Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"Carolyn will explain everything," I said. And I didn't envy her a bit.

All of a sudden I was taking cabs a lot. I took the third of the day to the corner of Eighteenth Street and Ninth Avenue. We made good time, and by two-fifteen I was staked out across the street from the heavy iron gate marked 4421?2. At that very moment he was supposed to be on the phone, and perhaps he was, because ten minutes later the gate swung open and Herbert Franklin Colcannon emerged from it. I was in a shadowy doorway where he couldn't have seen me, but he didn't even look in my direction, turning to his left and striding purposefully toward Tenth Avenue, either to catch a cab or because he had a car parked there.

I didn't care which it was. I let him reach the corner, then jogged across the street-I was wearing my Pumas, their excessive width notwithstanding. It was a bright sunny afternoon and there were people on the street, but that didn't bother me this time. I knew which of my skeleton keys would do for the lock on the iron gate, since I'd already determined that Tuesday night, so I had the key in hand as I crossed the street and I was through the gate and had it locked behind me in a matter of seconds.

I wasn't wearing rubber gloves, either. This time around I didn't care about prints. If things went wrong they'd go wrong dramatically, and fingerprints would be the least of my worries. If things went right, nobody would give a damn where my fingers had been.

Once I was through the gate and into the tunnel I unsnapped the locks on my attaché case and took the gun from it.

Nasty things, guns. This one looked to have been made of blued steel, but its surface was warmer to the touch. The material was some sort of high-impact phenolic resin. I suppose I could have carried it onto an airplane. I let my hand accustom itself to the feel of the weapon, checked its load, and made my way through the tunnel.

I wanted that gun in my hand in case Astrid was spending the afternoon in the garden. I didn't expect that would be the case, but the bitch was attack-trained and I wasn't, and I didn't want to be unprepared for an encounter with her. At the mouth of the tunnel I paused with the gun at my side and scanned the garden carefully.

No Astrid. No people, either. I slipped the gun beneath the waistband of my trousers where my jacket would screen it from view and then walked quickly across the flagstone patio with scarcely a glance at the tulips and daffodils, the little fishpond, the semicircular bench.

With a garden like that, why would a man go chasing phantom coins all over the place? Of course it might not be his garden, it might indeed belong to the front house, but surely he could sit in it, couldn't he?

I mounted the stoop and rang the bell. I'd seen him leave, but how did I know he'd been alone there? I put my ear to the door and listened, and I heard some barking that I could have heard without putting my ear to the door, and then a rumbling sound as if something bulky had just fallen down a flight of stairs. A chest of drawers, say, or an excitable Bouvier des Flandres. The barking was repeated and got louder, and all I had between me and Astrid was a wooden door about two inches thick.

Which I promptly set about opening.

The locks had been easy the first time, and they're always easier the second time around. My fingers remembered their inner workings, and I knocked them off one-two-three in not many more seconds than it takes to tell about it. If anyone had watched from a rear window of the front house, say, I don't think he'd have had cause for suspicion.

I turned the knob, opened the door the merest fraction of an inch. The barking increased in volume and climbed in pitch. There was a manic intensity in it now-or perhaps it just sounded that way to me.

I drew the gun, checked the load once more.

Was there any way I could avoid doing this? Couldn't I just close the door and lock up after myself and get the hell out? Maybe I could rush up to Madison and Seventy-ninth, maybe Colcannon and I could work something out, maybe-

Quit stalling, Rhodenbarr.

I leveled the gun in my right hand, held the doorknob in my left. In one motion I threw the door violently inward. The dog-a huge black beast, and utterly ferocious to look upon-recoiled reflexively, then gathered herself to spring at my throat.

I pointed the gun and fired.

The dart went right where I'd aimed it, taking Astrid in the left shoulder. Bouviers have a dense curly coat and there was no way to be sure the dart wouldn't get deflected en route, and for a moment I thought it had because she seemed unaffected by it.

Then the tranquilizer hit. Astrid was about halfway into her spring, forepaws off the ground, when all at once her eyes glazed over and her jaw went slack. Her paws worked in the air like the feet of the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons when he runs off a cliff and tries to keep going. Astrid couldn't keep going. She settled back down again, her spring unsprung, and then she wobbled like a child in high heels, and finally she uttered a sort of whimpery sound and pitched over onto her side.

How do you check a dog's pulse? I actually tried, fumbling around with what I don't suppose you call a wrist when you're dealing with a dog, but I gave that up because I didn't know what I was doing, and what difference did it make, anyway? If she was alive all I could do was let her sleep it off, and if she was dead there was nothing anybody could do for her, and my own course of action was the same in either case.

And I didn't have all the time in the world, either.

I raced up the stairs. The bedroom was in good order now, I saw. Sheets of plywood had been secured over the broken skylight, and the pastoral landscape once again hung on the wall, hiding the safe. I took it from its hook, fluffy sheep and rose-cheeked shepherdess and all, and placed it on the bed.

I wasn't sure if I'd remember the safe's combination or not. I'd thought about it in the cab on the way over, trying to put all the numbers together in the proper sequence, but once I was up there with my fingers on the dial I took the problem away from my mind and entrusted it to my hands, and they remembered. I opened the safe as if its combination were written out for me.

Five minutes later-well, no more than ten, anyway-I was hanging Little Bo Peep back where she belonged. I did a couple of other things, and in the second-floor library I sat at a leather-topped kneehole desk and used a modern reproduction of an old brass telephone to call Narrowback Gallery. I gave a progress report and established that Colcannon had not called since Carolyn sent him to Madison and Seventy-ninth.

I asked how long Astrid was likely to remain unconscious. "I don't know," Carolyn admitted. "I bought the dart gun because it's supposed to be a good thing to have around, but I never used the thing. I didn't think you would need it, to tell you the truth. She's always a perfect lady when I give her a bath. She never even growls."

"Well, she was ready to kill a few minutes ago."

"It's a territorial thing, I guess. If she hadn't been on her own turf she'd have been gentle."

"If she hadn't been on her own turf," I said, "we wouldn't have met. I just wish I knew how much time I've got."

"Maybe you'd better not take any longer than you have to. That stuff works longer on a small dog than a large one, and Astrid's no Yorkie."

"No kidding. She's the Hound of the goddamn Baskervilles, is what she is."

"Well, get done as quickly as you can, Bern. If you have to use a second dart it might kill her. Or it might not work at all, or I don't know what."

I hung up and made another phone call, this one to the pay phone at Squires coffee shop at Madison and Seventy-ninth. I asked the woman who answered if she would summon Mr. Madison to the phone, and explained she'd be likely to find him at one of the rear booths. A moment later he said, "Well? Where are you?"