Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

She nodded thoughtfully. “This is not the right time for us,” she said.

“And I don’t have the cuffs or the stick.”

“No, you don’t. But as an experiment, why don’t you come kiss me?”

It was a stirring kiss. We were standing, her arms around my neck, and midway through the kiss I dropped my hands to her buttocks and took hold of them and squeezed with all my strength, whereupon she made some extraordinary sounds and quivered a bit. Eventually we let go of each other and she stepped backward.

“After all of this is over, Bernard-”

“Yes. Definitely.”

“The uniform wouldn’t even be all that important. Or the other paraphernalia.”

“No, but it might be fun.”

“Oh, it would definitely be fun.” She licked her lips again. “I want to wash up. And you’ll want to change, or do you plan to wear the uniform downtown?”

“No, I’ll change.”

I was in my own clothes by the time she returned from the bathroom, the heat flush gone from her face, the lipstick replenished on her mouth. I put on my silly yellow wig and fixed my cap in place over it. She gave me keys for the front door and the door to the apartment so that I would be able to let myself in when I returned. I didn’t remind her that I could manage without them.

She said, “Bernard? That two hundred dollars the policeman was going to keep?”

“What about it?”

“Would he have divided it with his partner?”

I had to think about it, and finally I told her I just didn’t know.

She smiled. “It’s a good question, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a very good question.”

I got back to Rod’s place before Ellie did. While I waited for her I tried my cop suit on again and frowned at my shoes. Did cops wear scotch-grain loafers? It seemed to me that they always wore square-toed black oxfords, occasionally switching to black wing tips. But did they ever wear loafers?

I decided it didn’t matter. Nobody was going to be staring at my feet.

When Ellie walked in my outfit gave her a giggling fit. This didn’t do wonders for my self-confidence. “But you can’t be a cop,” she said. “You’re a crook!”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“You just don’t look like a cop, Bernie.”

“Cops don’t look like cops anymore,” I pointed out. “Oh, older bulls like Ray still look the part, but the younger generation’s gone to hell. Ray’s partner’s a good example. Bumping his nightstick into his knee, asking me what my sign was, then collapsing in a dead faint. I look as much like a cop as he does. Anyway, the only person I have to convince is a doorman. And I’ll be with Ray and he’ll do all the talking.”

“I guess,” she said.

“Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”

“I suppose so. You really think it’s still there? The blue box?”

“If it was there in the first place it’s there now. I think I know who turned my apartment inside out. I think it was a couple of people from Michael Debus’s office.” Probably the two men I’d seen going into my building two nights ago, I thought. While I’d stood on the corner looking up at my lighted windows they’d been busy turning order into chaos. “He’s a D.A. in Brooklyn or Queens and he was connected to Flaxford.”

“Flaxford was blackmailing him, too?”

“I don’t think so, I think he was Debus’s fixer. Carter Sandoval was making things hot for Debus, and Flaxford was putting pressure on Mrs. Sandoval to call her husband off. Debus must have been worried that something incriminating was left on the premises. But he probably didn’t know it was in a blue box or anything like that, just that Flaxford had it and he couldn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. At any rate, he sent over a pair of oafs to toss my place. If he did that, then he didn’t get the box himself. And that means no one did.”

“What about the killer?”

“Huh?”

“Flaxford had a visitor at his apartment that night. Someone he knew. Probably someone else he was blackmailing. Who knows how many people he had his hooks into? And he could have kept all the evidence in that box of his.”

“Keep talking.”

She shrugged. “So he met with his victim and the victim demanded to see the evidence and Flaxford showed it to him, and then the victim killed Flaxford, smashed his head in, and scooped up the box and ran like a thief.”

“Like a murderer, too.”

“Exactly. Seconds later you went in-it’s a miracle you and the killer didn’t bump into each other in the hallway, actually-and meanwhile someone heard the struggle and called the police, and while you were riffling desk drawers they came through the door and there you were.”

“There I was,” I agreed.

“This Debus would still think the box was either at Flaxford’s apartment or at your place. Because he wouldn’t know about X.”

“About who?”

“X. The killer.” I looked at her. “Well, that’s how they always say it on television.”

“I hate seeing my whole life reduced to an algebraic equation.”

“Well, call him whatever you want. Just because Debus thinks you have the box doesn’t mean a third person couldn’t have it, so if you don’t find it in the apartment it may be because it isn’t there in the first place.”

I felt slightly angry, the way people must have felt a few centuries back when Galileo started making waves. I said, “The box is in Flaxford’s apartment.” And the earth is flat, you bitch, and heavy objects fall faster than light ones, and quit raining on my parade, damn you.

“It’s possible, Bernie, but-”

“The killer may have panicked and ran out of the apartment without the box. Maybe Flaxford never showed him the box in the first place.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe the blue box has been in Flaxford’s safe deposit box all along. Safe in the bowels of some midtown bank.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe Michael Debus killed Flaxford. He got the box and then Darla Sandoval and Wesley Brill ransacked my apartment.”

“You don’t think-”

“No, I don’t. Maybe Brill killed Flaxford because he couldn’t remember his lines. He gave the box to Carter Sandoval to keep his coin collection in. That’s not what I think, either. I’ll tell you what I think. I think the blue box is in Flaxford’s place.”

“Because you want it to be there.”

“That’s right, because I want it to be there. Because I’m a fucking intuitive genius who plays his hunches.”

“Which is largely responsible for the fantastic success you’ve made of your life.”

We were by this point managing the neat trick of screaming at each other without raising our voices. In a portion of my mind-the portion that wasn’t screaming-I wondered just what we were really mad about. I knew that on my part there was at least a little sexual agitation involved. Darla Sandoval had started fires that had not yet been properly extinguished.

Ultimately the fighting died down as pointlessly as it had started. We looked at each other and it was over. “I’ll make coffee,” she offered. “Unless you’d rather have a drink.”

“Not when I’m working.”

“But you’ll have keys, won’t you? And you’ll be with an authorized representative of the law.”

“It’s still burglary as far as I’m concerned.”

“So just coffee for you. Fair enough. He’s picking you up at her place? Are you going uptown dressed like that?”

“Don’t you think I’ll be warm enough? Sorry. I don’t know if I’ll change or not. Frankly I’m getting sick of putting this uniform on and taking it off. But with my luck somebody’ll stop me en route uptown and expect me to shoot it out with a holdup man.”