The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (9 page)

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember noticing the time. I put the TV on and watched CNN for a little while, then realized I was out of milk for the morning. I went out and got a few things from the deli. Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Well, I’m curious, too,” I said. “According to what you said, Gilmartin got off the phone with me and went looking for his comic books and his Captain Midnight decoder ring.”

“Just his baseball cards, Bern.”

“You mean he didn’t keep all his boyhood treasures in the same place? Never mind. Wherever he kept them, he looked for them and they were gone. Correct?”

“So?”

“They were gone then, right? At midnight or twelve-thirty or whenever it was, right?”

“What’s the point, Bern?”

“The point,” I said, “is that his baseball cards were already gone when I talked to him, so what possible difference could it make if I went to the deli at one or one-thirty in the morning?”

“If it don’t make no difference,” he said, “why did you have to go and lie about it?”

“Lie about it?”

“Well, what else would you call it?” He took out a pocket notebook, consulted a page. “You left your house at one-thirty. You got back at twenty minutes of six. That’s better’n four hours, Bern. Where was this deli, Riverdale?”

“I guess I must have made another stop,” I said. “On my way home from the deli.”

“And it slipped your mind until this minute.”

“No, it’s been on my mind since the questioning started, and I didn’t want to have to talk about it. I’ve been seeing someone, Ray.”

“Oh, yeah? Anybody I know?”

“No, and you’re not going to meet her, either. Look, you’re a man of the world, Ray.”

“This is gonna be a good one, isn’t it?”

“She’s married,” I said. “We’ve had to sneak around and grab moments when we can. Last night was one of those moments.”

“I’m ashamed of you, Bernie.”

“Well, I’m not proud of it myself, Ray, but—”

“Ashamed of you, trottin’ out an oldie like that. You wouldn’t want to give me her name, would you?”

“Ray, you know I can’t do that.”

“Too much of a gentleman, huh?”

“Ray, common decency requires—”

He held up a hand. “Spare me,” he said. “You didn’t go visit no woman last night, married or single. What you did, leavin’ your place on the sly in the middle of the night, is you took the baseball cards you already stole from Martin Gilmartin—”

“See?” I demanded. “It
is
a silly name, drunk or sober.”

“—an’ you took ’em to a fence, an’ you sold ’em. As far as when you broke into the Gilmartin place to steal ’em, my guess is it was sometime last night, because it was yesterday you had the argument with your landlord.” He made a face. “Don’t sputter like that, Bernie. If you got somethin’ to say, go ahead an’ say it. You gonna tell me you didn’t have no trouble with the landlord?”

“We had a heated discussion about books,” I said. “But you expect that sort of thing in a literary saloon. Anyway, his name is Stoppelgard.”

“Borden Stoppelgard.”

“So what has he got to do with Marty Gilmartin and baseball cards?”

“Gilmartin’s married.”

“Well, I swear it wasn’t his wife I was in bed with last night.”

“His wife’s name is Edna.”

“That’s an okay name,” I said. “Edna Gilmartin. Nothing the least bit funny about that.”

“How about Edna Stoppelgard? What’s that do for your funny bone?”

When Cornwallis was about to surrender his troops to George Washington at Yorktown, he ordered the band to play a tune called “The World Turned Upside Down.” If I’d had a tape of it lying around I would have played it.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Gilmartin’s wife used to be married to Stoppelgard?”

“Couldn’t happen,” he said. “There’s a law against it. Although I suppose there’s ways of gettin’ around it, don’t you figure?”

“Ways of getting around what?”

“The law against marryin’ your own sister, but why would you want to? The only plus I can see is you wouldn’t be arguin’ every year about do you spend Christmas with your parents or hers.” He shook his head. “Borden Stoppelgard is Martin Gilmartin’s brother-in-law.”

“You’re making this up.”

“All news to you, huh, Bernie? Nice try. Here’s more news. Last night the Stoppelgards an’ the Gilmartins all went to the theater together, to see something about wishin’ for horses. Then they all went out for supper, an’ your name came up. Seems Stoppelgard was crowin’ about the good deal he got on a rare book you sold him, an’ how the prices’d be even better when you had your Goin’-Outta-Business sale.”

“He said that, did he?”

“Then Gilmartin an’ his wife went home, an’ he got the call from you, but at the time he didn’t know who it was. Even without knowin’ it was you, first thought he had was somebody broke in, and the first thing he went an’ looked for was his baseball card collection, an’ it was gone.”

“So he called the police.”

“That’s just what he did, an’ the desk sent a couple of blue uniforms over, an’ they took a report. It landed on my desk this mornin’, an’ I mighta let it lay there except he called up, an’ the call got routed to me, an’ I smelled somethin’ funny.”

“Somebody got a bad burrito,” I suggested.

“He told me about the phone call,” he said, “an’ I figured any burglar’d be smart enough to make a call like that from a phone where it couldn’t be traced back to him. But you learn to check these things out, because a burglar who’s dumb enough to make that kind of call in the first place might be just stupid enough to make it from a friend’s apartment, especially if the friend in question’s a sawed-off little dyke who spends her life givin’ poodles a shave an’ a haircut.”

“It’s funny,” I said, “the way you and Carolyn never did get along. Ray, I already admitted I made the phone call, so what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is I tried out your name on Gilmartin, an’ he recognized it right away from his talk with his brother-in-law. ‘I know who that is,’ he says. ‘He’s a bookseller, an’ not a very good one, either.’ I tell him I know you, too, an’ that ain’t all you are. ‘He’s also a burglar,’ I say, ‘and there I’d have to say he’s one of the best in the business.’ ”

“Thanks for the endorsement, Ray.”

“Well, credit where credit’s due.”

“But if I’m such a high-level burglar—”

“One of the best, Bern. You always were.”

“—then why would I waste my talents on a cigar box full of baseball cards?”

“More like a shoe box, according to Gilmartin.”

“I don’t care if it was a packing crate. For God’s sake, Ray, these are little pieces of cardboard smelling of bubble gum. We’re not talking about the Elgin Marbles.”

“Marbles,” he said. “That’s what my mom got rid of, God rest her soul. I had a huge sack of ’em, too. I don’t know if I had any Elgins, but I had a real nice collection.”

“Ray—”

“Baseball cards aren’t kid stuff anymore, Bernie. Grown-ups buy ’em an’ sell ’em. They’re hot with investors these days.”

“Like Sue Grafton.”

“Does she collect ’em? I just read one book of hers, an’ it wasn’t bad. It was set on an army base durin’ war game maneuvers.”

“
‘K’ Is for Rations.
”

“Somethin’ like that, yeah.”

“I know some of the scarce cards are worth money,” I said. “There’s one famous one. Honus Wagner, right? And the card’s worth a thousand dollars, maybe more.”

“A thousand dollars.”

“In perfect shape,” I said. “If it’s all beat up from flipping it against the wall, well, it would be worth a lot less.”

He looked at the notebook again. “Honus Wagner,” he announced. “Hall of Fame shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Back in 1910 they went an’ put his picture on a card, except back then they gave ’em out in cigarette packs instead of bubble gum.”

“But he didn’t smoke,” I recalled. “And he didn’t want to have a bad influence on kids.”

“So he made ’em withdraw the card, an’ that’s why it’s so scarce today. You’re a little low, though, when you peg it at a thousand bucks.”

“Well, I was low on
‘B’ Is for Burglar,
too. What’s it worth?”

“They auctioned one a couple of years back,” he said, “an’ it went for $451,000. Accordin’ to Gilmartin, it’d bring well over a million in today’s market. You honestly didn’t know that, Bernie?”

“I didn’t,” I said, “and I’m not sure I believe it. A million dollars? For a baseball card?”

“The T-206 card. There’s other Honus Wagner cards, not advertisin’ cigarettes, an’ they’re not worth anythin’ like that kind of dough.”

“And Gilmartin had a T-206?”

“No.”

“He didn’t? Then who cares? Ray—”

“But he had lots of other good cards,” he said. “He had the Topps 1952 set, with Mickey Mantle’s rookie card. An’ he had a lot of Ted Williams an’ Babe Ruth an’ Joe DiMaggio cards. I wouldn’t mind havin’ a card with Joe D on it, I got to admit it.”

“If I ever get one,” I said, “I’ll swap you straight up for the Elgin Marbles.”

“You got a deal, Bern. But the point is, Gilmartin didn’t have Honus Wagner, but what he had was probably worth a lot more than what your mother gave to the sisterhood rummage sale. He had the whole lot insured for half a million dollars.”

“Half a million dollars.”

“An’ he says it’s worth more than that. That’s why I was hopin’ you took his cards, Bernie. We could do a little business, do us both some good. An’ you took ’em all right, you poor sap, but you didn’t know what you had. You took ’em sometime between eight o’clock an’ midnight, an’ you went out in the middle of the night to visit one of those wide receivers you know an’ sold ’em cheap. You an’ me, Bernie, we coulda done a deal with the insurance company an’ split a hundred grand between us. I’ll bet you didn’t bring home a tenth of that last night.”

“I didn’t take the cards, Ray.”

“You took ’em,” he said. “You were mad at Stoppelgard. You prolly followed him to the Gilmartin place, an’ then when they all went to the theater you went right in. You got back at Stoppelgard by knockin’ off Gilmartin, an’ you got in quick an’ grabbed the first thing you saw that looked like it might be worth somethin’. An’ instead of takin’ the time an’ trouble to find out what you had, you dumped ’em fast an’ screwed yourself good.” He sighed. “You got one chance of gettin’ outta this clean. Have you got the cards?”

“No.”

“Can you get them?”

“No.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said heavily. “Well, in that case, I got a card for you. Where’d I put the damn thing? Here we go. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to consult an attorney. If you do not have an attorney…’ ”

“B
efore I forget,” Wally Hemphill said, “I called your therapist. So that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What therapist?”

“Patience Tremaine.”

“
You
called her? I asked Carolyn to call her.”

“Well, Carolyn asked me to call her, so I did. I told her Mr. Rhodenbarr had to cancel his eight o’clock appointment, and he’d be calling to reschedule as soon as he was able.”

“That’s what you told her, huh?”

“Right, I kept it crisp and professional. I’ve got to say she seems to take more of a personal interest in her clients than most of the shrinks I’ve known.”

“She’s not exactly a shrink,” I said. “She’s a poetry therapist.”

“Oh, yeah? You been having trouble with your poems, Bernie?” He looked puzzled, then shrugged it away. “She seemed more concerned about your digestion than anything else. Something about knishes and burritos.”

“Oh.”

“But I cleared everything up for her. I explained that the cops had you in a holding pen charged with burglary, but that I was on my way to get a writ and I expected to have you out on bail in a couple of hours. Did I say something wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Wally. Don’t you think you may have been overly discreet?”

“Bernie, she’s your therapist, right? Obviously she knows your history and what you do for a living. How else could you expect to get anywhere in therapy?”

“How indeed?”

“Though she did seem taken aback, come to think of it. Maybe she was upset that you were actually arrested and charged with a crime.”

“That must be it.”

“People outside of the criminal justice system, they don’t realize that’s all part of the deal. Anyway, she’ll be waiting for you to call.”

“With bated breath, I’ll bet. Wally, she’s not my therapist. She’s a woman I had a couple of dates with.”

“Oh.”

“We were just starting to get to know each other,” I said. “As far as she knew, I was just a bookseller with a slight case of Delhi Belly. She had no idea I was a burglar.”

“Well, she’s got a pretty good idea now,” he said. “Bernie, I’m sorry as all hell. I guess I really stepped in it.

“Forget it.”

“Were you, uh, sleeping with her?”

“No,” I said, “but I had hopes.”

“Rats. I’m sorry, I really am. But hey, you’ll call her in a day or two and you’ll think of something to say.”

“And so will she. Hers’ll probably be something along the lines of ‘Lose my number, asshole.’ ”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Talking to her, she didn’t seem like the kind of girl to use bad language. Outside of that, you’re probably right.”

“‘If you do not have an attorney,’” Ray had intoned, “‘one will be provided for you.’”

Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary. I had an attorney. You can hardly be in business without one these days, and this is doubly true if your business comes under the broad heading of felonies and misdemeanors. You really need a lawyer you can call your own, and he ought to be the kind you have to pay. I’m sure the fellows and gals at Legal Aid do a commendable job for their clients, but I’m happier personally with legal counsel that’s just a little more upscale.

Besides, a successful professional criminal with a Legal Aid lawyer is like a billionaire collecting Social Security. Maybe he’s entitled to it, but so what? It’s still tacky.

For years my lawyer was a man named Klein with an office on Queens Boulevard, a wife and kids in Kew Gardens, and a girlfriend in Turtle Bay, just around the corner from the United Nations. Then one day a couple of years ago I got arrested, through no real fault of my own, and when I went to call Klein I found out he was dead.

Poof, just like that.

So I called Wally Hemphill. I knew him from the park, where we would encounter each other evenings, dressed in shorts and singlets and shod in state-of-the-art running shoes. We would jog along together for a mile or so, chatting companionably about this and that, until he sped up or I slowed down. When I met him he was training for the marathon. That was several marathons ago, and he’s never slowed down.

I, on the other hand, was a lot less dedicated. It’s hard to remember why I started running in the first place, although it may have been a natural outgrowth of the instinct for self-preservation. It’s nice to be able to run away if something takes it into its head to start chasing you. Still, I had never felt the urge to run twenty-six miles and change, or to transmute myself into a human whippet, and eventually the day came when running ceased to be one of the things I did and became instead one of the things I used to do, like reading comic books and collecting baseball cards. I still wear running shoes—they work just as well at low speeds—and I still own a few sets of running shorts and singlets, although I no longer get any use out of them. (If my mother lived with me, she’d probably throw them out.)

“I’m sorry it took so long,” Wally was saying. It was a quarter after ten Saturday morning, some eighteen hours after Ray Kirschmann had read me my rights, and we were in an Ethiopian coffee shop on Chambers Street. I think the restaurant’s previous owners must have been Greek, because they’ve still got spinach pie and moussaka on the menu.

Wally, who’d had an early breakfast before he came downtown, was working on a chocolate doughnut and a cup of coffee. I had coffee, too, along with a big glass of orange juice and a plate of scrambled eggs and salami and two slices of rye toast. Nothing builds an appetite like getting out of jail, even if you don’t pass Go and collect $200.

“They were being obstructive,” he explained. “Shunting you around from precinct to precinct like that so that I couldn’t get you out until morning. It’s a nuisance, but it’s actually a good sign.”

“How do you figure that?”

“What it tells me is they know they’ve got no case. What have they got? As far as evidence is concerned, they can demonstrate two things. One, someone called the Gilmartins from Carolyn’s apartment around midnight Thursday. They can’t even prove it was you that called, and the NYNEX records only show the one call that went through, so there’s no indication you’d been trying the number for hours. Two, they’ve got your doorman’s testimony that you left the building a little after one and didn’t get back until just before dawn. Well, so what? Leaving aside the fact that I could tie the guy in knots on cross, they can’t say you spent that time stealing Gilmartin’s baseball cards, because he had already reported them missing. You don’t have a working time machine, do you, Bernie?”

“I had one,” I said, “but I could never get batteries for it.”

“Their contention is you had the cards when you left your place and sold them during the night to person or persons unknown. But they have to do more than contend. Can they prove it?”

“No.”

“Suppose they find the buyer?”

“There was no buyer, Wally.”

“You know,” he said, “I think I’m gonna have another of these doughnuts. You can’t beat Ethiopians when it comes to doughnuts. You want one?” I shook my head. “It’s good I run seventy miles a week,” he said, “or I’d weigh three hundred pounds. Bernie, it might be a good idea if you beat them to the punch. Give up the fence.”

“Give up the fence?”

“Rat him out.”

“There was no fence,” I said.

“I know it may strike you as unethical,” he went on, “but standards aren’t what they used to be. Even Mafia guys drop dimes on each other nowadays. Next thing they do is call their agent, set up a book deal and a miniseries. Incidentally, Bernie, when the time comes—”

“You’re the guy I’ll call, Wally.”

“Naturally.”

“Wally,” I said, “there was no fence, because I never took the cards.”

“Whatever you say, Bernie. Listen, if you
didn’t
fence them—”

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

“That case, I hope you got them someplace safe. One reason they kept you overnight was so they’d have time to get a warrant and search your apartment. They must not have found anything, because we’d know about it if they did. Wherever you put the cards—”

“I never took them.”

“Bernie, I’m your attorney.”

“Really? I was beginning to think you were the DA. I never took the cards. I didn’t even know he had baseball cards, and they wouldn’t have tempted me if I did, because who knew they were worth that kind of money?”

“I thought everybody knew. I must have a dozen acquaintances who collect them. Lawyers, mostly. It’s a great investment.”

“So I understand.”

“They go to dealers, spend their weekends at card shows. One woman I know never leaves her office. She sits at her desk, plugged into one of those computer bulletin boards, buying and selling as if she had a seat on the stock exchange. She pays by credit card and they Fed Ex the cards to her at the office. She walks them across the street to the bank and pops them in her safe deposit box. Her biggest hassle is deciding which client to bill her hours to. Bernie, say you did take the cards—”

“I didn’t.”

“This is hypothetical, okay? If you took them, or if you just happened to get hold of them, I could probably do an end run with the insurer that would include getting the charges dropped.” He took a sip of coffee. “You really didn’t take ’em, huh?”

“Don’t tell me it’s beginning to sink in.”

“So why call Gilmartin?”

“If I’d just finished knocking off his apartment,” I said, “that’s the last thing I would have done. The thing is, I cased his apartment, and—”

“I thought you didn’t know about the card collection.”

“All I knew was he and his wife weren’t going to be home that night. They lived in a good building in a decent neighborhood. It stood to reason I’d find something to steal.”

“Makes sense.”

“But I didn’t go, Wally. I resisted temptation, and got a little bit tanked in the process. The real reason I called wasn’t to tweak his tail, it was to make sure he and Edna were home safe so I didn’t have to keep fighting the urge to pop his locks and make myself at home. When I finally reached him I joshed him a little, that’s all. It seemed safe enough.”

“And then you went home.”

“Right.”

“And then you went out again.”

“Uh.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing you want to hear about, Wally.”

“Bernie,” he said earnestly, “I’m your attorney. Anything you tell me is a privileged communication. Anything you
don’t
tell me is a potential stumbling block down the line. For instance, if you had told me that Patience Tremaine was someone you were involved with socially—”

“How could I tell you that? I never even had the chance to speak to you.”

“Well, maybe that’s not a good example. What did you do when you left your apartment in the middle of the night?”

“I let myself into another apartment, stole some money, and then came home.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that, Bernie.”

“You just said—”

“I know what I just said. I still wish you hadn’t told me. When I was five years old I begged my older brother to tell me the truth about Santa Claus, and he wouldn’t, and I begged and begged and begged, and finally he did, mostly to shut me up, I suppose. And the minute he did, I wished he hadn’t. Nothing I could do about it, though. I knew there was no Santa Claus, and the knowledge has been with me for the rest of my life.”

“It must have been awful.”

“It was.”

“So I guess you don’t want to hear about the dead body.”

“Oh my God.”

“So I won’t say anything.”

He shook his head. “Ignorance may be bliss,” he said, “but knowledge is power, and a good lawyer takes power over bliss any day. So let’s hear it.”

“Here’s what I think will happen,” he said. “They’ll spend a few days investigating, and when they don’t turn up anything further they’ll drop all charges.”

“Great.”

“Unless they find out where you really went after you got home from Carolyn’s. If that happens, I’d hate to be in your shoes.” He paused to glance at my feet. “Saucony,” he said, recognizing the logo on the shoes in question. “I almost bought a pair of those. How are they holding up?”

“They’re fine. Of course, the only exercise they get is when I take them out for a walk.”

“You never got back to running, huh, Bern? I don’t know how you managed to stop. It’s addictive, you know. They’ve done studies.”

“I know.”

“How’d you break the addiction?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I just substituted another addiction for it. I found something even more addictive than running.”

“What?”

“Not running,” I said. “It’s got to be the most addictive thing ever. Believe me, a few days of not running and I was hooked.”

“I don’t think it would work for me,” he said. “I hope I never find out.”

“Like Santa Claus.”

“Right. Where was I?”

“If they find out, you’d hate to be in my Sauconys.”

He nodded. “Because you won’t have an alibi, and they’ll have a witness or two and possibly some physical evidence, and the guy in the tub raises the stakes. A former president would say you were in deep doo-doo. His successor would probably advise you not to inhale.”

“What should I do?”

“Just sit tight,” he said. “Don’t break into any houses.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Well, don’t pull any unplanned burglaries, either. The money’s not worth it. Speaking of money, Carolyn gave me ten thousand dollars.”

A while back I had built a secret compartment into Carolyn’s closet. It’s small—you couldn’t conceal a Third Cat there—but it’s a perfect hiding place for money and valuables. I’ve always believed in maintaining a cash emergency fund, and it made sense to keep it not only where I could get hold of it, but where she’d have easy access. So I’d stashed ten grand in Carolyn’s apartment, and she’d passed it on to Wally, as per my instructions.

“They wanted to set bail at half a million dollars,” he said, “because that’s the insurance coverage on the cards. I got that knocked down to fifty thousand, or five thousand in cash, which I posted. We’ll get that back when they drop the charges. My thought is I ought to hang on to the other five as a retainer.”