Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"Or out of my hat, and I don't have a hat, either. He wants me to get everybody in a room and unmask a killer, and I don't see how I can."

"Because you don't know what happened."

"Oh, I've got a pretty good idea what happened," I said, "and how it happened, and who made it happen. But this isn't the usual kind of case, where there are all of these suspects and one of them did it."

"There aren't really any suspects, Bern."

"I know. Usually all sorts of people walk into the bookstore, and one of them turns out to be the killer. This time the only person who walked in was Valdi Berzins, the fat man from the Latvian embassy, and he can't be a suspect because he got killed right away."

"So what are you gonna do?"

"I shouldn't have to do anything," I said. "I already made a big score, and got away clean. I even got a girlfriend out of the deal. It's not a great way to meet girls, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but in this case it worked out fine. I actually told her the truth about myself, which is something I generally tend to avoid, but I had no choice, and so far she seems to be able to handle it. So I could stop now and let the police work it out or not work it out, and everything would be fine."

"But you won't, will you?"

"I might."

"Yeah, right," she said. "Fat chance, Bern."

I called Barbara, and when the machine picked up I rang off and tried her at the office. It looked like a late night, she said, and I said that was probably just as well, as I had some things I ought to take care of. She was a sworn officer of the court, she reminded me, so if the things I had to do weren't legal, she'd prefer not to have fore-knowledge of them. I told her not to worry her pretty little head, and she gave me a suggestion which, on the face of it, struck me as physically impossible. "Pardon my Latvian," she added, and we agreed we'd talk tomorrow.

I took a bus to 34th Street, had a slice of pizza and a Coke, and transferred to a crosstown bus to Lexington. I walked into and out of half a dozen saloons, including Parsifal's, but didn't spend more than a couple of minutes in any of them. I did make a few phone calls, including one to Crandall Mapes in Riverdale. A man answered, and I said, "I'm not sure I have the right number. I'm trying to reach Clifford Mapes, the composer."

"I never heard of him," he said. "I didn't even know there was a composer named Mapes. What sort of music does he compose?"

"Oh, no music," I said. "He composes limericks. He's brilliant at it."

"Good for him," he said, and rang off, and I wasted a good twenty minutes fiddling around with the rhymed saga of a poor fellow named Mapes, who got into some terrible scrapes. Either that or he had a few narrow escapes, as you prefer. The last line might have involved women with curious shapes, or pissing all over the drapes, but the couplet in the middle was hopeless and I finally ordered myself to drop it. It's yours, if you want to mess with it. Feel free.

The other calls were to the number Marty had given me, and I got to hear the recorded voice of Marisol Maris, inviting me to leave a message. She had a nice voice, and if there was any trace of San Juan or Riga in it, I couldn't hear it. She sounded like any sweet young thing from Oakmont, PA.

I didn't leave a message, not even a fake one to see if she was screening her calls. She was an actress, she wouldn't screen her calls, she'd grab the phone the minute it rang, as sure as hope springs eternal. If the machine was picking up, that meant she was out-and not with Mapes, who was home in his big old house on Devonshire Close, trying not to think of a limerick with his name in it.

I walked uptown and west, passing through Times Square, and stopping whenever I found a working pay phone to try her number again. I had my finger poised to break the connection the instant I knew it was the machine answering. If you're quick about it, you get your coins back. I got it right all but one time, which struck me as pretty good, since you only get your coins back somewhere around sixty percent of the time from a New York pay phone even if there's no answer at all.

I got so good at it that, when I called from a phone mounted on the exterior wall of a bodega at Ninth Avenue and 46th Street, I rang off and scooped up my quarters only to realize belatedly that it wasn't a machine that had just answered. It was the same voice as the one on the machine, but it was live and in person, and I'd hung up on it all the same.

I tried the number again-I was in no danger of forgetting it-and this time her "Hello?" had an edge to it. "Sorry," I said. "That was me a moment ago, and I'm afraid we got disconnected."

"I wondered what happened."

"It's good you're home," I said. "Stay right where you are. I'll be there in a few minutes."

I got over there in a hurry. The building was your basic Hell's Kitchen tenement, with four apartments to a floor, and the bell for 3-C was markedMARIS. I rang, and her voice over the intercom was inaudible over all the static. "It's me," I said, accurately if not helpfully, and she found that sufficiently reassuring to buzz me in.

I took the stairs two at a time, and the door marked 3-C opened just as I was reaching to knock on it. The young woman who opened it was tall and slender, with the sort of awkward grace that gets called coltish. She had Baltic blue eyes and honey blonde hair and high cheekbones and rich tawny brown skin and a generous, full-lipped mouth that made you grateful the Supreme Court knocked out all those dumb laws against the very thing that mouth put you in mind of.

She looked frightened, but not necessarily of me. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you here? What do you want?"

"My name is Bernie Rhodenbarr," I said. "And I want to talk to you about Valentine Kukarov."

She took a step backward, put her hand to her remarkable mouth, and burst into tears.

It was after ten when I left Marisol's apartment. I walked back to Ninth Avenue and hailed a cab, something I seemed to have been doing a lot that day. Sometimes I'll go weeks without taking a taxi, and all of a sudden I was flagging them left and right.

This one let me off in front of Parsifal's, where an owlish young fellow looked as though he couldn't believe his luck, either at having a cab drop right into his lap that way or at the young woman who was draped on his arm and ready to share it with him. I wished them well and went on inside.

Sigrid's shift hadn't started yet when I'd come in earlier, but she was behind the bar now, serving drinks to the Thank God Monday's Over crowd. I eyeballed the room, then went and found a spot at the bar. She came over and said, "It's either Laphroaig or Pellegrino. What kind of a mood are we in tonight?"

I felt more like a glass of brandy-it had been a long day-but it would have been gauche to suggest it. I went with the Laphroaig, and when she brought it I crooked a forefinger and motioned her in close. "Late Friday night," I said, "I was talking with a woman named Barbara. Dark hair, had it up in a bun-"

"I remember."

"You were starting to tell us about a guy who came on strong earlier in the evening," I said, "and then you did a quick one-eighty and changed the subject."

"Oh?"

"It was pretty smooth," I said. "She didn't notice it, but I did, and that might be because I was looking for it. My guess is you were behind the stick two nights earlier, and he was the same guy she went home with that night, and as soon as you made the connection you dropped the subject."

"That's your guess, is it?"

"It's an educated guess."

"Well, you seem like an educated guy. Maybe you're even smart enough to tell me why you and I are having this conversation."

"I'm hoping you'll help me find him."