The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr)

by Lawrence Block

“No.”

  “But—”

  “I decided you were cute,” she said, “which I’d already established, and I also decided that you were hot. So I decided to sleep with you.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Well, hadn’t you already made the same decision? I could tell the way you were checking me out. So I got you to ask me to dinner—”

  “You never had a dinner date in the first place,” I said. “The phone call was a ruse. Or did you even bother punching in a number? I bet you were just talking into a dead phone.”

  “No, I was talking to Chloe, actually.”

  “I suppose you told her you were going to sleep with me.”

  “Well,” she said, “I was right, wasn’t I? But I didn’t expect to get such a fabulous dinner out of it. When you suggested Italian, I figured we’d go to some red-sauce joint on Thompson Street.”

  “And look where I took you. Maybe I was husband material after all.” She was shaking her head. “No? Why not?”

  “How could I even consider marrying a man impulsive enough to blow two hundred dollars on a meal?”

  “Maybe I’m a gentleman of means,” I suggested. “Maybe two hundred dollars is nothing to me.”

  “Bernie, don’t take this the wrong way. Your store doesn’t do any business, and when your lease is up you won’t be able to afford the rent increase.”

  “For all you know,” I said, “I own the building.”

  “And for all you know I’m Queen Marie of Romania. No, everything I saw made it clear you wouldn’t be standing next to me when I tossed my bridal bouquet. And that was kind of a relief, because it meant I could sleep with you.”

  “And otherwise you couldn’t?”

  “Not on the first date, silly, and probably not on the second or third, either. But you and I were only going to have one date, so why not make the most of it?”

  “Well, we certainly did that,” I said. “You’d have thought you were trying to cram a whole relationship into a couple of hours.”

  “I was.”

  “And you’re trying to deny it now,” I said, “but the way you behaved in bed suggests that maybe you sensed more of a future for us than you let on.”

  “You are so wrong.”

  “I am?”

  “Bernie, if I’d thought that, tonight wouldn’t have been anything like this. We did some pretty wild things tonight.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Some of it, it’s not the sort of thing you do with a future husband. It’s not even the sort of thing you do after you’re married, not for a couple of years, anyway.”

  “Because you wouldn’t want him to know what kind of woman you are?”

  “Of course not. But if we’ve only got one night, and you’re never gonna see the guy again—”

  “Then what the hell, why not go for it?”

  “Exactly. And one thing I knew, as soon as I knew we weren’t going to get married, is that I wanted to try absolutely everything with you.”

  “And I guess we did.”

  She got a look on her face. “Well,” she said.

  “Well what?”

  “Well, there’s this thing I’ve never actually tried. I’ve just read about it, and you might think it’s weird or sick or disgusting.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I tell you,” she said, “you’ll think I’m weird and sick and disgusting. But so what? We’re never going to see each other again.”

  She put her mouth to my ear, gave my earlobe a quick nibble, then whispered.

  “Well, Bernie? What do you think?”

  “I think you’d better take your blouse off,” I said, “and come back to bed.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “You’d better stay over,” I said. “You’ll never get a cab to Brooklyn at this hour, and God knows you don’t want to take the subway.”

  “Oh, Bernie.”

  “You don’t live in Brooklyn, do you?”

  “I could have walked home from the restaurant. I made up Brooklyn so I could see your apartment.”

  “And so I couldn’t see yours?”

  “Oh, Bernie.”

  She was dressed now, and putting on lipstick, checking her reflection in the mirror on my closet door.

  “I won’t ask for your number,” I said. “But you know how to get in touch with me.”

  “I won’t, though.”

  “The husband hunt can’t spare a couple of hours?”

  “It’s not that,” she said, and turned to face me. “One night was fine. If I saw you again, well, we’ve already done everything, haven’t we? It would almost have to be a letdown.” She lowered her eyes. “Or if it wasn’t, I might fall in love with you, Bernie. And that would be a really bad idea.”

  “Straight women,” Carolyn said. “I’ve never understood them and I always will.”

  “Amen.”

  “How do you feel, Bern? Used and abused?”

  “If I had the energy to feel much of anything,” I said, “that might be it. The first part, anyway. I can’t really call it abuse.”

  “No, a victim doesn’t usually have such a good time. It was a real Playboy fantasy, wasn’t it? She’s hot and gorgeous, she does everything you can think of and a couple of things you can’t, and then she’s gone. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

  “It could have been better. Around four in the morning she could have turned into a pizza.”

  “Hold the anchovies.”

  “A pizza without anchovies,” said a voice from the doorway, “is like an ointment without a fly.”

  I looked up, even as Carolyn was closing her eyes, and saw a big man in an expensive if ill-fitting suit. His name was Ray Kirschmann, he’s a detective in the NYPD, and over the years he has occasionally served as the fly in my ointment.

  “Hello, Ray,” I said.

  “Hello, Bernie. Hello, Carolyn.”

  After a beat, just long enough to show her heart wasn’t in it, Carolyn said, “Hello, Ray.”

  “Whatever that is you’re eatin’,” he said, “I have to say it smells better than it looks. I guess it’s some kind of Chinese, bein’ as you’re eatin’ it with chopsticks, which I never got the hang of usin’ myself.”

  “That’s just as well,” Carolyn said. “I don’t have an extra pair to offer you.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with ’em if you did.”

  “I could probably suggest something,” she said, “but never mind. There’s no food left over, anyway.”

  “Plus I already ate.”

  “And yet here you are, Ray. And I’ll bet you’re going to tell us why.”

  “A guy sets out to be friendly,” he said, “and what does it get him? A guy walks in here, he doesn’t make any nasty remarks about dykes, he doesn’t even come up with any short jokes, although God knows he’s got ample opportunity for both. And what does it get him?”

  “The abuse he must unconsciously crave, or why else would he walk in the door?”

  He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, Carolyn. Bernie, where were you last night?”

  “Last night?”

  “That’s right. That would be the little stretch of time between yesterday afternoon and this morning.”

  “I had an early dinner,” I said, “and then I was at my apartment.”

  “Alone, I suppose.”

  “No, I had company.”

  “I suppose it was a lady,” he said, “unless you’ve started pitchin’ for the other team.”

  “My preferences haven’t changed,” I assured him, “although I sometimes think it might be easier if they did.”

  “Does she have a name? And how do I get in touch with her?”

  “You don’t.”

  “You’ve got an alibi,” he said, “but you want to keep it to yourself, and how can it do you any good that way? What is she, Bernie, married? Are you droppin’ your load in some other man’s Maytag?”

  “That’s the worst figure
of speech I’ve heard in a long time,” I said, “but never mind. Anyway, I’m not.”

  “You’re not what?”

  “What you said. She’s not married. Not yet, anyway. All I know is her first name, and I have a feeling it’s not really hers in the first place. I don’t have a phone number for her, or an address.”

  “So how are you gonna see her again?”

  “I’m not, and I don’t care if she can’t give me an alibi, because what in the world do I need with one?”

  “They’re useful,” he said. “They come in handy for keepin’ burglars out of jail.”

  “I don’t do that anymore, Ray.”

  “Yeah, right. But if you did, an alibi wouldn’t hurt a bit.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “What happened? Well, I’d say a few things happened. If he’s to be believed, Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernard got lucky with a mystery woman. And, just playin’ the odds, I’d guess that Mrs. Kaiser’s daughter Carolyn got drunk in one of the muff-type dives on Hudson Street.”

  “If you’ve got nothing else going for you, Ray, you’re just plain dripping with class.”

  “Thanks, Carolyn. Let’s see now, what else happened? Well, the Mets won and the Yankees lost, or maybe it was the other way around. And oh yeah, somebody killed a lady in a townhouse on East Ninety-second Street.”

  “During a burglary.”

  “Good guess, Bernie. Assumin’ it was a guess and not a personal recollection.”

  “Ray, you don’t seriously believe I did it.”

  “No,” he said, “of course I don’t. Give me some credit, Bernie. How long have we known each other?”

  “A long time.”

  “A long time is right, and I have to say I know you pretty good, probably better’n you think I do. I know you’re still a burglar, no matter how you swear up and down that you’ve turned honest. A leopard don’t change his stripes, and neither does a dyed-in-the-wool burglar.”

  I sighed. “I guess you’ll believe what you want to believe.”

  “Yeah, I guess I will, especially when it’s the truth. But besides bein’ a thief to the core, another thing you’ve always been is a gentleman.”

  “Why, thank you, Ray. That’s nice of you to say.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “You’re still a lowlife deadbeat who breaks into people’s houses and steals their stuff. But at the same time you’re the last of the gentleman burglars. You wouldn’t believe the kind of scumbags who’ve been moving into your profession.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Instead of takin’ the trouble to learn the art and science of pickin’ a lock, they kick the door in. Instead of tiptoein’ through a house, they wake up the occupants and force ’em to turn over their valuables.”

  “And last night one of them killed a woman. Are you sure it was a burglar?”

  He nodded. “Unless she trashed the place herself. She was a widow, stayin’ on in this big four-story brownstone after her husband passed on. Her kids wanted her to move to an apartment, and she was thinkin’ about it, but where would she put all her art and antiques?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. That’d be one load off her mind, if she was still around to appreciate it. She was at the opera, and it was a long one—”

  “They all are,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, it looks like we found one thing we can agree on, Carolyn, because how people can sit through them things is beyond me. This particular opera was by that guy Hitler was crazy about.”

  “Wagner,” I suggested.

  “That’s the guy. Anyway, I guess Mrs. Ostermaier could only take so much.”

  “That’s her name? Mrs. Ostermaier?”

  “Last name Ostermaier, first name Helen. She told her friend she was tired, and I guess all the screeching made it hard to sleep through. She went out and caught a cab, and she’d have been better off stayin’ where she was.”

  “I don’t suppose you were able to locate the cabby.”

  “Well, you’re wrong for a change, Bernie. He turned up and he remembered the fare. He told us she read his name off the license and guessed he was from Haiti, which he was, and she told him all about a week she and her husband had spent there back when we were all of us a lot younger, herself included. He said she was a very nice lady.”

  “And he dropped her at her door, and that’s the last anybody ever saw of her.”

  “Except for the guy who was waitin’ for her. Philippe said he offered to walk her to her door, but she said she’d be fine. All the same he hung around at the curb long enough to make sure she got the door open, and only drove off after it closed behind her.”

  We were all silent for a moment. Then Carolyn pointed out that there weren’t many rich old ladies nice enough to talk to a cabdriver about his homeland.

  “We can’t afford to lose people like that,” I said. “Ray, how was she killed?”

  “See, I was plannin’ to ask you that, Bernie. But if you didn’t do it you probably couldn’t come up with the answer.”

  “You don’t know the cause of death yet?”

  “The cause is pretty clear-cut. The cause is breaking and entering. Otherwise she’d still have a pulse.”

  “The medical cause, Ray, and don’t tell me she stopped breathing.”

  “Well, she damn well did,” he said, “and that’s about all we know for sure at this point. A couple of uniforms got the call and found her layin’ in the middle of her living room floor. When I got there a gal from the medical examiner’s office was standin’ by to tell me she couldn’t find a bullet hole or a stab wound or any bangs and bruises.”

  “Maybe she had a heart attack.”

  “First thing I thought of,” he said. “She walks in, some mug’s turnin’ her house upside down, and she’s scared and upset and she can’t catch her breath.”

  “Essentially,” Carolyn said, “you’re saying the poor woman was verklempt.”

  “If that means what it sounds like, then that’s what she was. And you always think of people as gettin’ a big shock and fallin’ over, but is that what gives you a heart attack? Then why are they always blaming it on steak dinners at Peter Luger’s?”

  “The shock comes when they bring the bill,” I said, “and you find out they don’t take plastic.”

  “So it coulda been her heart, but it coulda been twenty other things, and that’s why we’re waitin’ on the autopsy. But you know the law, Bernie. You’d have to, to break it as often as you do. Even if she died of a bee flyin’ up her nose, the burglar’s goin’ down for murder.”

  “ ‘When the commission of a felony leads to a death, the perpetrator of that felony is guilty of homicide.’ ”

  “Felony murder,” he said. “When I was at the Police Academy, they had an example that stuck in my mind. A guy’s writin’ out a forged check, and a drop of ink from the pen flies up in the face of the intended mark, and the guy has an allergic reaction and dies on the spot. And the forger goes away on a murder charge. Neat?”

  “It couldn’t happen nowadays,” Carolyn said. “You’d pretty much need a fountain pen, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t think it ever happened. The point’s not what happened, it’s how the law works.”

  “Haphazardly at best,” I said. “Ray, if you really think I had anything to do with this—”

  “Aw, I know you didn’t, Bernie. Let’s say you were there. She pays off the cab, she walks in, and there you are, checkin’ out the valuables.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “I dunno. I guess she flops on the floor. What else do you do when you get a heart attack?”

  “Take aspirin,” I said, “and call 911.”

  “I guess she didn’t get the chance. But that’s the thing, Bernie. If you’d been there—”

  “Which I wasn’t.”

  “Which I know, because what you woulda done is called 911 your own self. Am I right?”

  “Well
, I wouldn’t just leave her there to die, Ray.”

  “See? Case closed. You weren’t there.”

  “And yet you,” Carolyn said, “are here.”

  He nodded. “I guess I was just wonderin’ if you heard anything, Bernie.”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “You did?”

  “Just now,” I said. “Right here, from you.”

  “Oh. For a minute there—”

  “Well, how else would I hear anything? It’s not as though I have friends in the business. I got locked up once, Ray, and one of the things they told me when they let me out was to avoid contact with other criminals.”

  “And you took the advice to heart.”

  “And followed it to the letter, because nothing could have been easier. I didn’t hang out with criminals before I went away, and the ones I met on the inside didn’t make me eager to continue the association.”

  Ray nodded. “If you weren’t an incorrigible criminal yourself,” he said, “it’d be hard to believe you were any kind of a crook at all. What did I call you before, Bernie?”

  “I think you said I was the last of the gentleman burglars.”

  “A vanishin’ breed,” he said, “although I don’t know as there was ever too many of them around. You’re the only one I ever met.”

  “There was always Raffles,” Carolyn said.

  “Raffles the Cat? Is this warming up to be some joke about cat burglars?”

  “A.J. Raffles,” I said. “He was the hero of a series of stories by an English writer named E.W. Hornung, who I believe was related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes. It seems to me that Hornung was his brother-in-law.”

  “One of ’em was married to the other one’s sister.”

  “I think so,” I said, “but I may be thinking of someone else. I could look it up.”

  “Later,” he said, “when I’m miles away from here. What’s this got to do with your cat?”

  “My cat was named for A.J. Raffles,” I said, “who’d been an outstanding cricket player in his school days, and who became equally distinguished as an amateur cracksman. In other words, a burglar.”

  “And he was the hero?”

  “He was suave and debonair,” I said, “and apt to come to the aid of damsels in distress. And, like Robin Hood, he only stole from the rich.”