The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr)

by Lawrence Block

  At the Bum Rap, Carolyn had finished one drink and started in on a second. I was still working on my first Perrier, and I’d just begun recounting what I’d learned about Livingston.

  “I’ve heard of him, Bern. Dr. Livingston I. Presume, right? He got lost in Africa, and Stanley Kubrick found him.”

  “That was David Livingstone, with an E on the end, and Henry Morton Stanley. And it was a century later.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Henry Beekman Livingston, I went on, was born in 1748 and was thus twenty-eight years old when his kinsman Philip Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence. He’d married Sally Wells in 1774, and he celebrated the birth of their first child by joining the American Revolution. He held the rank of major, and commanded the New York Regiment from 1776 to 1779.

  In 1783, two years after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Sally Livingston died. She’d borne four children, and left Henry to raise them alone. In 1793 he married Jane Patterson, and had four more children with her. He led a blameless life, as far as anyone can tell, and he spent his time writing poetry while he watched all those children grow up.

  “Poetry? Was it any good, Bern?”

  “He wrote mostly for his own amusement,” I said. “And he didn’t publish much of anything, but there’s one poem of his that received a fair amount of attention. A lot of people know it, and you’re one of them.”

  “I know a poem of his? Bern, a minute ago I mixed him up with the guy who swam up the Congo and got lost. What makes you think I know his poetry?”

  “I’ll quote the first two lines,” I said, “and you let me know if it rings a bell. ‘’Twas the night before Christmas / And all through the house.’ ”

  “Bern, I know for a fact that was somebody else. He lived in Chelsea, and there’s a building there with a plaque on it, and I can come up with his name if you give me a minute.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “Moore,” she said. “That’s his name. One of them, anyway. Something Something Moore.”

  “Clement Clarke Moore.”

  “That’s the guy. He wrote ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, except the actual title was something else.”

  “A Visit From St. Nicholas.”

  “There you go. He just about invented Christmas, if you stop and think about it. He was the one who named the reindeer. Of course he didn’t know about Rudolph, but he got all the others right.”

  “All true,” I agreed. “Except it was actually Henry Beekman Livingston who wrote the poem. The names of the reindeer were those of the horses in Henry’s stable. Do you remember Primary Colors, the political novel published by Anonymous a while back?”

  “Of course I do. I hope you’re not going to tell me Henry Livingston wrote that one, too. Because everybody knows who wrote it. Joe Klein wrote it.”

  “And do you remember who outed Joe Klein?”

  “Some guy who analyzed the text. It was pretty interesting the way he worked it out. But I don’t remember his name.”

  “It was Donald Foster.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Bern.”

  “And the same Donald Foster ran the same kind of textual analysis of A Visit From St. Nicholas, and guess what?”

  “Henry Beekman Livingston wrote it?”

  “It certainly looks that way. According to him there’s no way on earth Clement Clarke Moore could have written that poem.”

  I told her some more—more than she needed to know, I have no doubt—about how Livingston made a habit of writing Christmas and New Year poems, and how this one was published anonymously in an upstate newspaper, and how Moore read it to his kids but later on was never able to show working drafts of it, explaining how it had all come to him word for word in a dream, and he just rushed to his desk and wrote it down in finished form, and—oh, never mind. Carolyn didn’t really need to hear the whole story, and neither do you.

  “Bern,” she said, when I finally stopped talking, “this is all very interesting.”

  “You honestly think so?”

  “Up to a point,” she said, “I do. But here’s my question. What’s all of this got to do with apostle spoons and Myer Myers?”

  “Livingston would be pretty interesting,” I said, “even if he hadn’t written the poem. He had a wide range of interests, a great intellectual curiosity, and a spirit of quiet adventure. He kept a low profile, so there’s a lot we don’t know about him, but among the things we do know is that he was acquainted with Myer Myers, both the person and the work. Relatives of his had commissioned work from Myers, and an inventory of his widow’s estate includes a pierced silver bowl that was almost certainly Myers’s work.

  “And he knew what apostle spoons were. There’s a 1792 letter that survives from a neighbor in Poughkeepsie with the report of a visit from ‘Henry and Jane, she well recovered from her recent illness, and he so taken with the St. Jude spoon I felt moved to press it upon him, but he too much the gentleman to accept it, for which I remain quite glad, as it should pain me to part with it.’

  “It wasn’t long after that social visit that Henry made a journey to New York that included a stop at Myer Myers’ shop. There he arranged an unusual commission—a set of fifteen silver spoons ‘fashioned in the manner employed for the depiction of the twelve apostles, but each showing rather a contemporary exemplar of civic virtue, selected to represent the thirteen original colonies.’ ”

  “I thought you said fifteen spoons, Bern.”

  “One for Vermont. It was part of New York when the colonies declared their independence, and it declared its own independence a year later in 1777, proclaiming itself the Vermont Republic and issuing its own coins. In 1791 New York recognized the secession, allowing Vermont to join the union as the fourteenth state. A year later, when Livingston ordered his spoons, he felt moved to include Vermont.”

  “That’s fourteen.”

  “Number fifteen was George Washington. He could have been on the Virginia spoon, but that would have meant leaving out Thomas Jefferson. Livingston’s reasoning was that Washington, first as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and now as President of the United States, ought to stand not for one state but for the nation as a whole.”

  “So he got a spoon of his own. Just like Jesus.”

  “I’m not sure Myer Myers would have put it that way,” I said, “or George Washington either, as far as that goes. I suppose Livingston must have decided who would represent each of the states, although he may have talked it over with Myers. A lot of them were men who had signed the Declaration of Independence, like Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Maryland’s Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of course Philip Livingston of New York. But Henry Livingston was a soldier, and he evidently admired military men, because he selected Nathanael Greene for Rhode Island and Francis Marion for South Carolina. Marion was known as the Swamp Fox, and his spoon showed him with a little fox at his feet, posed like Man’s Best Friend.”

  “More like Man’s Slyest Friend,” she said.

  “And for Vermont, well, there weren’t any signers from Vermont, and the choice was another military hero, Ethan Allen.”

  “What did Myer Myers put at his feet, Bern? A love seat? A ladderback chair?”

  “I don’t know. He captured Fort Ticonderoga, so maybe it was a pencil.”

  “Myer Myers,” she said. “You know, when you first mentioned the name—”

  “You thought for sure I meant the Ed McBain character.”

  “Well, can you blame me? But it just this minute hit me, Bern. Myer Myers, right?”

  “So?”

  “And Roda Roda?”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s like we keep ducking into an echo chamber. I think I’ll go to the jukebox and play some Duran Duran. Or go home and watch reruns of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Or—”

  “Stop.”

  “Okay. You probably think I was going to mention Walla Walla, but it never entered my mind. Myer Myers made the
spoons, right? All fifteen of them?”

  I took out the Culloden book, opened it to Plate XVI.

  “That’s George,” she said. “He’s probably the only one I’d have a chance of recognizing. What’s he holding?”

  “I forget what it’s called, but it’s an instrument surveyors used. He did a lot of surveying, when he wasn’t busy crossing the Delaware.”

  “A hatchet would be better, Bern. For chopping down cherry trees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spoon shaped like that.”

  “Myers went retro,” I said. “The bowl like a teardrop, the long straight handle—he must have been inspired by the typical apostle spoons of a century or two earlier.”

  “I like it,” she said. “I guess you’ll be looking at the original in a couple of hours.”

  I shook my head. “Not unless I go a few blocks north of Leopold’s place to the Museum of the City of New York. That’s where George has been ever since a Livingston descendant died and left it to them.”

  “I thought Mr. Leopold had the whole set.”

  “Not even close. The Charles Carroll of Carrollton spoon wound up in the collection of the Baltimore Historical Society, and—”

  “Bern, why do they always call the guy Charles Carroll of Carrollton?”

  “I have no idea. Not that I haven’t often wondered myself. You could look it up.”

  “I could,” she agreed, “but probably won’t. He’s in Baltimore, huh?”

  “Well, his spoon is. I couldn’t tell you what became of the man himself. The other spoons are scattered, some in public collections, some in private hands. Two or three have vanished without a trace. Every so often manipulation sends the price of silver skyrocketing, and every time it does, a lot of collectible silver goes to the smelter. Gone, never to be seen again.”

  “If there was ever a Judge Crater spoon, I bet that’s what happened to it.”

  “Of the original fifteen,” I said, “our Mr. Leopold has four of them.”

  “And you’re going to take them.”

  “Only one,” I said. “The one with the button.”

  The book got me into the building.

  That, of course, was why Mr. Smith had sent me to steal it in the first place. Access to the Wattrous apartment, itself easily gained, could give me access to the far more formidable fortress uptown.

  And I’d have had a hell of a time without it. Many of Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens are essentially immune to burglary simply because the buildings they inhabit are impregnable. Edwin Leopold lived in such a building, and if he hadn’t sent down word earlier that I was expected, I’d have been sent speedily on my way.

  A liveried doorman, built like a tight end, was stationed out in front. I gave my name, along with Leopold’s, and he passed me on to the concierge, a slightly smaller man in a similar uniform, the jacket cut to cloak but not entirely conceal the bulge of a shoulder holster.

  Or maybe he was just glad to see me. He looked me over—my suit, my muted necktie, the briefcase I was carrying. I gave my name, and he nodded in recognition, checked a list to confirm his memory, and then called upstairs on the chance that Mr. Leopold might have changed his mind, and no longer welcomed my company.

  “Mr. Lederer,” he announced, and listened. “Very good, sir,” he said, and gave me a smile, though not a terribly warm one. “The front elevator,” he said.

  I’d noted a camera mounted above the building’s entrance, and another above and behind the concierge’s desk. From where that gentleman sat, he could monitor a bank of a dozen screens, which suggested that there were at least that many closed-circuit cameras busily recording the activity in all of the building’s public spaces.

  I spotted one in the elevator, along with its operator, an older fellow with a bulldog jaw and, yes, a maroon uniform with gold piping, a match to those I’d seen on the concierge and the doorman. He whisked me two hundred feet closer to heaven and dropped me at a hallway some ten feet square. There were paintings on both side walls, rural landscapes in matching frames, while opposite the elevator was the door to the Leopold penthouse.

  Behind me, the elevator operator held his position, and I knew he wouldn’t budge until my host let me in. I transferred my briefcase to my left hand and knocked with my right, and a male voice asked my name.

  “Philip Lederer,” I said, and locks began to turn.

  Several of them. Two cylinders showed on the outside of the door, but there was also a massive sliding bolt, and a Fox lock at least as sturdy as the one I’d encountered on Tenth Street.

  The locks were a surprise. As a general rule, the easier it is to get into a building, the harder the residents make it to get into their apartments. The Wattrous apartment, swaddled by Rabson and Poulard and Fox, was a perfect example. Anyone armed with a butter knife could get past the downstairs door, so the brownstone’s tenants hung industrial-strength locks on their doors.

  But here on Fifth Avenue, with a gun-toting concierge and a doorman who could double as the Rock of Gibraltar, you’d expect a more casual attitude toward locks. If no one could get into the building in the first place, why put oneself to the trouble of carrying all those keys and turning all those locks?

  My heart would have plummeted at the sight of all those locks, especially once he’d let me in only to relock every one of those contrivances. You can’t be too paranoid, Mrs. Hesch had advised me, but she’d never met Edwin Leopold.

  So the locks would have lowered my spirits, but they were already somewhere below sea level, and I was just glad I had the book with me, and that we’d already set a price for it. Because that thousand dollars was all the money I’d ever see for my efforts.

  He didn’t need all those locks. He didn’t need a single one of them. He could have fastened his door with a piece of string, or left it open altogether. It didn’t matter.

  It wasn’t Fort Knox, but it might as well have been. There was no way I’d be getting anything out of that building.

  Edwin Leopold had a firm handshake, and treated me to it after we’d introduced ourselves. The handshake came as a surprise, but then so did everything else about the man’s appearance. All I knew about him was that he had a passion for old silver and an extreme disinclination to leave his apartment, and the mental picture I’d formed was of a pale little slug of a man, possibly corpulent, possibly chair-bound, looking as if he’d crawled out of a cartoon by Charles Addams.

  He was my height but looked taller, perhaps because his posture was better than mine—and indeed better than just about anyone’s. His shoulders were broader and his waist trimmer. His made-to-measure suit was understated, but the functional buttons on its cuffs were a custom touch that Mr. Smith would have appreciated.

  And his skin, firm and unlined, boasted a deep coppery tan. I supposed he could have obtained it on a terrace, but the terrace would have had to be in Miami. It was only June, and it would take all of a New York summer to turn him that color.

  “I hope you’ll excuse this silliness with the locks,” he said, after capping the performance by arming his Kaltenborn alarm system. He took my arm and led me to a small table set for two, holding a thermos of coffee and a plate of cookies. “But if I fail to lock every last one, and set the alarm even though I’m sitting this close to the door, I assure you I’ll be able to think of nothing else. Are you phobic, Mr. Lederer?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Still, I wouldn’t say I’m fearless. There are certainly things that make me uncomfortable.”

  “There’s a difference between discomfort and paralysis. If you were phobic, you’d realize it. Do you know the word agora?”

  “From crossword puzzles. I think it means market.”

  “In the sense of the Greek marketplace of old, which would have been an open public area where merchants laid out their goods. Thus agoraphobia, which is literally a fear of open spaces. Have one of these cookies, Mr. Lederer. They’re from the Hungarian bakery on Second Avenue.”

  “Del
icious.”

  My seat gave me a good view of the glassed-in triple cabinet off to my right. It reached to within a few inches of the ten-foot ceiling, and light glinted off the silver objects on its shelves. A quick glance didn’t show me any spoons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there to be seen.

  “I call them,” he said of the bakery, “and they’re good enough to deliver. New York is remarkably considerate of the agoraphobic. One can have virtually anything brought to one’s home.”

  “How long—”

  “Have I been like this? I’m sixty-two years old, Mr. Lederer.”

  “You look younger.”

  “Do I? I try to stay in shape. I ran five miles this morning. A normal man would have gone across the street and done his running in the park. I used a treadmill. I’m assured my cardiovascular system can’t tell the difference.”

  He’d had one room converted to a gym, with other machinery to keep the treadmill company, along with an assortment of free weights. And he’d had a sauna installed—it didn’t take much space, or use that much electricity. And a sunlamp, which accounted for the tan.

  “All of this,” he said, “to accommodate a deplorable neurotic condition. You asked how long I’ve suffered from it. When I was thirty years old, I was a world traveler, even an explorer. I camped out in the Taklamakan desert in western China. Have you been there?”

  Curiously enough, I hadn’t.

  “A miserable place. This vast expanse, and it looked as though someone had set out to pave it and ran out of tar. And there I was, sleeping under the stars, all alone in the middle of nowhere. And quite comfortable, if you can believe it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I honestly don’t know. All I can say is that something happened. I had a trip planned to Italy, a region of that country that was the closest thing to a second home to me. I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t want to go. I canceled the trip, and I’ve never been out of New York since.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? Because I don’t. This is the apartment I grew up in, it was my parents’, and my mother was still living then. I moved back in with her, and went on living here after her death. At first I was comfortable anywhere in the city, but gradually my world grew smaller. I learned to stay in the immediate neighborhood. The day came when I crossed the avenue, intending to sit for a few minutes in the park, and instead I turned around and came right back. I never crossed Fifth Avenue again.”