Burglars Can’t Be Choosers

Chapter Thirteen

Her 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.”

“You think there’s something else?”

“I think there has to be. You and your husband are the only people who’d be interested in the tapes and pictures. But if neither of you killed Flaxford and neither of you sacked my apartment, then there has to be something else for somebody else to be looking for. And once we know what it is we’ll have a shot at knowing who’s looking for it.”

She started to say something but I tuned her out. An idea was beginning to glimmer. I picked up my glass, then put it down without drinking anything. No more liquor tonight, not for Bernard. He had work to do.

“Money,” I said.

“In the blue box?”

“That’s always possible, I suppose. But that’s not what I’m talking about. You were going to pay me another four thousand dollars. Have you still got it?”

“Yes.”

“At home?”

“Here, as a matter of fact. Why?”

“Can you raise any more?”

“Maybe two or three thousand over the next few days.”

“No time for that. Your four thousand and my five thousand is nine thousand-isn’t it impressive the way I can work out these sums in my head-nine thousand might be enough. Ten thousand would be a lot better. Could you dig up an extra thousand dollars in the next couple of hours if you put your mind to it?”

“I suppose I could. I’m thinking who I could ask. Yes, I could manage a thousand dollars. Why?”

I opened my suitcase, took out the three books. I gave Gibbon to Darla Sandoval and kept Barbara Tuchman and beekeeping for myself. “Every thirty pages or so,” I said, talking as I riffled pages, “you will find two pages glued together. Tear them open-” I suited action to words “-and you’ll find a hundred-dollar bill.”

“Where did you get these books?”

“Mostly on Fourth Avenue. Not Guns of August, that came from Book-of-the-Month Club. Oh, you thought I stole them. No, this is my stash, my case money. I may have stolen the money but the books are all my own. They’ve been shaken and riffled and all, but they’ve refused to give up their secret. Come on, now. If we both work we’ll get the money that much faster.”

“But what are we going to do with it?”

“We are going to put your five thousand and my five thousand together,” I said, “and that will give us ten thousand dollars, and we’re going to use it to get me into J. Francis Flaxford’s apartment, past the doorman and through the police evidence seal and everything. We’re going to do it in the most expedient way possible. We’re going to hire a police escort.”