Lawrence Block: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

"And she wasn't crazy about you."

"She despised me. Detested me. Thought of me as a dwarf who smelled like a wet dog."

"And you thought she was bony and gawky."

"Well, I was wrong, wasn't I?"

"How did it-"

"I don't know, Bern." The waiter sailed by and she caught him by the hem of his jacket and pressed her empty glass into his hand. "It's an emergency," she told him, and to me she said, "I swear I don't know how it happened. I guess there must have been an attraction all along and our hostility was a cover-up for it."

"Best cover-up since Watergate."

"Just about. The thing is I feel awful about it and so does Denise. We started off yesterday forcing ourselves to tolerate each other, and there was something in the air, and we both sensed it, and I decided to deny it, because I knew I didn't want to make a pass. In the first place she was your girlfriend and in the second place she wasn't gay."

"So?"

"So she kept getting flirtier and flirtier, and you know me, Bern, I can resist anything but temptation. She wound up making the pass, and-"

"Denise made the pass?"

"Yeah."

"I never suspected she was gay."

"I don't think she is. I think she's straight enough to own a goddamn poodle, if you want to know, but right now she wants to go on going to bed with me, and I figure what I'll do is take it a day at a time and see where it goes. I don't think it's the love affair of the century, and if it's going to fuck up our relationship, Bern, then what I figure is the hell with her. There's women all over the place, but where am I gonna find another best friend?"

"It's okay, Carolyn."

"It's not okay. It's crazy."

"Don't worry about it. Denise and I weren't the love affair of the century, either. I called her the other day primarily because I figured I might need an alibi. You don't have to tell her that, but it's true."

"She already knows. She said so herself as a way of justifying our going to bed together."

"Well, what the hell."

"You're not upset?"

"I don't know what I am exactly. Confused, mainly. You know the story about the guy whose wife dies and he's all broken up at the funeral, and his best friend takes him aside and tells him how he'll get over it?"

"It sounds familiar. Keep going."

"Well, the best friend says that he'll get over it, the pain and loss will fade, and after a few months he'll actually start dating again, and he'll find a woman he responds to, and he'll fall in love and go to bed with her and start building a new life. And the bereaved widower says, 'Yeah, sure, I know all that, but what am I going to do tonight?'"

"Oh."

"Somehow I think Marilyn Margate is out. Even if somebody posts bail for her, I have a feeling she wouldn't welcome me with open arms."

"Not now. How come you threw her to the wolves? You didn't have to, did you?"

"Well, it didn't hurt. Improved the case against Colcannon, tied up a few loose ends."

"I thought, you know, honor among thieves and all. She and Harlan and Rabbit are fellow burglars or something, so I didn't think you'd tip them to the cops."

"Fellow burglars? You saw what they did on Eighteenth Street."

"Yeah."

"They weren't burglars. They were barbarians. The best thing I could do for the profession of burglary was get them the hell out of it."

"I suppose." She sipped at her new martini. "She was pretty cheap-looking, anyway."

"True."

"She must have been really sluttish in that red and black outfit."

"You might say so."

"Still," she said thoughtfully, "I can see how she'd be very attractive to someone who liked the type."

"Uh-huh."

"I like the type, myself."

"So do I."

"Of course it's not the only type I like."

"Same here."

"Bernie? You're not mad at me? You don't hate me?"

"Of course not."

"We're still buddies?"

"You bet."

"We're still partners in crime? I'm still your henchperson?"

"Count on it."

"Then everything's okay."

"Yeah, everything's okay. 'But what am I gonna do tonight?'"

"Good question." She stood up. "Well, I know what I'm gonna do tonight."

"Yeah, I'll bet you do. Give my love to Denise."

After she left I thought about having another Irish coffee, or a martini, or any of a number of other things, but I didn't really want anything to drink. Some of Abel's ancient Armagnac might have tempted me but I didn't figure they'd have it in stock. I settled our tab, added a tip, and went for a walk.

I didn't consciously aim my feet at Washington Square but that's where they took me all the same. I bought a Good Humor, the special flavor of the month, something with a lot of goo on the outside and a fudgy chocolate core inside the ice cream. I decided it might give me one of Carolyn's sugar hangovers and I decided I didn't give a damn.

For one reason or another I kept bench-hopping, sitting in one place for a few minutes and then turning restless and scouting out another perch. I watched the dealers and the drunks and the junkies and the young mothers and the courting couples and the drug dealers and the three-card-monte con artists and the purveyors of one thing or another, and I watched the joggers relentlessly threading their way through the walkers as they made their endless counterclockwise circuits of the park, and I watched the children and wondered, not for the first time, where the hell they got their energy.

I was still restless. For a change I had more energy than the children and no place to direct it. I got up after a while and walked past the chess players to the corner of Fourth and MacDougal. I was wearing a suit and carrying an attaché case and my shoes were too wide and I had Morton's Foot, but what the hell.

I tucked the case under my arm and started jogging. And that would be as good a place as any to leave it, except that Jessica Garland turned up at my store a few days later with the two books I'd read from at the service. She said she wasn't a student of moral philosophy herself, and would I like to have Spinoza and Hobbes in remembrance of Abel?

"I just hope I'll get something of his myself sooner or later," she said. "He doesn't seem to have left a will, and there's some question as to my ability to prove I'm his granddaughter. I have letters from him, or Mum has them back in England, but I don't know if they'll constitute proof, and meanwhile I expect the estate will be tied up for a long time. Until then there's no way for me to get into his apartment."

"Even if you inherit," I said, "it'll have been searched by professionals first. I don't suppose Abel had clear title to most of the things he owned. Your best hope is that they won't find everything. Between the cops and the IRS people they'll find a lot, but there are things they'll miss. I'd be surprised if they get the money in the telephone." She looked puzzled and I explained, and told her something about the other treasures tucked away here and there.

"They'll likely disappear before I see them," she said. "Stolen or not, I suspect they'll walk out of there, wouldn't you say?"

"Probably. Even if Abel bought them legitimately." Not everyone, after all, shared my reluctance to rob the dead. "Maybe the doorman would let you in. You could at least get the money out of the telephone."

"I tried to get in. It's a very strictly run building from a security standpoint." She frowned, and then her face turned thoughtful. "I wonder."

"You wonder what?"

"Do you suppose you could get in? I mean it is rather your line of country, isn't it? And I'd be more than willing to give you half of whatever you managed to salvage from the apartment. I've a feeling I'll never see any of it otherwise, between the police and the inland revenue and whatever bite the death duties take, or do you call them inheritance taxes over here? Half of something is considerably more than a hundred percent of nothing. Could you do it, do you suppose? It's not really stealing, is it?"