Lawrence Block: The Burglar on the Prowl

"Punishment," she said. "Well, sure, why not? For them that have it coming, that is."

We were in the Bum Rap, you will not be surprised to learn, on a Thursday evening just a week and a day after I'd gathered much of New York 's population into the living room of the house on Devonshire Close. It was not the first time Carolyn and I had sat down together since what a less original narrator might characterize as that fateful day, since we'd kept our standing lunch date more often than not. It wasn't even the first time we'd met for our after-work drinks date at the Bum Rap. But there'd been time constraints, or people around, on other evenings, and lunch wasn't right for the conversation we had to have. It was somehow necessary that there be glasses in our hands, and scotch in those glasses.

And this seemed like the time and place. Neither of us had anything to do for the next hour or so, nor was anyone likely to pull up a chair and horn in. And we had scotch at hand, and if it somehow disappeared, the faithful Maxine would see that it was replenished.

" Bern," Carolyn said, "there are a couple of things I'm not sure I understand."

"I'm not surprised. There are things I don't understand myself."

"A lot of things came out in Mapes's living room, and I was following along okay, but it was confusing. And then the way it ended, with the shooting and all, it seemed like some ends were left dangling."

"Like participles," I agreed. "No question about it."

"And then there were the things that came out that weren't true."

"Lies, we call them."

"Well, I wasn't going to say that. It seemed a little harsh."

"But accurate," I said. "There were basically three kinds of information dispensed that afternoon. Some of it was true, and some of it was guesswork, and some was utter fiction."

"That's what I thought, Bern. But now that it's over, I'd love to know the pure and simple truth."

"According to Oscar Wilde," I said, "the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Some of it we'll never know, because the only people who could tell us are dead. But I can certainly tell you what I know. Where do you want me to start?"

"With William Johnson," she said. "Billy the Nephew. Talk about your impossible coincidences. He didn't date-rape Marisol, did he?"

"No, of course not. He never saw her before in his life."

"But she said he did."

"Does that mean it must be true?"

"She was very convincing, Bern. I was watching her, and she had tears in the corners of her eyes."

"Everybody was watching her," I said. "The girl has presence. Carolyn, she's an actress. She was acting."

"Well, she fooled me. I knew what she was saying couldn't possibly be true, and I believed it anyway. You must have told her what to say."

"When I saw her," I said, "she fell apart. Because of what she'd done, violating her lover's confidence, four people were dead, including Valdi Berzins, a genuine Latvian patriot."

"And a positive thinker."

"That too. She felt guilty, and when I suggested she might be able to do something to make it right, she was eager to help-especially when I told her what kind of a fellow Johnson was and what he'd pulled on Barbara Creeley. We worked out a story, and she gave me the ruby necklace Mapes had given her."

"And you planted it in Johnson's apartment."

"When I let myself in, after I'd left him in the alley swathed in Sigrid's puke."

"I can't believe she did that."

"She's a resourceful woman," I said, "with a tendency to get straight to the heart of the matter."

"She backed up Marisol's date-rape story, too. And she was pretty convincing in her own right, Bern."

"She's an actress herself, even if she doesn't go on auditions anymore. I didn't coach her, just let her know what to expect, and she did a great improv. But then she'd improvised beautifully getting Johnson out of Parsifal's and into the alley, so I could get his address."

"Because you had to get into his place."

I nodded. "I had two things to do there. First, I had to plant Marisol's necklace where he wouldn't come across it himself in the next day or two, without concealing it so well that the cops couldn't find it when the time came."

"And it came soon enough. Ray was reading him his rights before the bodies were cold."

"I'm not sure of that. Before Colby Riddle's body was cold, maybe, but I have a feeling Georgi Blinsky's body was somewhere around room temperature long before Mapes started tossing lead around the room. That Russian was the coldest man I ever saw."

"He looked good in black, though. What else did you do in Johnson's apartment?"

"I found Barbara's class ring from Bennett High."

"And gave it to her?"

"Just the other night. I have to say she was impressed."

"I bet she was. Maxine?" She pointed at our glasses, and got a nod of assent from Maxine. "Reinforcements are coming, Bern. I've got some more questions."

"Shoot."

"Colby Riddle. When did you start to think he had something to do with it?"

"Well, I always wondered," I said. "He never called me about a book before. It's rare that I get a phone call from someone who's just looking for a reading copy, andThe Secret Agent 's in print in trade paperback, so anybody hunting for it could just drop into the nearest general bookstore, or get online and pick it up from Amazon. But Colby was always an odd bird to begin with, and we were up to our eyeballs in coincidences anyway, so I didn't dwell on it. I didn't really tie him in until I let myself into Mapes's office."

"You went there to check out his appointment book, and pick a time that would work for the showdown."

"And while I was there, I had a look at his files. I was looking for Kukarov, not really expecting to find anything, not under that name. And I didn't, of course. But then I looked up a few other people, and the only one I found was Colby. And he'd been there for just the reason I'd said. He had a growth removed from his cheek two years earlier."

"That could have been a coincidence too, couldn't it?"

"I suppose so, but I figured he was tied in."

"Yeah, I guess not even coincidence has arms that long. Hey, thanks, Max. Bern, we're not gonna die of thirst after all."

I took a sip of my drink just to make sure.

" Bern? Summarize what happened, will you? Not with William Johnson, I get all that. But the rest of it, with the photographs and the people getting killed and all."

I thought about it. "Well," I said, "there are a couple of versions. There's what I laid out, which is how the cops have the case written up. And there's what Ray knows is really true. And then there's what's even truer, that Ray doesn't know about. And then of course there are the things I did to make it happen."

"Uh-huh."

"So which would you like to hear?"

She grinned. "All of 'em, Bern."

"The Lyles got the photographs pretty much the way it came out in Mapes's living room. Marisol told her cousin Karlis, and he made a fake appointment with Mapes and swiped the book when no one was looking. He got it to his father, who in turn got it to Arnold Lyle."

"Okay."

"Lyle talked to more people than he should have, and made arrangements to sell the book to Georgi Blinsky."

"Principles of Organic Chemistry, you mean. That book."

"Right, Volume Two. The book Mapes taped the photos in. First, though, Lyle removed the Kukarov photos from the book, but he liked Mapes's system, so he taped them into another book, one belonging to the owner of the apartment he'd sublet, and stuck it back in the bookcase."

"And that wasQB VII."

"Uh-huh. Now the way I told the story, Ray found the book in a careful search of the apartment after the murder, but the photos were already missing."

"Ray couldn't find a black cat on a white sofa, Bern."