Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"So?"

"So how come you're not happy?"

"I'm happy."

"Yeah? You don't seem happy to me. You seem…"

"What?"

"Preoccupied, Bern."

"Preoccupied," I said. "Well, I guess maybe I am."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Eventually," I said. "But here's what I'm going to do right now. First I'll drop you and the money at your place. I've been getting too many visitors lately and I don't want to have piles of cash around the apartment, not until the traffic thins out and I have a new cupboard built to hide stuff in. I'll drop everything, and then I'll take the car back, and do something about the phone. And then I'll come down to Arbor Court again. And there'll be coffee made, and maybe something from the deli, and I'll sit down with a cup of coffee and put my feet up. And then we can talk about what's preoccupying me."

When I got back to Arbor Court, there was a whole buffet arranged on the plywood slab that topped the tub. Beef with orange flavor from Hunan Pan, pumpkin kibbee from the little Syrian joint, cold cuts from the Korean deli. "It occurred to me that neither of us had dinner tonight," Carolyn said, "and that I was hungry enough to gnaw wood, and you probably were, too. But I didn't know what you wanted, so I just walked along Hudson Street and bought some of everything."

We filled plates and emptied them, while her two cats, Archie and Ubi, gazed at us as plaintively as the kids in those Foster Parents Plan ads. It didn't work. Archie's a Burmese and Ubi's a Russian Blue, and neither one looks as though he's missed a meal since his first victory over a ball of yarn.

We had, however, and ate as if determined to make up for it. There was food left when we'd finished-she'd bought a ton, as one does when one shops while hungry-and some of the leftovers went in the fridge, and the rest went to the cats.

"Look at those drama queens," she said. "Now that the food's in their bowls, they stroll over to it as if it's the last thing on their minds. 'Oh, what have we here? Food, is it? Well, I'm not terribly hungry, but I'll just force myself so her feelings aren't hurt.' "

"That's what I did," I said. "I forced myself. Now I think I'll force myself to have a cup of coffee."

"Well, I made some, because you said to. But won't it keep you awake?"

"I hope so," I said.

"Miles to go before you sleep?"

"Miles and miles. I don't suppose you had time to count the money, did you?"

"Count it? I didn't even want to look at it. I left the two bags in the closet, right where you put them, and before I went shopping I stuck a chair in front of the closet door. Like that would make a difference."

"It would have been a bad time for a burglary. Some junkie kicks the door in, hoping to grab a portable radio he can sell on the street for ten bucks, and hello, what have we got here?"

"That's what was going through my mind."

"Well, the chair would have stopped him," I said. "You were clever to think of it."

I got the bags from the closet and drank two cups of strong coffee while we counted. The dope traffickers don't bother counting, they just dump the cash on a scale and weigh it, knowing that you get so many bills to a pound. That works when they're all the same denomination-for those guys, it's hundreds-but the Mapes haul ran the gamut from singles all the way up, and the only scale in the place was the one in the bathroom, and neither of us knew how many bills made a pound, anyway. So we sorted them by denomination and counted. It took a long time, but counting money is not an unpleasant task, not if you get to keep what you count.

We'd each pick up a stack and count it, then write the total on a sheet of paper, then reach for another stack. When all the stacks were counted I added up the numbers on the sheet of paper and wrote the total at the bottom. I showed it to Carolyn and her eyes got very big.

"Two hundred thirty-seven thousand," she said. "Even?"

"I rounded it off."

"That's almost a quarter of a million."

"Pretty near."

"My God, it's a fortune."

"Keep it in proportion. It's the price of a large studio apartment in a good building."

"That's one way of looking at it," she allowed. "But since I'm not shopping for a place to live, there's another way I like better. It's enough to pay the rent on this place for a thousand months. How many years is that?"

"More than eighty. Of course even with rent control, you'd have some increases over the years. Figure sixty-five years."

"That's plenty, Bern. Sixty-five years from now I'll probably want to move over to the Village Nursing Home, anyway. I just hope they'll let me bring the cats. Anyway, not all of this is mine. How much have I got coming, can you figure it out for me?"

I could, with pencil and paper, subtracting Marty's share and dividing the remainder by three. Her end, I was able to tell her, came to $67,150.

"I'm rich, Bern."

"Well, you're richer than you were a few hours ago."

"I'm richer than I ever was. Bern, I'm scared to have the money in the house."

"It should be safe here. Your locks are good ones. You're on the ground floor, but you've got bars on your window. Most important, no one's got any reason to think you've got anything worth taking."

"Thanks a lot."

"You know what I meant. There's a lot of money here, but you and I are the only ones who know about it, and I don't plan to tell anyone."

"Neither do I. And I know it's safer than your place. But the closet, Bern? Isn't that the first place they'd look?"

She had a point. I asked her if she needed a bath. "Not desperately," she said. "Or do I?" She raised an arm, sniffed herself. "Nothing that would make a billy goat leave the room," she said. "I'll have a bath before I go to bed. Why?"

"Have it now."

"Huh? Oh, I get it."

"I'll turn the other way," I said, "and bury my nose in a book. I wish I had the one I was reading. The new John Sandford."

"I bought it, Bern. I read it, I finished it a week ago. I was gonna ask if you wanted to borrow it."

"I would have, if I'd known. A copy came into the store, and I started it the other day. The one where the guy's killing vegetarians."

"That's the one. I wanted to kill one myself once. I had this sweet young thing over for dinner, and I splurged and bought a gorgeous beef Wellington at Ottomanelli's, and I bring it to the table just in time for her to tell me she doesn't eat red meat. 'Take it home with you,' I wanted to tell her, 'and leave it out on the counter for a week, and it won't be red anymore. It'll be nice and green and you can pretend it's a vegetable.' Did you find it yet? I think it's on the top shelf."

"I've got it."

"I loved it. I think the best scene's where he gets the diet doctor, the one who has all his patients eating nothing but bean sprouts and celery."

I told her I hadn't gotten that far yet, and she said she'd stop before she spoiled it for me. I got caught up in the book and read until she told me I could turn around now, that she was all bathed and dressed.

"And I took a towel," she said, "and dried the tub. How's the book? Enjoying it?"

"Yeah, it's terrific."

"I think it may be his best. I even like the title.Lettuce Prey. The tub's all ready, Bern."

I put the two bags of money in the tub, put the cover on, then took it off again. "It's a shame your cats know how to use the toilet," I mused.

"It is? I always thought it was a blessing. Oh! If we covered up the money with Kitty Litter, anybody who looked would just figure it was one big catbox."

"That's what I was thinking."

"They'd also figure my cats were cleaner than their owner, because what would I use for bathing? But the hell with the good opinion of burglars. Present company excepted, of course." She winked. "The deli's still open. You think one bag's enough? Or should we get two?"