The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (25 page)

I worked on my scotch. Carolyn worked on her coffee. All around us, women of varying ages with varying estrogen levels drank, talked, laughed, cried, danced, paired off, broke up, and drank some more.

And I talked.

By the time I stopped, my drink was gone and so was her coffee. “I feel a lot better,” I told her.

“And I feel sober,” she said, “although a traffic cop might not see it that way. Bern, lots of people have tattoos.”

“I know.”

“If you look around this room, you’ll spot a whole lot of ink. Go ahead, take a look.”

“They’ll think I’m staring at them.”

“So? The worst thing that could happen is somebody’ll beat you up. That was a joke, Bern.”

“Ha ha.”

“Okay, so I’ll look around, because they’re used to me staring at them. Tons of tats, Bern.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“And that’s not counting the ones you can’t see. Like the little butterfly way up on the inside of Rosalie’s thigh, or Denise’s frog, and why anyone would want a frog there is beyond me, but—”

“Okay,” I said. “I get it.”

“Do you? Because the mere fact that your Mr. Leopold’s Queen of the Happy Ending has a tattoo doesn’t mean her first name is Chloe.”

“But—”

“She’s not the one, Bern. Of all the bookstores in all the streets of New York, she didn’t walk into yours. She probably doesn’t even own a Kindle, and if she ever heard of
The Pit
I bet she thinks Edgar Allan Poe wrote it.”

“She’s studying American literature and history at Hunter.”

“And massage at the House of the Rising Sun. What’s Miss Miller’s first name?”

“It’s Chloe.”

“Did he tell you this?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would have been awkward. ‘My assistant gives me the most wonderful hand jobs.’ ‘Oh, really? What’s her first name?’ ”

“Well, I can see where that might have been a little awkward.”

“You think?”

“But so what, Bern? You already wrote off the evening and you’re never going to see him again. What’s awkward gonna cost you? He won’t let you have any more Hungarian cookies?”

“We’d finished the cookies by then.”

“There you go. What was Hungarian about them, by the way?”

“They came from a Hungarian bakery. I didn’t ask her name because I didn’t have to ask her name. I
knew
her name.”

“Chloe.”

“And you knew this because anybody with a tattoo pretty much has to be named Chloe.”

“If the tattoo’s on her left arm, above the elbow.”

“Lots of tattoos—”

“And if it shows a gecko.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I didn’t ask her name,” I said, “because that would have been awkward. But I did ask about the tattoo. ‘My friend Carolyn has a tattoo,’ I told him. ‘It shows a snake, all wrapped around her arm.’ ”

“You used my name, Bern?”

“It was the first name that came to mind. What difference does it make? He doesn’t know you.”

“He will, the minute he spots my tattoo. Except I don’t
have
any tattoos, Bern.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah? How do you know for sure? I could have a butterfly like Rosalie or a frog like Denise, and how would you know it?”

“You’d tell me.”

“Yeah, I probably would. So you told him about my snake, and he told you about Chloe’s gecko.”

“Right.”

“There’s probably more than one gecko tattoo in New York City.”

“Probably.”

“But we both know it’s her.”

“I’d say so, yes.”

“You met her, Bern. In the bookstore. Then you spoke to her when you called Leopold. Did the voice sound familiar?”

“No, but—”

“But you weren’t looking for similarities. You just wanted to talk to Leopold. Bern, the woman you met. Can you picture her performing that particular service for him?”

“Vividly.”

“She’s the type, huh?”

“She turned up at Barnegat Books,” I said, “and picked an item out of my stock, booted up her Kindle, ordered the eQuivalent from Amazon, and reported her accomplishment with innocent pride. And then she steered Janine of Romania my way, allowing that enterprising young woman to take me out for a test drive. So yes, I’d say she’s definitely the type to put her hands to good use in order to keep her boss happy. If she worked at the Bronx Zoo, she’d probably do the same for the elephant.”

“I suppose I could have waited until morning,” I said. “But all I could think of was that victory was there, waiting to be snatched from the jaws of defeat.”

“And you wanted to share it with somebody.”

“With you, Carolyn.”

“One more lesbian club,” she said, “and you’d have shared it with the bartender. You were like Chloe herself, Bern, after she’d snatched Frank Norris from the jaws of Amazon.”

We had left Mytilene, with Rosalie’s butterfly and Denise’s frog still unseen, and walked the few blocks to Arbor Court, and I was telling her it was a little different. “In my case,” I said, “victory is still unsnatched.”

“And that’s where Chloe comes in.”

“I can’t get into Leopold’s building again. I had to steal a book to get in there the first time, and a fat lot of good it did me. The only way I could leave his apartment was in the attended elevator, and it took me straight to the lobby, where the elevator operator watched me walk to where the concierge and doorman were waiting.”

“Buildings like that,” she said, “don’t make it easy.”

“They don’t. I’m sure Leopold’s apartment has a service entrance, where the porter picks up the trash and whisks it away on the service elevator, but what good would that do me? And, knowing Leopold, it’s probably got three or four locks on it, too.”

“And a moat around it, Bern.”

“Complete with alligators. You know, I might have had a chance. When it was time to pay me, I was hoping he’d have to get the cash from a wall safe.”

“What were you gonna do, Bern? Hide in the safe?”

“It would be in another room,” I said, “and he’d probably have to take down a framed painting to get at it, and work a complicated combination. That might have given me enough time to pick the lock on the china cabinet.”

“And grab the spoon.”

“And possibly even lock up again before he got back. But possibly not, and what happens if he comes back right in the middle of things?”

“Not good.”

“Not good at all. But he had the money all ready for me, all he had to do was reach into his pocket for it. Then I thought maybe he’d get a call of nature. He had a couple of cups of coffee, and he may be in great shape but he’s had the same bladder and prostate for over sixty years, so you’d think sooner or later he’d have to pee.”

“Would that give you enough time?”

“I don’t know. Probably not, but I never got the chance to find out. I guess all those happy endings have kept his plumbing in good shape. He never left the room.”

“And then he told you about Miss Miller.”

“Miss Miller,” I said, “and her manual dexterity. And her tattoo, which served to identify Miss Miller for me. She could do it, Carolyn.”

“And evidently she did, on more or less a daily basis, but—”

“Not that. She could steal the spoon. All she’d have to do is get hold of the key, and she might already have one of her own. When those remarkably soft hands aren’t otherwise occupied, don’t you suppose they’re occasionally put to use polishing silver?”

“You want her to steal the spoon for you.”

“What could be simpler? She opens the cabinet, she removes the spoon, she pops it into her purse.”

“Where it can keep the Kindle company.”

“Whatever. Then the next time she has a class at Hunter, I’m there at the classroom door.”

“You could just walk right into the college?”

“Or I’ll meet her on the corner, or wherever she wants.”

“And she gives you the spoon.”

“Right. But here’s the problem, Carolyn. How do I find her?”

“How do you find her?”

“The first time,” I said, “she showed up at Barnegat Books, just walked in off the street. But who knows if that’ll ever happen again? But I happen to know someone who knows her.”

“Janine.”

“Janine. She’ll know how to get in touch with Chloe. I bet she’s got Miss Manual Dexterity on speed dial. But I don’t have a number for Janine, or an address, and she never told me her last name, and I’m pretty sure the first name she gave me is bogus. So how do I find her?”

“She said she lives just a few blocks from your store.”

“What do I do, go door to door?”

“Maybe Ray could help,” she said. “You’ve been helping him with Mrs. Ostermaier, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t been all that much help.”

“But you’ve been trying. Maybe he could sit you down with one of those police artists, and you could describe her.”

“And the guy’ll draw a pornographic picture.”

“Bern—”

“All right, I sit down with an artist, and together we come up with a sketch that looks about as much like Janine as that sketch of the Unabomber looked like the guy they caught.”

“He got the hoodie right. And anyway, they caught him, didn’t they?”

“His brother turned him in.”

“Well, all that counts is they caught him. And you probably got a better look at Janine than anybody ever got of the Unabomber.”

“I got a very good look at her, Carolyn.”

“So maybe your sketch’ll turn out better.”

“And then what? Ray puts out an APB of it? We run around taping it to lampposts? The woman didn’t do anything.” I thought about that last sentence. “Nothing illegal, anyway. Well, considering all the things people do in private that are technically against the law—”

“Bern.”

“Sorry. I don’t think a police artist is the answer. Maybe an ad.”

“You mean like Missed Connections in Craigslist?”

“I was thinking more of a personal notice at the bottom of the front page of the
New York Times
.”

“They still have those? The only one I ever see is to tell Jewish women to light Shabbos candles. What would you put?”

“I don’t know. ‘You said your name was Janine. There’s something I need to ask you. Call me at the bookshop.’ ”

“Would you put the number? No, because this way you’ll only hear from somebody who knows which bookstore to call. I suppose it might work.”

“I don’t know. I’d probably stand a better chance with a Ouija board. Those ads probably work when a person’s waiting to get a message that way, but who else actually reads them?”

“People with a lot of time on their hands, Bern. Not people who are busy day and night looking for a husband.”

I stood up. “I’m going home,” I said, “to sleep on it. There’s got to be a better way to reach her, Carolyn. We’re just not thinking of it.”

I went home, I went to bed, I woke up. And I caught the phone midway through the first ring. “We’re both stupid,” I said.

“I can’t believe how stupid we are, Bern. You only had one drink, too.”

“It was a double.”

“I had more than that, but then I stopped and switched to coffee. I don’t think we were drunk.”

“No, just stupid.”

“I can see one of us being that stupid, but—”

“Which one?”

“Either one, depending on circumstances. But both of us? I think the French have a word for it.”

“
Stupide
?”

“No, it’s a phrase.
Folie à deux
, I think. You know, when two people get stupid together.”

“Really stupid, in this case.”

“Boneheaded, brainless-type stupid. All the schemes we kept coming up with.”

“Craigslist,” I said. “The
New York Times
.”

“Sitting down with Ray and a police artist.”

“Going around the neighborhood putting up fliers and knocking on doors.”

“Stupid. When all along—”

“I knew her name—”

“Chloe Miller.”

“And where she lives and works.”

“I’ve even got her number. And you know something else, Carolyn?”

“What?”

“If it’s not Chloe, if it’s some other young woman with remarkably soft hands—”

“But we figured out that it has to be her.”

“And it does,” I agreed, “but on the remote chance that it isn’t, so what? Even if her name is Madeleine Miller, or Rachel Miller, or, I don’t know—”