The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (19 page)

“They might try that.”

“In which case I’d be stuck with a box of junk instead of a six-figure settlement. I could always bring suit, hoping they’d be willing to split the difference, but I might decide it wasn’t worth the trouble, not to mention the negative publicity.” He furrowed his brow, working it all out. “The best thing to do would be to pay you a finder’s fee. What did I just say the cards were worth? Ten thousand at the outside? Well, let’s double that. Twenty thousand dollars.”

I looked at him.

“No, I didn’t really think that would fly. I’m low on cash at the moment, and it would be a strain to pay you even that much. I’ll have cash when the insurance company pays up, but they can be sluggish when it comes to settling a claim. Besides, I’m going to need that money. If I hadn’t needed it I wouldn’t have put in a fraudulent claim in the first place. In a year’s time I ought to have more money than I’ll know what to do with. Now if you were willing to take a promissory note—”

“You know, I wish I could. But you’re not the only one with a cash-flow problem.”

“It’s the economy,” he said with feeling. “Everybody’s up against it. But may I say something?”

“Please.”

“This may sound like the brandy talking, and perhaps that’s exactly what it is, but I can’t dismiss the feeling that you and I have the opportunity to do ourselves and each other a great deal of good.”

“I know what you mean.”

“It’s ridiculous on the face of it, and yet—”

“I know.”

“Well,” he said. “That doesn’t change the situation of the moment. Perhaps it would help clarify things if you could tell me just what it is that you want.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “I want to keep my store.”

W
hen I went out for lunch with Martin Gilmartin I left a little cardboard sign hanging in the door.
Back at,
it says, and there’s a clock face. I had set the hands at two-thirty, and when I got back there was a customer waiting. I had never seen her before, although she looked something like my eighth-grade civics teacher. As I was unlocking the door she made one of those throat-clearing sounds that generally gets rendered in print as “harrumph.” I looked at her and she pointed first at her wristwatch, then at my cardboard clock face.

“It’s three o’clock,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “That thing’s been running slow lately. I’m going to have to get it repaired.” I took the sign from the door, moved the big hand to the three and the little hand to the twelve. “There,” I said. “How’s that?”

For a minute there I thought she was going to send me to the principal’s office, but then Raffles rubbed against her ankle and charmed her, and by the time she left she’d picked out a couple of novels to go with the picture book of American folk rugs that had caught her eye in the window, and kept her waiting a half hour. It was a decent sale, and the first of several such. By the time I closed up again at six, I’d punched the old cash register a dozen times. Even better, I’d bought two big shopping bags full of paperbacks from an occasional customer who informed me he was moving to Australia. I took his count and made the deal without even looking at the books, and half of them turned out to be eminently collectible—Ace double volumes, Dell map-backs, and other goodies to gladden the heart of a paperback collector. There were half a dozen spicy novels from the sixties, too, and I knew a vest-pocket dealer in Wetumpka, Alabama, who’d pay me more for those than I’d shelled out for the lot.

Not a bad afternoon at all, and it ended with a phone call from a woman who told me she’d had to put her mother in a nursing home, and would I like to come have a look at the library? From her description it sounded promising, and I made an appointment to see it.

What with one thing and another, I was whistling by the time I got to the Bum Rap. I ordered a Perrier and got a quizzical look from Carolyn.

“It’s not what you think,” I said. “I had a couple of brandies at lunch. They’ve just about worn off, and I’d just as soon not add fuel to a dying fire. I had a good day, Carolyn. I bought some books, I sold some books.”

“Well, that’s the whole idea with bookstores, Bern. How was lunch?”

“Lunch was great,” I said. “As a matter of fact, lunch was terrific. I think I’m going to be able to keep the store.”

“It’s very confusing,” she said.

“What’s so confusing? It’s a perfectly good way for me to wind up with the bookstore.”

“Not that, Bern. The whole business with what happened to the baseball cards. According to Doll—”

“I don’t think ‘according to Doll’ is ever going to have the authority of, say, ‘according to Hoyle,’ or ‘according to Emily Post.’ ”

“I understand that, Bern. But even so, if she’s Marty’s girlfriend—”

“She’s not.”

“But—”

“I had a feeling she was making that up. I was pretty sure before I went up to her apartment, but that clinched it. I couldn’t imagine why a man crowding sixty would want to climb all those stairs to visit his mistress. A fifth-floor walk-up with a single bed, that’s some love nest.”

“Then where does she fit in?”

“I don’t know.”

“And how did the cards wind up in Luke’s apartment? And how did she and Luke know each other?”

“Good question.”

“Which one?”

“Both of them.”

“And what about the Nugents, Bern? How do they fit into the picture? What was Luke doing in their apartment? Who killed him?”

“Beats me.”

“Don’t you care?”

“Not particularly.”

“You’ve got some ideas, though. Right?”

“Nope.”

“But you can’t just—uh-oh.”

“What’s the matter?” I turned and saw the answer to that question, looming over our table like bad weather in the western sky. “Oh,” I said. “Hi, Ray.”

“Don’t mind me,” he said, pulling up a chair from another table. “I just thought I’d stop by an’ pass the time of day. Had a real funny thing yesterday in your neighborhood, an’ I was wonderin’ if you had any ideas on the subject.”

“Something happened in the Village, Ray?”

“I’m sure plenty of things did,” he said, “but the neighborhood I was referrin’ to is the one where you live. As opposed to down here, where you got your store, say, or the East Side, where you do the bulk of your stealin’.” He turned to favor the waitress with a smile. “Oh, hiya, Maxine,” he said. “Make it a glass of plain ginger ale. You know the way I like it.”

“How’s that, Ray?” Carolyn asked him.

“How’s what?”

“How do you like your plain ginger ale?”

“With about two an’ a half ounces of rye in it,” he said, “if it’s any of your business.”

“So why not order it that way?”

“Because it don’t look good for a cop to be drinkin’ spirits in public.”

“But you’re not in uniform, Ray. Who’s gonna know you’re a cop?”

“Anybody who looks at him,” I told her. “You were telling a story, Ray. Something happened uptown?”

“Yeah,” he said levelly. “An’ you’re involved, an’ I don’t know how I know that, but I know it all the same. They got a call on 911 about a bad smell, an’ you know what that means. It’s never once turned out to be somebody forgot to put the Limburger cheese back in the icebox. So a couple of blues went over, an’ nobody in the buildin’ knew nothin’ about it, an’ you couldn’t smell nothin’ in the hall. The doorman got hold of the super, an’ he had keys to the place, an’ he let ’em in.”

“I think I know what they found,” I said, hoping to save us all some time. “There was something on the news last night. There was a man dead in the bathroom, right?”

“That’s where the smell was comin’ from. The door was jammed so they had to kick it in, an’ there he was. Been dead since the middle of last week, accordin’ to the doc.”

“Had a Spanish name, if I remember correctly.”

“Santangelo,” he said. “Spanish or Italian, which is pretty much the same thing. Marginal.”

“Marginal?”

He nodded. “Like you wouldn’t want your sister to marry one, but it’d be okay for your cousin. Marginal. What you prolly don’t know, on account of we just learned it ourselves, is he lived right there in the building. What you also don’t know, on account of we been holdin’ it back, is he was burglarizin’ the place.”

“Is that right?”

“Well, somebody was,” he said, “an’ it sure as shit wasn’t me. Was it you, Bernie?”

“Ray—”

“Drawers pulled out an’ overturned in the master bedroom. A couple of pieces of jewelry in the tub with him. A bullet hole in the guy’s forehead, an’ no gun to be found anywhere in the apartment. What’s it sound like to you, Bernie?”

“Foul play,” I suggested.

“He was no straight arrow, this Santangelo. We got a sheet on him. Mostly drug stuff, but people change, right? Say he’s upstairs knockin’ off the apartment. Say you’re Nugent.”

“Come again?”

“Nugent, the guy who lives there. You’re Nugent an’ you come home, an’ there’s this spic or guinea, whatever he is, helpin’ hisself to a fistful of bracelets an’ earrings. So you grab your gun an’ blow him away, which is your right in a free country, him bein’ a burglar an’ all. What’s the matter, Bernie, did I say something?”

“I get nervous when people talk about blowing away burglars.”

“I can see where you would. Anyway, here’s my question. Say you’re a burglar.”

“You’ve been saying that for years, Ray.”

“Say you’re a burglar, an’ you’re knockin’ off this apartment. Why would you take off your clothes?”

“Huh?”

“He was bareass naked. Didn’t that make the news?” I couldn’t remember if it had or not. “Naked and dead as the day he was born,” he said, “an’ I heard of women who do their housecleanin’ in the nude, an’ I heard of burglars leavin’ all kinds of disgustin’ souvenirs behind, but did you ever hear of one took all his clothes off before he started huntin’ for the valuables?”

“Never.”

“Me neither. I can’t picture him climbin’ two flights of stairs in the buff, either, or ridin’ in the elevator that way. But what did he do with his clothes? He wasn’t wearin’ ’em, an’ they weren’t in a pile, so what did he do, fold ’em up an’ put ’em in the drawers? If you’re Nugent an’ you shoot the guy, why do you run off with his clothes?”

“If I’m Nugent,” Carolyn said, “and I kill him, which I would never do myself because I’m basically nonviolent—”

“Good for you, Carolyn.”

“—I pick up the phone and call the police. ‘I just defended my home,’ I say, ‘so will you please send somebody over to get this stiff out of here.’ That’s what I do. I don’t go away and lock the door and hope he’ll vanish while I’m gone.”

“The elves’ll take care of it,” I said, “after they’re done at my place.”

Ray gave me a look. “I thought of that,” he said. “Not that shit about elves, but what you just said, Carolyn. Why not report it? What occurs to me, maybe the gun’s unregistered. Guy’s burglarizin’ your premises, you got an iron-clad right to shoot the son of a bitch, but you better make sure you got a license for the gun. Even so…”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I finished for him. “And didn’t I hear that the Nugents were out of the country?”

He nodded. “Due back tomorrow or the next day. Question is, when did they take off?”

“There you go,” Carolyn said. “Say I’m Nugent. I’m on my way to the airport, and I wonder did I leave a pot cooking on the stove? So I go back, and what do I find but a burglar. So I pull out my unregistered gun and shoot him, and then I have to leave to catch a plane, so there’s no time to call the police. Instead I pull off the guy’s clothes, throw him in the tub, take the clothes with me, and catch the next plane to…where?”

“Tajikistan,” I suggested.

“Forget Nugent,” Ray said.

“Done.”

“Say another burglar killed him. Say you, for example, Bernie.”

“Me?”

“Just for the sake of argument, okay?”

“Fine. I killed him. But you can’t quote me on that because you haven’t read me my rights yet.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “This is just a discussion, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Ray.”

“He lives right there, he knows the Nugents are out of town, an’ he closes his eyes an’ sees dollar signs. But he needs somebody who can make a lock sing an’ dance, an’ that’s Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s little boy Bernie.”

“Why doesn’t he just jimmy it, Ray?”

“Maybe he don’t know how. But jimmyin’ leaves marks, an’ there weren’t any, so we know he didn’t do that. No, he knows you from the neighborhood, whatever, so he tips you to the job, an’ the two of you go in together.”

“Just my style, Ray.”

“When I say you,” he said, “I don’t mean you. Okay, Bernie? I know you work alone, an’ I know you don’t shoot people. Forget you, okay? Some other fuckin’ burglar is his partner for the day, an’ the other fuckin’ burglar opens the door for him, an’ him an’ the other fuckin’ burglar both go in, an’ then you shoot him.”

“It’s back to me again, isn’t it?”

“It’s just too much trouble savin’ it the other way is all. But if it bothers you that much—”

“No, it’s all right. Why do I shoot him?”

“So you won’t have to split with him. Say you really score big an’ it’s like the Lufthansa job where there’s so much money you can’t afford to split it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Why is he naked?”

“So they won’t identify the clothes.”

“Get real.”

“Okay, maybe you’re both naked.”

“He seduces me, Ray. Then I realize what I’ve done. I’m racked with guilt, and instead of killing myself I lash out at him. He’s taking a shower, washing away the traces of our evil lust, and I find a gun in the desk drawer and punch his ticket for him.”

He sighed. “It don’t make a whole lot of sense,” he said.

“Gee, Ray, what makes you say that? And why are we even having this conversation? Don’t get me wrong, Carolyn and I always enjoy it when you drop around, but what’s the point?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that clears it up.”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Call it a policeman’s intrusion.”

“That’s exactly what I’d call it,” I said, “but I think the word you want is intuition.”

“Whatever. There’s somethin’ tells me you know more about this than meets the eye, an’ if you don’t you could find out. An’ I got the feelin’ it could be very good for the both of us.”

“How do you mean, Ray?”

“That I couldn’t tell you. That’s the trouble with feelin’s, at least the kind I get. They ain’t much on specifics. I don’t know what figures to be in it for me, whether it’s something as basic as a good collar or something more negotiable. But you an’ me, Bernie, we done each other some good over the years.”

“And you’re just a sentimental guy, Ray. That’s why you got all choked up the other day when you threw me in a cell.”

“Yeah, I was bitin’ back tears.” He stood up. “You give it some thought, Bern. I bet you come up with somethin’.”

“Ray’s right, Bern.”

“My God,” I said, “I never thought I’d hear you say that. I ought to write it down and make you sign it.”

“He thinks you ought to work out what happened, and he doesn’t even know you were there. How can you just turn your back on the whole thing?”

“Nothing to it.”

“You have information Ray doesn’t have, Bern.”

“Indeed I do,” I said. “About almost everything.”

“What about your civic duty?”

“I pay my taxes,” I said. “I separate my garbage for recycling. I vote. I even vote in school board elections, for God’s sake. How much civic duty does a person have to have?”

“Bern—”

“Oh, look at the time,” I said. “Don’t rush, take your time and finish your drink. But I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home to shower and change clothes.”

“And then?”

“Got a date. Bye.”