Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"Well, I'll see you Monday," I said. "I hope I still have the money by then. Maybe I'll put it in my shoe in the meantime."

Brooklyn Information had a listing for a J. L. Garland on Cheever Place. The operator had no better idea than I if that was in Cobble Hill, but she said the exchange sounded about right, so I dialed it and got a chap with a sort of reedy voice. I asked to speak to Jessica and she came to the phone.

"This is Bernie Rhodenbarr," I told her. "I'll be there tomorrow, and I just wanted to confirm the time and place. Two-thirty at the Church of the Redeemer, is that right?"

"That's correct."

"Good. There are a couple of people I'd like you to call, if you would. To ask them to come. Neighbors of your grandfather's."

"I already posted a notice in the lobby. But you can call anyone yourself if you think it's advisable."

"I've already invited several people, as a matter of fact. I'd appreciate it if you'd make these particular calls, though. Could you write this down?"

She said she could and I gave her names and numbers and told her what to say. While I was doing this it occurred to me that she might have access to Abel's apartment. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to visit the place in her company, but it looked to be better than not going at all.

So I asked her if she'd been up to the place since the murder, and she hadn't. "I don't have keys," she said, "and the doorman said the police had left strict instructions not to admit anyone. I don't know that they'd let me up anyway. Why?"

"No reason," I said. "I just wondered. You'll make those calls?"

"Right away."

A few minutes after eight I presented myself at Abel Crowe's building. The doorman was a stranger to me, even as I presume I was to him. He looked as assertive as Astrid the Bouvier and I hoped I wouldn't have to take him out with a tranquilizer dart in the shoulder.

I had the dart pistol along, albeit not at hand. It was in my attaché case, along with burglar's tools, a fresh pair of palmless rubber gloves, and my wide-track Pumas. I was wearing black wingtips for a change, heavy and leather-soled and not particularly comfortable, but a better match than Weejuns or Pumas for my funereal three-button suit and the somber tie with the muted stripe.

"Reverend Rhodenbarr for Mrs. Pomerance in 11- J," I said. "She's expecting me."

"He had European manners," Mrs. Pomerance said. "Always a smile and a kind word. The heat of summer bothered him, and sometimes you could tell his feet hurt by the way he walked, but you would never hear a complaint out of him. Not like some others I could mention."

I wrote "real gent" and "never complained" in my little notebook and glanced up to catch Mrs. Pomerance sneaking a peek at me. She didn't know how she knew me and it was driving her crazy. Since I was clearly the sincere Brooklyn clergyman Jessica Garland had called her about, the obliging chap gathering material for Abel Crowe's eulogy, it hadn't occurred to her that I might also be the Stettiner boy who'd shared an elevator with her a day earlier. But if I was Reverend Rhodenbarr of Cobble Hill, why did I look familiar?

We sat on plump upholstered chairs in her over-furnished little apartment, surrounded by bright-eyed photographs of her grandchildren and a positive glut of bisque figurines, and for twenty minutes or so she alternately spoke well of the dead and ill of the living, doing a good job of dishing the building's other inhabitants. She lived alone, did Mrs. Pomerance; her beloved Moe was cutting velvet in that great sweatshop in the sky.

It was about eight-thirty when I turned down a second cup of coffee and got up from my chair. "You've been very helpful," I told her, truthfully enough. "I'll look forward to seeing you at the service tomorrow."

She walked me to the door, assuring me she wouldn't miss it. "I'll be interested to see if you use anything I told you," she said. "No, you have to turn the top lock, too. That's right. You want to know something? You remind me of somebody."

"The Stettiner boy?"

"You know him?"

I shook my head. "But I'm told there's a resemblance."

She closed the door after me and locked up. I walked down the hall, picked Abel's spring lock and let myself into his apartment. It was as I'd left it, but darker, of course, since no daylight was streaming through his windows.

I turned some lights on. I wouldn't have done this ordinarily, not without drawing drapes first, but the closest buildings across the way were also across the river, so who was going to see me?

I did a little basic snooping, but nothing like the full-scale search I'd given the place the day before. I went through the bedroom closet, looking at this and at that, and I paid a second visit to the cigar humidor. Then I browsed the bookshelves, looking not for stashed loot but simply for something to read.

What I would have liked was my Robert B. Parker novel. I would have enjoyed finding out what was going on with old Spenser, who was evidently capable of jogging without orthotics and lifting weights without acquiring a hernia. But light fiction was harder to find in that place than a 1913 V-Nickel, and any number of books which might have been interesting were less so because of my inability to read German, French or Latin.

I wound up reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism, which was not at all what I'd had in mind. The book itself was a cheap reading copy, a well-thumbed Modern Library edition, and either Abel himself or a previous owner had done a fair amount of underlining, along with the odd exclamation point in the margin when something struck his fancy.

"If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets," I read, "he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease."

I rather liked that, but a little Schopenhauer does go a long way. I thought about playing a little music, decided that having turned on some lights was as dangerously as I cared to live for the time being.

Some of that ancient Armagnac would have gone nicely. I had a little milk instead, and somewhere between ten and eleven I turned off the lights in the living room and went into the bedroom and got undressed.

His bed was neatly made. I suppose he must have made it up himself upon arising on the last morning of his life. I set the bedside alarm for two-thirty, crawled under the covers, switched off the lamp and went to sleep.

The alarm cut right into a dream. I don't recall what the dream was about, but it very likely concerned illegal entry of one sort or another because my mind promptly incorporated the wail of the clock into the dream, where it became a burglar alarm. I did a lot of fumbling for the off-switch in the dream before I tore myself free of it and fumbled for the actual clock, which had just about run down of its own accord by the time I got my hands on it.

Terrific. I sat for a few minutes in the dark, listening carefully, hoping no one would take undue note of the alarm. I don't suppose anybody even heard it. Those old buildings are pretty well soundproofed. I certainly didn't hear anything, and after a bit I switched on the lamp and got up and dressed.

This time, though, I put on the Pumas instead of the black wingtips. And I put my gloves on.

I let myself out of Abel's apartment, pushing the latch button so that the spring lock wouldn't engage when I closed the door. I walked down the hallway past the elevator to the stairwell, and I walked down seven flights of stairs and made my way to 4-B.

No light showed beneath the door. No sound was audible within. There was only one lock on the door, and you could have taken it to the circus and sold it as cotton candy. I let myself in.