Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

He didn't get very far. Before he could take the first step, the two feds rose to their feet, while the two trios of cops and goons at the room's two exits all but linked arms to block his flight. That gave him pause, and then Michael Quattrone said, "Sit down, Mapes," and he sat.

"The operations," I said, "were a success. Dr. Mapes gave Kukarov a new nose and refigured his jawline. He shaved his cheekbones to make him look less Slavic, and took ten to fifteen years off his appearance by lifting what had begun to droop, tightening the loose skin on the neck, and doing a little work around and under the eyes. He got rid of a scar at the side of Kukarov's mouth. Nobody knew about it back in Latvia, he'd grown the beard to hide it, but it was a distinguishing mark in the American version of Kukarov, and Mapes got rid of it for him. He pitched the blond hairpiece, reworked the hairline with a combination of surgery and electrolysis, improved the eyebrows permanently with some more electrolysis, and taught his patient to dye his hair and eyebrows a light brown that was becoming enough while less attention-getting than what he'd had. Besides"-I glanced pointedly at Mapes, who glow-ered back from beneath his rug-"sooner or later someone recognizes even the best wig for what it is, and starts wondering what you'd look like without it."

"So he fixed him up good," Ray said. "Then what?"

"Then he took some more photographs," I said, "and collected the balance of his fee, and sent the Black Scourge of Riga on his way."

"Excuse me," said Grisek, the man from the Latvian embassy. "Kukarov allowed him to retain these photographs?"

"Certainly not. He'd always been cautious to the point of paranoia on the subject of photos, and now that he had a new face he certainly didn't want pictures of it floating around."

"Ah."

"Mapes insisted on taking the photos," I said, "because he needed them for reference while the work was in progress. The surgeries took months, and he took more shots along the way to chart his progress. And he snapped a last batch upon completion as well, so that he and his patient could view them side by side, Before and After, and see just how substantive a change Mapes had worked in Kukarov's appearance."

"That's standard," Mapes said. "Everyone in the field does it."

"That's what you told Kukarov. And he let you do it because you assured him that, when your work was over, all copies of the photos would be destroyed."

"The man insisted."

"As other men had insisted before him. And you agreed, as you had agreed before. But you didn't keep your word, did you? You held on to four photos, mug shots, really. Before and after, full-face and profile. Just as you kept of all your patients, legitimate and criminal."

He winced a little at the last word, then rallied to tell me what a valuable, even essential, reference library the photos constituted.

"Pardon my Latvian," I said, "but that's a load of crap. You kept the pictures to feed your ego. You knew you shouldn't have the pictures, so you didn't keep them with the rest. Instead you Scotch-taped them to the pages of a book and stuck it on the shelf in your office. Maybe you got a kick out of it, having it right out in plain sight, where anybody could pick it up and page through it. But of course nobody did.Principles of Organic Chemistry, Volume Two. Sounds like a real page-turner, doesn't it?"

"They were readily available for reference," he said, "yet secreted so that no one would find them. You said it yourself, Rothenberg." I didn't correct him. The man was hopeless. "Even if you were searching the place, you'd never pick up that book. And no one would stumble on it by accident."

"Suppose they'd read Volume One, and didn't want to miss the sequel? Never mind. Let's say the photos were safe there. But you didn't just drool over them in private. Every once in a while you couldn't resist pulling the book down and showing off. Every now and then you just had to impress some sweet young thing by showing her the dangerous men whose faces you'd rearranged."

"They didn't know the men, they weren't going to tell anybody, it was perfectly safe…"

His voice trailed off. Everyone was staring at him now, except for Marty, who was gazing thoughtfully at Marisol, and Marisol, who was examining her feet.

"If it was so damn safe," I said, "how come we're all here? How come four people are dead?" I sighed. "It might have been safe. Unethical, dishonest, illegal, but safe. Except you forgot one thing. You forgot the long arm of coincidence."

I liked the phrase enough to say it again. "The long arm of coincidence. The law has a proverbially lengthy arm, but so does coincidence. I checked myBartlett's this morning, and a fellow named Haddon Chambers coined the phrase back in 1888, in his playCaptain Swift. He was born in 1860 and died in 1921, and except for his one immortal line, that's as much as I know about Haddon Chambers. Of course you could go and Google him, and you'll probably get his blood type and his mother's maiden name, along with Whittaker Chambers and Haddon's Notch, New Hampshire.

"The long arm of coincidence. There's a hand at the end of that arm, and it's left its fingerprints all over this business. Starting with the time a couple of weeks ago when Mapes took Volume Two down from the shelf to show off to his latest girlfriend."

"That's terrible," Lacey Kavinoky said. "On top of everything else, the man cheats on his wife." She colored, embarrassed by her outburst. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pipe up like that."

"How could you help it? It's shocking, and we're all shocked. Still, there's a fair amount of it going around. What's coincidental is that the woman in question was the daughter of a Latvian immigrant."

"And he showed her Cuckoo's pitcher anyway?" Ray said. "Not too bright, is he, Bernie?"

"Not the sharpest scalpel in the autoclave," I allowed, "but all he knew about Kukarov was that he was Russian. The man wouldn't have mentioned the Riga connection, let alone that he was the Black Scourge thereof. 'Now this man,' Mapes told her, 'came here from Russia to make a new life for himself, and thanks to me he doesn't have to look over his shoulder for KGB operatives.' The pictures didn't mean a thing to her, Before or After. But she knew the name. There aren't too many Latvians-or half-Latvians, for that matter-who wouldn't recognize the name of Valentine Kukarov."

Grisek said something in an undertone, but even in an overtone I wouldn't have understood it, because he was speaking in his native tongue. I found out later that it was something along the lines ofMay the fires of Hell consume him, starting at the toes and taking eternity to reach his cursed head. I'd have pardoned his Latvian, but nobody asked me to.

"Marisol was the girl's name. That doesn't sound Latvian, but don't worry about it. She'd heard her father talk about Kukarov, and would have gone to him for advice, but he was back home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. But she had an aunt and uncle in Bay Ridge, and they agreed that she had to get hold of those photographs.

"But how? She'd been to her lover's office once, at his invitation. There was no reason for him to invite her again, and no plausible way she could invite herself. The way things stood, if the book disappeared he'd never suspect her; he'd put it back himself before ushering her out of the office. But if she were to pay him another visit, andthen the book went missing…

"Her cousin Karlis came up with the answer. An artist with a loft in Williamsburg, he made an appointment with Dr. Mapes. He showed up twenty minutes early, looking perfectly respectable in his weddings-and-funerals suit, and when the receptionist was out of the room he pulled downPrinciples of Organic Chemistry and popped it in his tote bag. He could have torn out the four pages with Kukarov's photos on them, but maybe that would have taken too much time."