The Burglar Who liked to Quote Kipling

CHAPTER Twelve

The Pontiac, untowed and unticketed, waited for us at the bus stop. The suitcase huddled undisturbed on the floor in back. All of this surprised Carolyn, but I’d expected nothing less. There was something about that car that inspired confidence.

On the way downtown I learned what Gert Blinn had told her. While I was a floor below in Madeleine Porlock’s apartment, Gert had maneuvered Carolyn into the kitchen, presumably to copy down a recipe but actually to dish a little dirt. The late Madeleine Porlock, she’d confided, was no better than she should be.

“Gert was vague,” Carolyn said. “I don’t know that Porlock was a hooker exactly, but I got the impression that her life tended to revolve around men. Whenever Gert met her on the stairs she was with some man or other, and I gather that’s how her rent got paid.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well, it surprises me,” she said. “I never saw Porlock, but the way you described her she was the furthest thing from slinky. The woman you were talking about sounded like she could play the mean matron in all the old prison movies.”

“That’s on a bad day. On a good day she could have played the nurse in Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Uh-huh. Bern, I admit I don’t know what men go for, because it’s never been a burning issue with me, but she doesn’t sound the type to get her rent paid.”

“You didn’t go through her drawers and closets.”

“Oh?”

A cab stopped abruptly in front of us. I swung the wheel to the right and slipped neatly around it. No question, I thought. The Pontiac and I were made for each other.

“Lots of sexy underwear,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Wispy things. Scarlet gauze and black lace. Peekaboo bras.”

“Men really go for that crap, huh?”

“So it would seem. Then there were a few garter belts, and a couple of tight corsets that you’d have to be a graduate engineer to figure out.”

“Tight corsets?”

“A couple of pairs of boots with six-inch stiletto heels. Lots of leather stuff, including those cunning wrist and ankle bracelets decorated with metal studs.”

“A subtle pattern begins to emerge.”

“Doesn’t it? And I haven’t even mentioned the small but tasteful wardrobe in skintight black latex or the nifty collection of whips and chains. Or the whole dresser drawer full of gadgets which we might euphemistically designate as marital aids.”

She twirled an imaginary mustache. “This Porlock creature,” she said, “was into kink.”

“A veritable mistress of kink,” I said. “It was beginning to get to me, prowling around in all that weirdness.”

“I’m surprised it didn’t make the papers. ‘Dominatrix Slain in East Side Pleasure Pad’-that should be good for page three in the Daily News any day of the week.”

“I thought of that. But nothing was out in plain sight, Carolyn, and when I was up there the first time, all I saw was a tastefully decorated apartment. Remember, the cops had an open-and-shut case, a woman shot in her own apartment by a burglar she’d evidently caught in the act. They didn’t have any reason to toss her apartment. And she really lived there, it wasn’t just her office. She had street clothes there, too, and there were dishes in the kitchen cupboards and Q-tips and dental floss in the medicine cabinet.”

“Find any cash? Any jewelry?”

“There’s a jar in the kitchen where she used to throw her pennies. And there was some loose jewelry in one of the bedroom drawers, but none of it looked like much. I didn’t steal anything, if that’s what you were getting at.”

“I just wondered.”

A siren opened up behind us. I edged over to the right to give them room. A blue-and-white police cruiser sailed past us, wailing madly, barreling on through a red light. I braked for the same light, and as we waited for it to turn green a pair of foot patrolmen crossed the street in front of us. The one with the mustache was doing baton-twirler tricks with his nightstick. At one point he swung around so that he was looking directly at us, and Carolyn gripped my arm and didn’t let go until he and his companion had continued on across the street.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Not to worry.”

“I could just picture a lightbulb forming over his head. Like in the comic strips. Are you sure he didn’t recognize you?”

“Positive. Otherwise he’d have come over to the car for a closer look.”

“And what would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Run the light, probably.”

“Jesus.”

I felt the subject deserved changing. “I thought of bringing you a present,” I said. “A fur jacket, really smart-looking.”

“I don’t like fur.”

“This was a good one. It had an Arvin Tannenbaum label in it.”

“Is that good?”

“He’s as good as furriers get. I don’t know much about furs but I know labels. This was pretty. I think it was Canada lynx. What’s the matter?”

“That’s a kind of a cat, Bernie. Don’t tell me how pretty it was. A lynx is like a bobcat. Wearing a lynx coat would be like having lampshades made of human skin. Whether or not they’re attractive is beside the point.”

Another siren oogah-oogahed in the distance. An ambulance, from the sound of it. They’ve got ambulances these days that sound like Gestapo cars in war movies.

That last thought blended with Carolyn’s lampshade image and made me ready for another change of subject. “The wig was there,” I said hurriedly. “The orange one that she wore to the bookstore. So it wasn’t just that my brain was addled from the drug. That was her buying Virgil’s Eclogues.”

“She must have been afraid someone would recognize her.”

I nodded. “She could have worn the wig so I wouldn’t recognize her at a later meeting, but that doesn’t really make much sense. I suppose she was afraid Whelkin would spot her. They must have known each other because he sent me over to her apartment, but I wish I had something more concrete to tie them together.”

“Like what?”

“Pictures, for instance. I was hoping for a batch of telltale snapshots. People with a closetful of whips and chains tend to be keen Polaroid photographers. I didn’t turn up a one.”

“If there were any pictures, the killer could have taken them.”

“Possible.”

“Or maybe there weren’t any to begin with. If she was only with one person at a time there wouldn’t be anybody to take the pictures. Did you find a camera?”

“Nary a camera.”

“Then there probably weren’t any pictures.”

“Probably not.”

I turned into Fourteenth Street, headed west. Carolyn was looking at me oddly. I braked for a red light and turned to see her studying me, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“You know something I don’t,” she said.

“I know how to pick locks. That’s all.”

“Something else.”

“It’s just your imagination.”

“I don’t think so. You were uptight before and now you’re all loose and breezy.”

“It’s just self-confidence and a feeling of well-being,” I told her. “Don’t worry. It’ll pass.”

There was a legal parking place around the corner from her apartment, legal until 7 A.M., at any rate. I stuck the Pontiac into it and grabbed up the suitcase.

The cats met us at the door. “Good boys,” Carolyn said, reaching down to pat heads. “Anybody call? Did you take messages like I taught you? Bernie, if it’s not time for a drink, then the liquor ads have been misleading us for years. You game?”

“Sure.”

“Scotch? Rocks? Soda?”

“Yes, yes, and no.”

I unpacked my suitcase while she made the drinks, then made myself sit down and relax long enough to swallow a couple of ounces of Scotch. I waited for it to loosen some of my coiled springs, but before that could happen I was on my feet again.

Carolyn raised her eyebrows at me.

“The car,” I said.

“What about it?”

“I want to put it back where I found it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“That car’s been very useful to me, Carolyn. I want to return the favor.”

I paused at the door, reached back under my jacket. There was a book wedged beneath the waistband of my slacks. I drew it free and set it on a table. Carolyn looked at it and at me again.

“Something to read while I’m gone,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s not Virgil’s Eclogues.”