The Burglar in Short Order

by Lawrence Block

  “Just so he didn’t suffer,” Eva said.

  Crittenden lifted Karl’s eyelid, squinted, touched the corpse here and there. “What it almost looks like,” he said, “is that he was smothered, but I don’t suppose some great speckled bird flew in a window and held a pillow over his face. It’ll turn out to be a heart attack, unless I miss my guess.”

  Could I just let it go? I looked at Crittenden, at Eva, at the sunburst pattern on the high ceiling up above, at the putative Tabriz carpet below. Then I looked at Karl, the consummate bibliophile, with FDR’s Fer-de-Lance on the table beside his chair. He was my customer, and he’d died within arm’s reach of the book I’d brought him. Should I let him requiescat in relative pace? Or did I have an active role to play?

  “I think you were right,” I told Crittenden. “I think he was smothered.”

  “What would make you say that, sir? You didn’t even get a good look at his eyeballs.”

  “I’ll trust your eyeballs,” I said. “And I don’t think it was a great speckled bird that did it, either.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s classic,” I said, “and it would have appealed to Karl, given his passion for crime fiction. If he had to die, he’d probably have wanted it to happen in a locked room. And not just any locked room, either, but one secured by a pickproof Poulard, with steel-lined walls and windows that don’t open.”

  “He was locked up tighter than Fort Knox,” Crittenden said.

  “He was,” I said. “And, all the same, he was murdered.”

  “Smothered,” I said. “When the lab checks him out, tell them to look for Halon gas. I think it’ll show up, but not unless they’re looking for it.”

  “I never heard of it,” Crittenden said.

  “Most people haven’t,” I said. “It was in the news a while ago when they installed it in subway toll booths. There’d been a few incendiary attacks on booth attendants—a spritz of something flammable and they got turned into crispy critters. The Halon gas was there to smother a fire before it got started.”

  “How’s it work?”

  “It displaces the oxygen in the room,” I said. “I’m not enough of a scientist to know how it manages it, but the net effect is about the same as that great speckled bird you were talking about. The one with the pillows.”

  “That’d be consistent with the physical evidence,” Crittenden said. “But how would you get this Halon in here?”

  “It was already here,” I said. I pointed to the jets on the walls and ceiling. “When I first saw them, I thought Bellermann had put in a conventional sprinkler system, and I couldn’t believe it. Water’s harder than fire on rare books, and a lot of libraries have been totaled when a sprinkler system went off by accident. I said something to that effect to Karl, and he just about bit my head off, making it clear he wouldn’t expose his precious treasures to water damage.

  “So I got the picture. The jets were designed to deliver gas, not liquid, and it went without saying that the gas would be Halon. I understand they’re equipping the better research libraries with it these days, although Karl’s the only person I know of who installed it in his personal library.”

  Crittenden was halfway up a ladder, having a look at one of the outlets. “Just like a sprinkler head,” he said, “which is what I took it for. How’s it know when to go off? Heat sensor?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said murder. That’d mean somebody set it off.”

  “Yes.”

  “By starting a fire in here? Be a neater trick than sending in the great speckled bird.”

  “All you’d have to do,” I said, “is heat the sensor enough to trigger the response.”

  “How?”

  “When I was in here earlier,” I said, “I caught a whiff of smoke. It was faint, but it was absolutely there. I think that’s what made me ask Karl about fire in the first place.”

  “And?”

  “When Mrs. Bellermann and I came in and discovered the body, the smell was gone. But there was a discolored spot on the carpet that I’d noticed before, and I bent down for a closer look at it.” I pointed to the Tabriz (which, now that I think about it, may very well have been an Isfahan). “Right there,” I said.

  Crittenden knelt where I pointed, rubbed two fingers on the spot, brought them to his nose. “Scorched,” he reported. “But just the least bit. Take a whole lot more than that to set off a sensor way up there.”

  “I know. That was a test.”

  “A test?”

  “Of the murder method. How do you raise the temperature of a room you can’t enter? You can’t unlock the door and you can’t open the window. How can you get enough heat in to set off the gas?”

  “How?”

  I turned to Eva. “Tell him how you did it,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “You must be crazy.”

  “You wouldn’t need a fire,” I said. “You wouldn’t even need a whole lot of heat. All you’d have to do is deliver enough heat directly to the sensor to trigger a response. If you could manage that in a highly localized fashion, you wouldn’t even raise the overall room temperature appreciably.”

  “Keep talking,” Crittenden said.

  I picked up an ivory-handled magnifier, one of several placed strategically around the room. “When I was a Boy Scout,” I said, “they didn’t really teach me how to open locks. But they were big on starting fires. Flint and steel, fire by friction—and that old standby, focusing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass and delivering a concentrated pinpoint of intense heat onto something with a low kindling point.”

  “The window,” Crittenden said.

  I nodded. “It faces north,” I said, “so the sun never comes in on its own. But you can stand a few feet from the window and catch the sunlight with a mirror, and you can tilt the mirror so the light is reflected through your magnifying glass and on through the window. And you can beam it onto an object in the room.”

  “The heat sensor, that’d be.”

  “Eventually,” I said. “First, though, you’d want to make sure it would work. You couldn’t try it out ahead of time on the sensor, because you wouldn’t know it was working until you set it off. Until then, you couldn’t be sure the thickness of the window glass wasn’t disrupting the process. So you’d want to test it.”

  “That explains the scorched rug, doesn’t it?” Crittenden stooped for another look at it, then glanced up at the window. “Soon as you saw a wisp of smoke or a trace of scorching, you’d know it was working. And you’d have an idea how long it would take to raise the temperature enough. If you could make it hot enough to scorch wool, you could set off a heat-sensitive alarm.”

  “My God,” Eva cried, adjusting quickly to new realities. “I thought you must be crazy, but now I can see how it was done. But who could have done such a thing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it would have to be somebody who lived here, somebody who was familiar with the library and knew about the Halon, somebody who stood to gain financially by Karl Bellermann’s death. Somebody, say, who felt neglected by a husband who treated her like a housekeeper, somebody who might see poetic justice in killing him while he was locked away with his precious books.”

  “You can’t mean me, Bernie.”

  “Well, now that you mention it . . .”

  “But I was with you! Karl was with us at lunch. Then he went into the library and I showed you to the guest room.”

  “You showed me, all right.”

  “And we were together,” she said, lowering her eyes modestly. “It shames me to say it with my husband tragically dead, but we were in bed together until almost six o’clock, when we came down here to discover the body. You can testify to that, can’t you, Bernie?”

  “I can swear we went to bed together,” I said, “And I can swear that I was there until six, unless I went sleepwalking. But I was out cold, Eva.”

  “So was I.”
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  “I don’t think so,” I said. “You stayed away from the coffee, saying how it kept you awake. Well, it sure didn’t keep me awake. I think there was something in it to make me sleep, and that’s why you didn’t want any. I think there was more of the same in the pot you gave Karl to bring in here with him, so he’d be dozing peacefully while you set off the Halon. You waited until I was asleep, went outside with a mirror and a magnifier, heated the sensor and set off the gas, and then came back to bed. The Halon would do its work in minutes, and without warning even if Karl wasn’t sleeping all that soundly. Halon’s odorless and colorless, and the air cleaning system would whisk it all away in less than an hour. But I think there’ll be traces in his system, along with traces of the same sedative they’ll find in the residue in both the coffee pots. And I think that’ll be enough to put you away.”

  Crittenden thought so, too.

  When I got back to the city there was a message on the machine to call Nizar Gulbenkian. It was late, but it sounded urgent.

  “Bad news,” I told him. “I had the book just about sold. Then he locked himself in his library to commune with the ghosts of Rex Stout and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and next thing he knew they were all hanging out together.”

  “You don’t mean he died?”

  “His wife killed him,” I said, and I went on to tell him the whole story. “So that’s the bad news, though it’s not as bad for us as it is for the Bellermanns. I’ve got the book back, and I’m sure I can find a customer for it.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Well, Bernie, I’m sorry about Bellermann. He was a true bookman.”

  “He was that, all right.”

  “But otherwise your bad news is good news.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. Because I changed my mind about the book.”

  “You don’t want to sell it?”

  “I can’t sell it,” he said. “It would be like tearing out my soul. And now, thank God, I don’t have to sell it.”

  “Oh?”

  “More good news,” he said. “A business transaction, a long shot with a handsome return. I won’t bore you with the details, but the outcome was very good indeed. If you’d been successful in selling the book, I’d now be begging you to buy it back.”

  “I see.”

  “Bernie,” he said, “I’m a collector, as passionate about the pursuit as poor Bellermann. I don’t ever want to sell. I want to add to my holdings.” He let out a sigh, clearly pleased at the prospect. “So I’ll want the book back. But of course I’ll pay you your commission all the same.”

  “I couldn’t accept it.”

  “So you had all that work for nothing?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “I guess Bellermann’s library will go on the auction block eventually,” I said. “Eva can’t inherit, but there’ll be some niece or nephew to wind up with a nice piece of change. And there’ll be some wonderful books in that sale.”

  “There certainly will.”

  “But a few of the most desirable items won’t be included,” I said, “because they somehow found their way into my briefcase, along with Fer-de-Lance.”

  “You managed that, Bernie? With a dead body in the room, and a murderer in custody, and a cop right there on the scene?”

  “Bellermann had shown me his choicest treasures,” I said, “so I knew just what to grab and where to find it. And Crittenden didn’t care what I did with the books. I told him I needed something to read on the train and he waited patiently while I picked out eight or ten volumes. Well, it’s a long train ride, and I guess he must think I’m a fast reader.”

  “Bring them over,” he said. “Now.”

  “Nizar, I’m bushed,” I said, “and you’re all the way up in Riverdale. First thing in the morning, okay? And while I’m there you can teach me how to tell a Tabriz from an Isfahan.”

  “They’re not at all alike, Bernie. How could anyone confuse them?”

  “You’ll clear it up for me tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Well, all right,” he said. “But I hate to wait.”

  Collectors! Don’t you just love them?

  The Burglar Who Collected Copernicus

  Ray Kirschmann, the best cop money can buy, found his way between the piles of books and leaned on my counter. “Bern,” he said, “this Coppernickels thing’s got your fingerprints all over it.”

  “Coppernickels?”

  “Polish guy with a telescope. Said the earth revolves around the sun, which every kid in school knows, so what’s the big deal?”

  “Copernicus,” I said. “I think he said it first.”

  “Wrote a whole book about it, Bern. There’s 260 of ’em left in the whole world, and each one’s worth 400 grand. And somebody’s stealing ’em.”

  “I read about it,” I said carefully. “Here’s something to think about, Ray. If you multiply it out, the world’s supply of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium is worth $94 million, and the distance between the earth and the sun is 93 million miles.”

  “Bern—”

  “Coincidence, Ray? I don’t think so.”

  He gave me a look. “There’s seven books been stolen so far,” he said, “minimum. Swiped out of libraries and colleges all over the world. In Kiev the thief posed as a cop.”

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “Bern,” he said, “when I fire up the old mental computer and punch in ‘old books’ and ‘grand larceny,’ what always comes up is Bernie Rhodenbarr.”

  “Maybe you should upgrade,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s a software problem. Ray, why would anyone want to steal Copernicus? You couldn’t turn around and sell it. And, even if you did have a customer, some rich collector who’d keep it in his safe and never show it to anybody, one copy’s all he’d want. Nobody in his right mind would try to steal all of them.”

  I don’t think I convinced him, but eventually he went off to enforce the law somewhere else. And the next person through the door was my new best friend, Evan Tanner. “You’re up early,” I said.

  He gave me a look. Tanner hasn’t slept since a shard of North Korean shrapnel destroyed the sleep center of his brain. That would make him somewhere in his sixties, but he spent a quarter of a century in a frozen food locker and looks about forty.

  “Copernicus,” he said heavily, and started going on about plano-terrestrialism and the globularist heresy. Tanner’s a member of the Flat Earth Society.

  “Heliocentrism has to be stamped out,” he said. “A flat earth at the center of the Universe, that’s what we need if we’re going to feel comfortable about ourselves. Well, Rhodenbarr? Do you have the book?”

  A Burglar’s-eye View of Greed

  So I walked over to Barnegat Books on East Eleventh Street for a word with my favorite bookseller, Bernie Rhodenbarr. He was behind the counter with his nose in a book while his cat lay in the window, soaking up the sun. The store’s sole customer was a young woman with multiple piercings who was reading a biography of St. Sebastian.

  “I understand the used-book business is hot these days,” I said. “You must be making money hand over fist.”

  He gave me a look. “Every now and then,” he said, “somebody actually buys a book. It’s a good thing I don’t have to depend on this place to keep body and soul together.”

  He doesn’t have to pay rent, either, having bought the building with the profits from his other career as the last of the gentleman burglars. Seriously, I told him, lots of people were making big bucks selling books on the Internet. Couldn’t he do the same?

  “I could,” he agreed. “I could list my entire stock on eBay and spend my time wrapping books and schlepping them to the Post Office. I could close the store, because who needs a retail outlet when you’ve got a computer and a modem? But I didn’t open this store to get rich. I opened it so I could have a bookstore, and have fun running it, and occasionally meet girls. See, I’m not greedy.”

  “But you steal,” I pointe
d out.

  He frowned, and nodded toward St. Sebastian’s biggest fan. “Not to get rich,” he said. “Only enough to get by. I don’t want to get rich, see, because it would turn me into a greedy pig.”

  “You’re saying the rich are greedy?”

  “They don’t necessarily start out that way,” he said, “but that’s how it seems to work. Look at all the CEOs with their eight-figure salaries. The more you pay them, the more they want, and when the company goes down the tubes they float down on their golden parachute and look for another corporation to sink. Or look at baseball.”

  “Baseball?”

  “America’s pastime,” he said. “The players used to have off-season jobs so they could make ends meet. The owners were always rich guys, but they were in it for the sport. They didn’t expect to make money.”

  “And?”

  “And now the players average something like two million dollars a year, and the owners have watched their investments increase in value by a factor of five or ten, and everybody’s rich, so everybody’s greedy. And that’s why we’re going to have a strike this fall. Because they’re all pigs, and all they want is more.”

  “In other words,” I said, “success turns men to swine.”

  “And women,” he said. “Success is an equal-opportunity corrupter. And it seems to be inevitable nowadays. Nobody’s happy just running a business and making a living. Everybody wants to grow the business, and either franchise it or sell it to a huge corporation. Luckily, I’m safe. Nobody’s aching to franchise Barnegat Books, and no multinational corporation’s trying to buy me out.”

  “So you’ll go on selling books.”

  “Every now and then,” he said, as the young woman put St. Sebastian back on the shelf and walked away empty-handed. “I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing I’m a thief. It keeps me honest.”

  The Burglar on Location

  So I ambled over to Barnegat Books on East Eleventh to get Bernie Rhodenbarr’s spin on the proposed real estate legislation. It was lunchtime, and my favorite burglar and his buddy, Carolyn Kaiser, were all set to tuck into the blue plate special from the Laotian joint around the corner. Raffles the Cat was in the fiction section, stalking imaginary mice.