The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown

41

“Dum,” she said. “And Dee.”

“Oh, right.”

“Jason and Mason. Bern, unless I’m missing something, they were the only two actual casualties. Both shot dead, one in the Innisfree penthouse while we were swiping the Kloppmann and the other in your store.”

“Right.”

“Jason and Mason, and it’s apparently impossible for me to remember which is which.”

“Well, they’re both dead,” I said, “and while we laid eyes on them from a distance we never really met either of them, and those weren’t their right names anyway, so why bother?”

“In other words, don’t worry my pretty little head about it?”

“There you go.”

“Who killed them, Bern?”

“Beats me.”

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t got a clue.”

“How is that possible?”

“Ignorance is always possible,” I said, “and there’s no end to the things I don’t know.”

She thought about it. “When you explained it, you sort of implied that Peter-Peter might have taken a gun along when he went up to the penthouse.”

“I’m pretty sure what I said was that there was no evidence he had anything to do with the bodyguard’s death.”

“No evidence.”

“None whatsoever.”

“In other words, we can’t prove it but we know he did it.”

“Someone may have come away with that impression,” I said airily, “but there’ll be no murder charges brought against Peter Tompkins.”

“And you don’t think he did it.”

“Not for a moment,” I said. “How could he? He never went up to the penthouse.”

“Oh, right. That was just something you invented.”

“And it seemed credible,” I said, “given that they found the Kloppmann rolled up in his socks.”

“Where you put it, after you got it back from Abel’s safe. So Peter-Peter didn’t lure the other Tweedle to your store, or follow him there.”

“Certainly not.”

“But the same person must have killed both of them, Bern. Right?”

“You think?”

“Come on,” she said. “Both shot dead, both killed the same way. Was it the same gun both times?”

“It could have been. Ray was still waiting for a ballistics report.”

“So who could have done it? Who was responsible for the Croatian Cessation?”

“They weren’t Croatian.”

“They weren’t?”

“They were Transnistrian.”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“Natives of Transnistria.”

“There’s no such place.”

“There certainly is.”

“Not in this universe, Bern.”

“In this universe,” I said, “and also in the one we just got back from. It’s a breakaway province of Moldova.” And I explained just how Transnistria had asserted its own independence after the breakup of the USSR, and how a war had ensued, and how it turned out, and it was all news to Carolyn. I won’t go through it here, but you could look it up.

Or not.

“Transnistrian,” she said, when I’d finished. “Did I say it right?”

“Close enough.”

“That’s interesting,” she said. “Sort of. But it doesn’t explain who killed them, or why.”

“I think it’s safe to say that they did some bad things in Transnistria, and wherever else they lingered in the course of the odyssey that ultimately brought them to New York.”

“Bad things,” she said. “Well, I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“Let’s say, for the sake of argument—”

“What’s the point of arguing?”

“—that the Tweedles killed a man in Transnistria, or somewhere else in Eastern Europe.”

“But not Croatia.”

“And let’s say the man’s son wanted vengeance.”

“Oh, he had a son?”

“No,” I said. “You know what? It’s better if it’s a daughter. The daughter adored her father and swears she’ll avenge him, and she turns up in New York and finds the men responsible.”

“Jason and Mason.”

“She manages to meet one of them in a bar.”

“What bar, Bern?”

“Well, it probably wasn’t the Oak Room at the Plaza. She strikes up a conversation in his native language—”

“Transnistrian?”

“Whatever. Next thing you know it’s time for the boss to catch Gillian Fremont’s opening at the Delorean, but somebody has to hang back and guard the Kloppmann Diamond. So Jason or Mason—”

“I’m pretty sure it was Jason, Bern.”

“—magnanimously volunteers to stay home, and takes the opportunity to smuggle the most beautiful woman in Tiraspol up to the penthouse.”

“Tiraspol’s in Transnistria?”

“It’s the capital.”

“And she’s a real beauty, huh? But you didn’t ever meet her, did you, Bern?”

“I didn’t have to,” I said. “I made her up. I don’t know what happened, or who managed to be up there with Mason—”

“Jason, Bern.”

“Fine, Jason. Whatever. He had somebody in the den with him, somebody who put three bullets in him, so why wouldn’t it be a Transnistrian daughter out for revenge?”

“And why wouldn’t she be gorgeous?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“And then, after she shot him—”

“She found some way to get out of there.”

“Okay. I won’t ask you how.”

“Good.”

“And then I guess she found a way to keep an eye on people coming and going from the Innisfree, and when the surviving Transnistrian went to your bookstore, she followed him there.” She frowned. “But what would give him the idea to go there?”

“You tell me.”

I wasn’t the only one who could make things up. “Peter-Peter described the two of us to Ray,” she said, “and Ray didn’t need more than half a minute to ID us. When he did his interrogations, he’d have tried to find out if anybody knew you. And it would be natural enough for him to mention your name.”

“That’s how Vandenbrinck found out I was involved,” I said, “and knew to turn up with Punjab and the Asp.”

“And hire you to get his diamond back.”

“Right.”

“Which you did, Bern.”

“Did I?”

“At the moment it’s probably in an evidence locker,” she said, “but it won’t stay there forever. He’s the legal owner, he’s got title to it, and it won’t be too long before he gets to put it back in the drawer of his bedside table.”

“Unless he decides on a safer place for it.”

“First he’ll have to let his actress girlfriend try it on. Gillian? I want to say Freebie.”

“Fremont.”

“That’s better. He hired you and you delivered, but did he pay you anything?”

“Not a penny,” I said. “It never occurred to me to ask for anything. The way it must have looked to Vandenbrinck, all I did was hold court at the store and spin some incomprehensible story of what had happened. As far as recovering the Kloppmann, well, it was Ray who found it in Peter’s sock drawer.”

We talked back and forth, and at some point another round of drinks appeared as if by magic, and disappeared every bit as magically. The conversation wandered here and there, as it will do, especially when drinks keep appearing and reappearing. I don’t know that either of us got drunk, but it was probably just as well neither of us was going to be called upon to drive or operate machinery.

There were, Carolyn kept saying, a few things she didn’t entirely understand. Like where the killer went, the vengeful daughter who’d done in both of the Tweedles. And how the second Tweedle had pulled off the break-in, and what he’d done with whatever he used to wreck my window gates.

“Look,” I said at length, “you’re trying to make sense of all of this, and it’s not possible. Right now, you and I live in a rational universe.”

“We do?”

“More or less. Things happen for a reason, even if sometimes it’s a stupid reason, or an incomprehensible one. But the universe we conjured into existence made things up as it went along, and they didn’t have to make sense. I don’t know who killed the Tweedles. The woman I fabricated seems like as good an explanation as any, but she’s just somebody I made up.”

“I think I get it.”

“In fact,” I said, “one way or another, we made all of it up. From the SubwayCards and Bowl-Mor to Punjab and the Asp, we made it up.”

“Then it didn’t happen, Bern?”

“Oh, it happened.”

“So it was real,” she said, “and we made it up.”

“Right.”

“And I don’t really have to understand it, do I?”

“Nope.”

“Now that,” she said, “is a good thing.”

I walked her most of the way home.

“October,” she said. “Don’t you love October, Bern? I’ve got to say it’s New York’s best month.”

“And this year there’s more of it than usual.”

“Because we had our little vacation in another world, and here we are, right back where we started.”

“Right back when we started.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” she said. “I’ll be tied up tomorrow night.”

“Really? I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.”

That earned me an eye roll. “Two friends of mine, they’ve been together for three months. That’s the longest relationship either of them has ever had, so they’re throwing a party to celebrate.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“To you, maybe. I just hope they’re still together at the end of the evening. The last time I saw them they were trying to kill each other.”

“Really?”

“Well, verbally. The C word turned up in just about every sentence. But that was at Paula’s, so who knows if anything like it ever happened?”

“Maybe they worked it out in that other universe,” I suggested, “and everything will be fine tomorrow.”

“Maybe. So that’s tomorrow, but maybe I’ll see you Sunday.”

I shook my head. “Come Sunday,” I said, “I’ve got a date. You’ll never guess who called.”

“You’re right.”

“How’s that?”

“Like you said, Bern. I’ll never guess.”

“So I’ll tell you. It was Katie.”

“Katie?”

“Katie Huang.”

“Juneau Lock,” she said. “Your Taiwanese flutist. Or is it flautist?”

“It’s whichever you want.”

“She’s back in town?”

“She will be. At Carnegie Hall, performing Mozart’s Double Concerto for Flute and Harp with the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. There’ll be a ticket for me at the box office, and afterward I’ll be taking her out for a very nice dinner.”

“And who knows,” she said, “what might happen after dinner.”