Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

She raised her penciled eyebrows. "Dial-a-Prayer," she said.

"Call it yourself if you don't believe me."

"And that's why you're going to help Rabbit."

"It's a reason. Won't it do?"

"Yeah," she said. "I guess it will. I guess it'll have to."

Marilyn wanted to leave right away. She had to see a lawyer about getting Rabbit out on bail, which might or might not be possible, and she said something about getting in touch with Harlan Reese. Then, when I warned her that Ray Kirschmann might be lurking in the lobby or laying doggo across the street, she reversed direction completely.

"Oh, God," she said. "Maybe what I oughta do is stay right here."

I looked at her, a veritable vision in rouge et noir, and I inhaled her scent, and I listened with amazement to my very own voice telling her I didn't think that was a good idea. "You have things to do," I said, "and I have things to do, and we'd better go do them. Besides, Ray could turn ornery and come back with a warrant and a crowbar, and then the bathroom wouldn't be sacrosanct anymore. One thing, though. Maybe you should leave the gun here."

She shook her head. "It doesn't belong to me. My boss keeps it in case we get held up. I think she just likes having it, you know? I mean who's gonna hold up a beauty parlor?"

"Is that where you work?"

She nodded. "Hair Apparent. There's four operators plus Magda, she's the owner. I'm working tomorrow. I'll put the gun back then."

"Good. Because if the police found it in your purse-"

"I know."

We were in the hallway and I was locking the last of the locks when the phone started ringing. I gritted my teeth. If I unlocked everything and raced I still wouldn't get to the phone on time, and if I did it would just be somebody offering me free home delivery of the Newark Star-Ledger. The hell with it.

The elevator took us down past the lobby to the basement. We went through the laundry room and down a dimly lit corridor to the service entrance. I held the door for her and she climbed a short flight of stairs, opened her red-and-black umbrella, and disappeared into the night.

Back in my apartment, I stood for a moment glaring at my phone and wondering how many times it had rung while I was letting Marilyn out. It wasn't ringing now, and it was getting late enough to discourage me from placing many calls of my own. I tried one, dialing Carolyn's number, and wasn't surprised when nobody answered.

The four little cups of espresso were starting to wear off and I poured myself a healthy hooker of straight Scotch to speed them on their way. I drank it down, then got a taller glass from the cupboard and stirred an ounce or two of Scotch into four or five ounces of milk. The perfect nightcap-the milk coats your stomach while the Scotch rots your liver.

The phone rang.

I leaped for it, then made myself draw a calming breath before lifting the receiver to my ear. A male voice, one I'd last heard almost twenty-two hours ago, said, "Rhodenbarr? I want the nickel."

"Who doesn't?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everybody wants it. I wouldn't mind getting my own hands on it."

"Don't joke with me. I know you have the coin."

"I had it. I don't have it anymore."

There was a pause, and for a moment I thought I'd lost him. Then he said, "You're lying."

"No. Do you think I'm crazy enough to pop it in the same pocket as the keys and the Saint Christopher medal? I wouldn't do that, and I wouldn't keep it around the house, either. Not with all the burglaries you hear about in this town."

This last didn't win a chuckle. "You have access to the coin?"

"It's where I can get it."

"Get it now," he urged. "And name your price and we will arrange a meeting. I have the rest of the night at my disposal, and-"

"I'm afraid I can't say the same," I said. "If I don't get enough sleep I'm a terrible grouch the next day. Anyway, I couldn't get hold of the coin at this hour even if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm afraid it'll have to be tomorrow."

"What time tomorrow?"

"That's hard to say. Give me a number where I can reach you."

This time I got the chuckle. "I think not, Rhodenbarr. It will be better if I continue to call you. Estimate how much time you'll need to gain possession of the coin, then return to your apartment at an appointed hour and I'll telephone you. Merely tell me the hour."

In other words, be at a specific place at a specific time with the coin in my hand. "Inconvenient," I said. "Tell you what. There's another number where I'll be tomorrow afternoon at two."

"And the number?"

I gave him Carolyn's. She sublets her rent-controlled apartment from a man named Nathan Aranow, and as he remains the tenant of record her phone is listed in his name. (Half the people in New York operate this way. The other half pay $500 a month for a studio apartment.) I didn't think he could get the name and address from the number, and if he did how was he going to find Nathan Aranow? Carolyn simply mailed a money order in that name to her landlord every month. For all any of us knew, Nathan Aranow had been wiped out years ago in a flash flood.

He repeated the number. "And the coin," he said. "Who else knows you have it?"

"Nobody."

"You had no accomplice?"

"I always work alone."

"And you haven't spoken to anyone?"

"I've spoken to plenty of people, but not about the coin."

"So no one else knows you have it."

"As far as I know," I said, "nobody else even knows it's missing. Just you and I and Herbert Franklin Colcannon, unless he's told somebody, and I don't think he has." Or else Ray Kirschmann would have been sniffing after half a million dollars, and if that had been the case he'd have been drooling all over my rug. "He might not report it, not if it wasn't insured. And if he had reasons."

"I'm sure he didn't report it."

"Of course Rabbit might talk."

"Rabbit?"

"George Edward Margate. Isn't that why you fingered the Colcannon place for him? You should have picked someone who knew how to punch a safe. I guess the nickel was supposed to be your finder's fee for setting up the job."

A long low chuckle. "Clever," he said. "I should have made my arrangements with you in the first place."

"You certainly should have. It might help if I knew your name."

"It might," he said. "I'll call you tomorrow at two o'clock. That number's in the Village, isn't it?"

"I own a bookstore on East Eleventh Street. There's two phones, one listed and one unlisted. I gave you the number of the unlisted one."

"Shall I simply meet you at your store, then?"

"No," I said. "Call the number at two."

I hung up and returned to my Scotch and milk. The milk was warmish, but that's supposed to be an advantage when you're trying to go to sleep. I sat down and sipped and thought that I'd done rather a lot of lying. Well, Dial-a-Prayer hadn't said anything provocative about honesty. Just being of service to one's fellow man, and if I wasn't that, then what was I?

The phone rang. I picked it up and it was Carolyn. "Been calling you all night," she said. "What the hell happened to you, Bernie? Either nobody answered or the line was busy, or once in a while I would get a wrong number. What's been happening?"

"Everything."

"Are you gonna have to get glasses?"

"Glasses?"

"Didn't you say you were going to the eye doctor?"

"Oh. Yeah, right."

"You have to get glasses?"

"No, but he said I should stop reading in the dark."

"I could have told you that. You okay? You sound a little funny."

She sounded about half lit, but I didn't bother to mention it. "I'm fine," I said. "Just exhausted. A lot of things have happened but I can't really talk now."