Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

Two bags did the job. Anybody who took the lid off the bathtub-and why anybody would do that was beyond me-would put it back on in a hurry. We could have upped the verisimilitude quotient by encouraging the cats to use the thing, but Carolyn drew the line at that. It had taken her long enough to teach them to use the toilet, and if they switched to the tub she'd have to put them to sleep and start over with two new kittens.

"I think we're set," she said. "Oh, I forgot to ask. His answering machine, that you left a message on. Did you get the tape?"

"It was digital, so all I had to do was erase it. And I got rid of the cell phone. Nowadays it's the easiest thing in the world for them to find out the source of an incoming call. Even if you don't have Caller ID, or if it just registers asUnknown Caller, the cops can pull the LUDS and know exactly who called and when."

"I know, they do it on Law amp; Order all the time."

"But with a prepaid cell phone," I said, "all they can find out is where the phone was sold, but not who bought it. So I dumped the phone, and that's the end of that."

"You just threw it away?"

"I could have, but it seemed wasteful. All of those prepaid minutes. I left it on the subway on my way down here. Somebody'll find it and call his mother in Santo Domingo for free."

"That was thoughtful, Bern."

"I was almost thoughtful enough to top up the gas tank on the Mercury," I said, "but not quite. I managed to find a parking place just a few doors down from where it was when I borrowed it. And I put back the ignition cylinder that I'd pulled. The owner won't know the difference."

"Except that it's not where he clearly remembers parking it. So he'll just think it's early Alzheimer's. Bern, what happened?"

"Huh?"

"You were preoccupied," she said, "and now you're not. What happened?"

"I'm still preoccupied," I said. "I just put it on the shelf."

"You did?"

"Literally," I said, and went to the closet. I'd taken something besides the money from the Mapes house, had tucked it into one of the bags before I left the house, and had removed it from the bag when I put it and its fellow in the closet. I'd put it on a high shelf, out of harm's and Carolyn's way, and now I took it down and handed it to her.

"It's a book," she announced. "Hardbound, no dust jacket." She squinted at the spine. "The Secret Agent,by Joseph Conrad. Isn't that the title of the book you sold to the fat man?"

"For thirteen hundred dollars."

"And you found a replacement copy in Mapes's library? That's handy, Bern. Now you can make that customer happy. What was his name again?"

"Colby Riddle."

"Right, and how'd I forget it? Ought to be an easy name to remember. Well, you said you had a feeling there was a coincidence waiting to show up, and I'd say this qualifies, wouldn't you? Or did he have such a huge library the book just about had to be there?"

"He had a very small library."

"Yeah? Then it was a real coincidence."

"More than you know," I said.

" Bern, you're kidding."

"Look on the flyleaf. It's priced at twelve dollars, and you can probably recognize the numerals as mine. And it wasn't in the bookcase, either. It was downstairs, on the desk in his den."

"It's the same book."

"Right."

"Not just the same title, but the same book."

"Right."

" Bern, that's more than a coincidence. That's… Bern, how the hell did it get there?"

"I don't know," I said, "but you wanted to know why I was preoccupied. That's why."

The fat man took the book."

"Right."

"But he didn't have it long. Whoever shot him took it and drove off with it."

"Right."

"The fat man thought it was something else, and so did whoever killed him and took it away from him."

"Right."

"And then it wound up in Mapes's den. Was it Mapes in the car? Did Mapes kill him?"

"He's a shitheel," I said, "but Marty never called him a thug. The man's a plastic surgeon. He uses a scalpel, not an AK-47."

"Is that what the fat man was shot with?"

"It was some kind of automatic weapon. You hold the trigger and the bullets keep coming out. All I know about guns is that I like to stay away from them."

"Me too. Either Mapes was in the car, or the guy in the car took the book to Mapes."

"That sounds logical."

"But the book's connected to the Rogovins, except that's not their real name. I forget their real names."

"Lyle and Schnittke."

"What have they got to do with Mapes?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I don't know anything. Who were the people in the car? I mean, were they the same ones who killed the Rogovins? Lyle and Schnittke, I mean. Are they the ones who killed Lyle and Schnittke?"

"That's what I thought. Now I'm not so sure. My apartment was tossed by the people who killed Lyle and…you know what? I'm going to call them the Lyles. I don't know if they were married or living together or just good friends, but I'm sick of saying Schnittke."

"It doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue, does it?"

"No, it doesn't. Anyway, the same people did those two things, because they gave both doormen the same treatment."

"Sort of a signature. They're the ones we've been calling the perps."

"Right, the perps. I don't know who's who, Carolyn. It's all too deep for me. All I know is the book was in Mapes's den, and it shouldn't have been there."

"And you took it."

"I know, and don't ask me why. It may not have been the brightest thing I ever did. I broke into his house and emptied his safe, and I was nice and anonymous about it, and then I took the book, and that narrows the suspect list from all burglars to a burglar with a particular interest in a particular book by Joseph Conrad. I might as well have taken along an etching tool and signed the safe."

" Bern, he just lost a quarter of a million dollars."

"Not quite."

"Close enough. He just lost the price of a studio apartment-"

"Well, a pretty nice studio apartment, in a good neighborhood."

"-and you think he's even going to notice the book is missing, or give a rat's ass about it if he does? Besides, the book's not the McGuffin. It's a fake McGuffin, and people only want it until they find out it's not what they want."

"Isn't that true of everything?"

" Bern -"

I got to my feet, holding my hands palm-outward to ward off more questions. "It's too deep for me," I said. "All of it."

"Where are you going, Bern?"

"A bar."

"You're gonna get drunk? You can stay right here, Bern. I've got plenty of booze in the house."

"But no softballs."

"Huh?" She waved the thought away, like a pesky fly. "You just drank a quart of coffee, and now you're going out drinking? You'll get falling-down drunk, and you'll lie there with the shakes from the coffee. I don't think it's a great idea, Bern."

"I'm not going to get drunk," I told her. "I'm barely going to drink. I'm going to a bar in Murray Hill. I want to see just how far coincidence goes these days."

I took a cab to Parsifal's. That's the only sensible way to get there from the West Village, especially at that hour, and when I thought about the money in Carolyn's bathtub, I figured I could afford it.

It was late, but when I'd been there earlier, guzzling Pellegrino, it had felt like the kind of joint that keeps selling booze as long as the law allows. The law in New York lets you keep going until four every night but Saturday, when the bars have to close an hour early, at three in the morning. (When you're dealing with drinking laws in New York, counterintuitive is definitely the way to go.)

The crowd at Parsifal's was a little lighter than it had been earlier, but these people made up for it in volume, as their alcohol intake raised their personal decibel levels. Collectively, they added up to something well below your average wide-open motorcycle engine, but a long ways up from the well-bred purr of a Rolls-Royce. I could still hear myself think, though why I would want to was another question.