Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

“Or investigate a burglary.”

“Or that. And without the cap the uniform looks incomplete. I guess I’ll change.”

“After you take your uniform off,” she said, “would you have to put your other clothes on right away?”

“Huh?”

She turned toward me, gave me a slow smile.

“Oh,” I said, and began undoing buttons.

I beat the cops to Darla’s place, but not by more than a few minutes. I had barely finished changing into my basic blue when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to admit Ray and Loren. Ray looked sour, Loren uncertain. Ray came in first, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “He’s been driving me nuts, Bernie,” he said. “You want to tell him why he can’t come along with us?”

I looked at Loren, who in turn looked at my scotch-grain loafers, not because he disapproved of them but because they were where he wanted to point his eyes. “I just think I should go, too,” he said. “Suppose something happens. Then what?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Ray said. “Me and Bernie, we’re gonna visit a place, then we’re gonna leave the place, then we come back here and Bernie gives you your stuff back and you and me, we get the hell outta here and go home and count our money. You bring some magazines along?”

“I brought a book.”

“So you sit on the couch there and read your book. It’s a nice comfortable couch. I sat on it earlier myself. You usually pick up this kind of dough reading a book?”

Loren breathed in and out, in and out. “Suppose something happens. Suppose this Gemini here pulls something and you and I are on opposite ends of town, Ray. Then what?”

“Flaxford’s apartment’s on the East Side,” I pointed out. “Just like this one.”

No one responded to this. Loren began describing things that could go wrong, from traffic wrecks to sudden civil defense alerts. Ray replied that having three cops along, two legitimate and one not, was more awkward than having one real one and one ringer.

“I don’t like this,” Loren said. “I’m not nuts about it, if you want to know the truth.”

“If you came along, you and Bernie’d only have one gun between the two of you. And one badge and so on. Just one hat, for Chrissakes.”

“That’s another thing. I’m going to be sitting here without my badge, without my gun. Jesus, I don’t know, Ray.”

“You’ll be sittin’ behind a locked door in an empty apartment, Loren. What in the hell do you need a gun for? You scared of cockroaches?”

“No roaches,” I said. “This is a class building.”

“There you go,” Ray said. “No roaches.”

“Who cares about roaches?”

“I thought maybe you did.”

“I just don’t know, Ray.”

“Just sit down, you asshole. Give Bernie your stuff. Bernie, maybe a drink would help him unwind, you know?”

“Sure.”

“You got any booze around?”

I went into the kitchen for the Scotch. I brought the bottle and a glass and some ice. “I better not,” Loren said. “I’m on duty.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ray said.

I said, “Well, it’s here if you want it, Loren.” He nodded. I buckled on his gun belt and made sure the holster was snapped shut so that the gun wouldn’t fall out and embarrass us all. I reached back, patted the cold steel on my hip, and thought what a horrible thing it was. “Damned thing weighs a ton,” I said.

“What, the gun? You get used to it.”

“You’d think it’d be hard to walk straight, all that weight.”

“No time at all you get used to it. You get so you feel naked without it, you know.”

I took the shiny black nightstick from Loren and gave it an experimental whack against my palm. The wood was smooth and well-polished. Ray showed me how to hook it to my belt and fix the stick so it wouldn’t swing loose and wallop me in the shin. Then I pinned on my badge, set my cap on my head and straightened it. I went to the bedroom and looked at myself in the mirrored door, and this time I decided that I really did look like a cop.

The cap helped, certainly, and I think the badge and gun and stick and cuffs made a subtle difference too, changing my own attitude, making me feel more comfortable in my role. I took the nightstick from its grip, giving it a tentative twirl, then tucking it back where it belonged. I even considered practicing getting the gun out of the holster but rejected the idea, confident that I would only succeed in shooting off a toe. Miraculous enough that I’d pinned my badge to my uniform blouse, I thought, and not to my skin.

But by the time I returned to the living room I felt enough like a cop to tell someone to move on, or hold up traffic, or get a free meal at a lunch counter. And I guess Ray noticed the difference. He looked me over from cap to shoes and back again and gave a slow nod. “You’ll pass,” he said.

Even Loren had to agree. “They’re natural actors,” he said.

“Burglars?”

“Geminis.”

“Jesus,” Ray said. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

In the black-and-white he said, “We’re cleared to enter the apartment. It’s sealed as evidence but what we do is break those seals and affix new ones when we leave. It’ll all be recorded that way so nothing’ll be screwed up.”

“Is that standard?”

“Oh, sure. The seals are to prevent unauthorized entry. They can’t really keep anybody out who wants in but you can’t go through the door without you break the seal. This particular apartment, it’s been opened up and resealed a couple times already. I saw the sheet on it.”

“Oh? Who’s been inside?”

“The usual. The photographer and the lab crew went through it before it was sealed up in the first place, but then the photographer went back for seconds later on. Maybe some of his pictures didn’t turn out or maybe somebody from the D.A.’s office wanted him to get establishing shots of the other rooms. You never know what those monkeys’ll want to show to a jury and label it Exhibit A. Then there was another visit from an Assistant D.A., probably to get the feel of the place firsthand, and there were a couple of bulls from Homicide, even though this is the precinct’s case all the way and we’re not letting those pricks from Homicide take it away from us, but of course they have to get a look all the same, maybe figuring the M.O.’ll fit a case they’re already carryin’ on the books. Then, and it musta been the same kind of thing, there was a visit from another D.A.’s office, not even Manhattan but some clowns from across the river-”

“When was that?”

“I dunno. What’s the difference?”

“Which office was it? Brooklyn? Queens?”

“ Brooklyn.”

“Who’s the Brooklyn DA?”

“ Kings County D.A. is-shit, I forget the name.”

“Is it Michael Debus?”

“That’s it. Yeah, Debus. Why?”

“When were his men there?”

“Sometime between the murder and tonight. What’s it matter?” He looked at me thoughtfully, almost sideswiping a parked car in the process. “They park right in the middle of the fuckin’ street,” he complained. “How do you connect up with this Debus character, Bernie?”

“I don’t. I think Flaxford did.”

“How?”

I thought for a moment. If I knew precisely when my own apartment had been visited, and precisely when Debus had had the Flaxford apartment searched, then…Then what? Then nothing. It might help my theory in my own mind if I could establish that Debus had sent men to East Sixty-seventh Street before he sent them to West End Avenue, but it wouldn’t really prove anything, nor would it demolish my theory if the timing was the other way around.

When all was said and done, the only really important variable was the box. Either I could find it or I couldn’t.