The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

25

They had tables set up outside at Rocco’s, but by the time I got there it had cooled off enough to lead me to choose a table inside. I’d picked up a newspaper along the way, and I read it while I worked my way through a fritto misto antipasto and a generous order of spaghetti puttanesca. It was, I suppose, every bit as ethnic a meal as anything they could have served me at Two Guys, but Italian food never tastes ethnic to me. It just tastes like New York.

While that second scotch at the Bum Rap hadn’t had me staggering, there’s no question that I’d been feeling it. But I’d walked it off on the way downtown, and by the time I sat down and took the menu from the sad-eyed waiter, I felt clearheaded. I might not have been sufficiently so for an evening of illegal entry, but I’d say I was as sober as your average judge.

Un vino, signore? No, I don’t think so.

There was nothing in the paper about the diamond, or about Orrin Vandenbrinck, or the Innisfree. I hadn’t really expected there would be, but I was beginning to wonder. It was getting on for twenty-four hours since I’d passed us off as Istvan Horvath et sa petite amie, and the most enduring after-party in the history of off-off-Broadway couldn’t have tied up Vandenbrinck for more than a few hours.

I ordered an espresso and said no to a suggested glass of Anisette. But when I’d finished the espresso and asked for a second, I decided I’d like a cordial after all.

“But not Anisette,” I said, and remembered the Andrew Vachss books Mowgli had sold me. “Perhaps a Strega.”

That made the waiter happy, and the golden liquid he brought me did nothing to dampen my own spirits. It’s name means witch in Italian, and I won’t say it cast a spell, but it did a good job of balancing out the caffeine.

On my way to the West Third Street address, I realized I couldn’t remember the professor’s name. Had I somehow contrived to forget it? Had he even told it to me in the first place?

He would have had to introduce himself when he called, wouldn’t he? But there’d been a lot of metaphorical water since then, under the bridge and over the dam, and it was evidently enough to wash away any name I might have heard.

So what was I going to tell the uniformed man on the desk? “My name’s Rhodenbarr, and good old What’s-his-name in 4-G is expecting me.”

What’s-his-name’s building turned out to be an apartment house six stories tall. It could have had a front desk, which in turn could have had an attendant, but it had neither. Instead there was a locked front door with a double row of names alongside it, each equipped with a button one could press.

I scanned the names. The one for 4-G said RUBISHAM and I studied it and pondered its pronunciation. The first syllable, I decided, might rhyme with either tub or tube, and if I’d ever in my life heard either version, it had slipped away to spend eternity with Judge Crater and Ambrose Bierce.

I pressed the bell. Or the buzzer, I couldn’t say which, because whatever sound it made was behind closed doors and four floors over my head.

No answer.

I checked my watch. It was 8:32, so I was officially two minutes late, but I couldn’t think that had led him to give up on me.

I rang again, longer and more forcefully this time, for whatever good that might do. And it did none, as far as I could see, because my summons went unanswered.

Curiouser and curiouser.

He’d phoned me twice, once yesterday and once this afternoon, but if he’d told me his phone number I’d promptly forgotten it along with his name. I checked my cell phone, clearly a fool’s errand because I knew well enough that both of his calls had been to the Barnegat Books landline. But I went through the motions anyway, on the chance that there was a call to my cell phone I’d forgotten, along with apparently everything else, and while I was doing this a woman with Jay Leno’s chin appeared at the front door.

I stepped aside and she stepped through it, looked at me, and showed what she thought of what she saw by very deliberately closing the door behind her. Not until it had clicked shut did she give me an icy smile and walk off to the left.

Fine. Be that way.

I rang the bell one more time, waited once more for a response that never came.

Then I let myself in.

A bright ten-year-old with a jackknife could have snicked back the bolt and opened the door to the lobby. That same kid wouldn’t have had much trouble getting into the Rubisham apartment, but only if I’d lent him my tools and given him a few lessons.

I hadn’t planned on unlocking the door to 4-G. I’d gone upstairs on the admittedly slim chance that the buzzer downstairs was out of order. I found the right apartment, poked the button, and heard the result, clear as a bell, from behind the door. When it went unanswered, I knocked, and knocked again.

It occurred to me that, if Professor Rubisham was old enough to retire, he might not be too young to have a heart attack, or join the I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up brigade. Like Jimmy Valentine in the O. Henry story, I could break a law and save a life.

Yeah, right. It was more likely that the guy was old enough to have a shaky memory, and that he’d simply forgotten our appointment. If he was home and in distress, I could help him; if not I could check out his library.

I opened the lock.

Inside, I found a three-room apartment, and it took me a few minutes to figure out what was odd about it. There was nothing hanging on the walls, no prints or paintings. The furniture was mostly from Crate & Barrel. No potted plants on the window sill, or anywhere else.

No coats in the closet, no clothing in the dresser drawers. Pots and pans and silverware in the kitchen, but no food in the cupboards and nothing in the fridge but a box of baking soda.

No toothbrush in the bathroom. No towels, either.

And not a single book, hardcover or paperback, anywhere in the apartment.