Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

She told him not to worry about it.

There really was a box. In fact he’d been waiting for me in Pandora’s that first night, sitting in a back booth with four thousand dollars on his hip, stretching out his drinks until they closed the place. It wasn’t until the following day that he found out what had gone wrong.

“And you didn’t kill Flaxford,” he said, after I’d done some recapping on my own.

“And neither did you.”

“Me? Kill the man? I never even met him. Oh, I see what you mean. You thought I set you up. But if you didn’t kill Flaxford-”

“Somebody else did. Because beating your own head in with a blunt instrument is no way to commit suicide.”

“I wish I knew more about this,” he said. “I’m not really in the center of things. There’s a lot happening I don’t know about.”

“I know how you feel.”

“All I am is an actor, really. And that career’s not going too well. One thing leads to another, and I had this drinking situation that’s over with now, thank God, but I reached a point where I couldn’t remember lines. I still have trouble. I can improvise, which is what I was doing the two times I saw you, building a role around a framework, but you can’t do that in the movies unless you’re directed by Robert Altman or something. The jobs stopped coming, and this agent I’m with now, I’d have to say he’s more pimp than agent.”

“I know. I was in his office.”

“You met Pete?”

“I was in his office,” I repeated, “but he wasn’t. Last night. To get your address.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked for a moment at his own door, no doubt reflecting on its failure to keep us out of his room. “The point is, I’m in this because I’m an actor. I used to play a lot of heavies and that’s what she hired me for, to hire you to get the box and then to pay you off and take the box to her.”

“How did you know to hire me?”

“She told me to.”

“Right, sure,” I said. “She told you to hire a burglar. But how did you happen to know that I happened to be one?”

He frowned. “She told me to hire you,” he said. “You specifically, Bernard Rhodenbarr. I’m an actor, Bernie. How would I go about finding a burglar on my own? I don’t know any burglars. I can play crooks but that doesn’t mean I hang around with them.”

“Oh.”

“I used to know a bookie but since off-track betting came in I couldn’t tell you if he’s alive or dead. As far as burglars are concerned, well, I now know one burglar, or-” with a nod to Ellie “-or possibly two, but that’s all.”

“The woman who hired you,” Ellie said. “She knew Bernie was a burglar.”

“That’s right.”

“And she knew where he lived and what he looked like, is that right?”

“Well, she took me over there and pointed him out to me.”

“How did she know him?”

“Search me.”

Loren the cop would have frisked him. I just said, “What’s her name, Wes?”

“I’m supposed to keep her name out of this.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“That’s why she hired me in the first place.”

Ellie’s eyes flashed. “Now you just wait a damned minute,” she said. “Don’t you think Bernie has a right to know who got him into this mess? He’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit and he’s taking a chance every time he sets foot outside, and he has to go around wearing a disguise-”

“The hair,” Wes said. “I knew something was different. You dyed your hair.”

“It’s a wig.

“Really? It looks remarkably natural.”

“God damn it,” Ellie said. “How can you have the nerve to tell us the woman doesn’t want her name mentioned?”

“Well, she doesn’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to tell us who she is or else.”

“Or else what?” he asked. Reasonably, I thought.

Ellie frowned, then glanced at me for help. But I was getting flashes and the tumblers were beginning to drop. Brill hadn’t known me, hadn’t even known I was a burglar. But this woman had hired him to rope me in, selecting him because he was an actor who had made a career out of playing underworld types. She didn’t know any real underworld types, nor did she know any real burglars except for me, but she did know who I was and where I lived and what I looked like and how I kept the wolf away from my door.

I said, “Wait a minute.”

“You can’t let him get away with it, Bernie.”

“Just hold it for a minute.”

“You can’t. We found him and we trapped him and now he’s supposed to tell us what we want to know. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”

I closed my eyes and said, “Cool it, will you? Just for a minute.” And the last tumbler tumbled and the mental lock eased open so sweetly, so gently, like the petals of a flower, like a yielding lady. I opened my eyes and beamed at Ellie, then turned the warmth of my smile on Wesley Brill.

“He doesn’t have to tell me a thing,” I said to Ellie. “It’s enough that he told me it was a woman. That triggered it, really. A woman who doesn’t know anything about crime except that a guy named Bernie Rhodenbarr burgles for a living. I know who she is.”

“Who?”

“Does she still live in the same place, Wes? Park Avenue, right? I don’t remember the address offhand but I could draw you a floor plan of the apartment. I tend to remember the layout of places where I’ve been arrested.”

Brill was perspiring. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and he wiped them away not with his whole hand but with an extended index finger. The gesture was very familiar. I must have seen him do it dozens of times in movies.

“Mrs. Carter Sandoval,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about the Sandovals, Ellie? Of course I did. Her husband had a monster coin collection that I’d taken an interest in. He also had a monster of a gun and his doorbell was out of order and he and his wife were home when I came a-calling. I’m sure I told you about this.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I thought so.” I grinned at Brill. “Her husband was head of CACA. That’s not a bathroom word, it stands for the Civic Anti-Crime Association or something like that. It’s a group of high-minded pests who push for everything from more foot patrolmen on the beat to investigations of political and judicial corruption. The sonofabitch held a gun on me and I tried to buy my way out, and he was the wrong man to offer a bribe to. He even wanted to prosecute me for attempted bribery but he wasn’t a cop, for God’s sake, and there’s no law against trying to bribe a private citizen. At least I don’t think there is, but come to think of it I’m probably wrong. There’s a law against just about everything, isn’t there? Of course I didn’t know he was the head CACA person. All I knew was that he did something terribly profitable on Wall Street and thought rare coins were a hell of a hedge against inflation. Does he still have the coins, Wes?”

Brill just stared at me.

“I remember them well,” I said. I was enjoying this. “And they would remember me, Wes. I saw them the night I was arrested, of course, but they were also on hand when I went before the judge. They didn’t have to be. I copped a plea to a lesser charge, and don’t think that didn’t take some doing. Carter Sandoval wasn’t nuts about the idea of that. But somebody must have taken him aside and explained that the courts would never get anything done if every criminal went through the ritual of a jury trial, and he must have decided it would get more of us evildoers off the streets if the system was allowed to go along as usual, so he and his wife showed up to watch me stand up and plead guilty and get sent away to the license plate factory. I suppose he figured it would be good publicity for his cause with him there to watch justice triumph. And I think he got a personal kick out of it, too. He seemed pretty attached to those coins and thoroughly steamed at the thought of me violating the sanctity of his home.”