The Burglar on the Prowl (7 page)

I
f Crandall Oaktree Mapes is a shitheel—”

“Crandall Rountree Mapes.”

“Whatever. If he’s a shitheel just for taking Marty’s girlfriend away from him, Bern, what does that make this guy?”

“There must be a word,” I said, “but I can’t think of it.”

“Well, for openers,” Carolyn said, “I’d have to say he’s a prick. You never got a look at him?”

“For all the time he was there, I was under the bed. All I got a look at were the dust bunnies.”

“It’s good you didn’t sneeze.”

“It is,” I agreed. “It’s good I didn’t even think about sneezing, because it was unpleasant enough without having that to worry about. But no, I never got a look at him. I decided he was six-four with a washboard stomach and shoulders out to here, but that was my imagination. All I really know is he had a deep voice.”

“I know women with deep voices, Bern. You can’t tell too much from a deep voice.”

It was Thursday, a few minutes after noon, and we were having lunch at my bookstore. Carolyn had gone clear over to the Second
Avenue Deli for sandwiches piled high with the best corned beef and pastrami and tongue in town. What, I’d asked her, was the occasion, and she’d replied that there was no occasion beyond the fact that she’d spent much of the previous night dreaming about delicatessen.

“I missed dinner,” she said. “I was on the computer for hours, browsing the listings on Date-a-Dyke, and I figured instead of wasting time eating I’d go over to the Cubby Hole and snack on the bar food. So I went to bed with nothing in my stomach but a couple handfuls of Beer Nuts, and I had this endless dream where they kept making my sandwich but never got around to bringing it to the table. And by the time I woke up I knew just what we were gonna have for lunch today. It’s good, isn’t it?”

We were working on the sandwiches and sipping our Cel-Ray tonic, and it turned out to be just what I wanted, even if I hadn’t had a dream to tell me so. Corned beef is Raffles’s favorite thing in all the world, and Carolyn had brought a little extra and slipped it into his food dish, where he was at once eating it and talking to it, a ritual he goes through with kosher corned beef and nothing else. Siamese talk to their food occasionally, or so Carolyn tells me, but Raffles is a tailless tabby, allegedly a Manx but lacking the characteristic body shape and rabbity gait of the typical Manx. His only Manx trait, really, is the tail he doesn’t have, and I’ve often suspected that he’s a Manx manqué, but I could be wrong about that. He’s certainly not Siamese, but he sounded like one when he had corned beef in his dish, so that’s how you might have pictured him if you’d been hiding under the bed, with nothing to go by but his voice.

Carolyn said, “How do you figure a guy like that, anyway? I mean, it goes without saying that he hates women, but why would he want her unconscious?”

“I don’t know. Maybe conscious partners tend to give him bad reviews.”

“I guess Barbara Creeley couldn’t tell him he was a lousy lover, since she didn’t have a clue what was going on. Still, you’d think
he’d want someone capable of responding. Maybe his first girlfriend was English.”

“I suppose it’s possible.”

She put down her sandwich. “That was a joke, Bern. You know the old one about the Frenchman who finds a girl on the beach and starts making love to her?”

“I know the joke.”

“Someone comes along and tells him she’s dead and he’s horrified. ‘Soccer blew,’ he said. ‘I thought she was English!’ ”

“I know the joke. Soccer blew, huh?”

“That’s what they say. Frenchmen, they say it all the time. Soccer blew. Don’t ask me what it means.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Bern? That was pretty decent of you, straightening up before you left. You must have been anxious to get out of there.”

“Well, I felt sorry for her. I wanted to do something.”

“It sounds as though you did everything but wash the windows.”

I shook my head. “All I did was straighten up a few things. I was going to put her clothes away, but I figured I’d just put them in the wrong place. Besides, there was no way to keep her from knowing she’d been out of it when she got home, or that she’d had sex. But I couldn’t leave her stuff in a heap on the floor, so I folded her things and put them on a chair.”

“And put the stuff in her purse, and so on. Bern, do you suppose he left her any souvenirs?”

“Souvenirs?”

“Like a pregnancy she wasn’t counting on, or an STD.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’d say probably not. He used a condom.”

“Really? You wouldn’t figure him to be that considerate, would you?”

“I think he was considering himself,” I said, “and practicing safe sex more for his own benefit than for hers.”

“And maybe to keep from leaving evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“You know, DNA. She could go to the police and they’d take a
swab and be able to identify him if they ever caught him. From his DNA.”

“If he was concerned about that,” I said, “he’d probably have taken the condom away with him.”

“He left it there?”

“On the floor.”

“Yuck. What did you do?”

“I got rid of it.”

“How?”

“I picked it up and flushed it down the toilet.”

“You touched it? Double yuck. How could you even do that, Bern?”

“I was wearing gloves.”

“Oh, right.”

“And I couldn’t just leave it where I found it.”

“No, of course not. You know something, Bern? Barbara Creeley was lucky you were there.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “It was her lucky night all around.”

“I mean it, Bern. If you hadn’t been there, that prick would have taken her watch and her charm bracelet and her diamond earrings.”

“Instead, I took them.”

“But you put them back, Bern.”

“Well, I felt sorry for her. An unprincipled son of a bitch slipped a drug into her drink and brought her home and raped her, and now I was adding insult to injury by stealing her stuff.”

“Except you got there first.”

“Even so. I’d already picked up the jewelry he left behind and put it away, and I figured if I put the good stuff back, she might not even know she’d been robbed. There were a few things missing, but what kind of moron would snatch a class ring and pass up a bracelet dripping with gold coins?”

“She’ll just think she must have misplaced the ring.”

“If I could manage to find out who he was,” I said, “I’d pay him a visit one of these nights and get her ring back for her.”

“Unless he’s sold it by then.”

“Oh, he won’t sell it. He won’t know where to go with it, and anyway he’ll want to keep it for a souvenir. Something to remember her by, the son of a bitch.”

“That’d be neat, if you could steal it back. How would you get it to her? Just drop it in the mail?”

“Or let myself into her apartment and put it in the drawer it came from.”

“Perfect. She’d just think she missed it the last time she looked for it, that it was hiding under a piece of costume jewelry.” She frowned. “Or else she’d worry that she was losing her mind. But at least she’d have her ring back.”

“I always leave a place as neat as I found it,” I said, “though in his case I might make an exception. But it’s academic, because I don’t have any idea who he is or where he lives.”

“And you got rid of the only thing that would identify him.” When I looked blank, she said, “You flushed it down the toilet, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Not that you could run around giving DNA tests to every guy with a deep voice. Bern, I know you didn’t break into her apartment out of an urge to do her a good deed. But that’s what you wound up doing, and she was lucky you were there. Didn’t you tell me you even put money in her wallet?”

“A few dollars.”

“How much?”

“Well, there was no way to know how much she started with. I didn’t think she’d carry too much cash. I wound up tucking a hundred and twenty dollars into the bills compartment.”

“A burglar who gives you money. That’s gotta be a first, Bern.”

“You think?”

“And that’s in addition to putting back everything you took—the bracelet and the earrings and the watch.”

“Right.”

“And the envelope full of money you found in the fridge. Bern? You put that back, didn’t you?”

“Well, no,” I said. “I didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“I took a hundred and twenty bucks out of it,” I said, “and that’s what I put in her wallet. But I kept the rest.”

“Oh.”

“Chivalry only goes so far.”

“I guess.”

“You’re surprised,” I said.

“Yeah, kind of. I guess I was starting to see you as a knight in shining armor.”

“I’m afraid the armor’s a little tarnished. I went there to steal, Carolyn. I put back most of what I took, but I wanted to come out a few dollars ahead on the deal.”

“So you made a profit of…”

“Eleven hundred and twenty dollars,” I said. “Minus cab fare.”

“Well, that’s a better hourly rate than you make selling books.”

“No kidding.”

“But considering the risk…”

I shook my head. “I don’t even want to go there. It was crazy, going on the prowl like that, and I just hope I got it out of my system, at least for a little while. The thing is, I knew how irrational it was, and how dangerous.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“I did it anyway. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say I couldn’t help myself, and I really couldn’t keep from hanging on to the money in the brown envelope, either. I can tell myself that I’m a pretty literate guy and a decent fellow. I don’t go out of my way to offend people, and I certainly wouldn’t slip Rohypnol into a lady’s drink. But there’s no getting around it. When all is said and done, I’m a burglar through and through.”

There’s a bell hanging from the door of the bookstore, so arranged that it makes a not-unpleasant jingling sound when the door opens. I was already into my last sentence when I heard the bell, and I suppose I could have chopped the words off instantly, but I didn’t.

“Now ain’t that the truth,” my visitor said. “Truer words were
never spoken, not by Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernard, at any rate. A burglar through an’ through, that’s what you are, all right, an’ all you’ll ever be if you live to be older’n Methuselah.”

I felt, if not as old as Methuselah, as though I could easily pass for his younger brother. “Hello, Ray,” I said. “How’s crime?”

He sighed and shook his head, and when he spoke the jaunty banter was gone. “As if you didn’t know,” he said. “You really put your foot in it this time, Bernie. You screwed up big time. I don’t know how the hell you’re gonna get yourself out of this one.”

T
hat’s a nice suit,” I said. “Armani?”

“Close,” he said, and held back the lapel to show me the label. “Canaletto. Another of your Eyetalians, an’ you can’t beat ’em for suits.”

Whichever fine Italian hand had crafted his suit, the price tag would have been too high for a policeman’s income, but then Ray Kirschmann had never attempted to live on what the city paid him. Fortunately no one would look at him and guess that his suit cost a bundle, because it had stopped looking expensive the minute he put it on. It was, as I’d said, a perfectly nice suit, but whatever suit he wore wound up looking as though it had been carefully tailored for another man, and a differently shaped one at that. The suit of the moment, navy with a subtle gray stripe, was too roomy in the shoulders and too tight at the waist, and the stain on the sleeve didn’t help, either. It looked like spaghetti sauce, which was another thing the Italians were acknowledged to be good at.

“As for you,” he said, “I have to say you look good in stripes.” I was wearing a striped polo shirt, a red and blue number Lands’ End had introduced a year ago with an excess of optimism; I’d picked it up last month from their catalog of overstocks. “It’s a damn shame,”
he went on, “that the prisons quit issuing striped uniforms, because they’d look great on you.”

“They still wear them in cartoons,” I pointed out. “When a cartoonist wants you to know that somebody’s a convict, he always puts him in stripes.”

“Is that a fact? Well, I guess you’ll be stayin’ out of the funny papers, because what they’re gonna put you in is one of them orange jumpsuits. I’m glad you think that’s funny, Carolyn. Maybe you’d like to explain the joke to me.”

“I was just trying to picture you in an orange jumpsuit,” she told him. “I figure you’d look like the Great Pumpkin.”

“You’d look like a beach ball,” Ray told her, “but then you always do.”

“Always a pleasure, Ray.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” he said. “An’ for a change you’ll come in handy. You can lock up after I take your pal here downtown.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “It’s beginning to dawn on me. Ray, you’re serious.”

“Serious as a positive biopsy. You been gettin’ away with it long enough, Bernie, but I don’t see how you’re gonna get out from under this one.”

“Well, maybe you can help me,” I said. “For starters, why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to have done?”

“I got a better idea. Why don’t I ask the questions an’ you tell me a few things?”

“Well, I suppose we could try it that way.”

“For starters, where were you last night?”

“Home. I was watching
Law & Order
.”

“I didn’t watch it myself, but I can tell you what happened. The cops put a great case together and the rest of ’em screwed it up. That’s what makes it a good show. It’s always true to life. You were home, huh?”

“All night long.” I decided to hedge a little. “Of course
Law & Order
doesn’t come on until ten, and it had already started by the time I got home.”

“Whatever you did before ten o’clock is your business, Bernie.”

“Actually,” I said, “you could say the same for whatever I did
after
ten o’clock, but it happens I was home, and I made it an early night. I must have been asleep well before midnight.”

“And slept right through?”

“Except for getting up to pee, and I couldn’t tell you when that was because I didn’t look at the clock. I suppose I ought to keep track of that sort of thing, in case a minion of the law comes around asking questions, but—”

“The question’s not when did you pee,” he said. “It’s where did you pee.”

Carolyn said, “What, did you miss the toilet, Bern? That’s disgusting, but I understand a lot of guys do it. It’s a natural consequence of the biological flaw that makes you pee standing up. But I didn’t know it was considered a police matter.”

He was looking at me, waiting for my answer. “I went to the bathroom,” I told him.

“The one in your apartment.”

“Oddly enough,” I said, “that’s the very one I used.”

“In that case,” he said, “do you suppose maybe you can tell me what the hell you were doin’ in the East Thirties?”

I’ll admit it, the question shook me. Here’s what I’d figured—someone had pulled some kind of break-in somewhere in Riverdale, and some eyewitness, presented with a book of mugshots of known offenders, had picked me out as someone who’d been seen lurking in the neighborhood. But any lurking I’d done had been in the early evening, and Ray said he was only interested in where I’d been after
Law & Order.

It didn’t seem like anything to worry about. One witness who thought he might have seen me in Riverdale a few hours before a break-in—well, I hadn’t done anything, and wouldn’t have left prints or trace evidence, so I couldn’t believe Ray expected to get anywhere with this. Most likely he was just going through the motions.

And then he mentioned the East Thirties.

Where the hell did that come from? The only person who could have reported the break-in at the Creeley apartment was Barbara Creeley herself, and there was no way she’d think she was the victim of a burglar. The odds were she was still deep in the throes of a booze-and-Roofies hangover and hadn’t yet discovered that her class ring was missing, not to mention the very cold cash from her refrigerator. When she did, she could only assume it had been taken by the miserable son of a bitch who’d brought her home. If she reported it—and I could see why she might not want to—and if she had any memory at all of the pickup, it would be Lover Boy’s description she’d give the police. It certainly wouldn’t be mine, as the woman had never laid eyes on me.

I didn’t know what to say, but I had to say something. “The East Thirties,” I said. “In Manhattan, you mean.”

“No, in East Jesus, Kansas.”

“The East Thirties. You mean Kips Bay, over by the East River?”

“Try a little north and west of there,” he said. “Try Murray Hill.”

“Murray Hill,” I said. “Murray Hill. I went to school with a fellow named Murray Hillman, but—”

“We know you were there, Bernie.”

“I suppose you’ve got a witness.”

He shook his head. “Better. What we got is photographic evidence. Ever hear of security cameras?”

Of course I’d heard of them, and they were one of the reasons I’d stayed away from apartment buildings. But there hadn’t been a security camera in the Feldmaus-Creeley house. I’d looked, I always look, and I’d have spotted it before it could have spotted me.

“You’re bluffing,” I said, “and I don’t know why, because I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have done. Which I think you really ought to tell me before we go any further.”

“You think so, do you?”

“I really do, Ray.”

“Whatever you say, Bernie. Sometime a little after midnight a couple of mopes walked into the lobby of one of them white brick apartment buildings on the corner of Third Avenue an’ 37th Street. They overpowered the doorman, duct-taped his feet and ankles,
slapped another piece of tape over his mouth, an’ locked him in the parcel room. Then they went around to all the security cameras an’ opened ’em up an’ took out the tape.”

“It seems like a lot to go through,” I said, “to steal some videotapes.”

“Go ahead an’ be a wiseass, see what it gets you. Next thing they did was go upstairs to the penthouse apartment, which was on the top floor.”

“Good place for it.”

“They forced the door, and overpowered the man and woman inside the apartment, who’d sublet the place as Mr. and Mrs. Lyle Rogovin, which may or may not have been their real names. They trussed them up with duct tape, same as the doorman, an’ went to work. There was a safe in the Rogovin apartment, big heavy monster, not what you’d expect to find in a residence. They got it open and cleaned it out and left.”

“And you think I had something to do with it.”

“I know damn well you did, Bernie.”

“Because you know me, and you know how I operate, and I have a long history of overpowering doormen and binding them with duct tape and forcing my way into apartments when the owners are home.”

“No, you’ve never done anythin’ like that in your life.”

“Of course not,” I said, “so why are you wasting my time and yours with this nonsense?”

“And mine,” Carolyn said.

“You want to go back where you belong so you can hose down a Rottweiler,” he told her, “feel free. No, it’s not your style, Bernie. An’ I don’t think for a minute that you roughed up the doorman or held a gun on the Rogovins.”

“Then why on earth—”

“What I figure you did,” he said, “what I flat out
know
you did, is open the safe. That box was a Mosler, an’ it took real talent to get into it, an’ if there’s one thing you’ve got a shitload of it’s talent. In one area, anyway. I don’t know if you can carry a tune or draw a straight line, but you can open any lock ever made without breakin’
a sweat. That’s what they wanted you for, an’ that’s why you were all over the neighborhood, walkin’ around as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.” He glanced over at Raffles, who was once again sunning himself in the window. “No offense,” he said. “You figure that’s how he lost his tail, Bernie? Got hisself run over by a rockin’ chair?”

“He’s a Manx,” I said. “He was born that way.”

“An’ I guess you were born that way yourself. With a talent for locks, I mean, not that you were born without a tail, although that’s probably true too, now that I come to think of it.”

“Ray,” I said, “am I missing something? Besides a tail, I mean. What I don’t get is where I come into all this. I know, you just told me, I’m the guy they brought in to open the safe. But why me?”

“They heard you were good.”

“No, what makes
you
think it was me?”

“I told you, Bernie. We got your pitcher.”

“My pitcher? Oh, my picture.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“Right. But you said they took the tape. The security cameras were out of commission.”

“In that buildin’, yeah. But not in the rest of the neighborhood. Jesus, Bernie, you walked past an ATM machine at the Chase bank at the corner of Third and 34th. An’ you walked past a whole lot of buildin’s. You must have been walkin’ around for an hour or so, waitin’ to get the call to go over to the penthouse an’ crack the safe. What you got to remember, Bernie, is that they got these cameras all over the place. They’re not just in lobbies an’ elevators. You walk down a street, any street, you might as well go ahead an’ smile, ’cause it’s a good bet you’re on
Candid Camera.”

“You say you’ve got all these pictures of me. You know, security camera pictures always tend to be blurry and out of focus. How do you even know it’s me?”

“You want me to tell you what you were wearin’? Khakis an’ a blue blazer. An’ a polo shirt, but not striped like the one you got on today. It was a solid color shirt, but don’t ask me the color, ’cause that I couldn’t tell you.”

“You’ve got pictures of me,” I said, “but all I’m doing is walking around, and the last I heard that was still legal. The pictures don’t establish that I was doing anything wrong.”

“They didn’t,” he said. “Not until you opened your mouth and lies started pourin’ out of it.”

“Huh?”

“I asked you where you were last night,” he said, “an’ you said you were home, watchin’ TV an’ goin’ to bed early an’ never stirrin’ except to pee. Right in your own bathroom, you said. You recall sayin’ somethin’ along those lines?”

“I wasn’t under oath,” I said, “so it’s not perjury, but you’re right. I lied.”

“Now tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

“The reason I lied,” I lied, “is I was ashamed to admit where I was.” I turned to Carolyn. “Because you’re here,” I said.

“What’s Shorty here got to do with it?”

Carolyn gave him a look. I said, “Oh, hell. There’s a woman I’ve been seeing, and it’s a sick, hopeless relationship, and I swore to Carolyn that I wasn’t going to see her anymore. And I went out last night looking for her.”

“I bet you went lookin’ in Murray Hill.”

“As a matter of fact I did. That’s where she lives, but she wasn’t home, so I went around looking in some of the bars and coffee shops she’s apt to frequent.”

“And did you find her?”

“Finally, but it took forever.”

“Bernie, I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Carolyn chimed in helpfully. “You actually started up with that neurotic bitch after you swore up and down you were through with her.”

“I know, I know. It was a mistake.”

“The two of you are somethin’,” Ray said. “One lies an’ the other swears to it. This femme fatality, has she got a name?”

“Of course she’s got a name.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell me, not just yet. First we’ll try a little experiment.” He took out his notebook, tore out a sheet of paper, ripped it in half, and gave half to me and half to Carolyn. “Since you
both know this woman,” he said, “whyntcha both write down her name?”

We did, and he collected the slips. “ ‘Barbara,’ ” he read. “An’ Barbara. I don’t know how the two of you pulled that one off, but it don’t really matter. I don’t buy the whole story for a second.”

“Fine,” I said. “It happens to be the truth, but you don’t have to believe it. Take my picture and show it to those people.”

“What people?”

“The Rogins, or whatever their name is.”

“Rogovin.”

“Fine. Show my picture to the Rogovins and ask them if they can identify me. When they can’t, maybe you’ll go bother somebody else.”

“Can’t do it, Bernie.”

“Why not?”

“They took two bullets apiece in the side of the head, an’ they’re never gonna be able to identify anybody.”

“Ohmigod.”

“You didn’t know, did you? I had a hunch you didn’t. Your partners must have sent you home before they capped ’em.” He frowned. “Bernie, you don’t look so good. You’re not gonna puke, are you?”

I shook my head.

“I know it’s not your style,” he said. “Not the rough stuff, and not the triple homicide.”

“Triple? I thought you said there were just two of them.”