Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"Me too. You been seeing anybody new, Bernie? Getting anywhere in the love life department?"

I shook my head. "How about you?"

"Zilch. Between my practice and my workouts in the dojo, I don't have a hell of a lot of time on my hands. Still, the old urge is always there, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean."

"What I'd really like to do," he said, "is get something going with our waitress. You happen to notice her?"

"I wasn't paying too much attention."

"I think she's beautiful. The Mysterious East and all that, and those silk robes she wears drive me nuts. I think they call them cheongsams."

"Is that a fact."

"All I know for sure is I'd like to get into hers. I'd ask her out to dinner, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"She doesn't speak any English. I mean, even if I managed to make myself understood, and even if she was willing to sit across a table from a round-eyed foreign devil, what would dinner be like?"

"I don't know. How are you with chopsticks?"

"I mean the conversation, Bernie. We couldn't even make small talk. I've been thinking of learning Mandarin."

"You're kidding."

"Well, it could come in handy. The Chinese population keeps growing, and some of them need lawyers. Don't you think they'd be more comfortable with an attorney who understood their language?"

"They'd probably be more comfortable with one who was Chinese to begin with."

"You're right, dammit. The only reason to learn the language is so I could talk to the waitress. The thing is, I think she likes me."

"Oh?"

"Every time I come here," he said, "she goes through the whole rigmarole, teaching me to make the tea. And I'm here three or four times a week, so it's obvious I know the drill by now. So why go through it each time? I figure she likes spending time with me."

"That's possible."

"Well, what other explanation could there be?"

"Maybe she doesn't remember you from one day to the next, because all Caucasian guys look alike to her."

"You think?"

"Or," I said, "maybe she figures you're not bright enough to retain the information from one tea-brewing session to the next."

"You really know how to make a guy feel good," he said. "I can't tell you how glad I am I brought up the subject in the first place. Bernie, I've got to ask you a question. I know you weren't on the scene last night, you're about the least likely person I can think of to be involved in something like that, but do you know anything about it?"

"Only what I heard from Ray."

"You were never approached? Like somebody invited you in on the job, and you said you'd pass, but you'd keep mum about it?"

"What makes you think that, Wally?"

"Well, it might explain what you were doing in the neighborhood, and why you couldn't tell Kirschmann. Maybe you hung around to see how the whole deal went down."

I shook my head. "Nothing like that. I'll tell you this much, I had a reason to be in Murray Hill, although I have to admit it wasn't a very good reason. And it was something I wasn't willing to share with Ray Kirschmann, and it's not something you need to know about."

"Got it."

"And it had no connection whatsoever with the Rogovin burglary, which incidentally I wish people would stop calling a burglary, because that's not what it was. It was a home invasion, and that's something I've never been involved in."

"First thing I told them. 'If you know anything about the man, you know it's not his style.' "

"And nobody tried to recruit me for it. The first I heard about it was when I got arrested for it. And if anybody had tried to enlist me, I'd have turned them down-"

"Just what I said a minute ago."

"-and the last place I'd have gone was Murray Hill, because I'd have wanted to be a long ways away when they pulled the job, preferably in the company of two judges and a cardinal."

"So you'd have a solid alibi. I get the point, Bernie, but let me put it this way. You know people. You hear things."

"I try not to associate with criminals, Wally."

"So do I," he said. "Present company excepted, of course. But much as I try, my line of work makes it difficult. And so does yours, so there's a chance you'll talk to someone who knows something, and if you do-"

"I could do myself some good by passing the word."

"A whole lot of good. Of course I realize that might go against your code of honor. Nobody wants to be a rat."

I shook my head. "Not where these clowns are concerned," I said. "I'd love to see the cops pick them up, and not just because they'd stop bothering me. They killed three people, for God's sake. It's jerks like that who give burglary a bad name."

They came to the Poodle Factory," Carolyn said, "sometime around two. Ray and two uniformed cops. They had a warrant to search Barnegat Books, and they wanted me to open up for them. On account of I'd locked up after Ray took you downtown. I said just because they had the right to search your place didn't mean I was under any obligation to shut down my own place of business and open up for them, and Ray said I was absolutely right, but if I didn't open up they'd have to force their way in, and that would mean using a bolt cutter on the padlocks and window guards. So I figured you wouldn't want that, and I did what they wanted me to. I hope that was right."

"Absolutely."

"When the place was open Ray told me I could go back to work, and I told him I wasn't budging until they were gone and the store was locked up again. See, I wanted to be there while they searched the place. I didn't want them making a mess, or upsetting Raffles."

"How did he take it?"

"I think he just assumed they were customers. But then he's just a cat, or he'd have spotted them as a bunch of illiterate lip-movers. At any rate, they didn't knock themselves out searching. It'd take hours to search a bookstore thoroughly, and they didn't even try. They rummaged around your back office and looked behind the counter, but they didn't take books off the shelves or anything."

"The place looked fine to me," I said. "I didn't even know anybody had been in it."

"You went there?"

"On my way here," I said. We were at Carolyn's apartment on Arbor Court, a West Village cul-de-sac that's so quaint and charming hardly anybody knows how to get there. When Carolyn first moved in, she'd had to start from the right place every night or she couldn't find her way home. Her apartment's as quaint and charming as the street it's on, with the tub in the kitchen and a sheet of plywood on top of it to transform it into a table, at which we were currently seated, tucking into some Bangladeshi takeout from No-Worry Curry. I'd spent too much time in the teahouse to agree to Chinese.

"I figured you'd lock up," I said, "but I wanted to make sure. And I had the rest of that sandwich waiting for me."

"It almost wasn't, Bern. One of the boys in blue had his eye on it. I told him if he laid a finger on it I'd have him up on charges. Scared the crap out of him."

"It wouldn't have worked with Ray."

"If I thought Ray was gonna eat it," she said, "I'd have poisoned it. He had his nerve, running you in."

"It's a pretty horrible crime. He's going to do whatever it takes to solve it."

"But he couldn't have thought you had anything to do with it."

"He probably didn't, but it was a case of leaving no stone unturned."

"If he was without sin," she said, "then he'd have the right to turn the first stone." She frowned. "I think I know what I meant, but I'm not sure it's what I said."

She asked about Wally, and I recounted our conversation at the teahouse, and she said that was the whole thing about tea-the higher the quality, the subtler the taste, until eventually you were drinking the very best stuff and it had no taste whatsoever. "With No-Worry Curry," she said, "you can damn well taste it."