Lawrence Block - Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

His face was round and jowly, with most of its features generally subdued. His eyes came closer to prominence than anything else. They were large and watchful and put me in mind of a pair of Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses. (With the foil removed.) They were just that shade of brown. His hair was flat black and perfectly straight and he was balding in the middle, his hairline receding almost to the top of his skull. I suppose he was in his late forties. It’s good I’m a burglar; I could never make a living guessing age and weight at a carnival.

I first met him on a Thursday night in a drinking establishment called The Watering Whole. (I’m sure whoever named it took great pride in his accomplishment.) The Whole, which in this instance is rather less than the sum of its parts, is a singles joint on Second Avenue in the Seventies, and unless you own a piece of it and want to inspect the register receipts there’s really only one reason to go there. I had gone for that very reason, but that evening the selection of the accessible young ladies was as dazzling as the dinner menu on a lifeboat. I’d decided to move on as soon as my wineglass was empty when a voice at my elbow spoke my last name softly.

There was something faintly familiar about the voice. I turned, and there was the man I’ve described, his eyes just failing to meet my own. My first thought was that no, he was not a cop, and for this fact I was grateful. My second thought was that his face, like his voice, was familiar. My third thought was that I didn’t know him. I don’t recall my fourth thought, though it’s possible I had one.

“Want to talk to you,” he said. “Something you’ll be interested in.”

“We can talk here,” I said. “Do I know you?”

“No. I guess we can talk here at that. Not much of a crowd, is there? I guess they do better on weekends.”

“Generally,” I said, and because it was that sort of a place, “Do you come here often?”

“First time.”

“Interesting. I don’t come here too often myself. Maybe once or twice a month. But it’s interesting that we should run into each other here, especially since you seem to know me and I don’t seem to know you. There’s something familiar about you, and yet-”

“I followed you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We coulda talked in your neighborhood, one of those joints on Seventy-second where you hang out, but I figure the man’s gotta live there. You follow me? Why shit where the man eats, that’s the question I ask myself.”

“Ah,” I said, as if that cleared things up.

Which it emphatically did not. You doubtless understand, having come into all this in roundabout fashion, but I had not the slightest idea what this man wanted. Then the bartender materialized before us and I learned that what my companion wanted was a tall Scotch and soda, and after that drink had been brought and my own wineglass replenished I learned what else he wanted.

“I want you to get something for me,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“See, I know who you are, Rhodenbarr.”

“So it would seem. At least you know my name, and I don’t know yours, and-”

“I know how you make your money. Not to beat against the bush, Rhodenbarr, but what you are is a burglar.”

I glanced nervously around the room. His voice had been pitched low and the conversational level in the bar was high, but his tone had about it the quality of a stage whisper and I checked to see if our conversation had caught anyone’s interest. Apparently it had not.

I said, “Of course I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I suggest you cut the shit.”

“Oh,” I said, and took a sip of wine. “All right. Consider it cut.”

“There’s this thing I want you to steal for me. It’s in a certain apartment and I’ll be able to tell you when you can get in. The building’s got security, meaning a doorman around the clock, but there’s no alarm system or nothing. Just the doorman.”

“That’s easy,” I said, responding automatically. Then I gave my shoulders a shake-shake-shake. “You seem to know things about me,” I said.

“Like what you do for a living.”

“Yes, just that sort of thing. You should also know that I work alone.”

“I didn’t figure to go in there with you, kid.”

“And that I find my own jobs.”

He frowned. “What I’m doing is handing you a piece of cake, Rhodenbarr. I’m talking about you work an hour and you pick up five thousand dollars. That’s not bad for an hour’s work.”

“Not bad at all.”

“You do that forty hours a week, just go and figure the money you’d make.”

“Two hundred thousand a week,” I said promptly.

“Whatever the hell it comes to.”

“That’s what it comes to, all right. Annually, let me think now, annually that would come to ten million dollars a year. That’s with two weeks off in the summer.”

“Whatever.”

“Or a week in the summer and a week in the winter. That’s probably the best way to do it. Or I could take my vacation in the spring and fall to avail myself of low off-season rates. Though I suppose the savings wouldn’t be significant if I was earning ten million dollars a year. Hell, I’d probably start blowing the bucks left and right. Flying first class. Taking cabs all the time. Buying the Mondavi zinfandel by the case instead of a niggling bottle at a time, and of course you save ten percent by the case but it’s not a true savings because you always find yourself drinking more than you would otherwise. You’ve probably noticed that yourself. Of course the pressure might get to me, anyway, but then I’d have those two weeks of vacation to let it all out, and-”

“Funny,” he said.

“Just nerves.”

“If you say so. You done talking for a minute? I want you to do this thing for me. There’s something I need and it’s a cinch for you to get it for me. And my price is fair, don’t you think?”

“That depends on what you want me to steal. If it’s a diamond necklace worth a quarter of a million dollars, then I’d have to say five thousand is coolie’s wages.”

His face moved into what I suppose was meant as a smile. It failed to light up the room. “No diamond necklace,” he said.

“Fine.”

“What you’ll get for me is worth five grand to me. It’s not worth nothing to nobody else.”

“What is it?”

“A box,” he said, and described it, but I’ve told you that part already. “I’ll give you the location, the apartment, everything, and for you it’s like picking up candy in the street.”

“I never pick up candy in the street.”

“Huh?”

“Germs.”

He waved the thought away with one of his little hands. “You know what I mean,” he said. “No more jokes, huh?”

“Why don’t you get it yourself?” He looked at me. “You know the apartment, the layout, everything. You even know what you’re looking for, which is more than I know and more than I want to know. Why don’t you keep the five thousand in your pocket?”

“And pull the job myself?”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. “Certain things I don’t do,” he said. “I don’t take out my own appendix, I don’t cut my own hair, I don’t fix my own plumbing. Important things, things that need an expert’s touch, what I do is I go and find an expert.”

“And I’m your expert?”

“Right. You go through locks like grease through a goose. Or so I’m told.”

“Who told you?”

An elaborate shrug. “You just never remember where you hear a thing these days,” he said.

“I always remember.”

“Funny,” he said. “I never do. I got a memory with holes in it you could fall through.” He touched my arm. “Place is filling up. What do you say we take our business outside. We’ll walk up and down the street, we’ll work everything out.”