Burglars Can't Be Choosers

by Lawrence Block

  Except he never did. At Times Square we picked up some fellow travelers—a pair of off-duty nurses, an utterly wasted junkie—and that gave the cop someplace else to focus his eyes. Then at Fifty-ninth Street he got off, and a stop later it was my turn. I climbed the stairs and emerged into the early morning air at Seventy-second and Central Park West and wondered what the hell I thought I was doing.

  Earlier that evening I’d been completely comfortable sitting around Rod’s apartment with my eyes on the television set and my arm around Ruth. But once she was gone I began finding the place unbearable. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t watch the tube, kept pacing around and getting increasingly twitchy. A little after midnight I took a shower, and when the prospect of putting on the same clothes seemed as appalling as you might imagine it would, I went through Rod’s closet and dresser to see what he’d left behind.

  There wasn’t much I could use. Either he tended to take an awful lot of clothing on the road with him or he didn’t own much in the first place. I found a shirt I could wear, although I didn’t much want to, and a pair of navy blue stretch socks, but that was about the extent of it.

  Then I came across the wig.

  It was a blondish wig, long but not quite hippie in style. I put it on and checked myself out in the mirror and I was astonished at the transformation. The only problem was that it was a little too garish and drew a little too much attention, but that problem was solved when I found a cloth cap on a shelf in the closet. The cap softened the effect of the wig and made it less of an attention-getter.

  Anyone who knew me personally would recognize me, I decided. But a stranger passing me on the street would just see yellow hair and a cloth cap.

  I told myself I was crazy. I took off the cap and the wig and sat down in front of the television set. After a few minutes the phone started to ring, and it went on ringing twenty-two times by actual count before the caller gave up or the service did what it was supposed to do. The phone had rung periodically during the day—Ruth almost answered it once—but it had never gone so long unattended.

  At a quarter to one I put on the wig and the cap and got out of there.

  From the subway I walked over to my apartment building. I’d taken the subway instead of a cab because I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone on a one-to-one basis. Maybe on some level or other I was worried that I’d run into the cabbie who’d driven me around the night before. But once I had to walk those few blocks to my building I began wishing I’d done things the other way around. There were a lot of people on Seventy-second Street and it was brightly lit, and I’d lived in that neighborhood for several years. In the course of a short walk I saw several people whom I recognized. I didn’t know their names but I’d seen them on the streets at one time or another, and it was logical to assume they’d seen me and could recognize me if they took a good long look at me. I tried to assume a posture and a rhythm of walking that was not my usual style. Maybe it helped. In any event, nobody seemed to notice me.

  Finally I was standing in the shadows on the corner diagonally across the street from where I lived. I gazed up and found my window up there on the sixteenth floor facing south. My apartment. My little chunk of private space.

  God knows it wasn’t much, two small rooms and a kitchen, an overpriced cubicle in a sterile modern building. The view was the only charm the place had. But it was home, dammit, and I’d been comfortable here.

  All that was over now. Even if I got out of this mess (and I couldn’t really imagine how that could happen) I didn’t see how I could go on living here. Because now they all knew the horrible truth about that pleasant chap in 16-G. He was a burglar, for God’s sake. A criminal.

  I thought of all the people I nodded to daily in the elevator, the women I’d exchanged pleasantries with in the laundry room, the doormen and hall porters, the super and the handyman. Mrs. Hesch, the chainsmoking old lady across the hall from whom I could always borrow a cup of detergent. She was the only person there that I really knew, and I don’t suppose I knew her very well, but I was on amicable terms with all those people and I’d liked living among them.

  Now I couldn’t go back there. Bernard Rhodenbarr, burglar. I’d have to move somewhere else, have to use some sort of alias to rent an apartment. Jesus, it’s hard enough functioning as a professional criminal, but when you have the added burden of notoriety you’re really up against it.

  Could I possibly risk going upstairs? The midnight-to-eight doorman, a stout old fellow named Fritz, was on his post. I didn’t really think the cap and the wig would fool him. It was possible that a couple of bucks would blind him to his civic duty, but it was also possible that it would not, and the downside risk seemed disproportionate to the possible gain. On the other hand, there was a side entrance, a flight of stairs leading to the basement. They kept that entrance locked; you could get out through it from inside, and the super would unlock it for deliveries, but you couldn’t get in.

  You couldn’t get in. I could.

  From the basement I could catch the self-service elevator straight upstairs, past the lobby to the sixteenth floor. And I could let myself out the same way, and I could carry with me a suitcase full of clothes and my five thousand dollars in case money. If I did turn myself in, or if they grabbed me, I had to have money for a lawyer. And I wanted to have the money on me, not tucked away in an apartment that I wouldn’t be allowed to go to.

  I fingered my ring of keys and picks, stepped out of the shadows and started to cross Seventy-first Street. Just as I reached the opposite corner a car pulled up in front of my building and parked at a hydrant. It was an ordinary late-model sedan but there was something about the nonchalance with which the driver dumped it next to the hydrant that shouted cop to me.

  Two men got out of the car. I didn’t recognize them and there was nothing obviously coppish about their appearance. They were wearing suits and ties, but lots of people do that, not just plainclothes detectives.

  I stayed on my side of West End Avenue. And sure enough they showed something to Fritz, and I stayed where I was, backing away from the curb, as a matter of fact, and placing myself alongside the stoop of a brownstone where I wouldn’t be noticeable. Anyone who noticed me would take me for a mugger and give me a wide berth.

  I just stood there for a minute. Then it occurred to me that I’d like to have a look at my window, so I crossed back to the corner I’d occupied originally and counted up to the sixteenth floor and over to the G apartment, and the light was on.

  I stayed there for fifteen long minutes and the light went right on blazing away. I scratched my head, a dumb thing to do when you’re wearing a loose-fitting wig. I rearranged the wig and the cap and wondered what the bastards were doing in my apartment and just how long it would take them to do it.

  Too long, I decided. And they’d be noisy, there being no reason for them to toss my place in silence, so that if I went in after them my neighbors might very well be sensitive to sounds, and…

  The hell with it.

  I walked for a while. I kept to residential streets and stayed away from streetlights, walking around and trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually I found myself just half a block from Pandora’s. I found a spot where I could watch the doorway without being terribly noticeable myself and I stood there until I got a cramp in my calf and became very much aware of a dryness in my throat. I don’t know just how long I stood there but it was long enough for eight or ten people to enter the saloon and about as many to leave. None of them was my little pear-shaped friend.

  Maybe I’d seen him around the neighborhood. Maybe that was why he looked familiar to me. Maybe I used to pass him regularly on the streets and his face and figure had registered on some sub-liminal level. Maybe he’d mentioned Pandora’s because it was his regular hangout and the first place that came to mind, even though he’d had no intention whatsoever of keeping our appointment.

  Maybe he was inside there right now.

  I don’t honestly t
hink I believed this for a minute. But I was thirsty enough to grab at a straw if it meant I could grab at a beer. The faint possibility of his presence in the place enabled me to rationalize going inside myself.

  And of course he wasn’t there, but the beer was good.

  I didn’t stay there long, and when I left I had a bad couple of minutes. I was convinced someone was following me. I was heading south on Broadway and there was a man twenty or thirty yards back of me who I was sure had come out of the bar after me. I turned right at Sixtieth Street and so did he, and this didn’t do wonders for my morale.

  I crossed the street and went on walking west. He stayed on his side of the street. He was a smallish chap and he wore a poplin windbreaker over dark slacks and a light shirt. I couldn’t see much of his face in that light and I didn’t want to stop and stare at him anyway.

  Just before I reached Columbus Avenue he crossed over to my side of the street. I turned downtown on Columbus, which becomes Ninth Avenue at about that point, and to the surprise of practically no one he turned the corner and followed me. I tried to figure out what to do. I could try to shake him, I could pop into a doorway and deck him when he came by, or I could just keep walking and see what he did.

  I kept walking, and a block farther on he ducked into a saloon and that was the end of him. He was just another poor bastard looking for a drink.

  I walked to Columbus Circle and took a subway home. Well, to my home away from home, anyway. This time I had less difficulty finding Bethune Street. It was right where I left it. I opened the downstairs door about as quickly as I could have managed if I had a key to it, scampered up the four miserable flights of stairs, and was in Rod’s apartment in no time at all. I had no trouble with the three locks because I hadn’t had a key to lock them with when I left. Only the spring lock was engaged, and I loided it with a strip of flexible steel, an operation that honestly takes less time than opening it with a key.

  Then I fastened all the locks and went to bed. I hadn’t accomplished a thing and I’d taken any number of brainless chances, but all the same I lay there in Rod’s bed and felt pleased with myself. I’d gone out on the street instead of hiding, I’d gone through the motions of taking some responsibility for myself.

  It felt good.

  Chapter

  Eight

  She didn’t have to knock any plants over the next morning. I was awake and out of bed a few minutes after nine. I took a shower and looked around for something to shave with. Rod had left his second-string razor behind. I found it in the medicine chest hiding behind an empty Band-Aid box. It was an obsolete Gillette that hadn’t been used in at least a year and hadn’t been cleaned in at least a year and a day. The old blade was still in it and so was the crud and whiskers from Rod’s last shave with it. I held it under the faucet stream, but that was like trying to sweep out the Augean stables with a child’s toy broom.

  I decided to call Ruth and ask her to bring things like toothpaste and a toothbrush and shaving gear. I looked up Hightower in the Manhattan white pages and found it was a commoner name than I would have guessed, but none of the Hightowers were named Ruth or lived on Bank Street. I called Information and an operator with a Latin accent assured me that there were no listings in that name or on that street. After I’d put the phone down I told myself there was no reason to question the competence of a telephone operator just because English looked to be her second language, but all the same I dialed 411 again and put another operator through the same routine. Her accent was pure dulcet Flatbush and she didn’t do any better at finding Ruth’s number.

  I decided she was probably unlisted. What the hell, she wasn’t an actress. Why should she have a listed phone?

  I turned on the television set for company, put up a pot of coffee, and went back and looked at the phone some more. I decided to dial my own number to see if there were any cops in the place at the moment. I picked up the phone, then put it down when I realized I wasn’t sure of my number. It was one I never called, since when I was out there was never anybody home. This sort of surprised me; I mean, even if you never call your own number you have to know it to give it out to people. But I guess that doesn’t happen often in my case. Anyway, I looked it up and there it was, and I’m happy to say I recognized it once I saw it. I dialed and nobody answered, which stood to reason, and I put the phone back in its cradle.

  I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard footsteps ascending the staircase and approaching the door. She knocked but I let her use her keys. She came in, all bright-eyed and buoyant, carrying a small grocery bag and explaining that she’d brought bacon and eggs. “And you’ve already got coffee made,” she said. “Great. Here’s this morning’s Times. There’s not really anything in it.”

  “I didn’t think there would be.”

  “I suppose I could have bought the Daily News too but I never do. I figure if anything really important happens the Times will tell me about it. Is this the only frying pan he owns?”

  “Unless he took the others on tour with him.”

  “He’s not very domestic at all. Well, we’ll have to deal with the material at hand. I’m relatively new at harboring fugitives but I’ll do my best to harbor you in the style to which you are accustomed. Is it called harboring a fugitive if you do it in somebody else’s apartment?”

  “It’s called accessory after the fact to homicide,” I said.

  “That sounds serious.”

  “It ought to.”

  “Bernie—”

  I took her arm. “I was thinking about that earlier, Ruth. Maybe you ought to bail out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You could wind up buying a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said. “You’re innocent, aren’t you?”

  “The cops don’t think so.”

  “They will when we find the real killer for them. Hey, c’mon, Bern! I’ve seen all the old movies, remember? I know the good guys always come through in the end. We’re the good guys, aren’t we?”

  “I’d certainly like to think so.”

  “Then we’ve got nothing to worry about. Now just tell me how you like your eggs and then get the hell out of here, huh? There’s room for me and the roaches in this kitchen and that’s about all. What are you doing, Bernie?”

  “Kissing your neck.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s okay, I guess. Actually you could do it some more if you’d like. Hmmmm. You know, that’s sort of nice, Bernie. I could learn to like that.”

  We were polishing off the eggs when the phone rang. The service was on the ball and picked up midway through the fourth ring.

  Which reminded me. “I tried to call you earlier,” I said, “but your number’s unlisted. Unless you’ve got it listed in your husband’s name or something like that.”

  “Oh,” she said. “No, it’s unlisted. Why were you trying to call?”

  “Because I need a shave.”

  “I noticed. Your face is all scratchy. Actually I sort of like it, but I can see where you’d want to shave.”

  I told her about the lack of shaving cream and the state of Rod’s razor. “I thought you could pick them up on your way over here.”

  “I’ll go get them now. It’s no trouble.”

  “If I’d had your number I could have saved you a trip.”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble,” she said. “I don’t mind. Is there anything else you need?”

  I thought of a few things and she made a small list. I took a ten out of my wallet and made her take it. “There’s really no rush,” I said.

  “I’d just as soon go now. I was just thinking, Bernie. Maybe it’s not a good idea to use the telephone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, couldn’t the people at the service tell if it was off the hook or if you were talking to someone? I think they could even listen in, couldn’t they?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. I’ve never understood just how those things work.”

 
“And they know Rod’s out of town, and if they knew someone was in his apartment—”

  “Ruth, they usually let the phone ring twenty times before they get around to answering it. That’s how efficient they are. The only time they pay attention to a subscriber’s line is when it’s ringing, and even then their attention isn’t too terribly keen.”

  “The last time it rang they got it right away.”

  “Well, accidents happen, I suppose. But you don’t really think there’s any risk in using the phone, do you?”

  “Well—”

  “There can’t be.”

  But when she went out I found myself standing next to the phone and staring at it as if it were a potential menace. I picked up the receiver and started dialing my own apartment—I remembered the number this time—but halfway through I decided the hell with it and hung up.

  While she shopped I did up the breakfast dishes and read the paper. All the Times had to tell me was that I was still at large and I already knew that.

  This time I hadn’t bothered locking the door, and when she knocked I went over and opened it for her. She handed me a paper bag containing a razor, a small package of blades, shaving cream, a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. She also gave me forty-seven cents change from my ten-dollar bill. Every once in a while something like that comes along to demonstrate that all this talk about inflation is not entirely unwarranted.

  “I’ll be going out in a few minutes,” she said. “You can shave then.”

  “Out? You just got here.”