Lawrence Block - The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"So you did."

"I thought you still had it. That's why I came here today in the first place, God damn it to hell. So how can you accuse me of killing Crowe?"

"I can't."

"But-"

I sent my eyes on a tour of my audience. I had their attention, all right. I looked straight at the murderer and saw nothing there but the same rapt interest that was evident on all their faces.

"I think you would have killed Abel," I told Colcannon, "if you had thought it would get you the coin back. For all I know you were planning to kill me this afternoon rather than pay me the twelve thousand dollars for the coin. But you didn't know he had the coin, and there was no way you could know."

"Unless Abel told him," Carolyn piped up. "Maybe Abel tried to sell the coin back to him."

I shook my head. "Not at that stage," I said. "He might have tried to work a deal with the insurance company, after the loss was reported. But it was too early for Abel to know that the loss wasn't covered by insurance, and far too early for him to think about selling the coin back to its presumptive owner.

"My first thought was that Abel had invited a prospective buyer to view the coin, and that he'd sufficiently misjudged the man's character to get murdered for his troubles. But was that the first thing Abel would do?"

I shook my head. "It wasn't," I answered myself. "Abel had just received a coin with a six-figure price tag. It had come from the hands of a thief who in turn had taken it from the house of a man who was not known to have possession of it. Before Abel did anything with the coin he had to determine whether or not it was genuine. Even though he could approach certainty by examining it closely, one doesn't take chances. Mr. Ruslander obtained the coin from a reputable museum, but even so he took the normal precaution of having it x-rayed to determine its authenticity, and Abel would do no less when dealing with a coin of doubtful provenance.

"Abel said at the time that such a determination was his first order of business. 'At a more favorable hour,' he said, he could verify the coin's legitimacy without leaving the building. I took this to mean that he could have an expert numismatist drop by to look at the coin and authenticate it, but experts of that sort don't habitually make house calls in the middle of the night.

"But that wasn't what he meant at all.

"He meant that there was someone in his building who could provide verification of the coin's bona fides. I thought there might be a numismatic expert in residence, and then I stopped to think about it and realized that Abel wouldn't want an expert to know that he had the coin. The 1913 V-Nickel's too rare and too celebrated, and the real experts in the coin field are highly ethical men who would balk at authenticating a stolen coin and being expected to keep quiet about it.

"No, what Abel required was not an opinion. He wanted an X ray."

I scanned my audience. The murderer remained quite expressionless, so much so that I almost doubted my conclusion. But not really. I glanced at Carolyn and saw her nodding intently. She had it figured now.

"Where do you go for an X ray? A lab? A hospital emergency room? A radiologist? You couldn't manage that without leaving Abel's building. A dentist? There's a dentist in the building, a Dr. Grieg. I believe he specializes in root canal work."

"He does," Mrs. Pomerance confirmed. "He doesn't hurt you, either, but he charges a fortune."

"They all charge a fortune," someone else said. "Grieg's no worse than the rest of them."

"Abel had false teeth," I said, "so I doubt he'd have needed Dr. Grieg's services, reasonable or otherwise. He might have become friendly with the man regardless and have used his X-ray equipment for examining rare coins and jewelry, but he wasn't a patient, and Abel doesn't seem to have developed intimate relationships with his neighbors.

"Anyway, Abel had a professional relationship with someone in the building who also had X-ray equipment. You see, Abel had trouble with his feet. I don't know if he had Morton's Foot or not, let alone chondromalacia, but he had bad feet and the weight he carried put an extra load on them. The shoes in his closet are all prescription items, with built-up arches and various oddities you can't buy in your friendly neighborhood Florsheims."

I looked at the murderer. His face was no longer expressionless. I saw something in his eyes that looked like alarm. The goatee and mustache kept me from seeing if he was keeping a stiff upper lip, but I tended to doubt it.

"Abel was a frequent patient of Murray Feinsinger's," I went on. "He must have been quite a contrast to all those runners and dancers, but his chart shows that he turned up in that office a great deal. He had an appointment the morning of the day he was killed."

"That's crazy!" Feinsinger was outraged. "He had no such appointment. He was my patient, it's true, and he was also my friend. That is why I am here at what I was told was to be a service for him, not an inquisition. He had no appointment with me on the day of his death."

"Funny. It's listed in your appointment book and on his chart." It hadn't been until early that morning, but why stress the point? "It wasn't the first time he used your X-ray equipment for nonpodiatric purposes, was it?"

Feinsinger shrugged. "Perhaps not. He would drop in occasionally and ask if he could use the machine. What did I care? He was a friend and a patient, so I let him use it. But he didn't come in that morning, or if he did I paid no attention. I certainly didn't kill him."

"Not then, no. You waited until your waiting room was clear during your lunch break. Then you went upstairs, and of course he let you in without a second thought. You asked for a look at the coin, and he showed it to you, and you killed him and took it."

"Why would I do that? I don't need money. My practice is better than it's ever been. I'm no coin collector, either. Why would I kill the man?"

"Avarice," I said. "No more and no less. You're no coin collector but you don't have to be one to know about the 1913 V-Nickel. Everybody knows about it. And the improvement in your practice just served to give you a taste for the good life-you told me that much yourself when you measured me for orthotics." And what would become of those orthotics now, I wondered. They'd already been ordered from the lab, but how could they find their way to me if my podiatrist was booked for homicide and jugged like a hare?

Never mind. "Spinoza had the answer," I said, opening the book to a place I'd marked. "'From the mere fact of our conceiving that another person takes delight in a thing, we shall ourselves love that thing and desire to take delight therein. But we assumed that the pleasure in question would be prevented by another's delight in its object; we shall, therefore, endeavor to prevent his possession thereof.'" I closed the book. "In other words, you saw how much Abel appreciated the coin and that made you hot for it yourself. You killed him and you took it, which is endeavoring to prevent his possession thereof if I ever heard of it."

"You can't prove this," he said. "You can't prove a thing."

"It's up to the police to prove things. But I don't think they'll have much trouble in this instance. You didn't just take the nickel. You also took the other articles I stole from Colcannon's safe-the emerald earrings and the Piaget watch. I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up somewhere in your office. In the locked center drawer of your desk, for instance."

He stared. "You put them there."

"How could I do a thing like that? That's not all you took from Abel. You also took his keys so that you could lock up after you left. That delayed the discovery of the body and helped you cover your tracks. I would have thought you'd have the sense to get rid of the keys."