The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (12 page)

“What does that prove?”

“Beats me. Right now I’m just piling up data. Interpreting it will have to wait. The second call was from Whelkin and he wasn’t terribly interested in howling jackals or growling monkeys.”

“I think it’s the other way around.”

“Monkeys and jackals aren’t terribly interested in Whelkin?”

“The jackal was growling and the monkey was howling. Not that it makes a hell of a lot of difference. What are you getting at, Bernie?”

“Good question. Whelkin seemed to take it for granted that I killed Madeleine Porlock. That’s why he wasn’t surprised I had the book. Which means he didn’t kill her. Unless, of course, he was pretending to believe I killed her, in which case…”

“In which case what?”

“Damned if I know. That leaves Demarest, and there’s something refreshing about him. He was very open about his name and he didn’t have to be coaxed into supplying his phone number. What do you suppose that means?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.” I helped myself to more coffee. “The murder’s what screws things up. If somebody hadn’t killed Madeleine Porlock I wouldn’t have a problem. Or if the police weren’t looking to hang the killing on me. I’d just sell the book to the highest bidder and spend the next two weeks in the Bahamas. One of those three killed her, Carolyn.”

“One of the ones who just called?”

“Uh-huh.” I looked at my watch. “We don’t have a hell of a lot of time,” I said. “I’m supposed to call them at hourly intervals, starting with Demarest at four. That gives us a couple of hours to set things up.”

“To set what up?”

“A trap. It’s going to be tricky, though, because I don’t know who to set it for or what to use for bait. There’s only one thing to do.”

“What’s that?”

“What I always do in time of stress,” I said. “Bribe a cop.”

W
hen he came to the phone I apologized for the intrusion. “Your wife didn’t want to disturb you,” I said, “but I told her it was important.”

“Well, I got Wake Forest and ten points,” he said. “So all I been doin’ is watch twenty bucks go down the chute.”

“Who are they playing?”

“University of Georgia. The Bulldogs got what they call the Junkyard Dog defense. All it means is they’re chewin’ the ass offa poor Wake Forest.” There was a long and thoughtful pause. “Who the hell,” he said, “
is
this?”

“Just an old friend and enemy who needs a favor.”

“Jesus, it’s you. Kid, I seen you step in it before, but I swear this time you got both feet smack in the middle of God’s birthday cake. Where are you callin’ from, anyway?”

“The Slough of Despond. I need a favor, Ray.”

“Jesus, that’s the truth. Well, you came to the right place. You want me to set up a surrender, right? First smart move you made since you iced the Porlock dame. You stay out there and it’s just a question of time before somebody tags you, and what do you want to get shot for? And the word is shoot first on you, Bern.” He clucked at me. “That wasn’t too brilliant, you know. Shootin’ a cop. The department takes a dim view.”

“I never shot him.”

“C’mon, kid. He was there, right? He saw you.”

“He saw a clown with a beard and a turban. I never shot him and I never shot her either.”

“And all you do is sell books. You told me the whole story, remember? How you’re straight as a javelin and all? Listen, you’ll be okay now. I’ll set up a surrender, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it. Makes me look good, no question about it, and it saves your ass. You get yourself a decent lawyer and who knows, you might even beat the whole thing in court. Worst comes to worst, so you do a couple of years upstate. You done that before.”

“Ray, I never—”

“One thing that’s not so good, this Rockland kid’s young and feisty, you know? If it was an old-timer you shot, he’d probably take a couple of kay to roll over in court and fudge the testimony. ’Course, if it was an old-timer, he probably woulda shot you instead of waitin’ to get hisself shot in the foot. So I guess you break even on that one, Bern.”

We went a few more rounds, me proclaiming my innocence while he told me how I could cop a plea and probably get off with writing “I won’t steal no more” one hundred times on the blackboard after school. Eventually I shifted gears and told him there was something specific I wanted from him.

“Oh?”

“I have three phone numbers. I want you to run them down for me.”

“You nuts, Bernie? You know what’s involved in tracin’ a call? You gotta set up in advance, you gotta be able to reach somebody at the phone company on another line, and then you gotta keep the mark on the phone for a couple of minutes and even then they sometimes can’t make the trace work. And then if you—”

“I already know the three numbers, Ray.”

“Huh?”

“I know the numbers, I want to know the locations of the phones. As if I already traced the calls successfully and I want to know where I traced them to.”

“Oh.”

“You could do that, couldn’t you?”

He thought it over. “Sure,” he said, “but why should I?”

I gave him a very good reason.

“I don’t know,” he said, after we’d discussed my very good reason for a few minutes. “Seems to me I’m takin’ a hell of a chance.”

“What chance? You’ll make a phone call, that’s all.”

“Meanwhile I’m cooperatin’ with a fugitive from justice. That’s not gonna go down too good if anybody ever hears about it.”

“Who’s going to hear?”

“You never know. Another thing, how in the hell are you ever gonna deliver? You make it sound good, but how can you deliver? If some rookie with high marks on the pistol range whacks you out, Bern, where does that leave me?”

“It leaves you alive. Think where it leaves me.”

“That’s why I’m sayin’ you oughta surrender.”

“Nobody’s going to shoot me,” I said, with perhaps a shade more confidence than I possessed. “And I’ll deliver what I promised. When did I ever let you down?”

“Well…”

“Ray, all you have to do is make a phone call or two. Isn’t it worth a shot? For Christ’s sake, if Wake Forest is worth a twenty-dollar investment—”

“Don’t remind me. My money’s gurglin’ down the drain and I’m not even watchin’ it go.”

“Look at the odds I’m giving you. All you got with Wake Forest is ten points.”

“Yeah.” I listened while his mental wheels spun. “You ever tell anybody we had this conversation—”

“You know me better than that, Ray.”

“Yeah, you’re all right. Okay, gimme the numbers.”

I gave them to him and he repeated them in turn.

“All right,” he said. “Now gimme the number where you’re at and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”

“Sure,” I said. “The number here.” I was about to read it off the little disc on the telephone when Carolyn grabbed my arm and showed me a face overflowing with alarm. “Uh, I don’t think so,” I told Ray. “If it’s that easy for you to find out where a phone’s located—”

“Bern, what kind of a guy do you think I am?”

I let that one glide by. “Besides,” I said, “I’m on my way out the door, anyway. Best thing is if I call you back. How much time do you need?”

“Depends what kind of cooperation I get from the phone company.”

“Say half an hour?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good. Try me in half an hour, Bernie.”

I cradled the receiver. Carolyn and both cats were looking at me expectantly. “A camera,” I said.

“Huh?”

“We’ve got half an hour to get a camera. A Polaroid, actually, unless you know somebody with a darkroom, and who wants to screw around developing film? We need a Polaroid. I don’t suppose you’ve got one?”

“No.”

“Is there one you could borrow? I hate the idea of running out and buying one. The midtown stores are likely to be crowded and I don’t even know if there’s a camera place in the Village. There’s stores on Fourteenth Street but the stuff they sell tends to fall apart on the way home. And there’s pawnshops on Third Avenue but I hate to make the rounds over there with a price on my head. Of course you could go over there and buy one.”

“If I knew what to buy. I’d hate to get it home and find out it doesn’t work. What do we need a camera for, anyway?”

“To take some pictures.”

“I never would have thought of that. It’s a shame Randy walked in when she did. She’s got one of those new Polaroids, you take the picture and it’s developed before you can let go of the shutter.”

“Randy’s got a Polaroid?”

“That’s what I just said. Didn’t I show you pictures of the cats last week?”

“Probably.”

“Well, she took them. But I can’t ask her to borrow it, because she’s convinced we’re having an affair and she’d probably think I wanted us to take obscene pictures of each other or something. And she’s probably not home, anyway.”

“Call her and see.”

“Are you kidding? I don’t want to talk to her.”

“Hang up if she answers.”

“Then why call in the first place?”

“Because if she’s
not
home,” I said, “we can go pick up the camera.”

“Beautiful.” She reached for the phone, then sighed and let her hand drop. “You’re forgetting something. Remember last night? I gave her keys back.”

“So?”

“Huh?”

“Who needs keys?”

She looked at me, laughed, shook her head, “Far out,” she said, and reached for the phone.

Randy lived in a tiny studio on the fifth floor of a squat brick apartment house on Morton Street between Seventh Avenue and Hudson. There’s an article in the New York building code requiring an elevator in every structure of seven or more stories. This one was six stories tall, and up the stairs we went.

The locks were candy. They wouldn’t have been much trouble if I’d been limited to my drugstore tools. Now that I had my pro gear, I went through them like the Wehrmacht through Luxembourg. When the penny dropped and the final lock snicked open, I looked up at Carolyn. Her mouth was wide open and her blue eyes were larger than I’d ever seen them.

“God,” she said. “It takes me longer than that when I’ve got the keys.”

“Well, they’re cheap locks. And I was showing off a little. Trying to impress you.”

“It worked. I’m impressed.”

We were in and out quicker than Speedy Gonzales. The camera was where Carolyn thought it would be, in the bottom drawer of Randy’s dresser. It nestled in a carrying case with a shoulder strap, and an ample supply of film reposed in the case’s zippered film compartment. Carolyn hung the thing over her shoulder, I locked the locks, and we were on our way home.

I’d told Ray I would call him in half an hour and I didn’t miss by more than a few minutes. He answered the phone himself this time. “Your friend moves around,” he said.

“Huh?”

“The guy with the three phone numbers. He covers a lot of ground. The Rhinelander number’s a sidewalk pay phone on the corner of Seventy-fifth and Madison. The Chelsea number’s also a pay phone. It’s located in the lobby of the Gresham Hotel. That’s on Twenty-third between Fifth and Sixth.”

“Hold on,” I said, scribbling furiously. “All right. How about the Worth number?”

“Downtown. I mean way downtown, in the Wall Street area. Twelve Pine Street.”

“Another lobby phone?”

“Nope. An office on the fourteenth floor. A firm called Tontine Trading Corp. Bern, let’s get back to the coat, huh? You said ranch mink, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you say the color was?”

“Silver-blue.”

“And it’s full-fashioned? You’re sure of that?”

“Positive. You can’t go wrong with this one, Ray. It’s carrying an Arvin Tannenbaum label, and that’s strictly carriage trade.”

“When can I have it?”

“In plenty of time for Christmas, Ray. No problem.”

“You son of a bitch. What are you givin’ me? You haven’t got the coat.”

“Of course not. I retired, Ray. I gave up burglary. What would I be doing with a hot coat?”

“Then where’d the coat come from?”

“I’m going to get it for you, Ray. After I get myself out of the jam I’m in.”

“Suppose you don’t get out of it, Bern? Then what?”

“Well, you better hope I do,” I said, “or else the coat’s down the same chute as your twenty-buck bet on Wake Forest.”

I
cabbed uptown for the Pontiac. By the time I brought it downtown again Carolyn had familiarized herself with the intricacies of the Polaroid camera. She proved this by clicking the shutter at me as I came through the door. The picture popped out and commenced developing before my eyes. I looked startled, and guilty of something or other. I told Carolyn I wasn’t going to order any enlargements.

“You’re a better model than the cats,” she said. “Ubi wouldn’t sit still and Archie kept crossing his eyes.”

“Archie always keeps crossing his eyes.”

“It’s part of being Burmese. Wanna take my picture?”

“Sure.”

She was wearing a charcoal-gray turtleneck and slate-blue corduroy jeans. For the photo she slipped on a brass-buttoned blazer and topped things off with a rakish beret. So attired, she sat on the edge of a table, crossed her legs, and grinned at the camera like an endearing waif.

Randy’s Polaroid captured all of this remarkably well. We studied the result together. “What’s missing,” Carolyn said, “is a cigar.”

“You don’t smoke cigars.”

“To pose with. It’d make me look very
Bonnie and Clyde.
”

“Which of them do you figure you’d look like?”

“Oh, very funny. Nothing like a little sexist humor to lighten the mood. Are we ready to go?”

“I think so. You’ve got the Blinns’ bracelet?”

“In my pocket.”

“And you’re comfortable with the camera?”

“It’s about as tricky to operate as a self-service elevator.”

“Then let’s go.”

And on the sidewalk I said, “Uh, Carolyn, you may not remind anybody of Faye Dunaway, but you look terrific today.”

“What’s all this about?”

“And you’re not bad to have around, either.”

“What
is
this? A speech to the troops before going into battle?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“Well, watch it, will you? I could get misty-eyed and run my mascara. It’s a good thing I don’t wear any. Can’t you drive this crate, Bern?”

On weekends, New York’s financial district looks as though someone zapped it with one of those considerate bombs that kills people without damaging property. Narrow streets, tall buildings, and no discernible human activity whatsoever. All the shops were closed, all the people home watching football games.

I left the Pontiac in an unattended parking lot on Nassau and we walked down to Pine. Number 12 was an office building that towered above those on either side of it. A guard sat at a desk in the lobby, logging the handful of workers who refused to let the weekend qualify their devotion to the pursuit of profit.

We stood on the far side of Pine for eight or ten minutes, during which time the attendant had nothing whatever to do. No one signed in or out. I looked up and counted nine lighted windows on the front of the building. I tried to determine if one of these might be on the fourteenth floor, a process made somewhat more difficult by the angle at which I had to gaze and the impossibility of determining which was the fourteenth floor, since I had no way of knowing if the building had a thirteenth floor.

I couldn’t find a pay phone in line of sight of the building. I went around the corner and walked a block up William Street. At two minutes past four I dialed the number Prescott Demarest had given me. He picked it up after it had rung twice but didn’t say anything until I’d said hello myself. If I’d shown similar restraint the night before we could have had Randy’s Polaroid without breaking and entering to get it.

“I have the book,” I told him. “And I need cash. I have to leave town. If you’re ready to deal, I can offer you a bargain.”

“I’ll pay a fair price. If I’m convinced the item is genuine.”

“Suppose I show it to you tonight? If you decide you want it, then we can work out a price.”

“Tonight?”

“At Barnegat Books. That’s a store on East Eleventh Street.”

“I know where it is. There was a story in this morning’s paper—”

“I know.”

“You feel it’s entirely safe? Meeting at this store?”

“I think so. There’s no police surveillance, if that’s worrying you. I checked earlier this afternoon.” And so I had, driving past slowly in the Pontiac. “Eleven o’clock,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”

I hung up and walked back to the corner of William and Pine. I could see the entrance of Number 12 from there, though not terribly well. I’d left Carolyn directly across the street in the doorway of a shop that offered old prints and custom framing. I couldn’t tell if she was still there or not.

I stayed put for maybe five minutes. Then someone emerged from the building, walking off immediately toward Nassau Street. He’d no sooner disappeared from view than Carolyn stepped out from the printshop’s doorway and gave me a wave.

I sprinted back to the telephone, dialed WOrth 4-1114. I let it ring a full dozen times, hung up, retrieved my dime, and raced back to where Carolyn was waiting. “No answer,” I told her. “He’s left the office.”

“Then we’ve got his picture.”

“There was just the one man?”

“Uh-huh. Somebody else left earlier, but you hadn’t even gotten to the phone by then, so I didn’t bother taking his picture. Then one man came out, and I waved to you after I snapped him, and there hasn’t been anybody since then. Here’s somebody now. It’s a woman. Should I take her picture?”

“Don’t bother.”

“She’s signing out. Demarest didn’t bother. He just waved to the guard and walked on by.”

“Doesn’t mean anything. I’ve done that myself, hitting doormen with the old nonchalance. If you act like they know you, they figure they must.”

“Here’s his picture. What we really need is one of those zoom lenses or whatever you call them. At least this is a narrow street or you wouldn’t be able to see much.”

I studied the picture. It didn’t have the clarity of a Bachrach portrait but the lighting was good and Demarest’s face showed up clearly. He was a big man, middle-aged, with the close-cropped gray hair of a retired Marine colonel.

The face was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t think why. He was no one I’d ever seen before.

On the way uptown Carolyn used the rear-view mirror to check the angle of her beret. It took a few minutes before she was satisfied with it.

“That was really funny,” she said.

“Taking Demarest’s picture?”

“What’s funny about taking somebody’s picture? It wasn’t even scary. I had visions of him coming straight across the street and braining me with the camera, but he never even noticed. Just a quiet little click from the shadows. No, I was talking about last night.”

“Oh.”

“When Randy turned up. The ultimate bedroom farce. I swear, if jumping weren’t allowed she’d never get to a conclusion.”

“Well, from her point of view—”

“Oh, the whole thing’s ridiculous from anybody’s point of view. But there’s one thing you’ve got to admit.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s really cute when she’s mad.”

By a quarter to five we were in a cocktail lounge called Sangfroid. It was as elegant as the surrounding neighborhood, its floor deeply carpeted, its décor running to black wood and chrome. Our table was a black disc eighteen inches in diameter. Our chairs were black vinyl hemispheres with chrome bases. My drink was Perrier water with ice and lime. Carolyn’s was a martini.

“I know you don’t drink when you work,” she said. “But this isn’t drinking.”

“What is it?”

“Therapy. And not a moment too soon, because I think I’m hallucinating. Do you see what I see?”

“I see a very tall gentleman with a beard and a turban walking south on Madison Avenue.”

“Does that mean we’re both hallucinating?”

I shook my head. “The chap’s a Sikh,” I said. “Unless he’s a notorious homicidal burglar wearing a fiendishly clever disguise.”

“What’s he doing?”

He had entered the telephone booth. It was on our corner, a matter of yards from where we sat, and we could see him quite clearly through the window. I couldn’t swear he was the same Sikh who’d held a gun on me, but the possibility certainly did suggest itself.

“Is he the man who called you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why’s he in the booth? He’s ten minutes early, anyway.”

“Maybe his watch is fast.”

“Is he just going to sit there? Wait a minute. Who’s he calling?”

“I don’t know. If it’s Dial-A-Prayer, you might get the number from him.”

“It’s not Dial-A-Prayer. He’s saying something.”

“Maybe it’s Dial-A-Mantra and he’s chanting along with the recording.”

“He’s hanging up.”

“So he is,” I said.

“And going away.”

But not far. He crossed the street and took a position in the doorway of a boutique. He was about as inconspicuous as the World Trade Center.

“He’s standing guard,” I said. “I think he just checked to make sure the coast was clear. Then he called the man I spoke with earlier and told him as much. Those may have been his very words—
The coast is clear
—but somehow I doubt it. Here comes our man now, I think.”

“Where did he come from?”

“The Carlyle, probably. It’s just a block away, and where else would you stay if you were the sort to employ turbaned Sikhs? The Waldorf, perhaps, if you had a sense of history. The Sherry-Netherlands, possibly, if you were a film producer and the Sikh was Yul Brynner in drag. The Pierre maybe, just maybe, if—”

“It’s definitely him. He’s in the booth.”

“So he is.”

“Now what?”

I stood up, found a dime in my pocket, checked my watch. “It’s about that time,” I said.

“You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I have a call to make.”

It was a longish call. A couple of times the operator cut in to ask for nickels, and it wasn’t the sort of conversation where one welcomed the intrusion. I thought of setting the receiver down, walking a few dozen yards, tapping on the phone-booth door and hanging onto my nickels. I decided that would be pound foolish.

I hung up, finally, and the operator rang back almost immediately to ask for a final dime. I dropped it in, then stood there fingering my ring of picks and probes and having fantasies of opening the coin box and retrieving what I’d spent. I’d never tried to pick a telephone, the game clearly not being worth the candle, but how hard could it be? I studied the key slot for perhaps a full minute before coming sharply to my senses.

Carolyn would love that one, I thought, and hurried back to the table to fill her in. She wasn’t there. I sat for a moment. The ice had melted in my Perrier and the natural carbonation, while remarkably persistent, was clearly flagging. I gazed out the window. The phone booth on the corner was empty, and I couldn’t spot the Sikh in the doorway across the street.

Had she responded to a call of nature? If so, she’d toted the camera along with her. I gave her an extra minute to return from the ladies’ room, then laid a five-dollar bill atop the little table, weighted it down with my glass, and got out of there.

I took another look for the Sikh and still couldn’t find him. I crossed the street and walked north on Madison in the direction of the Carlyle. Bobby Short was back from his summer break, I seemed to recall reading, and Tommie Flanagan, Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for years, was doing a solo act in the Bemelmans Lounge. It struck me that I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend a New York evening, and that I hadn’t been getting out much of late, and once this mess was cleared up I’d have to pay another visit to this glittering neighborhood.

Unless, of course, this mess didn’t get cleared up. In which case I wouldn’t be getting out much for years on end.

I was entertaining this grim thought when a voice came at me from a doorway on my left. “Pssssst,” I heard. “Hey, Mac, wanna buy a hot camera?”

And there she was, a cocky grin on her face. “You found me,” she said.

“I’m keen and resourceful.”

“And harder to shake than a summer cold.”

“That too. I figured you were in the john. When you failed to return, I took action.”

“So did I. I tried taking his picture while you were talking to him. From our table. All I got was reflections. You couldn’t even tell if there was anyone inside the telephone booth.”

“So you went out and waylaid him.”

“Yeah. I figured when he was done he’d probably go back where he came from, so I found this spot and waited for him. Either he made more calls or you were talking a long time.”

“We were talking a long time.”

“Then he showed up, finally, and he never even noticed me. He passed close by, too. Look at this.”

“A stunning likeness.”

“That’s nothing. The film popped out the way it does, and I watched it develop, and it’s really amazing the way it does that, and then I tore it off and put it in my pocket, and I popped out of the doorway, ready to go back and look for you, and who do you think I bumped into?”

“Rudyard Whelkin.”

“Is he around here? Did you see him?”

“No.”

“Then why did you say that?”

“Just a guess. Let’s see. Prescott Demarest?”

“No. What’s the matter with you, Bern? It was the Sikh.”

“That would have been my third guess.”

“Well, you would have been right. I popped out with my camera in my hot little hands and I almost smacked right into him. He looked down at me and I looked up at him, and I’ll tell you, Bernie, I could have used a stepstool.”

“What happened?”

“What happened is I was incredibly brilliant. A mind like quicksilver. I went all saucer-eyed and I said, ‘Oh, wow, a turban! Are you from India, sir? Are you with the United Nations? Gosh, will you pose for me so I can take your picture?’ ”

“How did this go over?”

“Smashingly. Look for yourself.”

“You’re getting pretty handy with that camera.”

“You’re no more impressed than he was. He’s going to buy himself a Polaroid first thing Monday morning. I had to take two pictures, incidentally, because he wanted one for a souvenir. Turn it over, Bernie. Read the back.”

An elegant inscription, with lots of curlicues and nonfunctional loops and whorls.
To my tiny princess / With devotion and esteem / Your loyal servant / Atman Singh.