Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

It didn't take long. When the door was open I straightened up and motioned her inside, but she stayed where she was, wide-eyed and openmouthed. "Come inside and sit down," I said. "There's something I have to tell you."

A burglar," she said. "I never met a burglar before. But how can I say for certain? I wouldn't have known you were one if you hadn't told me."

"You must have had your suspicions when I opened your lock."

"I don't know what I thought. That this wasn't happening, that I really had lost my mind and I'd never be able to find it. Or that maybe you were just this incredible storybook hero, a man for all seasons able to cope with anything."

"What kind of hero hides under the bed?"

"A smart one. Is there really room under there? I've heard of women who always check the bed to see if there's a man under it. I thought it was a joke, but now just watch, I'll be doing it myself. What's the name of the drug he gave me?"

"Rohypnol. Roofies for short."

"The date-rape drug. What a bastard he must be. Pardon my Latvian, but what a motherfucking cocksucking shiteating cuntrag asswipe." She took a breath. "Whew! I got carried away there. Pardon my Latvian, or did I say that already?"

"You can say it all you want."

"I brought one stranger home with me, and there was another one already here. Suppose I'd come home alone. What would you have done?"

"Pretty much the same thing, when I missed my chance to get out the window. Incidentally, you're taking a big chance keeping it nailed shut like that. Suppose there's a fire?"

"There are two windows side by side."

"Right, and they're nailed shut."

"I bet I can tell you which one you tried."

"Only one's nailed shut? I'll be a ringtailed son of a bitch."

"It's a good thing you picked the one on the right, or you'd have gone out the window with all my good jewelry. How come you put it back, anyway?"

"Because I felt sorry for you. Because by the time he left and I got out from under the bed I felt as though I knew you, and I don't take things from people I know."

"You kept the money."

"Well, I didn't know you that well. And it was only money, it wasn't something personal like jewelry."

"My dad gave me the charm bracelet. He was a coin collector, and he'd add a coin for birthdays and other occasions, or just because he'd picked up something at a show. I never wear it because it looks dorky, but I'd hate to part with it. I probably ought to keep it in a safe-deposit box. It must be worth a few dollars."

"The diamond earrings, too."

"I know. They were my grandmother's, and I'd hate to lose them. But I wear them sometimes, and that would mean having to go to the bank first."

I told her about hidey-holes, and that I'd make one for her.

"My hero," she said. And her eyes got this look in them, and it seemed like a good time to kiss her. And, well, one thing led to another.

"That's how you knew it was pink," she said.

In light of the particular activity that immediately preceded this remark, it took me a second to realize she was talking about her Lady Remington.

"You took it," she said, "so of course you knew what color it was. Why do you suppose he smashed it? He likes his women hairy?"

"Quite the contrary. He threatened to shave you."

"Toshave me? Where would he-oh."

"Right."

"In that case I'm glad he broke the shaver. I've already replaced it, and God knows how long the other would have taken. I guess he broke the thing because he's all those things I already called him, but why did you take it?"

"To keep you from wondering why it was broken."

"So I wouldn't know just how bad a night it had been. That's the same reason you straightened up. And you put the jewelry back because you're a sweet man. You may be a criminal, but you're too much of a softie to be a hardened criminal."

"Sometimes I tell myself I'm not really a criminal, I'm just a man who performs criminal acts."

"Oh, I like that."

"And then I tell myself that's a load of crap."

"I like that, too. You put the jewelry back because you felt like you knew me, but you kept the money because it was only money, and then you put it back. Because we'd slept together?"

"I suppose so. And you hadn't noticed it was gone, and this way it would be back before you missed it."

"Except it wasn't, but how could you know I would look between the time we talked on the phone and the time you got here to replace it?"

"I should have expected it."

"Why, Bernie?"

"Because it's a coincidence, and I've had a run of them lately. If I'd known you'd missed the money, I don't know how I would have handled it. I'd have found some way to give it back to you, but not in a way that would leave you doubting your sanity."

"You were Gaslighting me, and you didn't know it. I like the explanations you came up with, incidentally."

"They were the best I could do on the spur of the moment."

"Dematerialization's cute, but the other was actually plausible enough to make me feel better. The idea that I could have taken the money out and put it back without it registering. I suppose that would be a form of hysterical blindness, wouldn't it? But I didn't really get hysterical until I came home and the money was there again, so would it still be hysterical blindness?"

"Maybe it's more along the lines of an emotionally detached retina."

"That sounds right. Wow, you've had a busy few days, haven't you? Wednesday night you broke into my apartment, except that's the wrong word for it, because you didn't actually break anything. The only thing that got broken was the Lady Remington, and you're not the one who broke it. Whatever we call it, you were here Wednesday night. Then Friday you picked me up at Parsifal's, or I picked you up-"

"We picked each other up."

"-and we came back here. Then Saturday you came back to return the money, and-I just thought of something, Bernie. He took the money from my wallet, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but fortunately he left the credit cards."

"That's not the point. He took the money, and I didn't think it was more than eighty dollars or so, but there was more than that in there the next day. You replaced it, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. Out of the twelve-sixty from the fridge."

"And then you replaced the twelve-sixty. You lost money on the deal."

"I'm a pretty good burglar," I said, "but not a great businessman."

She had a curious expression on her face. I'd seen something similar on Mindy's face, ofMork amp; Mindy, when she would look at Robin Williams.You're from outer space, she seemed to be saying,but you're kinda cute.

She drew a breath and said, "And now it's Sunday, and you've entered my apartment twice tonight. The first time I let you in, and the second time you let me in. And in the meantime you've been running a bookstore? Where do you find the time?"

"Barbara," I said, "you don't know the half of it."

I guess I felt like talking, because I went pretty much nonstop for the next half hour or so. By the time I was finished, she knew it all.

Monday morning Carolyn and I counted money. We went straight to her bank, where she sat down with an officer and did what you have to do to rent a safe-deposit box. They only had the smallest size available, but that was all she needed to hold the $65,000 in large bills she'd brought along. That wasn't the full amount of her share, she had another two grand and change, but the rest was in small bills and she'd keep it around the house and spend it.

She left to open her salon, while I caught a cab uptown. The subway would have been faster, but not with what I was carrying. The Number One train stops at Broadway and 79th, and for years now I've had a safe-deposit box at a Citibank branch on that very corner. I could have been there in ten minutes on the train, but I'd worked too hard stealing the money I was carrying to risk letting some common thief take it away from me. While the cab ride took longer, I got out of the cab only ten dollars poorer than I got into it, and that was fine with me.