Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

There was a smallish canvas suitcase in the closet. My leather suitcase had been carved up by a lunatic looking for a secret compartment, I suppose, but the canvas bag was so flimsy that it was obviously hiding nothing. I put my three books in it and added clean clothing from the pile on my bed and the other pile on the bedroom floor. I left myself a change of clothes, packed enough socks and shirts and underwear to last a few days, zipped up the suitcase, then took off the clothes I’d been wearing. I dropped them on the floor along with everything else and went into the bathroom to take a shower.

It was a sloppy shower because my good friends had pulled down the rod that holds the shower curtain in place. They’d also yanked the towel bars loose from their moorings. Some of these bars are hollow and some people hide things in them. I’ve never been able to understand why; the stash winds up being hard for its owner to get at, while a prowler or cop can reach it in a second by ripping the bar off the wall.

I’ve noticed over the years that your average person is not terribly good at hiding things.

Anyway, I had to shower without the benefit of shower curtain, which meant that an awful lot of water wound up on the floor. There were clothes and things there to absorb most of it as it landed. Somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to care what happened to the floor or the clothes or the whole apartment, because I was never going to have anything to do with any of them again. I couldn’t live in the apartment even if I wanted to, and now I no longer wanted to, so the hell with all of it.

I finished my shower, kicked clothing aside until I found a couple of towels to dry myself with, put on my clean clothes and slid my feet into my best pair of scotch-grain loafers. Then I added a few more things to my suitcase-my own razor, some other toilet articles, a vial of hay fever pills (although it wasn’t the season) and a rabbit’s foot key chain with no keys on it that I’d given up for lost ages ago. It must have been hiding out in the back of a dresser drawer or something and my guests had located it for me in the process of dumping the drawer. An ill wind that blows no good, said I to myself, and paused in my labors to transfer the rabbit’s foot from the suitcase to my pocket, then paused again and attached it to my little ring of picks and keys and such. As little good as the foot may have done its original rabbit owner, it had always been lucky for me, and nowadays I seemed to need all the help I could get. I took a last look around, wondering what I hoped to find. I picked up my telephone, wondered if it was tapped, decided that it probably wasn’t. But who was I going to call? I hung up and found the phone book, which had received the dump and shake treatment like every other book in the apartment. I picked it up and looked for Elaine Christopher without success. There were several E Christophers listed but none on Bank Street. I decided that the lady’s listing or lack thereof was one of an ever-increasing number of things I couldn’t be bothered to think about.

So I hefted my suitcase, killed the lights, opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and there was Mrs. Hesch.

She was wearing a shapeless housedress with faded flowers on it. (Printed on it, that is. Not pinned to it or anything like that.) She had cloth slippers on her feet and her gray hair was pinned up in a sort of sloppy chignon. An unfiltered cigarette with a good half-inch of ash hung from the right corner of her wide mouth. I’d seen her in this outfit before, or in one very much like it. I’d also seen her dressed to the nines, but I’d never seen her without a cigarette smoldering in the corner of her mouth. She never took it out to talk and I’m not positive she removed it when she ate.

“Mr. Rhodenbarr,” she said. “I thought I heard you moving around in there. Meaning I thought I heard somebody. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Uh,” I said. “Well, it was.”

“Yeah.” Her bright little eyes took in the suitcase. “Going someplace? Not that I blame you. Poor boy, you got some kind of trouble for yourself, huh? The years we live across the hall from each other, you and me, and whoever would guess a nice boy like you would be a burglar? You never bothered anybody in this building, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Exactly what I said. You know the kind of conversations you hear in the laundry room. There are crazy women in this building, Mr. Rhodenbarr. One the other day, she’s running off at the mouth like a broken record. ‘We ain’t safe in our own beds!’ I said to her, ‘Gert,’ I said, ‘in the first place you’d be safe in anybody’s bed, believe me.’ And I said to her, I said, ‘When did Mr. Rhodenbarr ever hurt anybody? Who did he ever rob in this building, and who cares what he does over on the East Side, where the rich momsers deserve whatever happens to them?’ You might as well be talking to a wall.” Ashes spilled from her cigarette. “We shouldn’t stand here like this,” she said, her voice pitched lower. “Come on into my place, I got coffee on the stove.”

“I’m really in sort of a rush, Mrs. Hesch.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You always got time for a cup of my coffee. Since when are you in such a rush?”

I followed her into the apartment as if hypnotized. She poured me a cup of really excellent coffee and while I sipped it she stubbed out her cigarette and replaced it immediately with a fresh one. She went on to tell me how I’d brought no end of excitement to the building, how the police had been in and out of my apartment, and how there had been other visitors as well.

“I didn’t see them,” she said, “but the door was wide open when they left. It was yesterday afternoon when Jorge put the new lock on it. I saw what they did to your apartment. Like animals, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Except an animal wouldn’t do nothing like that. Who was it? Cops?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know who it was?”

“No, I wish I did. You didn’t see them?”

“I don’t even know when they were there. Such a mess they made you’d think I’d of heard them, but when I got the set going I don’t hear nothing. You don’t know who did this thing? Is it mixed up with the man you killed?”

“I never killed anybody, Mrs. Hesch.”

She nodded thoughtfully, neither buying nor rejecting the statement. “I can imagine you a burglar,” she said slowly. “But killing somebody is something else again. I said as much to the cop that questioned me.”

“They questioned you?”

“They questioned the building, believe me. Listen, I didn’t tell them a thing. I’ll be honest with you, I got no use for the momsers. The time my niece Gloria was raped all they did was ask her stupid questions. What I told them about you was you’re a nice boy who would never hurt a cockroach. I wouldn’t tell a cop if his pants was on fire, believe me. But what he told me, the cop, he told me you ran into this Flaxford-that’s his name?”

“Flaxford, right.”

“He says when Flaxford discovered you, you panicked, but I thought about this, Mr. Rhodenbarr, and I don’t know if I can see you killing somebody in a panic. You didn’t do it?”

“Definitely not, Mrs. Hesch. In fact I’m trying to find out who did.”

“If you say so.” She was still keeping an open mind on the subject. “Though to be frank, those momsers on the East Side, what do I care if you did or didn’t? They got it coming is how I look at it. This is good coffee, isn’t it?”

“The best.”

“Coffee’s one thing I make a fuss about. You got to take the trouble or you’re drinking dishwater. Maybe you’re hungry, I didn’t think to ask. You like cinnamon buns?”