Lawrence Block: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"I did," he said, then caught himself and shook his head violently. "I did not take any keys," he said, trying to cover. "I did not kill him, I did not take the coin, I did not take any jewelry, and I most certainly did not take any keys."

"You certainly didn't get rid of them. They're in the drawer with the earrings and the watch." And they were, too. Not the set he'd taken with him, but who was to know that?

Well, he knew it. "You've framed me," he said. "You planted those things."

"Did I plant the nickel, too?"

"You won't find the nickel in my possession."

"Are you sure of that? When the police search the place thoroughly? When they turn it upside down and know what they're looking for? Are you absolutely certain they won't find it? Think it over."

He thought about it, and I guess I was convincing and evidently he had a higher opinion of the cops' ability to find a needle in a haystack than I did, because before anybody knew what was happening he pushed his chair back and shoved past the woman seated beside him and was on his way to the door.

Ray had his gun out almost immediately, but he was in the wrong position and there were too many people between him and Feinsinger, all of them on their feet and making noise. I could have let him go-how far was he going to run, orthotics or no?

Instead I reached under my jacket and got my gun, yelled for him to stop, and when he didn't I tranquilized the son of a bitch.

"What we want is Irish coffee," Carolyn said, "and where we want to go for it is McBell's."

McBell's is in the Village, on Sixth Avenue a couple of blocks below Eighth Street, and we went there by cab. It's not terribly hard to find a Brooklyn cabbie willing to go to Manhattan, although it can be quite a trick convincing a Manhattan cabbie to go to Brooklyn, which just proves once again that we live in an inequitable universe, and when was that ever news?

By this time the tumult and the shouting had died and the captives and the kings had departed, the kings in this case being Ray Kirschmann and a couple of stalwarts from the local precinct whom he'd called to help him with the captives. There were enough of the latter to go around-Murray Feinsinger, Herbert Franklin Colcannon, George Edward "Rabbit" Margate, and, lest we forget, Marilyn Margate and Harlon Reese.

Jessica and Clay invited us back to their place, along with most of the crowd from the service, but I said we'd take a rain check. Nor did we spend much time talking with the three-man delegation from Philadelphia. It looked as though no charges would be pressed against Howard Pitterman, who was evidently a good curator when he wasn't rustling his employer's cattle. I had the feeling Milo Hracec was in for a bonus, and arrangements had already been made for Ray Kirschmann to put a ten-thousand-dollar reward in his pocket the day the coin found its way back to its rightful owner. Normal procedure would call for the nickel to be impounded as evidence, but normal procedure can sometimes be short-circuited when the right cop is properly motivated, and Gordon Ruslander had agreed to provide the proper motivation.

The cabbie took us over the Brooklyn Bridge, and it was a glorious view on a glorious Sunday. I sat in the middle, Denise on my right and Carolyn on my left and thought how fortunate a man I was. I'd solved two murders, one of them a friend's. I'd admitted to burglary in front of a roomful of people and didn't have to worry about being charged with it. And I was riding into Manhattan with my girlfriend on one side of me and my best buddy on the other, and they'd even left off sniping at each other, and who could ask for anything more?

Carolyn was right about the Irish coffee. It was what we wanted, all right, and it was as it ought to be, the coffee rich and dark and sweet with brown sugar, the Irish whiskey generously supplied, and the whole topped not with some glop out of a shaving-cream dispenser but real handwhipped heavy cream. We had one round, and then we had a second round, and I started making noises about eventually rounding off the day with a celebratory dinner, all three of us, unless of course somebody had other plans, in which case-

"Shit," Denise said. We were sitting, all three of us, around a tiny table that had room for our three stemmed glasses and one big ashtray, and she'd almost filled the ashtray already, smoking one Virginia Slim after another. She ground one out now and pushed her chair back. "I can't take any more of this," she said.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm coming unglued, that's all. You two talk, huh? I'm going home so my kid doesn't forget what I look like. The two of you can kick it around, and then you'll come over to my place later, all right?"

"I guess so," I said.

But she wasn't talking to me. She was talking to Carolyn, who hesitated, then gave a quick nod.

"Well," Denise said. She grabbed up her purse, drew a breath, then put a palm on the table for support and leaned over to kiss Carolyn lightly on the mouth. Then, cheeks scarlet, she turned and strode out of the place.

For a few minutes nobody said anything. Then Carolyn managed to catch the waiter's eye and ordered a martini. I thought about having one myself but didn't really feel like it. I still had half of my second Irish coffee in front of me and I didn't much feel like finishing that, either.

Carolyn said, "Couple of things, Bern. How'd you know Marilyn Margate set up all those burglaries?"

"I figured she knew Mrs. Colcannon. When she turned up with a gun in her purse and accused me of murder, she called the woman Wanda. I figured they were friends, but what kind of friend gets her brother to knock off a friend's house? And it couldn't have been coincidence that Rabbit and Harlan found their way to Eighteenth Street, any more than it was coincidence they picked a time when nobody was home.

"Then when I dropped in at Hair Apparent I overheard a woman talking about something personal, and I realized women tell their hairdressers everything, and I got a list of similar burglaries committed in the immediate area of the beauty parlor."

"And you found some of the names in their appointment book when you went there this morning. Bern? Wasn't that doing it the hard way? Couldn't you have just called the burglary victims and asked where they got their hair done?"

"I thought of that. But that wouldn't prove Wanda got her hair done at Hair Apparent. Besides, if I couldn't find any of the other names in the appointment book, I could always write them in myself."

"Falsify evidence, you mean."

"I think of it more as supplying evidence than falsifying it. For another thing, I could have wound up spending hours on the phone without reaching anybody. People tend to go out on Saturday night. But maybe the most important reason, aside from the fact that I'm a burglar and it's natural for a burglar to take a burglaristic approach to problems, is that I wanted to see about the gun."

"The gun?"

"The one Marilyn brought to my apartment. I was relieved to find it in a drawer. She'd said she had put it back, but if I didn't find it I was going to assume it was still in her purse, and that would have meant tipping off Ray so that she didn't get a chance to pull it when I exposed her role in the burglaries."

"I see."

"Uh, Carolyn-"

"Shit. You probably want to talk about Denise."

"I don't know what I want to. But I think we have to. Don't we?"

"Double shit. Yeah, I guess we probably do." She finished her martini, looked around in vain for the waiter, then gave up and put her glass down. "Well, I'll be damned if I know how it happened, Bern. God knows I didn't plan it."

"You didn't even like her."

"Like her? I couldn't stand her."