The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

16

There was a pivotal moment after which anything might have happened. But it passed with no off-ripping of clothes or out-screwing of brains. Neither of us said anything, and then each of us said the other’s name, and then the room went silent again.

“I think it’s universal,” I said.

“You mean everybody in the world feels this way?”

“God, could you imagine? No, I mean it’s this universe as opposed to the one we were in yesterday.”

“The old universe,” she said. “The real world. Or is this the real world?”

“Whatever world we’re in,” I said, “is the real world.”

“Because we’re in it.”

“Right.”

“Did you do this, Bern?”

“I don’t know what I did or didn’t do. It happened while I was asleep, remember?”

“But you designed it. Bowl-Mor, SubwayCards, the internet still firmly in place — but no Amazon, no eBay.”

“And no security cameras or pickproof locks. I have to admit it’s got my fingerprints all over it.”

“Good thing you were wearing your Smurf gloves. Bern, if you designed this world for us—”

I held up a hand. “I may have been the architect,” I said. “I may have been the one who designed the building. But I had help furnishing the rooms.”

“From me?”

“We’re not only in this together,” I said. “We got into it together. Look how astonished you were to find a SubwayCard in your purse.”

“Bern, how could I have done anything? I never even read the book.”

“What Mad Universe.”

“Right. I never read a word of it.”

“You asked me about it. I showed it to you and explained the premise.”

“That’s true,” she said, and if we’d been in a cartoon I’d have seen a light bulb taking shape over her head.

“What?”

“When I got back here last night,” she said, “I’d been to the only two remaining lesbian bars in Greenwich Village and struck out in both of them, and I blamed the world.”

“The universe.”

“Whatever. And I thought about some of the bars that have disappeared over the years, and what it’s done to the dyke social scene. Two women can get married now, Bern, but how are they supposed to find each other in the first place?”

“That’s hardly the first time you’ve had that conversation with yourself.”

“I know, and I’ve also had it with you, haven’t I? But it hit me last night, and I thought about Fredric Brown.”

“And wished he would open a bar for lesbians?”

“I thought about alternate universes.”

“Oh.”

“I was in bed at the time, so it was probably the last thing I was thinking about when I fell asleep. Or passed out, whatever you want to call it, and the next thing I knew it was morning.”

“And you had a SubwayCard in your purse.”

“If I’d passed by Sheridan Square,” she said, “I could have checked. Two Boots opened a pizza parlor where the Duchess used to be. They’ve even got a pie that they call The Duchess, as a sort of homage to what used to be.”

“And you think—”

“I just wonder if the old joint’s back in business. Is it possible?”

“I’m beginning to believe everything’s possible.”

“Maybe it is. And maybe Paula opened up again in the old location on Greenwich Avenue.”

“Do you want to go take a look?”

She thought it over, shook her head. “What I want to do,” she said, “is get rid of the albatross.”

“The Kloppmann.”

“I’m fine with having the Chagall on my wall. For one thing, it looks as though it belongs there.”

“It does.”

“And I stole it myself, years ago, and nobody’s knocking on doors looking for it. It’s beautiful, but it’s not a painting. It’s a lithograph.”

“Pencil-signed,” I said.

“And numbered, and it was worth a few hundred dollars when I got it, so what can it be worth now? A few thousand tops?”

“Could be low five figures.”

“Really? That’s more than I’d have guessed. But the Kloppmann is something else entirely. What are we gonna do with it, Bern?”

The first thing I did was turn on the television set. We’d had a look at New York One as soon as we’d arrived at her apartment, and there’d been no report of anything related to the Innisfree. This time a cheerful announcer told us about a devastating fire in the Bronx and a drive-by shooting in Brownsville that had killed a seven-year-old girl in another apartment.

“It may be a different universe,” Carolyn said, “but in certain respects it’s no better than the last one we were in.”

But once again there was nothing about the Innisfree.

Maybe the shots we’d heard in Vandenbrinck’s penthouse were on the TV. Maybe whoever was watching it had turned up the volume, or maybe the adrenaline in our veins had just made it seem louder.

Or maybe TV had nothing to do with it and two actual people were having an argument, and one of them shared Al Capone’s opinion that you could get further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. Three shots fired, perhaps into the ceiling to make a dramatic point, perhaps into one’s companion to make it even more dramatically.

We’d heard it, because we were only a couple of rooms away at the time. But Vandenbrinck’s was the only apartment on his floor, with nothing over his head but the roof and the sky, and there was no reason to assume anyone was home on the floor below his, not in a building that by all reports was largely empty.

And if you were some shifty foreigner with an unlaundered fortune, and you heard what might or might not have been gunshots in another apartment, would you reach for a phone and call 911?

“I think we’re all right,” I said. “At least until Vandenbrinck and the next Sarah Bernhardt get home from the after-party. And it would be nice if the diamond could pass into another pair of hands before that happens.”

“Do you have any particular hands in mind, Bern?”

“I wish. I could name three or four men and one woman who could identify themselves on LinkedIn as receivers of stolen goods. But it’s been a long time since I tried to deal with any of them, and I don’t know if they’re still in business, or still have the same phone numbers.”

“Do you want to try?”

“No,” I said, “because for one thing they’re a bunch of crooks.”

“In a business like that? Go figure.”

“There’s not one of them I’d trust. And they’d be miles out of their league anyway with something that last changed hands for an eight-figure sum.”

“Isn’t there anybody else?”

“In all my life,” I said, “I’ve only known one man I could go to with something like this.”

“Can’t you call him?”

“Not unless they have phones in heaven.”

“He died?”

“Years ago. He was murdered. You’d remember him.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Abel Crowe.”

Abel Crowe.

Good fences make good neighbors, as you’ve very likely heard, and Abel Crowe was unquestionably a good fence, and was held in high regard by his fellow tenants on Riverside Drive — until one of them killed him in a very unneighborly fashion. It happened the day after my own last meeting with Abel. Carolyn was with me, and so were some interesting if inanimate objects I’d brought along with me.

One was rare edition of Spinoza’s Ethics. Baruch Spinoza was a special passion of Abel’s, who was apt to quote the Dutch philosopher whenever the opportunity arose, and he’d have been an eager customer for the book, but I’d brought it as a gift.

I’d also brought a pair of emerald tear-drop earrings and a Piaget wristwatch. I’d acquired them earlier that evening, in the residence of a couple named Colcannon, even as Carolyn had been lifting their Chagall lithograph from its hook on the wall.

And hadn’t there been something else as well? Oh, right. A 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, one of five in existence, with a likely value at the time of a quarter of a million dollars.

I’d left it with Abel. And, not twenty-four hours later, it got him killed.

“Abel Crowe, Bernie. He was such a sweet man.”

“The operative word,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone with so prominent a sweet tooth.”

“I saw one of those T-shirts the other day. ‘Life is Uncertain; Eat Dessert First.’ I thought of him right away.”

“I miss him,” I said. “He was a pleasure to do business with, but it was more than that. I always enjoyed his company.”

“And it hit you hard when he was killed.”

“Well, if I hadn’t brought him the damn coin—”

“You can’t blame yourself, Bern.”

“I know that, but—”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I shrugged.

“Bern? You said you miss him.”

“I do. I mean, it’s not as though I spend half my time thinking about him, but he does come to mind. Whenever I see a book by Spinoza, or when an enterprising waiter makes sure I get a good look at the pastry wagon, or — well, you get the idea.”

“It’s not the only idea I get.”

“Huh?”

“Bern, is it safe to say that you missed Abel Crowe even more than you missed Bowl-Mor?”

I looked at her. I said, “I think I know what you’re getting at.”

“I’d be shocked if you didn’t.”

“Carolyn, the man spent the war years in Dachau, that’s where he developed the craving for sweets.”

“I know.”

“And he wasn’t a boy in knee pants when he went there. He was a grown man.” I closed my eyes, ran numbers in my head. “Jesus,” I said, “even if he was still alive, he’d be dead by now.”

“Unless this is really the best of all possible worlds, Bern.”

I picked up my phone, checked my contacts. “No listing for him, and how could there be? He was a few years gone before I finally broke down and bought a cell phone.”

“It’s hard to believe we ever got along without them.”

“I know. Even if Abel somehow survived, what are the odds he’s still in the same apartment?”

“You remember that apartment, Bern?”

“At Eighty-ninth and Riverside. I was there, oh, probably eight or ten times over the years.”

“I was there two of those times,” she said. “The night we brought him the V-Nickel, and before then, on the Fourth of July, when he invited us to watch the fireworks over the Hudson.”

“I remember the evening.”

“And I remember the apartment,” she said, “and the only way anybody would leave an apartment like that is feet first. Trust me, Bern. If Abel’s still got a pulse, he’s still in that apartment. His number’s not in your phone?”

I shook my head.

“You must have had it written down somewhere. An old notebook or something like that?”

“I wouldn’t begin to know where to look,” I said. “Oh.”

“Oh? Oh what?”

“It was one of those numbers I didn’t have to look up,” I said, “and evidently I still don’t.” I picked up my phone. “But what are the odds he still has the same number?”

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s ringing,” I reported, “probably in a gentrified brownstone in Williamsburg, where someone with a Wall Street job and five or six tattoos will let it ring eight times before picking it up and saying something ironic. And then—”

And then it stopped ringing and I stopped talking, and a familiar voice, a voice I understandably never thought I’d hear again, said, “Yes? Hello?”