Burglars Can't Be Choosers (13 page)

“Which means you don’t—”

“Right. I don’t.”

“Shit,” he said, pronouncing the word as emphatically as if he’d just stepped in it. Then he remembered that the little lady was present. “I beg your pardon,” he said.

She told him not to worry about it.

There really was a box. In fact he’d been waiting for me in Pandora’s that first night, sitting in a back booth with four thousand dollars on his hip, stretching out his drinks until they closed the place. It wasn’t until the following day that he found out what had gone wrong.

“And you didn’t kill Flaxford,” he said, after I’d done some recapping on my own.

“And neither did you.”

“Me? Kill the man? I never even met him. Oh,
I
see what you mean. You thought I set you up. But if
you
didn’t kill Flaxford—”

“Somebody else did. Because beating your own head in with a blunt instrument is no way to commit suicide.”

“I wish I knew more about this,” he said. “I’m not really in the center of things. There’s a lot happening I don’t know about.”

“I know how you feel.”

“All I am is an actor, really. And that career’s not going too well. One thing leads to another, and
I had this drinking situation that’s over with now, thank God, but I reached a point where I couldn’t remember lines. I still have trouble. I can improvise, which is what I was doing the two times I saw you, building a role around a framework, but you can’t do that in the movies unless you’re directed by Robert Altman or something. The jobs stopped coming, and this agent I’m with now, I’d have to say he’s more pimp than agent.”

“I know. I was in his office.”

“You met Pete?”

“I was in his office,” I repeated, “but he wasn’t. Last night. To get your address.”

“Oh,” he said. He looked for a moment at his own door, no doubt reflecting on its failure to keep us out of his room. “The point is, I’m in this because I’m an actor. I used to play a lot of heavies and that’s what she hired me for, to hire you to get the box and then to pay you off and take the box to her.”

“How did you know to hire me?”

“She told me to.”

“Right, sure,” I said. “She told you to hire a burglar. But how did you happen to know that I happened to be one?”

He frowned. “She told me to hire you,” he said. “You specifically, Bernard Rhodenbarr. I’m an
actor,
Bernie. How would I go about finding a burglar on my own? I don’t know any burglars. I can
play
crooks but that doesn’t mean I hang around with them.”

“Oh.”

“I used to know a bookie but since off-track betting came in I couldn’t tell you if he’s alive or dead. As far as burglars are concerned, well, I now know one burglar, or—” with a nod to Ellie “—or possibly two, but that’s all.”

“The woman who hired you,” Ellie said. “She knew Bernie was a burglar.”

“That’s right.”

“And she knew where he lived and what he looked like, is that right?”

“Well, she took me over there and pointed him out to me.”

“How did she know him?”

“Search me.”

Loren the cop would have frisked him. I just said, “What’s her name, Wes?”

“I’m supposed to keep her name out of this.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“That’s why she hired me in the first place.”

Ellie’s eyes flashed. “Now you just wait a damned minute,” she said. “Don’t you think Bernie has a right to know who got him into this mess? He’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit and he’s taking a chance every time he sets foot outside, and he has to go around wearing a disguise—”

“The hair,” Wes said. “I knew something was different. You dyed your hair.”

“It’s a wig.

“Really? It looks remarkably natural.”

“God
damn
it,” Ellie said. “How can you have the nerve to tell us the woman doesn’t want her name mentioned?”

“Well, she doesn’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to tell us who she is or else.”

“Or else what?” he asked. Reasonably, I thought.

Ellie frowned, then glanced at me for help. But I was getting flashes and the tumblers were beginning to drop. Brill hadn’t known me, hadn’t even known I was a burglar. But this woman had hired him to rope me in, selecting him because he was an actor who had made a career out of playing underworld types. She didn’t know any real underworld types, nor did she know any real burglars except for me, but she did know who I was and where I lived and what I looked like and how I kept the wolf away from my door.

I said, “Wait a minute.”

“You can’t let him get away with it, Bernie.”

“Just hold it for a minute.”

“You can’t. We found him and we trapped him and now he’s supposed to tell us what we want to know. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”

I closed my eyes and said, “Cool it, will you? Just for a minute.” And the last tumbler tumbled and the mental lock eased open so sweetly, so gently, like the petals of a flower, like a yielding lady. I opened my eyes and beamed at Ellie, then turned the warmth of my smile on Wesley Brill.

“He doesn’t have to tell me a thing,” I said to Ellie. “It’s enough that he told me it was a woman. That triggered it, really. A woman who doesn’t know anything about crime except that a guy named Bernie Rhodenbarr burgles for a living. I know who she is.”

“Who?”

“Does she still live in the same place, Wes? Park Avenue, right? I don’t remember the address offhand but I could draw you a floor plan of the apartment. I tend to remember the layout of places where I’ve been arrested.”

Brill was perspiring. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and he wiped them away not with his whole hand but with an extended index finger. The gesture was very familiar. I must have seen him do it dozens of times in movies.

“Mrs. Carter Sandoval,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about the Sandovals, Ellie? Of course I did. Her husband had a monster coin collection that I’d taken an interest in. He also had a monster of a gun and his doorbell was out of order and he and
his wife were home when I came a-calling. I’m sure I told you about this.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I thought so.” I grinned at Brill. “Her husband was head of CACA. That’s not a bathroom word, it stands for the Civic Anti-Crime Association or something like that. It’s a group of high-minded pests who push for everything from more foot patrolmen on the beat to investigations of political and judicial corruption. The sonofabitch held a gun on me and I tried to buy my way out, and he was the wrong man to offer a bribe to. He even wanted to prosecute me for attempted bribery but he wasn’t a cop, for God’s sake, and there’s no law against trying to bribe a private citizen. At least I don’t think there is, but come to think of it I’m probably wrong. There’s a law against just about everything, isn’t there? Of course I didn’t know he was the head CACA person. All I knew was that he did something terribly profitable on Wall Street and thought rare coins were a hell of a hedge against inflation. Does he still have the coins, Wes?”

Brill just stared at me.

“I remember them well,” I said. I was enjoying this. “And they would remember me, Wes. I saw them the night I was arrested, of course, but they were also on hand when I went before the judge.
They didn’t have to be. I copped a plea to a lesser charge, and don’t think that didn’t take some doing. Carter Sandoval wasn’t nuts about the idea of that. But somebody must have taken him aside and explained that the courts would never get anything done if every criminal went through the ritual of a jury trial, and he must have decided it would get more of us evildoers off the streets if the system was allowed to go along as usual, so he and his wife showed up to watch me stand up and plead guilty and get sent away to the license plate factory. I suppose he figured it would be good publicity for his cause with him there to watch justice triumph. And I think he got a personal kick out of it, too. He seemed pretty attached to those coins and thoroughly steamed at the thought of me violating the sanctity of his home.”

“Bernie—”

“She was a lot younger than him. She must have been around forty or close to it, so I guess she’s around forty-five now. Good-looking woman. A little too much jawline for my taste, but maybe she was just setting her jaw with determination the times I saw her. Is her hair still the same color, Wes?”

“I never told you her name.”

“That’s true, Wes, and I wish you would. It’s on the tip of my tongue. It’s not Carla and it’s not Marla and what the hell is it?”

“Darla.”

Something made me glance at Ellie. Her shoulders were set and her head cocked forward. She looked to be concentrating intently. “Darla Sandoval,” I said. “Right. That ring any kind of a bell for you, Ellie?”

“No. I don’t think you mentioned her name before. Why?”

“No reason. Why don’t you call her, Wes?”

“She calls me. I’m not supposed to call her.”

“Call her and see if she wants the box back.”

“But you don’t
have
the box, Bernie.” He eyed me in his oblique fashion. “Or do you? I’m getting more confused by the minute. Do you have the box or don’t you?

“I don’t.

“I didn’t think so because you didn’t even believe there
was
a box. You didn’t get the box from Flaxford’s apartment, then. Did you see it there and—”

“No.”

“You went through the desk? There
was
a desk there, wasn’t there? A large rolltop?”

“There was, and I went through it pretty carefully. But I couldn’t find any kind of blue box in it.”

“Shit,” he said, and this time he didn’t think to apologize to Ellie. I don’t think she minded. I’m not even sure she heard him. She seemed to have something else on her mind.

“That means they got it,” he said.

“Who?”

“Whoever killed him. You didn’t commit the murder or steal the box, so somebody else did both those little things and that’s why the box was gone when you got there. So that’s the end of everything.”

“Call Darla.”

“What’s the point?”

“I know where the box is,” I said. “Call her.”

H
er hair was still blond, and if she had changed much in any other respect I didn’t notice it. She was still slim and elegant, with strength in her face and assurance in her carriage. Wes and I met her as arranged over the phone at a brownstone apartment a few blocks from the one I’d been caught burgling a few years back. She opened the door, greeted me by name, and told Wes his presence would not be necessary.

“You run along, Wesley. It’s quite all right, Mr. Rhodenbarr and I will work things out.” It was the dismissal of a servant, and whether he liked it or not he took it without a murmur. She was swinging the door shut even as he was turning. She bolted it—with the burglar already inside, I thought—and favored me with a cool and regal
smile. She asked if I’d like a drink and I said Scotch would be fine and told her how to fix it.

While she made the drinks I stood around thinking of Ellie. She’d decided rather abruptly that she wouldn’t come along to meet Darla Sandoval. A quick glance at her watch, a sudden realization that it was much later than she’d thought, an uncertain bit of chatter about an unspecified appointment for which she was already late, a promise to meet me back at Rodney’s apartment later on, and away she went. I’d see her later, after her appointment had been kept, after her legendary cats had been fed, after her legendary stained-glass sculpture had been assembled…

I was running various thoughts through my mind when Darla Sandoval came back with drinks for both of us. Hers was a darker shade of amber than mine. She raised her glass as if to toast, failed to hit on a suitable phrase, and looked slightly less than certain for the first time in our acquaintance. “Well,” she said, which was toast enough, and we took sips of our drinks. It was excellent Scotch and this did not much surprise me.

“Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Oh, this? I borrowed it from a friend.”

“Still live at the same spot? Where we met?”

“Oh, yes. Nothing’s changed.” She sighed. “I want you to know I’m sorry about all this,” she said, sounding apologetic if not devastated. “I
never expected to get you involved in anything so complicated. I thought you’d do a very simple job of burglary for me. I remembered how skillfully you opened our locks that night—”

“That was skill, all right. Hitting the place with you two in it.”

“Accidents do happen. I thought you’d do perfectly, though, and of course you’re the only person I know who could possibly do the job. I remembered you, of course, your name, and I just glanced through the telephone book on the chance that you might be in it, and there you were.”

“There I was,” I agreed. “They charge extra for an unlisted number and I’ve always considered it a waste of money. The idea of paying them for an unperformed service. Goes against the grain.”

“I never thought Fran would be home that night. There was an opening downtown.”

“An opening?”

“An experimental play. He was supposed to be in the audience and at the cast party afterward. Carter and I were there, you see, and when Fran didn’t turn up I got very nervous. I knew you were going to be burgling his apartment and I didn’t know where he could be, whether he’d gone somewhere else or stayed home or what. Wesley says you didn’t kill him.”

“He was dead when I got there.”

“And the police—”

I gave her a quick summary of what had happened in Flaxford’s apartment. Her eyes widened when I mentioned how I’d arranged to buy my way out. Here her husband was battling police corruption and she didn’t seem to know that cops took money from crooks. I guess civilians just don’t understand how the system works.

“Then someone else actually killed him,” she said. “I don’t suppose it could have been accidental? No, of course it couldn’t. But you did look in the desk before the police came? I saw Fran put the box in the desk. It was a deep blue, a little darker than royal blue, and the box itself was about the size of a hardcover novel. Maybe larger, perhaps as big as a dictionary. And I saw him put it in the desk.”

“Where in the desk? Under the rolltop?”

“One of the lower drawers. I don’t know which one.”

“It doesn’t matter. I went through those drawers.”

“Thoroughly?”

“Very thoroughly. If the box was there I would have found it.”

“Then someone else got it first.” Her face paled slightly beneath her make-up. She drank some more of her drink, sat down in a straight chair with a needlepoint seat. “Whoever killed Fran took the box,” she said.

“I don’t think so. That desk was locked when I
found it, Mrs. Sandoval. Desk locks are always easy to open but you have to know what you’re doing.”

“The killer could have had a key.”

“But would he have bothered to lock up afterward? With a corpse in the bedroom? I don’t think so. He’d have thrown things all over the place and left a mess behind him.” I thought of my own ravaged apartment. “Besides,” I went on, “somebody’s still looking for the box and you don’t go on looking for something you already have. I went back to my own place a couple of hours ago and it looked as though Attila had marched his Huns through it. You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you could have hired someone. No hard feelings if you did, but you’d better tell me or we’ll be wasting our time chasing wild geese.”

She assured me she had had nothing to do with looting my place and I decided she was telling the truth. I hadn’t really figured she’d been involved in the first place. It was more logical to assume it had been tossed by the same person who had scrambled Flaxford’s brains.

“I think I know where the box is,” I said.

“Where?”

“Where it’s been all along. Flaxford’s apartment.”

“You said you looked.”

“I looked in the desk, but that’s as far as I got. I’d have kept on looking if the Marines hadn’t landed and I think I probably would have found it. It could have been anywhere in the apartment. Just because you saw him put it in the desk doesn’t mean he left it there forever. Maybe he had a wall safe behind a picture. Maybe he stuck it in a drawer in the bedside table. It could even be in the desk but not in a drawer. Those old rolltops have secret compartments. Maybe he put the box in one of them after you left. Anyway, I’ll bet it’s still there, right where he put it, and the killer assumes I’ve got it, and the apartment’s all locked up with a police seal on the door.”

“What can we do?”

An idea began heating up in the back of my mind. I let it simmer there while I took a different tack with her. “This blue box,” I said. “I think it’s time I knew what was inside it.”

“Is it important?”

“It’s important to you and it’s important to the man who killed Flaxford. That makes it important to me. Whatever it is must be pretty valuable.”

“Only to me.”

“He was blackmailing you.”

A nod.

“Photographs? Something like that?”

“Photographs, tape recordings. He showed me
some pictures and played part of a tape for me.” She shuddered. “I knew he didn’t love me any more than I loved him. But I thought he enjoyed what we did.” She stood up, took a few steps toward the window. “My life with my husband is quite conventional, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Some years ago I learned that I’m not all that conventional myself. When I met Fran some months ago we learned we had certain, uh, tastes in common.” She turned to face me. “I never expected to be blackmailed.”

“What did he want from you? Money?”

“No. I don’t have any money. I had a hard time raising enough cash to hire you and Wesley. No, Fran wanted me to influence my husband. You know he’s involved with CACA.”

“I know.”

“There’s a man named Michael Debus. He’s the District Attorney of Brooklyn or Queens, I can never remember which. Carter’s spearheading some sort of investigation which threatens to expose this Debus.”

“And Flaxford wanted you to pull the plug on it?”

“Yes. As if I could, incorruptible as Carter is.”

“What was Flaxford’s interest?”

“I don’t know. I can’t figure out how he fits into it all. He and I became involved long before Carter began this investigation, so he didn’t start seeing me with an ulterior motive in mind. And I always
understood that he was involved with the theater. He produced some shows off-off-Broadway, you know, and he moved in those circles. That’s how I met him.”

“And that’s how you met Brill also?”

“Yes. He didn’t know Fran or any of my other theater friends, which made me feel safer about using him. But Fran must have been involved with crime in some way that I never knew about.”

“He must have been some kind of a fixer,” I said. “He was obviously trying to fix things for Debus.”

“Well, he certainly fixed me.” She came over, sat down on a love seat, took a cigarette from a box on the coffee table, lit it with a butane table lighter. “He must have known just what he was doing when he started up with me,” she said levelly. “Even if the Debus investigation hadn’t started. He knew who Carter was and he must have decided that it would come in handy sooner or later to have a hold on me.”

“Did your husband ever meet him?”

“Two or three times when I dragged Carter to an opening or a party. I’m interested in the theater the way Carter is interested in collecting coins. With those small companies you can have the excitement of being a backer and the thrill of being an insider for a couple of hundred deductible dollars. It’s an inexpensive way to delude yourself into
thinking you’re involved in creative work with creative people. Oh, you meet the most interesting people that way, Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

She took our empty glasses into the kitchen. I think she may have helped herself to a slug from the bottle while she was at it because when she came back her face had softened and she seemed more at ease.

I asked her when Flaxford had shown her the contents of the blue box.

“About two weeks ago. It was only the fourth time I’d been to his apartment. We generally came here. This isn’t a friend’s apartment, you see. I rented it myself some years ago as a convenience.”

“I’m sure it’s convenient.”

“It is.” She drew on her cigarette. “Of course he took me to his apartment so he could make the tapes and photographs. And then he invited me up to show me his work and make his pitch.”

“He told you to get your husband to drop the Debus investigation?”

“Yes.”

“But you couldn’t do that?”

“Tell Carter to discontinue a CACA project?” She laughed. “You ought to remember just how high-principled a man my husband is, Mr. Rhodenbarr. You tried to bribe him, remember?”

“I do indeed. Didn’t you say as much to Flaxford?”

“Of course I did. He said he was just trying to give me a chance to work things out on my own. For the sake of our friendship, he said.” She gritted her teeth. “But if I couldn’t sway Carter myself, then he’d go to him directly, threaten to circulate the photos.”

“What would Carter have done?”

“I don’t know. I’m not certain. He couldn’t have allowed the photographs to circulate. Carter Sandoval’s wife doing perverted things? No, he could hardly have tolerated that, no more than he could have tolerated remaining married to me. I’m not sure just what he would have done. He might have tried something dramatic, something like leaving a detailed note implicating Fran and Debus and then diving out a window.”

“Would he have tried killing Flaxford?”

“Carter? Commit murder?”

“He might not have thought of it as murder.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t imagine him doing it,” she said. “Anyway, he was with me at the theater.”

“The whole night?”

“We had dinner together and then we drove downtown.”

“And you were together the entire time?”

She hesitated. “There was a one-act curtain raiser before the main production. An experimental extended scene written by Gulliver Shane. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work.”

“I’m not. Is Carter?”

“Pardon?”

“He missed the curtain-raiser, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “He dropped me in front of the theater and then went to park the car. The curtain was at eight-thirty and I had time for a cigarette in the lobby so he must have dropped me at twenty after eight. Then he had trouble finding a parking place. He won’t park by a hydrant even though they don’t tow cars away that far downtown. He’s so disgustingly honest.”

“So he missed the curtain.”

“If you’re not seated when the lights go up you have to watch from the back of the theater. So he couldn’t sit next to me during the Shane play. But he said he watched from the back, and he was sitting beside me by nine o’clock, or maybe nine-fifteen at the outside. That wouldn’t have given him enough time to rush all the way uptown and kill Fran and get back to me that quickly, would it?”

I didn’t say anything.

“And Carter wouldn’t even have known about Fran. Fran hadn’t gone to him yet, I know he hadn’t. I was supposed to have until the end of the week. And Carter wouldn’t kill anyone by striking him. He’d use a gun.”

“Does he still have that cannon of his?”

“Yes. It’s a horrible thing, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know the half of it. You didn’t have it pointed at you. But suppose Carter didn’t plan any murder. Suppose Flaxford confronted him with the photos and he reacted on the spur of the moment. He wouldn’t have had the gun with him, and—”

I left it right there because it didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t just that Sandoval would have been acting completely out of character. Beyond that, there was no reason for Flaxford to have met him at that hour or to have been wearing a dressing gown during the confrontation. And if a man like Carter Sandoval did kill anyone in a blind rage, which was hard enough to believe, he certainly would have given himself up and taken his punishment afterward.

“Forget all that,” I said. “Carter didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t see how he could have.”

“It keeps coming back to the blue box,” I told her. “We have to get our hands on it. You want those photos and tapes before some opportunist gets his hands on them. And I want to find out what’s in the box besides tapes and pictures.”