The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (14 page)

But it looked as though someone had had a go at it. There were scratches that looked fresh, and someone had mucked about with the jamb, trying to get a purchase with a pry bar. Nothing will keep a person out who is sufficiently determined to get in—a resourceful housebreaker, confronted with an unbreachable door, will simply go through the wall—but whoever had paid me a visit had been unwilling or unable to carry things that far. I let myself in with my keys, reasonably certain no one had entered in my absence, and locked the locks behind me. I checked everything, including my hidey-hole, just to be sure, and everything was fine.

I drew a tub, soaked in it, got out and dried off and lay down on the bed for a minute. I didn’t even realize I was tired, but I must have been gone the minute my head touched the pillow. I don’t know how long I slept, because I don’t know what time I lay down, but when I opened my eyes it was ten after six, and I was sufficiently disoriented that I had to check my calendar watch to be entirely certain it was still that afternoon, not six the following morning.

I called Carolyn and couldn’t reach her at home or at work. I put on clean clothes, tossed some other clothes and sundries into a flight bag from a defunct airline, and rode the elevator to the basement. If it had stopped at the lobby floor I might
have been able to get a peek at the man with the newspaper, if he was still there, but he might have been able to get a peek at me at the same time, so I guess it was just as well the trip was nonstop. I let myself out through the service entrance, circled the block to avoid the little reception committee in front of the building, and tried to figure out where to go next.

Was I hungry? I’d had a hot dog and a knish a couple of hours back. I didn’t really feel like sitting down to a meal, but I felt like eating something. But what?

Of course. What else?

Popcorn.

“I
think it’s so romantic,” Carolyn said. “I think it’s just about the most romantic thing I ever heard of.”

“It wasn’t romantic,” I said.

“Oh, come on, Bern, how can you even say that? It’s incredibly romantic. Night after night, a man goes to the theater all by himself.”

“What do you mean, night after night?”

“Last night and tonight, that’s night after night.” She shook her head at the wonder of it. “Each time he buys two tickets and saves two seats, always in the same location. Each time he gives one of them to the ticket-taker and tells him that a woman may be joining him later.”

“And each time he buys the largest-size popcorn,” I said. “Don’t forget that. And sits there and eats it all himself. You can’t beat that for romance.”

“Bern, forget the popcorn.”

“I wish I could. I’ve got a husk stuck between two molars and I can’t budge it. I just hope it’s biodegradable.”

“You’re just trying to be cynical to hide how romantic you are.” She made a fist, punched me playfully on the shoulder. “You son of a gun,” she said, not without admiration. “I didn’t know you were going to the movies tonight.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“You just happened to be there when the movie was about to start. Just the way I happened to be out in front when it let out the other night, so I could just happen to catch a glimpse of Ilona.”

“In my case it’s almost literally true,” I said. “I couldn’t reach you, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I was five minutes from the Musette with half an hour until curtain. And I asked myself if I felt like seeing two more Humphrey Bogart films, and I had to admit the answer was yes.”

“So you bought two tickets because it seemed like the hardheaded and sensible thing to do.”

“Maybe that was romantic,” I admitted.

“Maybe?”

“To tell you the truth,” I said. “I thought there was a slight possibility she would show up.”

“Honestly?”

“If she wanted to get in touch with me,” I said, “that was the way to do it. Obviously I didn’t have to leave a ticket for her. But I figured I could afford it. I had twenty bucks from her boyfriend.”

“Mike Todd?”

“Mikhail,” I said, giving the name the full treatment.

“You’re positive that was her in his apartment, Bern?”

“Not necessarily. She could have been in the next apartment, shouting through a hole in the wall.”

“You know what I mean. You’re sure it was her?”

“Positive.”

“Because a lot of women have accents, especially the ones you find hanging out with guys named Mikhail. I mean, what exactly did you have to go by? It’s not as if she said ‘Bear-naaard.’”

“No, it’s as if she said ‘Mikhail,’ and I’m positive it was her. Unless it just happened to be someone else with great tits and an Anatrurian accent.”

“What tits? You didn’t get a look at her, so how do you know what kind of tits she had?”

“I’ve got a good memory for that sort of thing.”

“But the girl in Mikhail’s apartment—”

“Was Ilona. Trust me on this, will you? I recognized her voice, the pitch, the inflection, the accent, everything. If she’d come to the door I would have recognized the rest of her, tits and all. Okay?”

“Whatever you say, Bern.”

“I think it was brilliant of me not to drop my jaw on the floor when I heard her speak up. I just took his twenty dollars and got the hell out of there.”

She frowned. “Bern,” she said, “I hope you’re not planning on keeping that twenty.”

“Why not?”

“You got it under false pretenses.”

“I get most of my money under false pretenses,” I said. “I felt relatively legitimate for a change. He actually handed me the money. Most of the time I take it out of somebody’s strongbox.”

“This is different, Bern.”

“How do you figure that?”

“That money was a donation. If you keep it, you’re not stealing it from Mike Toddsky, or whatever you want to call him. You’re actually stealing it from the AHDA.”

“The what?”

“The American Hip Dysplasia Association. What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Carolyn,” I said carefully, “I made that up. I didn’t want to pick some popular disease, because for all I knew somebody else in the building had come collecting for it a couple of days ago. So I picked hip dysplasia, because I figured I was safe. There’s no such thing as the American Hip Dysplasia Association.”

“There most certainly is.”

“Oh, come on.”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh, come on’? The AHDA is leading the fight against the worst canine crippler around. They’re sponsoring some of the
most important research going on in veterinary medicine.”

“You’re serious,” I said.

“Of course I’m serious. Look, Bern, I’m in the business, I don’t take dog diseases lightly. And I give an annual donation to the fight against hip dysplasia, not a whole lot but as much as I can afford. I mean, there are a lot of worthy causes out there. Look at feline leukemia.” She heaved a sigh, while I wondered where I was supposed to look for feline leukemia. “I was just surprised that you know about the AHDA, Bern, seeing that you’re not a dog person. But now it turns out you don’t know about it after all.”

“Well,” I said, “I do now.”

“You do, and you can give me twenty dollars right now and I’ll send it in for you. Unless you want to write a check so you can take it off your taxes.”

I found a twenty and handed it over.

“Thanks, Bern. I bet you feel better already, don’t you?”

“How much do you want to bet?”

“Well, you will,” she said, and tucked the twenty away. “So tell me,” she said. “How were the movies?”

“The movies?” I said. “The movies were great.
Virginia City
and
Sabrina.
What’s not to like?”

“Virginia City,”
she said. “It sounds like a western. Actually, it sounds like a southern western, if you stop and think about it. What is it?”

“A western.”

“Humphrey Bogart in a western?”

“Errol Flynn’s the hero,” I said. “Bogart’s a half-breed bandit.”

“Give me a break, Bern.”

“With a mustache and sideburns, and it is a sort of a southern western, because it’s during the Civil War and Confederate sympathizers in this Nevada mining town are planning to ship a load of gold bullion to Dixie.”

“But Errol Flynn saves the day?”

“And Bogie’s killed, of course. Flynn won’t say where the gold is because he hopes it’ll be used to rebuild the South after the war. That’s his story, anyway. I figure he wanted a retirement fund for himself. Anyway, Miriam Hopkins pleads for his life and Abraham Lincoln commutes his sentence.”

“Who played Lincoln?”

“I missed the credit. Not Raymond Massey, though.”

“And
Sabrina
’s with Audrey Hepburn, right? She’s in love with Alan Ladd and winds up with Bogart.”

“William Holden.”

“She winds up with William Holden?”

“Holden’s the brother she starts out with, and Bogart gets her in the end.”

“Yeah? What happened to Alan Ladd?”

“He must have been off making another picture,” I said, “because he sure wasn’t in this one.”

We were in her apartment on Arbor Court, where I’d gone, flight bag in hand, after the credit crawl at the end of
Sabrina.
No one was home when I got there, unless you want to count Archie and Ubi. I let myself in and played with them and made a pot of coffee, and before I’d drunk half a cup of it she’d come in, relieved to see me.

We were sitting at the kitchen tub-table now, and I’d switched from coffee to Evian water while Carolyn sipped Scotch. “I don’t particularly feel like a drink,” she said, “but it’s not a good idea to miss a day. It’s like exercise. If you want to stay in shape, you should make sure you get out there and do something every day. Even if it’s just a slow jog around the block or two laps in the swimming pool, at least you’re hanging in there.”

“I’d join you,” I said, “but I might work tonight.”

“It’s kind of late for it, Bern.”

“I know, and I don’t think I will, but I might. It’s called keeping my options open. While you’re hanging in there, I’m keeping my options open.”

“I think it’s great the way it looks as though we’re just sitting here with glasses in our hands,” she said, “when we’ve each actually got a sound philosophical basis for what we’re doing. I was glad to find you here when I got in, Bern. I was a little worried when I didn’t hear from you all day.”

“I called,” I said.

“And we talked? Better bring on the ginkgo biloba, because I don’t remember a thing.”

“I couldn’t reach you,” I said. “I tried you here and at the store. Two, three times minimum. You were never at either place.”

“Which store, Bern?”

“The Poodle Factory, of course. How many stores do you have?”

“Just one,” she said, “but you’ve got one, too, and that’s where I was.”

“At my store?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Barnegat Books?”

“No. Lord and Taylor. How many stores do
you
have, smartie?”

“I was closed today, Carolyn.”

“That’s what you think.”

“You opened up for me?”

“Well, I had to go in to feed Raffles,” she said, “and I got to thinking that somebody might be trying to get in touch with you. Like Tiggy, for instance, or Candlemas, or the other one whose name was mentioned. The fat man. Sarnoff.”

“Tsarnoff,” I said.

“Whatever you tsay, Bern. I figured nobody could reach you at home, and they didn’t know you were staying here, and you don’t have an answering machine on either of your phones, so how could they get in touch with you?”

“They can’t,” I said, “which should make it hard for them to kill me.”

“Well, I didn’t think anybody would try to kill me, so I figured I’d spend the day in the bookstore.
It’s not as if I had anything else to do. My store’s closed for the weekend.”

“So was mine. How did you manage? The bargain table must have been a bitch to move.”

“For a small weak woman like me? That’s what I figured. I left it inside.”

“Really? It’s a good draw, it lets people know they’re passing a bookstore.”

“Bern, I wasn’t looking to do big business. I just wanted to be open in case anybody came by with a message for you. I sold some books, but that wasn’t the point.”

“You actually sold some books?”

“What’s so remarkable about that? You sit behind the counter, people bring up a book, you check the price and add the tax and take their money and make change. It’s not nuclear physics.”

“How much did you take in?”

“I don’t know, a little under two hundred dollars. Whatever it was, I left it in the register.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t send it to the hip dysplasia people.”

“I wish I’d thought of it. A lot of your regular customers asked about you. They wanted to know if you were sick. I told ’em you were up till all hours and had a killer hangover.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“People like hearing that sort of thing, Bernie. It’s a humanizing flaw, they identify with you and feel superior to you at the same time. Anyway, I
didn’t want to say you were sick or they might worry.”

“You could have said I had hip dysplasia.”

“You think that’s funny, but—”

“I know, I know, it’s no laughing matter.”

“Well, it’s not.” She poured herself a little more Scotch, hanging in with a vengeance. “Mowgli came by with a shopping bag full of treasures from the Twenty-sixth Street flea market. He said he was sure you’d want them, but I said I couldn’t do any buying.”

“Is he going to come back?”

“He’ll have to. I gave him a ten-dollar advance and got him to leave the books for you to look at. If they’re not worth ten dollars—”

“They’ll be worth it. You did the right thing, otherwise he’d have taken them to somebody else. Anybody else come in that I should know about?”

“Tiggy Rastafarian.”

“Rasmoulian.”

“I know, I was being funny.”

“You’re joking anyway, right? He didn’t really come in.”

“Sure he did. I think that book confused him, Bern. He didn’t know what to make of it. He’s a snappy dresser, the way you said, and I guess he’s pretty short, but you made him sound like a midget.”

“For a full-grown person,” I said, “he’s not.”

“He’s taller than I am, Bern.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different? Because I’m a woman? Why should that make a difference?”

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s a clear-cut case of sex discrimination, and I think there must be a government agency you can call. What did he want?”

“Tiggy? He wouldn’t come right out and say, and then he didn’t get a chance to say anything, because Ray came in.”

“Again? Tiggy must think he lives there.”

“That’s what Ray seems to think. He comes in and makes himself right at home, doesn’t he? He remembered Tiggy, who I guess would be hard to forget, wouldn’t he? Ray greeted him by name, but of course he got the name wrong, not that Tiggy bothered correcting him. He just got the hell out of there, which gave Ray a chance to do what he’d wanted to do from the minute he walked in.”

“What was that?”

“What he always does. Make short jokes. ‘Hey, Carolyn, it does my heart good to see you finally got a boyfriend your own size.’ And that was just to get himself warmed up. I happen to be altitudinally challenged. What’s the big deal?”

“Well, you know how he is.”

“I know what he is, too,” she said with feeling, “but I’m not insensitive. You don’t see me making asshole jokes every time I’m in the same room with him. He wants you to get in touch with him. He says it’s urgent.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, and I couldn’t get it out of him, but he sounded serious. I told him you were away for the weekend.”

“Good thinking.”

“I said I didn’t know where but you’d mentioned something about New Hampshire. Bern, do you think those were cops hanging around your place uptown? Because he said he knew you hadn’t been home, and how else would he know that unless they had the place staked out?”

“Maybe,” I said. “They were obvious enough about it. But I don’t get it. I can see him dropping in, he does that all the time, and I can even see him leaving a message that it’s urgent, even if it’s not. But a stakeout? What for?”