Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"Oh, God. Don't tell me you went on the prowl again, not after the haul we made last night. You'd have to be out of your mind."

"I went on the prowl," I said, "but not to burgle."

"What else would you…oh, I get it. Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, did you get lucky?"

"A gentleman never tells," I said. "Yes, I got lucky."

"Anybody I know?"

"Almost."

"Almost? What the hell does that mean?"

"Well, she works at a law firm at 45th and Madison," I said, "but not as a paralegal. She's a full-fledged lawyer, insofar as lawyers get fledged, and she's in the same firm with GurlyGurl."

"That's impossible."

"Why? Because there are eight million people in New York?"

"It's just a pretty big coincidence, that's all. I have a Date-a-Dyke date with one woman, and the same night you get to go home with somebody from the same law firm."

"I gather it's a good-sized firm. Even so, it's a pretty big coincidence. But I know a bigger one."

"What's that?"

"She took me home to her apartment," I said, "but what she didn't know was that I'd been there before."

"You'd been to her apartment but she didn't know it. Oh, for God's sake. Don't tell me."

"Okay."

"Are you kidding? Tell me!"

I told her in person, but before I made the trip downtown I called 1-800-FLOWERS, then hung up while they were telling me my call might be monitored. She lived in a brownstone, with no doorman and a grouch for a downstairs neighbor, so I didn't want to send flowers unless I knew she'd be home to receive them.

So I called her and caught her on her way out the door. She had a wedding to go to out on the island and she was running late. "But I thought it might be you," she said, "so I picked up the phone."

I told her I just wanted to say what a good time I'd had, and she said the same, and I suggested dinner the following evening. She said she'd be staying over that night, and there was a brunch on Sunday she was supposed to go to, and it was hard to say how late it would run, or whether she'd get a ride back or have to take the train. We left it that she'd call when she got in, or knew when she was going to get in, and if it wasn't too late and I hadn't made other plans, we'd get together.

So I didn't have to call 1-800-FLOWERS after all. No point-they'd only waste their fragrance on the desert air.

The way it was raining I'd have been happy to take a cab to Carolyn's, but enough other New Yorkers felt the same way to drop the number of empty cabs below the Mendoza line. I couldn't find one, and I didn't waste too much time trying. I had my umbrella, and it kept me dry all the way to the subway.

"It's a pretty big coincidence that they both work at the same place," Carolyn said, "but it's not a coincidence you went home with her. Because you were looking for her, weren't you?"

"Well, kind of. Parsifal's struck me as the kind of place she'd be likely to go, but I figured I was about as likely to run into him as her."

"Him? Oh, the date-rapist. How would you know it if you did?"

"By his voice, if I heard him talk. I have a feeling he was in there earlier, and that I didn't miss him by much."

"What makes you say that?"

"Just a hunch. Anyway, it's not important. Boy, do I hate rainy weekends."

"You and everybody else, Bern."

"Especially this one. But I'd hate this weekend even if the sun were out. Everything's just stuck."

"Stuck?"

"The money's stuck in the bathtub. We can't rent a safe-deposit box and put it in the bank because the banks are all closed until Monday. And everything else is stuck, too. Barbara's stuck out in Long Island at a wedding, and Ray's not working. He sometimes works weekends, but not this one, naturally. I called the precinct, and they said he was off today, and I called his house in Sunnyside and nobody answered."

"What did you want him for?"

"I thought he might know who the fat man was, or what the Lyles had that the perps wanted. He can't know much less than I do, but I know something he doesn't know, and that's that the Conrad book, the false McGuffin, wound up at Mapes's house."

"You can't tell him about Mapes."

"I can't tell him about Mapes the Burglary Victim, but why can't I clue him in about Mapes the McGuffin Recipient? Besides, if I can give him something, maybe I can get something from him."

"What makes you think he knows anything?"

"Even if he doesn't there's something he can find out for me. But not unless I ask him, and I can't do that until I know where he is. I wish I could get in touch with him. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I just never thought I'd hear you say that, Bern."

"I hate weekends," I said. "You know what we could do? We could go someplace."

"In this weather? Where would we go?"

"How about Paris?"

"For the weekend?"

"Sure. We'll take the Concorde. A suite at the George Cinq, dinner at Maxim's, a cruise on the Seine, a stroll down the Boul' St. Germain, acafé au lait avec croissant at Les Deux Magots, then back on the plane and we're home again."

"That would cost a fortune."

"As it happens, we've got a fortune. We could swing it. Say fifteen to twenty thousand apiece for round-trip Concorde tickets, a thousand a night for a decent suite, half that for dinner-I'll tell you, for fifty thousand dollars we could have a memorable weekend."

"Uh, it sounds great, Bern, but-"

"But we can't do it," I said, "because the Concorde isn't flying anymore. And anybody who tries to buy any airplane ticket for cash, let alone thirty or forty thousand dollars' worth of cash, is going to spend hours answering questions in a room full of uniforms. Besides, we'd need to take a cab out to JFK, and how would we get a cab on a day like this?"

"And you've got a date tomorrow night with Barbara Creeley."

"She'll never make it back from the island in time, not in this weather. Man, do I hate weekends."

There was one thing I could do, though not without getting wet again. While Carolyn was getting wet herself, picking up dry cleaning around the corner, I made a small withdrawal from the stash of money in her bathtub. I could have done it while she was there, but I wanted to avoid having to explain why I needed it. And not long after she got back I put the Sandford novel aside yet again and walked up to 14th Street and took one bus east to Third Avenue and another bus uptown. I got off at 34th, walked up and over, and let myself into Barbara's brownstone.

I went upstairs, past the Feldmaus apartment, and remembered to open only the two locks she was in the habit of locking, which saved me a little time. I was in and out in under five minutes, and when I hit the street I couldn't think where to go next. Back to Carolyn's? Down to the store? Uptown to my place?

I went around the corner to Parsifal's, wondering what kind of a crowd they'd get on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and found that they got a sort of rainy-Saturday-afternoon crowd. There's something warm and welcoming about a bar on a day like that, but after you get over being warmly welcomed, you notice that everybody there gives off an air of desperation.

I'm sure I was no exception myself. I took a stool at the bar, where Sigrid's role was now being played by a black woman with short curly hair that either she or God had colored red. She was as tall as Sigrid and had the same cheekbones, along with the same subliminal message: Sleep with me and you'll die, but it'll be worth it.

I ordered Laphroaig and took a long time drinking it, meting it out in small sips. I was making progress, or it was; by the fourth sip, it tasted pretty decent.

While I sipped at it, I worked my way around the bar, talking to no one but listening to everybody. I was hoping to hear a particular low-pitched voice, but didn't really expect to. There was no one in the place who looked like my image of the man, and there was no one there who sounded like him, either.