Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"Pardon my Latvian," I said. "I assume that's the language they're in?"

"Some's Russian, goin' by the letters. They're in that alphabet they got, that's like Greek but worse."

"Cyrillic."

"No, I'm pretty sure it's Russian. The others are in our alphabet, for all the good it does. An' there's one in English, speculatin' that the Black Scourge of Riga might be hidin' out here in America."

"The Black Scourge of Riga. Did they give his name?"

"Yeah," he said, "an' it's a whole string of vowels an' consonants. He's some kind of war criminal, would be my guess."

"Another doddering old European who might have been a concentration camp guard. Whatever he did, he probably can't remember doing it." I thought a moment. "How old was Arnold Lyle?"

"I forget. Why?"

"Because he changed his name from something, and it probably had vowels and consonants in it. If the Black Scourge of Riga was a war criminal, he'd have to have been at least twenty-five in 1945, and probably older than that. Otherwise he'd have been the Junior Assistant Black Scourge of Riga. But say he was twenty-five. That would make him what, eighty-four?"

"Forget it. Lyle was fifty tops."

"It was just a thought. There's a connection there, Ray. Not to the clipping about the Black Scourge, but some kind of connection tying Berzins to Lyle."

"They're both Russians."

"Except for Berzins, who's Latvian. But Latvia was part of the Soviet Union back when there was such a thing. Not originally, because it was independent between the two world wars, but then the Russians took it over along with the rest of the Baltics. Ray? How hard would it be to get into the murder apartment? The one at 34th and Third?"

"It's a crime scene, Bernie. It's sealed."

"Oh."

"Why?"

"I'd like to get in there."

"Oh, well, we'll just ask permission from the guys in Major Cases. 'Bernie here's a convicted burglar, plus he's an early suspect in the case, an' he'd like to poke around the crime scene. Any of youse got a problem with that?' "

"I thought we could do it off the books."

"Sneak you in, in other words. Why?"

"Two people died in that apartment," I said, "plus the doorman downstairs. They all got killed because someone went there looking for something."

"Which we don't know what it is."

No, but I was beginning to have an idea. "We know they didn't get it."

"Bernie, I saw the safe. It was cleaner'n a whistle."

"So if the McGuffin was in the safe, the perps got it."

"Who the hell's McGuffin, an' where'd he come from?"

"It's a name," I said, "for the thing everybody wants, because we have to call it something and we don't know what it is. If it was in the safe, they got it. But suppose it wasn't?"

He frowned at me. "Why'd they have a safe an' not put the thing inside? Unless they didn't have it in the first place."

"A possibility," I admitted, "but I think they had it, and I think they were planning to sell it, and they bought the safe so they could keep the money in it when they got paid, because they were expecting a lot of money and they'd be getting it in cash. But suppose they kept the McGuffin somewhere else?"

"Then the perps got it. They tortured Lyle an' Schnittke until they handed it over, an'-"

"Did you find evidence of torture?"

"No, just a couple of bullets in their heads."

"That may have hurt," I said, "but it wouldn't have made them talk."

"Then they talked without bein' tortured, or the perps found the stuff on their own, and you know how I know that? Because if it was there an' they missed it, thenwe would have found it."

"I know they didn't find it, Ray. Otherwise they wouldn't have looked for it in my apartment."

He sighed. "It was us tossed your place, Bernie. We had a court order, it was all opened up aboveboard."

I told him about the second search, and when he protested that I hadn't reported it, I told him about Edgar the Doorman and the INS.

He looked hurt. "We wouldn't rat a guy out to those assholes," he said. "Half the guys on the force are Irish, an' half of them got a relative with a fishy Green Card or none at all. All the same, I can see why he'd be worried. But I have to say you're right. Same MO with the doorman means the same bunch of mopes, and if they found it they'd quit lookin'. So you know what I think? I think it wasn't there in the first place."

"Because the murder scene was searched by trained police investigators."

"Right."

"What were you looking for, Ray? And where did you look for it?"

"I can answer the second part. We looked high and low, searched the place top to bottom. What were we lookin' for? We'da known if we found it."

"I'm a trained burglar," I said, "and I know more places to hide things than you do, and more places to look for them. And I even have a sort of an idea what I'm looking for."

"An' you want me to sneak you in there. Against all rules, in a case that ain't my case anymore."

"Right."

"Get me two more of those crullers," he said. "With the chocolate on 'em, an' the jimmies." I went and fetched them, and he ate them without a word. Then he drank down the rest of his coffee and got to his feet.

"Well, what the hell," he said.

There were things I wanted to look at before I started hunting the McGuffin. First was the lock on the door to the Lyles' apartment. You can pick a lock without leaving traces, if you're careful not to scratch the face of the cylinder. But the cruder forms of entry all tend to involve gouges of some sort or other, and I couldn't see any, or any scratches, either. It looked to me as though the Lyles had let their killers in.

Ray had badged his way past the doorman, picking up a set of keys in the process, and the two of us had pulled down all the yellowCRIME SCENE tape from the door, and I balled it up and pocketed it for disposal later, far from the scene of the crime. After I'd studied the lock, he opened it with the key, and in we went.

The forensics team had long since come and gone, but it was still hard to resist an impulse to mince around on tiptoe. I did pull on a pair of Pliofilm gloves, which got a raised eyebrow from Ray, but I couldn't see any reason to leave a print behind, and several reasons not to.

"The Lyles let them in," I'd told Ray before we entered, and after a close examination I said as much for the safe. "Either Lyle opened it for them, or he told them the combination and let them do it themselves. But nobody blew it or peeled it, and I don't think there are fifteen people in America who could open it without force and violence."

"Fifteen, huh? You an' fourteen others?"

"It wouldn't be easy. The thing is, if they were good enough to get through this safe, they wouldn't have kicked my door in. I had a good lock on there, but it would have been child's play compared to this baby."

It wasn't locked, so I didn't have to show off. I opened the thing, and it was as empty as he'd said it was.

"If it was like this when Lyle opened it for 'em," he said, "an' if they looked all over an' still didn't find it, why the head shots? I can see doin' one of 'em, to show the other one you're serious, but why cap 'em both?"

"Head shots," I said.

"That can't be news to you, Bernie. I told you, an' even if I didn't you'da got it from TV or the papers. They were both shot in the head, and with the same gun. And no, before you ask, it wasn't the same gun as killed Berzins. That was a Lindbauer TDK on full auto. Lyle and the lady were shot with a.22 caliber pistol."

"Your crew searched the place."

"I told you that."

"But neatly," I said, looking around. "You put things back where you found them."

"It's a crime scene, Bernie. You don't touch it until the forensics guys are done, an' then you do what you have to do an' put everything back where you found it."