The Burglar on the Prowl

by Lawrence Block

  It didn’t take long. When the door was open I straightened up and motioned her inside, but she stayed where she was, wide-eyed and openmouthed. “Come inside and sit down,” I said. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Thirty

  A burglar,” she said. “I never met a burglar before. But how can I say for certain? I wouldn’t have known you were one if you hadn’t told me.”

  “You must have had your suspicions when I opened your lock.”

  “I don’t know what I thought. That this wasn’t happening, that I really had lost my mind and I’d never be able to find it. Or that maybe you were just this incredible storybook hero, a man for all seasons able to cope with anything.”

  “What kind of hero hides under the bed?”

  “A smart one. Is there really room under there? I’ve heard of women who always check the bed to see if there’s a man under it. I thought it was a joke, but now just watch, I’ll be doing it myself. What’s the name of the drug he gave me?”

  “Rohypnol. Roofies for short.”

  “The date-rape drug. What a bastard he must be. Pardon my Latvian, but what a motherfucking cocksucking shiteating cuntrag asswipe.” She took a breath. “Whew! I got carried away there. Pardon my Latvian, or did I say that already?”

  “You can say it all you want.”

  “I brought one stranger home with me, and there was another one already here. Suppose I’d come home alone. What would you have done?”

  “Pretty much the same thing, when I missed my chance to get out the window. Incidentally, you’re taking a big chance keeping it nailed shut like that. Suppose there’s a fire?”

  “There are two windows side by side.”

  “Right, and they’re nailed shut.”

  “I bet I can tell you which one you tried.”

  “Only one’s nailed shut? I’ll be a ringtailed son of a bitch.”

  “It’s a good thing you picked the one on the right, or you’d have gone out the window with all my good jewelry. How come you put it back, anyway?”

  “Because I felt sorry for you. Because by the time he left and I got out from under the bed I felt as though I knew you, and I don’t take things from people I know.”

  “You kept the money.”

  “Well, I didn’t know you that well. And it was only money, it wasn’t something personal like jewelry.”

  “My dad gave me the charm bracelet. He was a coin collector, and he’d add a coin for birthdays and other occasions, or just because he’d picked up something at a show. I never wear it because it looks dorky, but I’d hate to part with it. I probably ought to keep it in a safe-deposit box. It must be worth a few dollars.”

  “The diamond earrings, too.”

  “I know. They were my grandmother’s, and I’d hate to lose them. But I wear them sometimes, and that would mean having to go to the bank first.”

  I told her about hidey-holes, and that I’d make one for her.

  “My hero,” she said. And her eyes got this look in them, and it seemed like a good time to kiss her. And, well, one thing led to another.

  “That’s how you knew it was pink,” she said.

  In light of the particular activity that immediately preceded this remark, it took me a second to realize she was talking about her Lady Remington.

  “You took it,” she said, “so of course you knew what color it was. Why do you suppose he smashed it? He likes his women hairy?”

  “Quite the contrary. He threatened to shave you.”

  “To shave me? Where would he—oh.”

  “Right.”

  “In that case I’m glad he broke the shaver. I’ve already replaced it, and God knows how long the other would have taken. I guess he broke the thing because he’s all those things I already called him, but why did you take it?”

  “To keep you from wondering why it was broken.”

  “So I wouldn’t know just how bad a night it had been. That’s the same reason you straightened up. And you put the jewelry back because you’re a sweet man. You may be a criminal, but you’re too much of a softie to be a hardened criminal.”

  “Sometimes I tell myself I’m not really a criminal, I’m just a man who performs criminal acts.”

  “Oh, I like that.”

  “And then I tell myself that’s a load of crap.”

  “I like that, too. You put the jewelry back because you felt like you knew me, but you kept the money because it was only money, and then you put it back. Because we’d slept together?”

  “I suppose so. And you hadn’t noticed it was gone, and this way it would be back before you missed it.”

  “Except it wasn’t, but how could you know I would look between the time we talked on the phone and the time you got here to replace it?”

  “I should have expected it.”

  “Why, Bernie?”

  “Because it’s a coincidence, and I’ve had a run of them lately. If I’d known you’d missed the money, I don’t know how I would have handled it. I’d have found some way to give it back to you, but not in a way that would leave you doubting your sanity.”

  “You were Gaslighting me, and you didn’t know it. I like the explanations you came up with, incidentally.”

  “They were the best I could do on the spur of the moment.”

  “Dematerialization’s cute, but the other was actually plausible enough to make me feel better. The idea that I could have taken the money out and put it back without it registering. I suppose that would be a form of hysterical blindness, wouldn’t it? But I didn’t really get hysterical until I came home and the money was there again, so would it still be hysterical blindness?”

  “Maybe it’s more along the lines of an emotionally detached retina.”

  “That sounds right. Wow, you’ve had a busy few days, haven’t you? Wednesday night you broke into my apartment, except that’s the wrong word for it, because you didn’t actually break anything. The only thing that got broken was the Lady Remington, and you’re not the one who broke it. Whatever we call it, you were here Wednesday night. Then Friday you picked me up at Parsifal’s, or I picked you up—”

  “We picked each other up.”

  “—and we came back here. Then Saturday you came back to return the money, and—I just thought of something, Bernie. He took the money from my wallet, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but fortunately he left the credit cards.”

  “That’s not the point. He took the money, and I didn’t think it was more than eighty dollars or so, but there was more than that in there the next day. You replaced it, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes. Out of the twelve-sixty from the fridge.”

  “And then you replaced the twelve-sixty. You lost money on the deal.”

  “I’m a pretty good burglar,” I said, “but not a great businessman.”

  She had a curious expression on her face. I’d seen something similar on Mindy’s face, of Mork & Mindy, when she would look at Robin Williams. You’re from outer space, she seemed to be saying, but you’re kinda cute.

  She drew a breath and said, “And now it’s Sunday, and you’ve entered my apartment twice tonight. The first time I let you in, and the second time you let me in. And in the meantime you’ve been running a bookstore? Where do you find the time?”

  “Barbara,” I said, “you don’t know the half of it.”

  I guess I felt like talking, because I went pretty much nonstop for the next half hour or so. By the time I was finished, she knew it all.

  Thirty-One

  Monday morning Carolyn and I counted money. We went straight to her bank, where she sat down with an officer and did what you have to do to rent a safe-deposit box. They only had the smallest size available, but that was all she needed to hold the $65,000 in large bills she’d brought along. That wasn’t the full amount of her share, she had another two grand and change, but the rest was in small bills and she’d keep it around the house and spend it.

  She left to ope
n her salon, while I caught a cab uptown. The subway would have been faster, but not with what I was carrying. The Number One train stops at Broadway and 79th, and for years now I’ve had a safe-deposit box at a Citibank branch on that very corner. I could have been there in ten minutes on the train, but I’d worked too hard stealing the money I was carrying to risk letting some common thief take it away from me. While the cab ride took longer, I got out of the cab only ten dollars poorer than I got into it, and that was fine with me.

  I went into the bank, sat at the appropriate desk, and signed William Johnson on the signature card. That was the name I’d taken the box under, purposely picking something eminently forgettable, although I didn’t have to worry about forgetting it myself. Bill Johnson was my scoutmaster when I was in Troop Seven, and I always liked the man. I was as surprised as anyone when those stories got around.

  The bank officer had never seen me before, but she compared my signature to the others on the card, and led me into the vault and used my key and hers to get my box out. It was a large one, at least ten times the size of Carolyn’s, but it was easy for Ms. Chang to carry because it was empty. I never keep anything in it for any length of time, because it’s only safe from other thieves, not from the cops or the IRS, who can get a court order to open it with no trouble at all. The only reason they’ve never opened my box is that they don’t know about it, but sooner or later they’ll find out, and I want it to be empty when that happens. So I only use it as a temporary cache, where I can stow something while I figure out a better place for it. If I’d had my hidey-hole it would have gone there, but for now it could sit in the vault.

  Ms. Chang led me to the little room where I locked myself in and transferred an even $125,000 to it from the Ultrasuede attaché case I was carrying. My full share had come to just under $135,000, but I’d already spent some of that, and the rest of it was in Carolyn’s tub, hiding out under the Kitty Litter.

  That left Marty’s share, which was still in the attaché case when I left the bank. It came to just over $35,000, enough to justify another cab down to the bookstore. I opened up, but didn’t bother with the bargain table, as it was getting on for eleven by then and I’d only be dragging it inside in another hour. Carolyn had already fed Raffles, though that didn’t stop him from rubbing against my ankles, trying to hustle me out of an extra can of Nine Lives. It works more often than not, but this time I didn’t fall for it.

  I opened the attaché case and got out the material Carolyn had downloaded from a few different Internet sites and printed out for me. I’d scanned it earlier, but I gave the several sheets of paper a closer reading this time around, while the world of readers and book collectors failed to beat a path to my door. I was going through the material a second time when the bell above the door announced a customer.

  “Welcome,” I said, without looking up. “Have a look around, and let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  “Not much chance of that, Bernie. Far as I can see, there’s nothin’ here but books. Whatcha lookin’ at?”

  “Nothing interesting, Ray. Just printed matter, like a book but without the binding.” I folded what I was reading and moved it out of harm’s way. He tried to get a look at it without being too obvious about it, failing in both respects, but did notice my attaché case on the floor behind the counter.

  “Nice briefcase,” he said. “I think I seen it before.”

  “Well, it’s possible. I’ve had it for years.”

  “Got any bunnies in there, Bernie?”

  “Bunnies? In an attaché case?”

  “Like I said, I seen it before, an’ more’n once you’ve been known to yank a rabbit out of it. If you’re gonna do it again, I want to be around when it happens.”

  “It seems unlikely,” I said, “but if any rabbits are yanked, you’ll have a front row seat.”

  “Back row’s better, Bernie. So’s I can block the doors.” He leaned in, dropped his voice. There were no customers in the store, but maybe he didn’t want Raffles listening in. “I ran the prints on that shaver. You can have it back, but I’d get a new one if I was you. The case is cracked an’ it don’t work.”

  “I know. Did you get an ID on the prints? That was fast.”

  “Computers,” he said. “They speed up everything, even the response time from Washington. Course it’s even faster when you don’t have to go to Washington, which is the case if the prints match up with somebody local that we already got a sheet on.”

  “I thought they might.”

  “There were some partials, probably a woman’s from the size of ’em. They didn’t ring a bell, an’ I didn’t send ’em to DC on account of I figured the others were what you were interested in. They were the ones on top, an’ they were nice an’ clear, an’ they damn well did ring a bell. The name William Johnson mean anythin’ to you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Yeah, right. You better not play poker, Bernie. The other players’ll know what you got before you do. Well, this Johnson’s the last person to handle the damn thing. Is that what you figured?”

  I should have expected something like this, given the run of coincidence I’d had all along. And it was a common name, which was why I’d picked it for my safe-deposit box. Even so, I hadn’t expected it to come up less than an hour after my first visit to the box in ages.

  “It couldn’t be the same William Johnson,” I said. “The reason I reacted—”

  “I’ll say you reacted. You looked like you swallowed a bad clam.”

  “That was my scoutmaster’s name when I was in the Boy Scouts, Ray. William Johnson. I was just thinking of him not an hour ago.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And he got in trouble, so he could have had a sheet. But it wasn’t in New York, so I don’t think it could be the same man. How old is the one who left his prints on the shaver?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “Different person. The man I knew, well, he’d have to be in his sixties by now. This one has a record? I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “What do you know about him, Bernie?”

  “Until a minute ago,” I said, “I didn’t even know his name.”

  He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I ain’t sayin’ I believe you, but you found that book about the quarterback, so maybe you know what you’re doin’. This Johnson’s been arrested half a dozen times, charged with assault an’ menacin’ an’ a few counts of disorderly conduct. What he is, he’s a pain in the ass.”

  “Has he done time?”

  “You only do time if you’re convicted. He never even went to trial. His uncle’s Michael Quattrone, an’ I think you probably heard of him.”

  “Investments,” I said.

  “That’s what he calls it. He’s been associated with some boiler-room operations over the years, where they got a bunch of guys workin’ the phones, lettin’ you in on the ground floor for some stock they’re pushin’. Soon as you bite it goes straight to the basement. Guy’s mobbed up, an’ we think he’s runnin’ a laundry for his friends.”

  “Laundering money, you mean.”

  “You want to get your shirts washed, take ’em to the Chinaman down the street. You want to make some drug money look like you came by it honest, maybe Quattrone can help you out. No indication this Johnson’s a part of it, beyond takin’ a desk an’ phone in the boiler room now an’ then. He’s Quattrone’s sister’s kid, an’ that means anytime we pick him up he gets a lawyer who’s real good at makin’ charges go away. Mostly he picks up jobs when he needs ’em, workin’ for a truckin’ company, or as a bouncer at a nightclub.”

  “A mover and shaker,” I said. “You happen to know where he lives?”

  “Last address we got’s in the West Fifties. You want it?”

  When Ray had left, after reminding me that he wanted to be there at rabbit-pulling time, I hauled out the phone book and had a look. There was no shortage of Johnsons, and a fair number of the
m were Johnson William or Johnson W, but none showed the West 53rd Street address Ray had supplied. I wasn’t hugely surprised. Johnson’s last address was almost three years ago, and somehow I didn’t see him as the type to stay in one place long enough to put down roots.

  I picked up the John Sandford novel, found my place, and stepped right back into the more logical world of Lucas Davenport. But I had to leave after a couple of pages, because it was time for my lunch with Marty.

  Thirty-Two

  The Pretenders have a rule against conducting business on club premises. Obviously they don’t monitor conversations at the bar or around the billiard table to make sure no one’s talking about auditions or offering a look at a script. What they want to avoid is the appearance that business is being done, and toward that end they make you check your briefcase at the door. Accordingly, I’d left the attaché case at the shop, having transferred Marty’s share to a pair of plain white envelopes. I handed them to him once we were settled in with our drinks.

  “These are yours,” I said, and he lifted the flap on one just enough to see that it was full of currency. His eyes widened the slightest bit, and he put the envelopes in his pockets and patted them through the fabric of his suit jacket.

  “Now there’s a surprise,” he said. “I hadn’t even known you’d, uh, taken up the good fight.”

  “Friday night.”

  “Extraordinary. And I gather you were successful. Highly successful, judging from the girth of those envelopes.”

  “They could be all singles,” I said, “but they’re not. Yes, I’d call it a great success.” I told him how much he’d find in the envelopes, and that it represented fifteen percent of the total sum.