The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (19 page)

There were no hangers in the closets—they really did take everything, the bastards—so I hung my slacks and jacket over the rail that would have supported a shower curtain, but for their having taken that along, too. I took off my shoes and slept in the rest of my clothes, using my flight bag as a pillow. It was about as useful in that capacity as the floor was as a bed.

I couldn’t afford to oversleep, and of course I hadn’t brought an alarm clock with me. But somehow I didn’t think that was likely to be a problem.

Did I really have to do this? Couldn’t I pay a visit to some other apartment? It was a holiday weekend, so it stood to reason that a substantial number of Boccaccio residents were out of town until Monday night at the earliest.

Suppose I just picked a likely door and opened it. If nobody was home, I was in business. And even if someone was on the premises, was that necessarily a disaster? I have burgled apartments while
the tenants slept, even on occasion creeping around in the very room where they were snoring away. No one would call it relaxing work, but there’s this to be said for it: you know where they are. You don’t have to worry about them coming home and surprising you.

This would be different, but couldn’t I sleep on the living-room couch, say, while they were sleeping in the bedroom? I’d make sure I woke up before they did. And if something went wrong, if they found me dozing in front of the fireplace, wasn’t it the sort of thing I could talk my way out of? Drunk, I’d say, shrugging sheepishly. Got the wrong apartment by mistake, just dumb luck my key fit in the lock. Terribly sorry, never happen again. I’ll go home now.

Was that so utterly out of the question? I could pull that off, couldn’t I?

No, I told myself sternly. I couldn’t.

I squirmed around, trying to find the most comfortable position, until I realized with dismay that I’d found it early on and it wasn’t going to get any better. I heaved a sigh and closed my eyes. I was as snug as a bug on a bare floor, and there’s a reason that metaphor has not become part of the language. It was going to be a long night.

It was a long night.

Every hour or so I would wake up, if you want to call it that, and look at my watch. Then I would
close my eyes and go back to sleep, if you want to call it that, until I woke up again.

And so on.

At six-thirty I gave up and got up. I splashed water on my face, dried my hands with toilet paper, and put on the slacks and shoes I’d taken off. I had a clean shirt and socks and underwear in my bag, but I was saving them until I had a clean body to put them on.

It was light out, so I could read again. I went back to Bertie Wooster, and everything he did and said made perfect sense to me. I took this for a Bad Sign.

At seven-thirty I checked the hall, and there were two people in it, waiting for the elevator. I eased the door silently shut. Two minutes later I tried again, and they were gone but someone else had taken their place. It seemed like a lot of traffic for a luxury building early on a holiday morning, but evidently the residents of the Boccaccio were an enterprising lot, not given to lazy mornings in bed. Or maybe they’d spent the night on the floor, too, and were as eager as I to be up and doing.

When I cracked the door a third time there was yet another person in the hall, but she looked to be a cleaning woman who’d just emerged from the elevator and was headed for an apartment at the far end of the hallway. I stepped out and drew the door shut, unwilling to lock up after myself as I usually do, not with so much traffic all around
me. The empty apartment would have to spend the next little while guarded only by the spring locks, which meant anybody with a credit card could steal inside and make off with the toilet paper.

So be it. I walked to the stairwell, setting a brisk pace, and its fire door closed behind me without my attracting any attention.

So far so good.

I climbed seven flights of stairs, telling myself that people paid good money to do essentially the same thing on a machine at the gym. I’ll admit I paused a couple of times en route, but I got there.

At the twelfth-floor landing, I waited until I’d caught my breath, which took longer than I’d prefer to admit. Then I opened the door about an inch and a half and looked out. I’d picked the right stairwell, and from where I was I had a good if narrow view of his door.

I hunkered down, which for years I thought was something people only did in westerns. It turns out you can do it anywhere, even in a ritzy building on Park Avenue. It was less tiring than holding a fixed upright position for a long period of time, and I was less likely to be seen; people do most of their looking at eye level, and my own eyes, lurking behind a slightly ajar door all the way at the end of the hall, wouldn’t be as noticeable if I kept them half their usual distance from the floor.

I checked my watch. It was seventeen minutes to eight. It seemed to me that should give me plenty
of leeway, but I hadn’t been there five minutes before I started to worry that I’d missed him.

According to him, he was a creature of habit, leaving the house at the same time and taking the same walk every morning. The previous morning I’d been loitering in a doorway across the street, drinking bad coffee from a Styrofoam cup and waiting for him to make his appearance. He’d done so at ten minutes after eight, and if he stayed on schedule today he’d leave his apartment sometime between a quarter to eight and eight-thirty.

Unless he didn’t.

If he was later today than yesterday, I could just wait him out. It’s not as though I had a train to catch, or a longstanding appointment at the periodontist. But if he was earlier, more than twenty-seven minutes earlier, say, then I’d get to see him return while I was still waiting for him to leave.

Not good.

If you ever start thinking you’re a long ways from being neurotic, just spend a little time squinting at a closed door waiting for it to open. I couldn’t get my mind to shut up. I’d made a big mistake, I told myself, staying as long as I had in the empty apartment. Suppose I’d missed him. Suppose the apartment was magnificently empty right now, while I squatted there like a constipated savage. I should have been in place by seven-thirty at the latest. Seven o’clock would have been better, and six-thirty would have been better still.

On the other hand, how long could I perch at
the stair landing without someone turning up to ask me what the hell I thought I was doing there? It did not seem unlikely that the stairs would see a certain amount of casual traffic, whether of tenants or building staff. I didn’t expect a whole lot of coming and going, but all it would take was one mildly curious individual and the best I could hope for was a summary exit from the premises.

The time crawled. I asked myself what Bogart would do, and right away I knew one thing he’d have done. He’d have smoked. By ten minutes after eight (his departure time yesterday, so where the hell
was
he?) the floor would have been littered with butts and cigarette ash. He’d have tapped cigarettes out philosophically, ground them out savagely, flicked them unthinkingly down the stairs. He’d have smoked like crazy, the son of a gun, but when it came time to take action, by God he’d have taken it.

What if I just went over there and rang his goddam bell? Now, without waiting for any more time to pass. If he’d left early, I’d be able to get in there now instead of wasting the whole day. And if he was still home, if he hadn’t left yet, and he answered the bell, well, I would just think of something.

Like what?

I was trying to think of it when his door opened, and I’d been staring at it so hard for so long that it barely registered. Then he emerged, looking quite dapper in flannel trousers and a houndstooth jack
et, and wearing the hat he’d been wearing that first night, when he opened the door for Captain Hoberman and blinked in surprise to see me there as well.

He had what seemed like a long wait for the elevator, but he waited patiently, and I tried to follow his example. A young couple emerged from the E or F apartment just as the elevator door opened, and the man called for them to hold the door while the woman locked up. Then they joined Weeks in the elevator and away they all went.

I let out my breath, looked at my watch. It was fourteen minutes after eight.

Three minutes later I was inside his apartment.

I
figured I had an hour before he was likely to return. If I wanted to play it safe, all I had to do was be out of there by nine o’clock.

As it turned out, it didn’t take me anywhere near that long to do what I wanted to do. I was out of his apartment by twenty to nine, out of the building shortly thereafter.

I probably would have had time for a shower.

You know, I thought about it. I could have shucked my clothes, treated myself to a minute and a half under a spray of hot water, then rubbed myself speedily dry with one of his fluffy mint-green towels. I could have stuffed the towel in my flight bag, carrying the evidence away with me. He’d never have missed it.

But I didn’t. Nor did I sneak a cup of the leftover coffee. He probably wouldn’t have missed that, either, and God knows I could have used it,
but I was a good little burglar and left it untouched.

I got in, I got out. When I hit the street I looked around, and he was nowhere to be seen. I caught a cab, gave the ethnically indeterminate driver my address, and sat back with my Braniff bag cradled on my lap. I felt grimy and grubby and I couldn’t stop yawning.

I didn’t see the suspect car in front of my building, and I wasn’t worried I’d find Ray Kirschmann in the lobby, but it seemed a bad time to leave anything to chance. I got the driver to circle the block and let me off around the corner in front of the service entrance. I’d just finished paying the tab when a fellow in a glen plaid suit and a horrible tie came out of the very door I was planning on opening. “Hold it!” I sang out, and he did, and I was inside my building without having to pick any locks.

Now isn’t that a hell of a thing? I’d never seen this clown before, so it was odds-on he’d never laid eyes on me, and here he was letting me through a door that was supposed to be kept locked.

I very nearly had a word with him about it. I’ve been known to do that. After all, I live in the building; the last thing I want is unauthorized persons roaming its halls and imperiling its tenants, one of them myself. I’ve bluffed and smiled and sweet-talked my way into any number of buildings. I know how it works, and I’d just as soon nobody worked it on the place where I live.

But I held my tongue. I’d talk to the fellow another time. For now, I had other things to do.

First a shower and a shave, neither of which could possibly have been called premature. Then, clad in fresh clothes, I took the subway downtown and ate a big breakfast at a Union Square coffee shop. It was another beautiful day, the latest in a string of them and a fitting finale for Memorial Day weekend. I treated myself to a second cup of coffee, and I was whistling as I walked to my store.

I got a royal welcome from Raffles, who was trying to see how much static electricity he could generate by rubbing against my ankles. I fed him right away, more to keep him from getting underfoot than because I felt he was in great danger of starvation. Then I dragged my bargain table outside—I’ve thought of putting wheels on it, but I just know if I did some moron would roll it away and I’d never see it again. I wanted the bargain table out there not for the trade it would bring but because I needed the space it otherwise occupied. If all went according to plan, I was going to have a full house this afternoon.

The first person through the door was Mowgli. “Whoa!” he said. “You trying to get rich, Bernie? Man, it’s a holiday. Why aren’t you at the beach?”

“I’m afraid of sharks.”

“Then what are you doing in the book business? I’m surprised to find you here, is all. First Carolyn was here to keep the place open yesterday and the
day before, and now you’re here in person. You get a chance to look at those books I left for you?”

I hadn’t, of course, and didn’t really have time to look at them now, but I found the sack of them behind the counter and gave its contents a fast look-through. It was good stuff, including a couple of early Oz books with the color frontispiece illustrations intact. We agreed on a price of seventy-five dollars, less the ten bucks Carolyn had advanced him, and I found four twenties in the cash drawer and held them out to him.

“Haven’t got change,” he said. “You want to give me sixty and owe me five, or can I owe you the fifteen? That’s what I’d rather do, but maybe you don’t want to do it that way.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Help me move some furniture and you won’t owe me a dime.”

“Move some furniture? Like move it where, man?”

“Around,” I said. “I want to create a little space here, set up some folding chairs.”

“Expecting a crowd, Bernie?”

“I wouldn’t call it a crowd. Six, eight people. Something like that.”

“Be a crowd in here. I guess that’s why you want to move some stuff around. What’s on the program, a poetry reading?”

“Not exactly.”

“Because I didn’t know you were into that. I read some of my own stuff a while back at a little place on Ludlow Street. Café Villanelle?”

“Black walls and ceiling,” I said. “Black candles set in cat-food cans.”

“Hey, you know it! Not many people even heard of the place.”

“It may take a while to find its audience,” I said, trying not to shudder at the memory of an evening of Emily Dickinson sung to the tune of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and a lifetime supply of in-your-face haiku. This wouldn’t be a poetry reading this afternoon, though, I added. It was more of a private sale.

“Like an auction?”

“In a way,” I said. “With dramatic elements.”

He thought that sounded interesting, and I told him he could hang around and sit in if he wanted. He helped me bring some chairs up front from the back room, and about that time Carolyn turned up. She had a couple of folding chairs at the Poodle Factory, and Mowgli went with her to fetch them.

Right after they left I got a phone call, and when they came back I made a phone call, and then I actually got a couple of customers, one of whom asked about an eight-volume set of Defoe and actually pulled out his wallet when I agreed to knock fifteen dollars off the price. He paid cash, too, and left me to wonder if I’d been making a mistake all these years, closing up on Sundays and holidays.

At twelve-thirty Carolyn went around the corner to the Freedom Fighter Deli and brought back lunch for all three of us. We each got a Felix Dzer
zhinsky sandwich on a seeded roll and a bottle of cream soda, and we sat on three of the chairs I’d set up and pushed two of the others together to make a table. Afterward I repositioned the chairs and stood back to survey the result.

Carolyn said it looked good.

“That’s the easy part,” I said. “But do you figure anybody will show up?”

Mowgli put his hands together and made a little bow. “If you build it,” he announced, his voice unnaturally deep and resonant, “they will come.”

And, starting an hour later, they did just that.

The first arrivals were two men I’d never laid eyes on before, but even so I knew them right away. One was tall and hugely fat, with a big nose and chin and impressive eyebrows. He was wearing a white suit and a white-on-white shirt with French cuffs, the links made from a pair of U.S. five-dollar gold pieces. A black beret looked perfectly appropriate on top of his mane of steel-gray hair.

His companion was rain-thin, with a weak chin and not nearly enough space between his shifty little eyes. He had the kind of pallor you could only acquire by sleeping in a coffin. A lit cigarette burned unattended in one corner of his sullen mouth.

The fat man looked us over. He acknowledged Carolyn with a polite nod, checked out Mowgli and me, and guessed correctly. “Mr. Rhodenbarr,” he said to me. “Gregory Tsarnoff.”

“Mr. Tsarnoff,” I said, and shook his hand. “It’s good of you to come.”

“We seem to be early,” he said. “Punctuality is a fault of mine, sir, and the lot of the punctual man is perennial disappointment.”

“I hope you won’t be disappointed today,” I said. “I haven’t met your uh friend, but I believe we spoke on the telephone.”

“Indeed. Wilfred, this is Mr. Rhodenbarr.”

Wilfred nodded. He didn’t extend his hand, nor did I offer mine. “A pleasure,” I said, as sincerely as I could. “Uh, Wilfred, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to put out the cigarette.”

He gave me a look.

“The smoke gets in the books,” I said. And in the air, I might have added. Wilfred glanced at Tsarnoff, who nodded shortly. Wilfred then took the cigarette from his lips. I thought he was going to drop it on my floor, but no, he opened the door and flicked it expertly out into the street.

“A deplorable habit,” Tsarnoff said, “but the young man has other qualities which render him indispensable to me. I should find it as hard to forgo his services as he to abjure Dame Nicotine. But are we not all slaves to something, sir?”

I couldn’t argue with that. I steered him to my desk chair, saying I thought he’d find it the most comfortable of the lot, and he eased his bulk into it. The chair bore the load well. Wilfred, not a whit less sullen without the cigarette, took a folding chair over to the side.

“I wonder,” Tsarnoff said. “Might we make lemonade of the sour fruit of punctuality? I am here, sir, and you are here. What do you say we do a deal and leave the latecomers out in the cold?”

“Ah, I wish I could.”

“But you can, sir. You have only to act on the wish.”

I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be fair to the others,” I said, “and it would leave some important points unaddressed. Besides, people will be arriving any minute now.”

“I daresay you’re right,” he said, and nodded at the door, where a woman with her arms full of packages was trying to get a hand free to reach for the knob.

It was the flower matron, Maggie Mason, breathless with anticipation. “I never thought you’d be open today,” she said. “How’s Raffles? Is he working too, or did you give him the day off?”

“He’s always on the job,” I said. “But as a matter of fact I’m not. The store’s closed.”

“It is?” She looked around. “That’s curious. It
looks
as though you’re open. You have people in the store.”

“I know.”

“Yes, of course, you would have to know that, wouldn’t you? But your Special Value table is outside.”

“That’s because there’s no room for it in the store this afternoon,” I said. I reached for the
CLOSED
sign and hung it in the window. “We’re hav
ing a private sale this afternoon. We’ll be open regular hours tomorrow.”

“A private sale! May I come?”

“I’m sorry, but—”

“I’m a wonderful impulse buyer, really I am. Remember the last time I was here? I just came in to talk to Raffles, and look at all the books I went home with.”

I remembered it well, as who in my business would not? A two-hundred-dollar sale, completely out of the blue.

“Please, Mr. Rhodenbarr? Pretty please?”

I was tempted, I have to tell you. For all I knew she’d sit there starry-eyed, ready to outbid everybody, and when the dust had settled she’d own a dozen more art books and that leather-bound set of Balzac.

“I’m sorry,” I said reluctantly. “It really is by invitation only. But next time I’ll put you on the invitation list. How’s that?”

It was good enough to send her on her way. I turned back to my guests and had started to say something when Mowgli caught my eye and gave me the high sign. I went to the door and opened it to admit Tiglath Rasmoulian.

This time he was wearing a belted trench coat, and the shirt under it was either persimmon or pumpkin blush, depending which mail-order catalog you prefer. He had the same straw panama, but I could swear he’d changed the feather in its band to one that matched his shirt. “Mr. Rhodenbarr,”
he said, smiling as he crossed the threshold. Then he caught sight of the man in the white suit and the spots of color on his cheeks looked on the point of spontaneous combustion.

“Tsarnoff,” he cried. “You Slavic blot! You foul corpulence!”

Tsarnoff raised his eyebrows, no mean task given the bulk of them. “Rasmoulian,” he purred, investing the name with a full measure of malice. “You Assyrian guttersnipe. You misbegotten Levantine dwarf.”

“Why are you here, Tsarnoff?” He turned to me. “Why is he here?”

“Everybody’s got to be someplace,” I said.

This left him unmollified. “I was not told he would be here,” he said. “I am not happy about this.”

“While I on the contrary am delighted to see you, Tiglath. I find your feculent presence enormously reassuring. How good to know you’re not somewhere else, causing unimaginable trouble.”

They looked daggers at each other, or possibly scimitars, even yataghans. Rasmoulian’s hand slipped into his trench-coat pocket, and across the way young Wilfred matched this escalation by sliding a hand inside his Milwaukee Brewers warm-up jacket.

“Gentlemen,” I said inaccurately. “Please.”

Across the way, Carolyn seemed to be looking around for a place to hide when the shooting started. Mowgli, standing beside her, showed less alarm. Maybe he was just blasé, considering what
he had to be used to in the abandoned buildings he called home. Or maybe he thought these were a couple of book collectors about to lose their heads over something from the Kelmscott Press, and that Wilfred had been reaching for a cigarette, and Rasmoulian for a handkerchief.

For a moment nobody moved, and the two of them kept their agate eyes fastened on one another. Then, in unison, as if in response to some high-pitched tone no human ear could detect, they brought their empty hands into view.

I’ll admit it, I breathed easier. I didn’t want them shooting each other, not in my store. Not this early in the game, certainly.

The next to arrive was Weeks.

He stood at the door, eyeballed the
CLOSED
sign, turned the knob, and came on in. He was wearing the same outfit I’d seen him leave the apartment in that morning, houndstooth jacket, flannel slacks, brown-and-white spectator wing tips, and that cocoa hat of his. It was quite a crowd for headwear, with Tsarnoff’s beret, Rasmoulian’s panama, and Weeks and his natty homburg. I hadn’t seen this many hats all at once outside of the Musette Theater, where on some evenings the screen was dark with them.