Bernard? Bernie? Barney?”

“I’ll answer to almost anything. Bill, if you’d rather.”

“Oh, I can’t call you Bill, now that I know it’s not your name.” He looked me over carefully. “What’s your favorite animal?” he demanded.

“My favorite animal? Gee, I don’t know. I never really thought about it.”

“Never?”

He made me feel I’d wasted a lifetime thinking about relativity and quantum theory and dialectical materialism when I should have been selecting a favorite animal. “Well, I guess I must have given it a little thought,” I admitted.

“What’s your favorite?”

“It depends. For eating I’d go with cows, I guess, or sheep. Tofu’s not an animal, is it? No, of course not. It’s not even a bird. Uh…”

“Not to eat.”

“Right. Well, let’s see. Different animals for different things, I’d have to say. I have a cat working for me in the store, fine mouser. If you’re going to have an animal around a bookshop I don’t see how you could do better than a cat. Rabbits are cute, but a rabbit in a bookstore would be a disaster. They, uh, gnaw things. Books, for instance. Now, for swimming in figure eights, well, you can’t beat the polar bear I was watching the other day. Eight eight eight eight eight, just like a repeating decimal, you’d have sworn he thought he was the square root of minus something-or-other.”

His face held an expression of long-suffering. “The animal you identify with,” he said. “The animal you see yourself as.”

“Oh.” I thought it over. “I guess I’ve always seen myself as a person,” I said.

“If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?”

“I guess that would depend on what kind of animal I was. I know, I’m supposed to think hypothetically, but I seem to be having trouble. I’m sorry. Is this important?”

“No, of course not. Let’s just forget it.”

“No, dammit,” I said, “that’s not right. I ought to be able to figure this out.”

“I was the mouse,” he said patiently. “Wood was the woodchuck. Cappy Hoberman was the ram.”

“And Bateman was the rabbit and Renwick was the cat.”

“Rennick.”

“Right, Rennick. So you think I ought to have an animal code name?”

“It’s really not important,” he said. “I was just making conversation.”

“No, I’d be glad to have one,” I said, “but maybe it’s not the sort of thing a person should pick for himself. If you wanted to pick a name for me…”

“Hmmm,” he said, and stroked his chin with his fingertips. “Something in the weasel family, I think.”

“Something in the weasel family?”

“I would think so. An otter?”

“An otter?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. Not an otter. The playful quality is there, to be sure, but the otter’s altogether too straightforward. I’d say not an otter.”

“Good,” I said. “Tastes of dog, anyway.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.”

“Something furtive,” he said. He put his palms together in front of his chest and made a sort of side-to-side motion. “Something nocturnal, something devious, something predatory. Something, oh, burglarous.”

“Burglarous,” I said.

“Not a wolverine, that’s altogether too rapacious. Nor a mink, I don’t believe. A badger?” He looked at me. “Not a badger. Perhaps a ferret.”

“A ferret?”

“Not a ferret. You know what? I think a weasel, a plain old garden-variety weasel.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You’re the weasel,” he said. He clapped me on the back. “Come on, weasel. Have a seat, make yourself comfortable. There’s coffee made.”

“Thank God,” I said.

The weasel was in the kitchen for a little over a half hour, passing on some facts and guesses to the mouse, drinking coffee, and listening to some reminiscences of skulduggery in the Balkans, circa 1950. It was absorbing and entertaining, and if not everything he told me was a hundred percent factual, well, that made us even.

It was close to midnight when I put down my coffee cup, got to my feet, and grabbed up my Braniff bag. “I’d better be going,” I said. “I have a feeling we’re getting somewhere, but maybe we shouldn’t bother. If Candlemas killed Hoberman, we don’t have to worry that he got away with it. He’s dead himself. He wasn’t my partner, and he forfeited any claim on my loyalties when he became a murderer. It might be interesting to know who killed him, but I can’t say it’s vitally important to me.”

“That’s a point.”

“Well, we can just take it a day at a time,” I said, “and see what happens. But I’m beat. I want to get on home.”

“I’ll see you out.”

I told him he didn’t have to go to the trouble, and he assured me it was no trouble. The next thing I knew we were out in the hall, waiting for the elevator I’d been careful not to ring for.

Hell.

I’d thought of having Carolyn call his number at a predetermined time, then contriving to be out in the hall waiting for the elevator at just that moment. But I’d decided it wouldn’t work. For one thing, trying to synchronize something like that is just about impossible. If the phone call comes a minute too early or late, the whole scheme falls flat. For another, his apartment was all the way down the hall, and you probably couldn’t hear his phone if you were standing by the elevator shaft.

“Is that thing not coming?” he said, after we’d waited for a few minutes.

“It may be a while. Look, there’s no reason for you to stand out here in your robe.”

“I’m not going to abandon you,” he said firmly. “You know, the same damned thing happened last time you were here.” He chuckled. “Maybe you don’t know how to ring that thing,” he said, and reached to do it himself.

I caught hold of his wrist. “I’ll level with you,” I said.

“Oh?”

“This is a genuinely difficult building to get into,” I said, “and now that I’m inside it, I hate to see the opportunity go to waste.”

“What do you mean?” He studied me with those see-through-everything eyes of his. “You can’t be planning another visit to that apartment on the eighth floor.”

I shook my head. “Whatever the guy had down there,” I said, “he doesn’t have it anymore, and I didn’t see anything else terribly exciting in his place. But there’s a couple on Nineteen, he’s a muni bond specialist in a big brokerage house downtown, and I think she’s a Vanderbilt on her mother’s side. And I happen to know they’re in Quogue for the weekend.”

“Ha!” he cried, delighted. “You’re the weasel, all right.”

“Of course, if they’re by any chance particular friends of yours…”

“Not at all, weasel, not at all. I don’t know anyone on the nineteenth floor, certainly not a huckster of municipal bonds. But you’ll be careful, won’t you? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It’s always dangerous,” I said, flashing a raffish grin. “That’s what makes it interesting.”

“Oh, what a weasel! Can’t keep him out of the chicken yard.”

“But I’ll be careful,” I assured him. “I’ll be in and out in an hour, and this”-I patted the flight bag-“should weigh a little more then than it does now.”

“And then you’ll simply head for home?”

“I’ll take the stairs this far,” I said, “for the elevator operator’s benefit. So if you happen to see me in the hallway an hour or so from now, don’t be alarmed.”

“I hope to be sleeping soundly by then,” he said. “I’ll rest easy, secure in the knowledge that the weasel is hard at work six stories above me.” He thrust his hand at me. “Good hunting, weasel.”