The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (13 page)

She was halfway out of the booth. “To get the check,” she said. “I told you I’d buy the coffee, remember?” She put her hand on mine. “You’ll see,” she said. “I can explain everything.”

Outside, we walked a long crosstown block to Broadway and stood on the corner watching people buy newspapers. “I didn’t know about the baseball cards when I saw you,” she told me. “And I didn’t know who you were, and I didn’t particularly care. All I knew was that you didn’t look like an ax murderer. And I gave you a character test. I waited to see what paper you bought.”

“Suppose I’d taken the
Post
instead?”

“If you’d picked up the
Post,
” she said, “I’d have picked up somebody else. But I was perfectly sure you’d turn out to be a
Times
kind of guy. What I told you that night was the truth. I’d been to an acting class, I’d just gotten off a bus, and I didn’t like the way it felt on the street. I never feel comfortable on the West Side, anyway. I know it’s as safe as anywhere else but it just doesn’t feel safe to me.”

“Then why do you live over here?”

“I don’t. I live on Seventy-eighth Street between First and Second.”

“Who lives at 304 West End?”

“Lucas Santangelo.”

“Alias Luke the boyfriend.”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

“You wanted a
New York Times
kind of guy to walk you to Luke’s place. Why? To make him jealous?”

“I told you. I was scared to walk by myself.”

“And out of all the guys around—”

“Bernie,” she said, “look around, will you? And bear in mind that it was an hour later and in the middle of the week. There were fewer people out and most of them looked like…well, like that panhandler over there, and those two creeps in army jackets, and—”

“I see what you mean.”

“I left some clothes at Luke’s,” she said, “and I’d been calling him for a couple of days, trying to make arrangements to get my stuff back. But all I ever got was his machine. That didn’t necessarily mean he was out, because sometimes he’ll let the machine pick up and wait until he knows who it is before answering. So I finally decided to go over there. If he was home, maybe he’d be enough of a gentleman to let me have my things.”

“And if he wasn’t home?”

“Maybe I could get in anyway. Most of the time he doesn’t bother to double-lock his door. I thought I might be able to open it with a credit card.”

“That’s not always as easy as they make it look on television.”

“Now he tells me,” she said, clapping her hand theatrically to her forehead. “It turned out to be impossible. I tried all three of my credit cards, and then I tried my ATM card, and that was a mistake because I must have crimped it a little. When I tried to get cash yesterday morning, the machine ate my card.”

“Bummer.”

“They gave me a new card. It was an inconvenience, that’s all. Believe me, it was more frustrating standing in front of Luke’s door with no way to get in. Why did I have to throw the keys? Why couldn’t I have thrown an ashtray instead?”

“Or a tantrum. After you gave up trying to open the door, then what did you do?”

“I went home.”

“Straight home?”

“Absolutely. I said good night to Eddie and off I went.”

“Who walked you to the bus stop?”

“Nobody. I took a cab.”

“Why didn’t you take one in the first place?”

“I did.”

“I thought you said you took a bus.”

“I telescoped things a little. I took a bus home from acting class, and I tried Luke’s number and got his machine again, and then I changed clothes to look ultrarespectable and took a cab from my apartment right through the park. I got off right in front of Luke’s building and had the doorman ring his apartment. There was no answer. ‘Well, I’ll just go on up,’ I said, but he wouldn’t let me.”

“Eddie stopped you? I’m surprised he even noticed you were there.”

“
He
wasn’t there. I got there a few minutes after midnight because that’s when his shift starts, but he was running late. The fellow on duty was a young Haitian who’s a real stickler for the rules. And I don’t think he was too happy about having to stay late. He wouldn’t let me in the building, so I walked over to Broadway to get a cup of coffee—the other coffee shop closes at midnight—”

“I know.”

“—and I got a real creepy feeling on the way over there, as if someone was stalking me. I guess I was nervous about breaking into Luke’s apartment. Then you turned up and walked me to my door, or to Luke’s door, actually, and then I went in and then I came back out again and then I went home. The next day I found out Marty’s baseball cards were missing. ‘They even know who took them,’ he said. ‘The insolent son of a bitch called to brag about it and they were able to trace the call.’ I couldn’t believe Luke had been so stupid. And then I found out it was you.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t mean you were stupid. You had your own reasons for making the call, and why not make a joke out of it? You had no way of knowing Marty’s cards would turn out to be missing.”

“You’re right about that. I didn’t even know he had them in the first place.” We had been walking back toward West End as we talked, and when we reached the corner we turned uptown as if by pre-arrangement, heading toward 304. “The way you tell it,” I said, “there’s hardly any coincidence operating at all. Just that Eddie happened to be late for work, and Luke happened to be away from his apartment, and I happened to be the first guy to come along and pick up the
Times.
”

“That’s right.”

“I wish I knew how much of your story to believe. Is your name really Doll Cooper?”

“It is now, but you and I are the only people who know it. You gave me the name, remember? Before that I told you my name was Gwendolyn Cooper, and it is.”

“Can you prove it?”

She fished in her bag and produced a couple of plastic cards. “Here,” she said. “A brand-new ATM card from Chemical. It was Manufacturers Hanover before the merger, and I loved going to a bank that you could call Manny Hanny for short. And here, my Visa card. It got crimped, too. See that corner? I tried to straighten it out but I think I only made it worse. I guess it’ll be all right as long as I don’t put it in any machines.”

I gave the cards back to her. “You gave me the right name,” I said. “How come?”

“The same reason you told me your name. We were two ships passing in the night. What reason would I have to lie to you?” She grinned. “Besides, Bernie, I wanted you to be able to get in touch with me.

“How? You’re not in the phone book.”

“I certainly am. G Cooper on East Seventy-eighth Street.”

“But I wouldn’t know to look there, would I? Because I was somehow under the impression that you lived at 304 West End Avenue.”

“You could have called me at work.”

“Where, at Faber Faber?”

“Haber Haber,” she said, “and Crowell.”

“You don’t work there anymore, remember?”

“I sometimes get calls still at the office. They take messages for me. I said I was a paralegal because that’s a lot more impressive than being a receptionist, and since I’m not either one, well, why not pick the one that sounds good?”

“You could have said you were a lawyer.”

“I almost did,” she said, “but I was afraid that might put you off. Some people don’t like lawyers.”

“Really?”

“I know it’s hard to believe. Bernie, I fibbed a little, okay? At the beginning I treated it all as an acting exercise. Improv, you know? We do scenes like that all the time in class. But I wasn’t really lying, any more than you lied to me by not mentioning that you’re a burglar.”

We had stopped walking now, half a block from Number 304. She nodded meaningfully at the building. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve got a great idea. We could go there right now. I’m sure we can bluff our way past the doorman.”

“Unless it’s your Haitian friend.”

“I could have sailed right past him, too, but I wanted him to ring the apartment first. We wouldn’t have to do that this time. We could just walk in as if we lived there.”

“And then what?”

“Then you could open Luke’s door for me.”

“Luke might not like that.”

“I’m positive he’s not there,” she said. “You know what I bet happened? He stole Marty’s cards early in the week. Then he got offered a job out of town. He would have jumped at it, too. But we can always ring his bell first, if you’re nervous about picking his lock with him inside.”

“Sure, that’s a good idea,” I said. “We’ll ring his bell.”

“And if he’s there I’ll just say I came to pick up my clothes. That’s easy enough.”

“And then we can drop in on the Nugents.”

She frowned. “The Nugents? Joan and Harlan Nugent?”

“Those very Nugents. In 9-G.”

“How do you know them?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why did you mention them?”

“You’re the one who mentioned them.”

“You just did, just a minute ago. ‘And then we can drop in on the Nugents,’ those were your very words. Remember?”

“Vividly. But you mentioned them two nights ago when we were standing in front of their building.”

“I did?” She scratched her head. “Why would I do that? I barely know them.”

“Well, you’re still way ahead of me,” I said, “because I don’t know them at all. You asked Eddie when they were coming back from Europe.”

“My God,” she said. “You’re right, I did. But that was after you left, wasn’t it?” She considered this, answered her own question. “Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The Nugents are an older couple. They live two flights up from Luke.”

“In 9-G, if I remember correctly.”

“You mean I even mentioned the apartment number? You must have thought—”

“That I was being invited to knock off their apartment,” I finished for her. “That’s exactly what I thought. But if you really didn’t know I was a burglar—”

“How could I have known? When a man tells me he’s a bookseller I generally take his word for it.”

“Why did you mention the Nugents?”

“Because I wondered if they were back yet, that’s all. Joan Nugent is an artist, and a couple of times we met in the hall and she asked me about posing for her. The last time I ran into her in the elevator she said she and Harlan were going to Europe, but that she would get in touch when she got back.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if I want to do it, though, if it would mean coming to this building and possibly running into Luke.”

“Especially if you suspect him of taking the cards.”

“It’s more than a suspicion,” she said. “I’m sure of it, and that’s all the more reason why I’d like to get my stuff out of there before he comes back. Suppose his place gets raided and my things wind up in an evidence locker?”

“It could happen.”

“I’d hate that.” She put her hand on my arm. “So what do you say, Bernie? Want to be a real sweetie and show me how good you are at opening locks?”

T
en minutes later we were sitting in a Blimpie Base on Broadway, planning the commission of a felony. That set us apart from the other customers, who looked to have gotten well past the planning stage.

I started out by telling Doll I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I’d stayed away from burglary for over a year. Then all I’d done was think about knocking off an apartment and the next thing I knew I was spending the night in a cell.

“I’d like to help,” I said. “You left some clothes in Luke’s apartment and naturally you wanted them back. But it seems to me there are a couple of alternatives to illegal entry. You could wait until he gets back and give him a call, or you could hit Marty up for a loan and go shopping.”

“Forget the clothes,” she said.

“Exactly. Forget them and buy new ones.”

Forget she’d even mentioned the clothes, she said. The big reason to break into Luke’s apartment was to recover Marty’s baseball cards. If Luke had left town in response to a call with an offer of work, he had probably rushed off before he had an opportunity to convert the baseball card collection into cash. Maybe he was in no rush, maybe he’d just as soon let the heat die down while he figured out the best way to sell them.

If we could just get into Luke’s apartment, she was pretty sure we could find the cards. And if we could return them to Marty, that meant I’d be off the hook for burglarizing his apartment. The charges would be dropped, and wouldn’t that be great?

“Well, it would certainly be nice,” I told her. “But according to my lawyer they’re probably going to have to drop the charges anyway, because he says they haven’t got enough evidence to get an indictment, let alone a conviction. On top of that, do you see what I’d be doing? I’d be actually committing a crime in order to exonerate myself from one I didn’t do. Somehow it doesn’t seem worth it.”

As a matter of fact, she went on, there might be something extra in it for me. She was pretty sure there’d be a reward. Marty, after all, was a generous man. His baseball card collection was near and dear to him. Surely I could count on being reimbursed handsomely for the risk I’d be running.

How handsomely, I wondered. Whatever Marty paid me would be coming out of his own pocket, and he’d already paid for the cards once. He wouldn’t want to shell out for them all over again, would he?

“You know,” she said, “he’s already reported the loss to the insurance company, so I suppose they’re already processing the claim. If I sat down with him privately and told him how you’d managed to recover the cards, well, maybe he wouldn’t bother saying anything to the insurance company.”

“I think I see what you’re getting at.”

“It wouldn’t exactly be stealing,” she said. “It would be more a case of letting things run their course, wouldn’t it? If the insurance company paid half a million dollars to settle the claim, which is only fair because the cards really were stolen, well, Marty would have all that money to spend replenishing his collection. If he could do that by buying an almost identical collection from you for a quarter of a million dollars, say, he’d be ahead of the game.”

“And so would I.”

“Absolutely. We both would.”

“Both of us, eh?”

“Fifty-fifty,” she said. “I need you to open Luke’s door and you need me to handle the arrangements with Marty. Bernie, that’s more than a hundred thousand dollars apiece.”

“I don’t know about the percentages,” I said.

“What could be fairer than fifty-fifty?”

“But is it really fifty-fifty? That’s one way to look at it, that you and I split what Marty pays out. But the whole pie is half a million dollars—”

“And Marty gets half of that, and we get the other half.”

“That’s if you count you and me as a team, Doll.”

“I think we make a great team, Bernie.”

“I’m sure we do, but there’s another way to look at it, and that’s that you and Marty are already a team, and your team winds up with three-quarters of the half million dollars.”

We sat there for twenty minutes, arguing over money an insurance company hadn’t yet paid for a box of baseball cards we hadn’t yet seen. She gave ground grudgingly, and we wound up agreeing to a three-way split. Marty would pay each of us a third of whatever he got from his insurance company.

“But don’t even think about going in there tonight,” I said. “The public has this romantic idea of burglary as night work, but that’s the most dangerous time for it. The later it gets, the worse it is. Right now it’s past midnight, and the average person looks suspicious at this hour without even doing anything.”

“But—”

“Look around you,” I said. “Here are a bunch of perfectly nice people having coffee and doughnuts, and just because it’s the middle of the night they look like riffraff and lowlife trash.”

“That’s what they are, Bernie.”

“See? Case closed.”

“But—”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “The jeans and the jacket are great on you, but leave them home tomorrow. Dress up nice and meet me at the bookstore at two. We’ll go straight from there.”

I got to the bookstore the next morning at ten minutes of ten. The first thing I did was call Carolyn. “I’m at the store,” I told her. “You said you’d walk over and feed Raffles for me, but you didn’t have a chance yet, did you?”

“I’m still on my first cup of coffee.”

“He’s acting like a famine victim,” I said, “but I’ve learned not to trust him, so I thought I’d better check. I’ll feed him, so you don’t have to.”

“I was gonna come over around eleven. How come you opened up? You’re always closed on Sundays.”

“Well, maybe I’ve been making a mistake all these years,” I said. “Maybe I’ve cost myself a bundle by closing on Sundays.”

“You really think so?”

“No, but I’m meeting somebody here at two o’clock.”

“You’re four hours early.”

“So? Everybody’s got to be someplace. Come by and keep me company if you feel like it.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You really did have a quiet evening at home, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I don’t know if I can take it.”

“Take what?”

“Your good mood.”

I considered this. “You didn’t have a quiet evening at home,” I said.

“I was going to,” she said, “but I stopped in at DT’s Fat Cat. I figured I’d sleep better if I had a drink.”

“Did you?”

“I slept fine,” she said, “once they closed the place so I could go home. I may not get there, Bern, but I’ll see you tomorrow for sure. Go feed the cat, he must be starving.”

I filled his food dish, freshened his water, flushed his toilet, and came back and watched him eat. That reminded me I hadn’t had anything myself since last night’s moo shu pork, so I went to the deli and picked up a couple of bagels and a container of coffee. After I had my bargain table set up outside I settled in behind the counter and ate my breakfast. The cat came over and sat on my lap for a while, watching me eat, but eating only held his interest when he was the one doing it. He leaped down onto the floor and sat there as if waiting for something to happen.

I finished one bagel and crumpled the paper it had come wrapped in. The noise caught Raffles’ attention and he reacted, the way they do. I let him stare in my direction. The minute he looked away I crumpled the paper some more, then tossed it past him. Except it didn’t get past him, because he sprang to his right and snagged the ball of paper on one hop. Then he batted it to and fro, chasing it up one aisle and down another and slapping it silly. Finally he decided it was dead and wasn’t going to come back to life, so he turned and walked away from it.

“Bring it back,” I said, “and I’ll throw it again.”

I swear he gave me a look, and I swear the unvoiced thought that accompanied it was something along the lines of
What the hell do you think I am, a fucking Labrador retriever?

His game, his rules. I unwrapped the other bagel, crumpled the paper, and put the ball in play.

Carolyn never showed up, which gave her something in common with most of humanity. I spent a couple of hours crumpling up sheets of paper and trying to throw them past Raffles. Then at a quarter of two the door opened, and it was Doll.

She was all dolled up, too, in a navy-blue dress and high heels. The dress was a perfect choice; it made her look as respectable as a Junior League luncheon while leaving no doubt whatsoever that she was a female member of her species, and that it was a distinctly mammalian species at that.

“You look great,” I told her. “That’s the perfect outfit.”

“Is it all right? I tried on the leather hot pants and the Deadhead T-shirt, but wouldn’t you know it got shrunk the last time I washed it? I was afraid it made me look too chesty.”

“That would never do.”

“No,” she said. “You look great yourself, Bernie. You should put on a tie and jacket more often. Bernie, why are there balls of paper all over your floor?”

I looked around for Raffles, but he was hiding. I crumpled a sheet of paper and his head came into view. “Now watch,” I said, and I threw the ball to his left, and the little rascal sprang up and batted it down.

“You have a cat,” she said.

“I don’t exactly have him,” I said. “He just works here. He’s not a pet or anything like that.”

“What is he?”

“An employee, that’s all.”

“And what’s this, a fringe benefit? On Sundays the help gets to play catch with the boss?”

“We’re not playing,” I said. “It’s to sharpen his reflexes.” I walked around picking up paper balls, not for the first time. “He won’t fetch,” I said.

“He’s not a dog, Bernie.”

“His words exactly. If he could talk, I mean.” I threw a ball for him. “Look at that,” I said. “I swear he could play shortstop. Ozzie Smith would have been proud of the move he made on that last one. Of course, Ozzie Smith would have whirled and pegged to first instead of trying to kill the ball. That’s why Ozzie’s playing in the bigs and Raffles is snagging mice in a bookstore.”

“What happened to his tail?”

“You know how they’re always chasing their tails? Well, you see how fast his reflexes are. He was chasing his tail one day and he actually caught it.”

“And he killed it?”

“No, he scooped it up on one hop and rifled it to first base. What’s so funny?”

“You are.”

“It’s just nerves, Doll,” I assured her. “I’ll settle down once we get there.”

The cab ride uptown didn’t do much to settle either of us. We were blessed with a driver who clearly believed that his best hope lay in reincarnation, and the sooner the better. Neither of us said much, except perhaps in silent prayer, until we pulled up right in front of 304 West End Avenue. I can’t imagine the doorman would have challenged a well-dressed couple who arrived by taxi, but the fellow on duty barely noticed us. His attention was taken up by a little old lady who wanted to know what all the fuss had been about that morning.

“Cops in the hallways,” she said. “On a Sunday morning yet. This was always such a nice building.”

They’d come and gone, he told her, before he went on duty. We were waiting for the elevator when the old woman said, “So what did she do, kill her husband? Stupid! Does she think they grow on trees?”

The door opened and we rode up to the seventh floor. Doll asked me what I thought the woman was talking about. Domestic violence, I said, was what it sounded like to me. On the other hand, I suggested, maybe the old lady was nuts. She’d been carrying on about cops in the hallways, and I certainly hadn’t seen any. If the doorman didn’t care, why should we?

I turned the wrong way when we got out on seven, but Doll caught my arm and steered me in the right direction. Luke Santangelo’s lock yielded to me as to an old lover. In a matter of seconds we were inside.

“I guess you haven’t lost your touch,” she whispered.

I flexed my fingers. “Once you learn,” I whispered back, “you never forget. It’s like drowning.”

“You mean swimming.”

“Or falling off a bicycle,” I said. “Same thing.” I donned my plastic gloves, double-locked the door, fastened the chain lock, and put on the light. Doll pointed at my gloves and mimed putting on a pair of her own.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. I only brought the one pair. Anyway, you couldn’t have worn gloves all the other times you were here, so the place must be full of your fingerprints. A few more won’t matter.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, you don’t think Luke’s going to dust the place for prints, do you?”

“No, but—”

“So let’s just find what we’re looking for and get out of here.”

That was easier said than done. She went first to the closet, and she did a pretty commendable job of ransacking it, yanking garments off hangers and tumbling boxes down from the top shelf. I guess that’s the way to search a place if you’re in a hurry, but it’s never been my style. I tend to walk lightly upon the earth, especially in other people’s houses.

“These are mine,” she said, holding a couple of sweaters and a pair of jeans. “But who cares?” She tossed them onto a wooden chair and spun around to glare at the open closet, her hands on her hips. “Come on, Bernie! I thought you were going to check the dresser.”

“I did.”

“How come you didn’t just pull out all the drawers and empty them in the middle of the floor? Isn’t that what burglars do?”

“Some do, I guess. This one doesn’t.”

“Well, you’re the expert,” she said, “but it seems to me—”

“Slow down,” I said. “Take a breath.”

“I know they’re here,” she said. “I guess I had this picture in my mind. You would open the door and we’d walk in and there they’d be, right out in plain sight. I expected to see Marty’s rosewood humidor sitting on Luke’s coffee table. But of course he left the humidor, didn’t he?”

“How would he have taken the cards? He didn’t just stuff them in his pockets.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’d pack them in a shopping bag.”

“And walk out of Marty’s building that way?”

“Why not? He could just—Bernie, the attaché case! That’s what he would have used.”