The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams

by Lawrence Block

  “And then what did I do, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

  “You tidied up. You screwed the switch plate back where it belonged. You threw a blanket over your wife and let her sleep it off. When she woke up asking whatever happened to cool bland Luke, you said he must have left before you arrived. ‘I guess I must have dozed off,’ she said. ‘I guess you did at that,’ you said, ‘but don’t you think we ought to start packing? We’ve got a flight tomorrow evening.’ ”

  “And I suppose I left the corpse in place and trotted off to London.”

  “Why not? He wasn’t going anywhere. Your wife already said she hardly ever uses that bathroom. If she tried to get in there during the twenty-four hours before you left for the airport, she’d find the door locked. ‘Seems to be stuck,’ you could tell her. ‘Wood must have swelled over the summer. Have to get the super to look at it after we come back.’ ”

  “You’re forgetting something.”

  “Oh?”

  “Our apartment was ransacked in our absence. Things tossed about, drawers emptied out, jewelry and other valuables taken. How does that fit in with your little scenario?”

  “He’s got a point,” Ray said. “There was even a piece or two of jewelry found in the tub with the deceased.”

  “I’m sure there was,” I said. “Right where Nugent tossed it when he faked the burglary?”

  Nugent stared at me. “I faked the burglary? When did I do that, right after I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby?”

  I shook my head. “I have a pretty good idea how you did it,” I said. “The only real question is when you tossed the jewelry in the tub. It was a nice touch, and I wonder if you were farsighted enough to do it right after you shot Santangelo or if you had to remove the switch plate a second time later on. I’d guess the latter. The killing was an impulse thing, wasn’t it? While the cover-up took some planning.”

  “You must be out of your mind.”

  “Here’s what I think,” I went on. “Late Tuesday night, while your wife was asleep, you realized what you had to do. You got some of her jewelry, came in here, undid the switch plate, tossed the jewels in the tub with the corpse, and closed up again. Then Wednesday the two of you were ready to fly to London. Maybe you were already down on the street loading the bags into the taxi when you contrived to remember something, one bag you’d conveniently left behind. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ you told your wife, and it wouldn’t have taken you much longer than that. Scoop up a few valuables, spill out a few drawers, and you’re on your way again. You’d already have disposed of whatever clothing Santangelo had removed before he, uh, did what he did. In a pinch you could have tossed them out the window, leaving them for the homeless to scavenge, but I suspect you found an even safer way.”

  “And what did I do with the jewels?”

  “Good question,” I said. “That necklace is a beaut, Mrs. Nugent. I’ve been admiring it all night. I don’t suppose it was one of the stolen pieces?”

  “I had it with me in Europe.”

  “I don’t know what you’re driving at,” Nugent said, “and I don’t think you do, either. The police have a full and precise inventory of everything that was taken. You can be assured that the pieces my wife is wearing are not on it.”

  “I’m sure they’re not,” I said, “but it’s good to know about the inventory. Ray, I don’t suppose you happen to have a copy of it with you, do you?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact.”

  “And I do if he doesn’t,” said Nugent. “What possible difference can it make?”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “if we found some of the pieces on that list here in this apartment, it wouldn’t look good for Mr. Nugent, would it?”

  “If he took the stuff,” Ray said, “he wouldn’t leave it here. He ain’t stupid, Bernie.”

  “I could hardly tuck it in my breast pocket and carry it to London and back,” Nugent said testily, “and I wouldn’t have had time to do anything else with it, would I?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You’d have had to stash it someplace on the premises. I know what you’re going to say, Ray. After the Nugents returned, he could have transferred the goodies to a safe deposit box.”

  “Words right outta my mouth, Bernie.”

  “And he could have,” I said, “but I don’t think he did. Why bother, since the cops had already been in and out of the place in his absence? I think he decided the jewels were perfectly safe right where they were. Now where would that be?” I looked thoughtfully at Harlan Nugent. “Someplace where your wife wouldn’t come upon them, because she thought the burglary was genuine. Some private space of yours. A den, say.” I led the way, and damned if they didn’t all follow me. “A locked desk drawer,” I said, having located just such a drawer. “Is this where you put the jewels, Mr. Nugent?”

  “What a curious fantasy.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to open the drawer for us?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “would please me more.” He opened an unlocked drawer on the opposite side of the desk and rummaged through it. “Damn it to hell,” he said.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I can’t find the fucking key.”

  “How convenient.”

  He cursed colorfully and imaginatively. If I’d been a key and somebody talked to me like that, I’d do whatever he wanted me to do. This key, however, remained elusive.

  “Bern,” Carolyn said, God bless her, “since when did you ever need a key to open a lock? Use the gifts God gave you, will you?”

  “Well, I can’t do that,” I said. “We’re guests in Mr. Nugent’s home, and it’s his desk and his drawer and only he knows what’s in it. I couldn’t possibly try to open it without his permission.”

  He looked at me. “You can open a lock without a key?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Then for God’s sake do it,” he started to say, and then I think he finally got it, and that made it perfect. “Wait a moment,” he said. “Of course you have no legal right.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “We’d need your permission.”

  “Which if we don’t get it, the next step’d be a court order,” Ray added.

  The big shoulders sagged. “There can’t be…I can’t imagine…go ahead, damn you, open the fucking thing.”

  Guess what we found?

  “I completely lost my head,” Harlan Nugent said. “Just as you said, I came home that Tuesday afternoon and found Joan sprawled naked on the daybed in her studio. She was unconscious, and in an awkward, unnatural position. I took one look at her and thought she was dead.”

  “Oh, darling!”

  “And there were these clothes piled on the floor, as if they’d been removed in a great hurry. Her clothes, and some male clothing as well. And my eye was drawn to the bathroom door, which was closed. It’s usually open when she paints.”

  “When I use acrylics, I wash my brushes in the sink.”

  “I tried the door, and of course I couldn’t open it. I shouted for whoever was inside to open the door. Of course he didn’t. If he had, I think I might have torn him limb from limb.”

  “So you got your gun.”

  “From the locked drawer. If I’d misplaced the key a little earlier, Santangelo might be alive.” He thought about it. “No,” he decided, “I’d have broken down the door and killed him. I was completely beside myself.”

  “But you remembered a way into the bathroom.”

  “The switch plate, yes. And I shot him. I don’t think I even knew who he was when I pulled the trigger. I didn’t care. He’d killed the only woman I ever loved, and he was damn well going to die for it. Then I would call the police and let them take over.”

  “Instead, she came back to life.”

  “Thank God,” he said. “She moved an arm, she was breathing, she was alive. I didn’t know what he’d done, whether he’d knocked her unconscious or drugged her or what—”

  “He sometimes gave me these pills,” she said,
“that made colors a lot richer. They had a very stimulating effect on my painting, but sometimes I would get very tired and have to lie down and take a nap.”

  “The swine,” Nugent said. “I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead. It’s hard to believe the world’s a poorer place for his having left it. But I wish I hadn’t killed him. It shook me badly.”

  “That’s why you were so moody in London, darling.”

  “I tidied up and tried to figure out what to do next. Then Joan awoke smiling and still a little groggy, asking when I’d come in and where Luke had gone. I said I just got in and he must have let himself out. When she turned in for the night I went out and draped his clothes on the gate of the church on Amsterdam Avenue. People leave clothing there all the time, and homeless people help themselves to it. I’ve left things there before, shirts with frayed collars, trousers that have gone shiny in the seat. I must say I’ve given away things of my own that were in better shape than what I hung on the gate that night. Dirty jeans gone at the knee, a sweater rank enough to gag a billy goat—”

  “Luke was never a dresser,” Doll put in. “And he could get a little lax in the personal hygiene area.”

  “I got rid of the gun as well. I’d bought it to protect our home from prowlers, and, in a manner of speaking, it had done its job. I dropped it down a storm drain.”

  “An’ then you burglarized yourself,” Ray said, “an’ lit out for London.”

  Nugent frowned. “I swear I don’t remember that part,” he said. “Is it possible for a man to do a thing like that and forget it entirely?”

  “Darling, you were under a strain,” his wife said.

  “I’ve always prided myself on my memory,” he said. “And it’s not like forgetting a telephone number.”

  “You did bring two of the bags down, Harlan. And then you went up for the other two, while I waited in the lobby.”

  “That’s when I must have done it,” he said. “I could have sworn—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. And what earthly difference does it make? I’ve already admitted to murder. That’s a far more serious offense than making a false report of a crime.” He heaved a great sigh. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I’ll call my attorney now. And then you’ll want to follow the form and read me my rights, won’t you?”

  There was a silence, and I started counting to myself. One. Two. Three. Four….

  “Let’s not be too hasty here,” Ray Kirschmann said. “Before we get all caught up in anythin’ official, let’s see what we’re lookin’ at here.”

  Someone asked him what he meant.

  “Well, where’s our evidence? You made an admission just now in front of a roomful of people, but none of that’s admissible in court. Any lawyer’d just tell you to retract it, an’ that’s the end of it. Far as physical evidence goes, what we got’s a lot of nothin’. There’s a switch plate with no switch box behind it, provin’ somebody coulda been shot in a locked room, but so what?

  “An’ as for you, young lady,” he said to Doll Cooper, “we got no doubt in my mind, an’ prolly not a lot in anybody else’s either, that you had somethin’ to do with the disappearance of those baseball cards. But we ain’t got the cards, an’ you ain’t got ’em either, an’ my best guess is they been sold an’ split up an’ changed hands three times already, an’ nobody’s ever gonna see ’em again. This gentleman here, Mr. Gilmartin, he might have a bone to pick with you, on account of it’s his cards you walked off with. If he insists on pressin’ charges, well, I think it’ll get kicked for lack of evidence, but I’d have to take you in.”

  “I don’t want to press charges,” Marty said. “I just hope Miss Cooper might narrow her range in the future and limit her acting to stage and screen. She would seem to have a considerable talent, and it would be a shame to see it diluted.”

  “You know,” Doll said, “you’re a gentleman, you really are. I’m sorry I took the cards from you. I was playing a part, that’s exactly what I was doing, and I think I fooled myself into thinking it gave me a dramatic license to steal. It’s corny to say this, but I may have actually learned a lesson tonight.”

  Carolyn gave me a “get her” look, but the speech seemed to go over well with everybody else.

  “So that’s that,” Ray said. “Brings us back to you, Mr. Nugent. What we keep comin’ back to is there’s no evidence, an’ I also gotta say the deceased don’t sound like no great loss. Of course there’s also the matter of makin’ a false report to an insurance company, claimin’ a loss when there was no loss.”

  “That bothered me,” Nugent admitted. “The idea of making an actual profit on the man’s death. But once the burglary was a matter of record I could hardly fail to put in a claim.” He thought for a moment. “I could tell them I made a mistake. The jewelry actually turned up.”

  “You sure you want to do that, Mr. Nugent? You sorta call attention to yourself that way. You’re in this deep, the shortest way’s straight ahead.” He put a companionable hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Far as makin’ a profit on all of this, believe me, sir, you got nothin’ to worry about. The rest of you folks, I’m thinkin’ maybe you all oughta clear outta here about now. The show’s over, an’ me an’ Mr. Nugent here need a little privacy to work out some of the details on how we’re gonna keep this whole matter private an’ personal.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-three

  I had a lunch date the following day, so I didn’t get a chance to sit down and talk with Carolyn until we met after work at the Bum Rap. I was a little late closing—a customer, a devout G. T. Henty collector, may his tribe increase—and by the time I got over there she was already at work on a scotch and soda. I asked Maxine to bring me a beer, and Carolyn told me that was a load off her mind.

  “You’ve been working up a storm lately, Bern,” she said. “I was starting to worry about you.”

  “Not to worry,” I said.

  “I went on home by myself last night,” she said, “because I had the feeling you and Patience might want to creep off into the night.”

  “On little iambic feet?” I shook my head. “I bought her a cup of coffee,” I said, “and put her in a cab.”

  “I was wondering what she was doing there, Bern. I was trying to figure out how she could have stolen the cards or shot Luke Santangelo, and I came up with a couple of real winners. Why’d you have Ray bring her?”

  “To save going through the whole thing another time,” I said. “I kind of owed her an explanation, after all the dates I broke and the fibs I told.”

  “Lies, Bern. Once you’re past seven years old, you don’t get to call them fibs anymore.”

  “Besides, I suppose I was showing off a little. And I thought it might cheer her up. She’s a nice woman, but she’s depressed all the time. She’ll come out of it for a minute or two to sing haiku to the tune of ‘Moonlight in Vermont,’ but then she’s off again, sinking into the Slough of Despond.”

  She frowned. “Isn’t that what they called Babe Ruth?”

  “That was the Sultan of Swat.”

  “Right. It’s hard keeping them all straight. Bern, you gotta remember that Patience is a poet.”

  “Who else would sing haiku?”

  “And they’re all moody like that, especially the women. It’s a good thing most of ’em have to live in basement apartments or they’d be jumping out the window all the time. As it stands they kill themselves left and right.”

  “Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.”

  “That’s just the tip of the ice cube, Bern. It’s a known phenomenon, poetic depression in women. There’s even a name for it.”

  “The Edna St. Vincent Malaise,” I said. “I’ve heard of it, but this is the first time I ever encountered it in person. And I think Patience and I have had a parting of the ways. Still, it didn’t hurt having her there. There were enough chairs to go around.”

  She took a sip of her drink and asked me what had
happened after the rest of them left.

  “What you’d expect,” I said. “Ray’s instincts are pretty good sometimes, I have to say that for him. He had a hunch I could clear it all up, and that there’d be something in it for him. He was right on both counts. You were there to watch me clear it up, and after you left he got his share.”

  “Harlan Nugent paid him off?”

  “That’s not the way Ray phrased it. According to him, some money had to be spread around to make sure the investigation didn’t go any further. Well, he can make sure of that simply by keeping his mouth shut and not filing a report, so there’s not a lot of spreading that has to be done. Ray’s idea of sharing is to divide the dough up and put it in different pockets.”

  “How much did he get?”

  “Eighty-three fifty for openers. That’s what cash Nugent had on hand. There’ll be more when the insurance company pays off on the Nugents’ jewelry. My guess is Ray’ll pick up another twenty or twenty-five.”

  “Eighty-three fifty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a familiar number.”

  “Isn’t it,” I said sourly.

  “It’s the money you took from Nugent’s desk the first time you went there, isn’t it?”

  “To the penny,” I said. “I swear that’s the stupidest job I ever pulled in my life. I went in three times. The first time I took some money and jewelry and put back the jewelry. The second time I kept the money and went back for the jewelry. Then the night before last I went in for the last time and put the money back where I found it, and put the jewelry in the same drawer with it. It’s like that logic problem with cannibals and Christians.”

  “I wouldn’t trust either of them, Bern. What did you do, go in in the middle of the night?”

  “Around four in the morning. Not a Nugent was stirring. I came as Young Dr. Rhodenbarr, with my stethoscope in my pocket. It would have been pretty awful to get caught the one time I was making a delivery instead of a pickup, but I figured I had to set the stage.”