Lawrence Block: The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

We left the house as we'd entered it. I suppose we could have gone over the rooftops ourselves, but why? I paused in the kitchen to turn the radio on again. A commercial was offering a three-LP set of the hundred greatest rumba and samba hits. There was a toll-free number to call, but I neglected to jot it down. I unhooked the chain bolt and unlocked three locks, and out we went, and I let Carolyn hold the attaché case while I used my ring of picks and probes to manipulate all three locks shut again. In school they taught me that neatness counts, and the lessons you learn early in life stay with you.

The fountain was still gurgling and the little garden was still being charming. I stripped off my rubber gloves, tucked them into a back pocket. Carolyn did the same with hers. I retrieved the attaché case and we made our way through the dark tunnel to the heavy iron gate. You didn't need a key to let yourself out-there was a knob to turn, unreachable from the street side. I turned it and let us out, and the gate swung shut and locked after us.

On the other side of the street, a slender young man with a wad of paper towel in his hand was bending over to clean up after his Airedale. He took no notice of us and we headed off in the opposite direction.

At the corner of Ninth Avenue Carolyn said, "Somebody else must have known about their trip. That they were taking the dog and all. Unless someone was just going over the roofs and got lucky."

"Not very likely."

"No. Wanda must have told someone else. Nobody heard it from me, Bernie."

"People talk," I said, "and a good burglar learns how to listen. If we'd gotten there first we'd have scored a lot bigger, but this way we can travel light. And we're free and clear, look at it that way. Those clowns went through that poor house like Cromwell's men at Drogheda, and it shouldn't take the cops too long to catch up with them. And we didn't leave a trace, so they'll hang the whole thing on them."

"I thought of that. What did you think of the Chagall?"

"I hardly looked at it."

"I was wondering how it would look in my apartment."

"Where?"

"I was thinking maybe over the wicker chair."

"Where you've got the Air India poster now?"

"Yeah. I was thinking maybe it's time I outgrew my travel poster phase. I might want to have the litho rematted, but that's no big deal."

"We'll see how it looks."

"Yeah." Three cabs sailed by, all with their off-duty signs lit. "I just took it because I wanted to take something, you know? I didn't want to leave empty-handed."

"I know."

"I had figured you'd be cracking the safe while I went through the drawers, but some bastards already went through the drawers and there was nothing for me to do. I felt sort of out of it."

"I can imagine."

"So I stole the Chagall."

"It'll probably look terrific over the chair, Carolyn."

"Well, we'll see."

Abel Crowe lived in one of those towering prewar apartment buildings on Riverside Drive. Our taxi let us out in front and we walked around the corner to the entrance on Eighty-ninth Street. The doorman was planted in the entranceway, holding his post like Horatius at the bridge. His face was a glossy black, his uniform a rich cranberry shade. It sported more gold braid than your average rear admiral and he wore it with at least as much pride of place.

He gave Carolyn a quick look-see, then checked me out from haircut to Pumas. He did not appear impressed. He was no more moved by my name, and while Abel Crowe's name didn't quite strike him with awe, either, at least it took the edge off his hostility. He rang upstairs on the intercom, spoke briefly into the mouthpiece, then informed us we were expected.

" Apartment 11 – D," he said, and waved us on to the elevator.

A lot of those buildings have converted to self-service elevators as a means of cutting overhead in the name of modernization, but Abel's building had gone co-op a few years ago and the tenants were big on keeping up the old standards. The elevator attendant wore a uniform like the doorman's but didn't fill it nearly so well. He was a runty wheyfaced youth with a face that had never seen the sun, and about him there hung an aroma that gave the lie to the advertiser's assurance that vodka leaves you breathless. He did his job, though, wafting us ten flights above sea level and waiting to see that we went to the designated apartment, and that the tenant was happy to see us.

There was no question about that last point.

"My dear Bernard!" Abel cried out, gripping me urgently by the shoulders. "And the beloved Carolyn!" He let go of me and embraced my partner in crime. "I'm so glad you could come," he said, ushering us inside. "It is half past eleven. I was beginning to worry."

"I said between eleven and twelve, Abel."

"I know, Bernard, I know, and all the same I began at half past ten to check my watch, and I seemed to be doing so every three minutes. But come in, come in, let us make ourselves comfortable. I have a house full of wonderful things to eat. And of course you'll want something to drink."

"Of course we will," Carolyn agreed.

He took a moment to lock up, sliding the massive bolt of the Fox lock into its mount on the jamb. Fox makes a couple of police locks. The kind I have features a five-foot steel bar fixed at a forty-five-degree angle between a plate set into the floor and a catch on the door. Abel's was a simpler mechanism but almost as good insurance against somebody's knocking the door down with anything lighter than a medieval battering ram. It featured a bolt two feet long and a good inch wide, made of tempered steel and mounted securely on the door and sliding sideways to engage an equally solid catch on the doorjamb. I'd learned on a previous visit that an identical lock secured the apartment's other door, the one leading to the service area and freight elevator.

I don't suppose most of the tenants bothered with such heavy-duty locks, not in a building so well protected by the staff. But Abel had his reasons.

His occupation, for one. Abel was a fence, and probably the best in the New York area when it came to top-quality collections of rare stamps and coins. He would take other things as well-jewelry, objets d'art-but stamps and coins were the sort of stolen goods he was happiest to receive.

Fences are natural targets for thieves. You'd think they'd be off-limits, that criminals would forbear to bite the hands that feed them, but it doesn't work that way. A fence generally has something on hand worth stealing-either goods he's lately purchased or the cold cash with which he conducts all his business. Perhaps as important, he can't complain to the police. As a result, most of the fences I know live in fully serviced buildings, double-lock their doors, and tend to have a gun or two within easy reach.

On the other hand, Abel might have been almost as security-conscious however he earned his living. He had spent the Second World War in Dachau, and not as a guard. I can understand how the experience might leave one with a slight streak of healthy paranoia.

Abel's living room, richly paneled in dark woods and lined with bookshelves, looks westward over Riverside Park and the Hudson River to New Jersey. Almost a year earlier, on the Fourth of July, the three of us had watched the Macy's fireworks display from Abel's windows, listening to a radio broadcast of classical music with which the fireworks were presumably coordinated and putting away vast quantities of pastry.

We were seated in the same fashion now, Carolyn and I with glasses of Scotch, Abel with a mug of espresso topped with fresh whipped cream. WNCN was playing a Haydn string quartet for us, and outside there was nothing more spectacular to watch than the cars on the West Side Highway and the joggers circumvolving the park. No doubt some of the latter had shoes just like mine.