Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

He looked at me and made me repeat the question. Then he said, "Could I run a print? Nothin' to it. Could I run a print for you? Now that's somethin' else again. Whose print and where'd it come from?"

"If I knew whose print it was," I said reasonably, "I wouldn't ask you to identify it for me. As for the rest, you don't want to know."

"Meanin' you don't want to tell me. I dunno, Bernie. I'm bendin' a whole lotta rules today."

"Rules were made to be bent."

"Well, you're right about that," he said, and held out his hand, and I filled it, and he looked at what he was holding and then at me. "I dunno, Bern," he said. "This yours? Could be you're as light on your feet as Valdi Berzins."

Now, while Carolyn settled in at her computer, I made a few calls on her phone. I reached Marty Gilmartin at home, asked him a couple of questions to which he gave guarded responses, and made a date for lunch the following day. He asked if The Pretenders was all right, and I said it was always fine with me. I might be pressed for time, I said, in which case we could make it a drink or a cup of coffee instead of a full meal, but it would be good to get together.

I hung up and called Barbara Creeley, and when I'd said hello she said she was hoping I'd call. "I called you about half an hour ago," she said, "but I got your machine."

"I was out," I said. "Still am."

"I'm home."

"I figured that," I said, "right about the time you picked up the phone."

"Oh, right, of course. That was dumb of me, saying I'm home. I mean, you called me, so of course I'm home."

"I wouldn't say it was dumb."

"You wouldn't?"

She sounded shaky. I asked her if she was all right.

"I guess so. Do you still want to have dinner?"

"That's why I was calling. I was hoping you'd be home, and that I could take you out someplace for something nice."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Well, sure. I mean, I'm home. And yes, dinner would be nice."

"Great. What time's good?"

"What time? I don't know. You say."

"Uh, seven?" That would give me plenty of time to go home and change. "Is that good?"

"Seven's fine."

"Should we pick a place? It's Sunday, so not everybody's open. Do you have someplace you particularly like? Or do you want to meet at Parsifal's, and we can figure out where to go from there?"

There was a pause, as if two questions at once was too much to deal with. Then she said, "Could you just come over here?"

"If you'd like."

"That would be good, Bernie. You'll come over here at seven?"

"I will."

"You know the address?"

"I do."

"I'll see you at seven, then. Or earlier, if you'd like. Whenever you're ready, just come over. I'll be right here."

She hung up. I sat there holding the phone for a long moment, and then did the same myself.

"I've got to run home," I told Carolyn. "I need a shave and a shower. I've got a date."

"With Barbara? That's great."

"Let's hope so," I said.

It was a little before seven when I mounted the half flight of steps at the brownstone on East 36 thStreet. I rang and she buzzed me in, and when I got to her floor she was waiting in the doorway. She wore a dress with a bold geometric print, the kind of thing Mondrian might have done if he hadn't been so firmly committed to the right angle.

I told her I liked her dress. I'd noticed it before, actually, and had admired it then, but it did more for her figure than for a hanger in the closet, which is where I'd seen it. She said she'd taken it to Long Island, to wear at the Sunday brunch, but an informal poll indicated that most of the other women would be wearing jeans or a skirt, so the dress went back in the suitcase. She didn't know where we'd go tonight, but she could put on something else if I thought she was over-or under-dressed.

I was wearing a blazer and gray slacks, and I had a tie in my pocket, so I figured we were all right for just about any setting. I said she looked great, and she did, but there was an uncertain air about her that matched what I'd heard over the phone. She led me into the apartment, and there was a touch of awkwardness, the to-kiss-or-not-to-kiss moment. We'd been to bed two nights ago, but we really didn't know each other, so would it be presumptuous for either of us to expect the other to fall into a clinch? I hesitated, and she hesitated, and I reached for her and she came into my arms and we kissed.

It was a nice embrace, and a lingering one, but when we drew apart she still seemed troubled, and I asked her if everything was all right.

"Yes," she said, and thought about it, and said, "No," and thought about that, and then frowned. "I don't know," she said finally.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm a little scared."

"I can tell. Of what?"

She'd been avoiding my eyes, but now she met them. "Bernie," she said, "have you ever had the feeling that you could be losing your mind?"

"Sometimes I'm not sure I ever had one in the first place," I said. I glanced at her bed, and thought about the time I'd spent not in it but under it. "Sometimes I know I'm doing something that's really nuts, but I can't seem to keep myself from doing it."

"You mean like eating dessert when you'd decided earlier not to have dessert, and you really don't even want it, but there it is and you eat it?"

"Something like that," I said, "but on a grander scale. Like it's a really rich dessert, and I'm a diabetic, and I eat it anyway."

"You're diabetic?"

"No, that's just an illustration of the relative degree of craziness I'm capable of."

"That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure. Everybody has that sometimes, don't they? But this is different. I really think I might be losing it. First that blackout when I only had two drinks, which can't be a good sign. And then this. Can I tell you what happened?"

"Sure."

"Sit down. Can I get you anything to drink? There's different kinds of soda, or I could make you a cup of tea. Or coffee, but it'll have to be instant."

"I'm fine."

"I wish I could say the same. Bernie, when I woke up Saturday morning I thought about what we'd talked about, about how I brought someone home the night I had the blackout, and how he'd gone through my things but didn't take anything, except for my Lady Remington. And I thought about my missing class ring, and I went through my jewelry more carefully. All my good stuff was there, but I was definitely missing a pair of earrings, and a couple of silver bangle bracelets."

"More souvenirs."

"And nothing I couldn't live without, but it was still disturbing."

"Of course."

"And then I remembered the money."

"In your wallet? You said it was all still there."

She shook her head. "The other money," she said. "I never keep cash in the house, there's no need, not with an ATM two blocks away. But for a week or so I'd had a lot of cash on hand. Well, not a fortune, but I think you could call it a substantial amount. It was over twelve hundred dollars."

"That's substantial. In cash, anyway."

"That's what I mean. It was enough so that I found a place to hide it. I put it in the icebox, in the freezer compartment. I don't know, maybe that's the first place a burglar would look."

Not the first place, I thought, but right up there.

"Why I had the cash in the first place," she said, "is that Alison Harlowe's wedding was coming up, and she was one of the last of our crowd to get married. And she and Scott were torn between a big wedding and a honeymoon in Europe, they couldn't really afford both without going into debt. So word got around, and we all agreed that the gifts would be cash, but not individual gifts from individual friends, because that would feel like the opening scene inThe Godfather, with everybody coming around with envelopes.