The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (9 page)

“Oops.”

“The Galtonbrook will have real locks,” I said, “and a state-of-the-art burglar system wired into the local precinct. I think I’ll go up there tomorrow. Just to look it over from a distance and check out the neighborhood. Then a few days after that I’ll be ready to go inside.”

“How will you get in?”

“I’ll pay the five dollars,” I said, “just like everybody else. I’ll get my picture taken by their security cameras, but I won’t be doing anything suspicious. I’ll be just another citizen taking in the art, and checking them out while I’m at it.”

“An unaccompanied citizen.”

“Not if you’d like to keep me company.”

Her eyes lit up. “I was your henchperson once before, Bern. Remember?”

“Like it was yesterday. This’ll be a little different. We won’t be doing anything illegal.”

“Sure we will,” she said. “I’ll be a part of a criminal conspiracy. That’ll give it an edge, even if all we’ll be doing is looking at paintings.”

Over the next few days, I made a couple of preliminary visits to scout the terrain. Then on the Thursday Carolyn joined me and I finally set foot inside the place.

I figured out which door led to the basement and noted its proximity to the restroom. I visited the restroom, examined the window. By the time we got out of there, I knew how I was going to pull it off.

“Their security’s good,” I told Carolyn on our way downtown. “But it’s not perfect.”

“You found a hole in it.”

“I think so. A pinhole, but I think I’ll be able to widen it.”

“It won’t be a job for two, will it? I didn’t think so. I played a small part, and that’s something. And I’ve been wanting to get to the museum for a long time.”

“That reminds me,” I said.

“What’s this, Bern?”

“A present,” I said. “The Modern Library edition of
Swann’s Way
. Now that the Galtonbrook’s off your list, you can kick back and start reading Proust.”

It’ll do that, have you noticed? Some days crawl and some days fly, but they all have the same number of hours, and each of them comes from wherever days come from and goes wherever they go. The moving finger writes, and what do you get?

Like the fellow who lifted sixteen tons, what I got was another day older. But instead of getting deeper in debt, I put Mr. Smith’s bounty to good use, paying what I owed and holding the rest in reserve. But first I passed along the bonus $5000 to Carolyn, who protested that all she did was keep me company on an innocent visit to an off-the-beaten-track museum.

“And you even paid the five bucks admission charge,” she said.

“True, but you used your own Metrocard on the subway. And you were a participant in a criminal conspiracy, as you pointed out earlier. An accessory to the fact, an accomplice.”

“More of an accessory before the fact, Bernie. I did my accessorizing on Thursday, and it wasn’t until last night that the fact came along. You’d think I’d have to be more involved to wind up with five grand.”

“Well . . .”

“What?”

“Well,” I said, “I was thinking. The Galtonbrook’s closed today. When they open up tomorrow, there’s only one thing that might make them the slightest bit suspicious.”

“The fact that one of their treasures is missing?”

“They’d never notice. But sooner or later somebody’ll jiggle the panel over the restroom window and discover it’s being held in place by duct tape.”

I didn’t have to draw her a map. “But if you were to show up tomorrow morning, for a five-dollar admission charge you could visit the restroom and put the bolts back.” She grinned. “But you were there just yesterday, in your Mets cap and your parrot shirt. Wouldn’t it be safer if you had a trusty henchperson to run that little errand for you?”

“I can supply the bolts,” I said, “and the screwdriver. All you’d need would be five minutes in the restroom.”

“Any woman who spends less than five minutes in a public restroom,” she said, “is a traitor to her sex.”

“It won’t take any longer than that. And putting the bolts in will be quicker and easier than taking them out, because some of them didn’t really want to budge.”

“So they’ll be glad to get back where they belong. Okay, Bern. You talked me into it. It sounds like fun, and it’ll give me something to do to earn the five thousand dollars. But even so the book would have been plenty.”

“About that book,” she said a week or so later.

“
Swann’s Way
?”

“I started it a few nights ago.”

“How are you enjoying it?”

“I got in bed with it,” she said, “and I enjoyed the first two pages just fine, and then my alarm clock went off.”

“You fell asleep.”

“Well, I’d made the rounds, Henrietta’s and the Cubby Hole, so I wasn’t exactly reading with a clear head. But I went to bed sober the next night, and this time I was out cold halfway down the third page.”

“So you were five pages in, and—”

“No, just three. I wasn’t too clear on what I’d read the first night, so I started over from the beginning.”

“I see.”

“And the night after that I’d had a few drinks, so I didn’t even bother to try. But the night after that—”

“That would be the fourth night.”

“Whatever. That was the night I had dinner with my aunt Amelia. I told you about that, right?”

“That would have been after you scared the crap out of Maxine. I have to admit it gave me a turn when you ordered Perrier. For a minute I thought you were planning to go out and break into somebody’s house.”

“Amelia’s in AA,” she said, “and she always tells me it’s perfectly all right to drink when I’m with her, that it doesn’t bother her a bit.”

“But you don’t believe her.”

“I had a drink once when I was with her. It was a glass of Chardonnay, and I don’t think it did bother her, but it bothered the hell out of me.”

“You sensed her disapproval?”

“She was watching me drink the wine, and she was watching me not drink the wine, and I could feel her getting ready to step on me.”

“To step on you?”

“They have these steps,” she said, “and one of them is to get other people to stop drinking, so they can all be miserable together and sit around in church basements and tell each other how much fun they used to have. I sat there with my one lousy glass of Chardonnay, and what I felt like doing was ordering a triple tequila martini and stepping right out of my pants.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not. But ever since then, whenever I can’t get out of having dinner with Aunt Amelia, I make a point of showing up with nothing on my breath but an Altoid, and she gets to watch me drink Perrier. Bern, where the hell was I?”

“Three pages into
Swann’s Way
.”

“Oh, right. So I got home with a head that was so clear you could see through it, and it was early, so instead of trying to read in bed I sat down in the wing chair and got the reading light just right. One of my cats settled in my lap and the other curled up by my feet, and I figured a brandy would make the picture complete. But first I’d read a couple of pages, and then I’d fix myself a drink.”

“How far did you get?”

“Bottom of the fourth page. Next thing I knew the sun was coming in the window and the cats were letting me know it was feeding time. I was cold sober and I still managed to fall asleep sitting up in a chair with my clothes on.”

“Marcel strikes again.”

“If word gets around,” she said, “the people who make Ambien are out of business. It’s quicker and cheaper, and you won’t get up in the middle of the night and raid the refrigerator.”

While she was not reading Proust, I was busy not developing a meaningful relationship.

Truth to tell, I’d given up trying. I’d been seeing a woman for a few months, and we’d reached the point where each of us kept a few things at the other’s apartment, and I was starting to wonder what it would be like if we took the plunge and started living together, and then one day she announced that her firm was moving her to their London office.

“Wow,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said, “because I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to make the move, but it’s a big step up, and an even bigger step backward if I were to turn it down.”

I could have said something. Like
Don’t go
, for example. Like
Stay here and we’ll get married.
Like
I’ve always wanted to try living in London.

But what I said was, “Well, it sounds like a great opportunity. I’ll miss you, Carole.”

“And I’ll miss you, Bernie. And, you know, if you’re ever in London . . .”

“I’ll be sure to knock you up.”

She looked at me, baffled, and I explained that that’s English-English for
call you on the phone.
And the fact that I’d needed to explain, I have to tell you, eased some of the pain of her departure.

I took my things from her apartment, and the following evening she came to my place to retrieve the stuff she’d stowed there. And we looked at each other, and for a moment either of us could have led the other into the bedroom, but neither of us did.

And that was that.

I’d never quite seen Carole as Ms. Right, but had liked her well enough as Ms. Right Now. Even while we were keeping company, I’d entertained stray thoughts about other women who’d come into view, although I’d never taken the step of acting on them.

So you might have thought I’d get right back in the game when she left, but that’s not what happened. It didn’t seem worth the trouble. There were women who looked good to me, and there were women whose conversation suggested they might be worth getting to know. She’s cute, I’d say to myself. She’s bright and interesting, I’d note.

And I’d let it go at that.

And then, late in the day on a deceptively bright June afternoon, a woman named Janine walked into my shop.