The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza

CHAPTER Fifteen

Marilyn wanted to leave right away. She had to see a lawyer about getting Rabbit out on bail, which might or might not be possible, and she said something about getting in touch with Harlan Reese. Then, when I warned her that Ray Kirschmann might be lurking in the lobby or laying doggo across the street, she reversed direction completely.

"Oh, God," she said. "Maybe what I oughta do is stay right here."

I looked at her, a veritable vision in rouge et noir, and I inhaled her scent, and I listened with amazement to my very own voice telling her I didn't think that was a good idea. "You have things to do," I said, "and I have things to do, and we'd better go do them. Besides, Ray could turn ornery and come back with a warrant and a crowbar, and then the bathroom wouldn't be sacrosanct anymore. One thing, though. Maybe you should leave the gun here."

She shook her head. "It doesn't belong to me. My boss keeps it in case we get held up. I think she just likes having it, you know? I mean who's gonna hold up a beauty parlor?"

"Is that where you work?"

She nodded. "Hair Apparent. There's four operators plus Magda, she's the owner. I'm working tomorrow. I'll put the gun back then."

"Good. Because if the police found it in your purse-"

"I know."

We were in the hallway and I was locking the last of the locks when the phone started ringing. I gritted my teeth. If I unlocked everything and raced I still wouldn't get to the phone on time, and if I did it would just be somebody offering me free home delivery of the Newark Star-Ledger. The hell with it.

The elevator took us down past the lobby to the basement. We went through the laundry room and down a dimly lit corridor to the service entrance. I held the door for her and she climbed a short flight of stairs, opened her red-and-black umbrella, and disappeared into the night.

Back in my apartment, I stood for a moment glaring at my phone and wondering how many times it had rung while I was letting Marilyn out. It wasn't ringing now, and it was getting late enough to discourage me from placing many calls of my own. I tried one, dialing Carolyn's number, and wasn't surprised when nobody answered.

The four little cups of espresso were starting to wear off and I poured myself a healthy hooker of straight Scotch to speed them on their way. I drank it down, then got a taller glass from the cupboard and stirred an ounce or two of Scotch into four or five ounces of milk. The perfect nightcap-the milk coats your stomach while the Scotch rots your liver.

The phone rang.

I leaped for it, then made myself draw a calming breath before lifting the receiver to my ear. A male voice, one I'd last heard almost twenty-two hours ago, said, "Rhodenbarr? I want the nickel."

"Who doesn't?"

"What do you mean?"

"Everybody wants it. I wouldn't mind getting my own hands on it."

"Don't joke with me. I know you have the coin."

"I had it. I don't have it anymore."

There was a pause, and for a moment I thought I'd lost him. Then he said, "You're lying."

"No. Do you think I'm crazy enough to pop it in the same pocket as the keys and the Saint Christopher medal? I wouldn't do that, and I wouldn't keep it around the house, either. Not with all the burglaries you hear about in this town."

This last didn't win a chuckle. "You have access to the coin?"

"It's where I can get it."

"Get it now," he urged. "And name your price and we will arrange a meeting. I have the rest of the night at my disposal, and-"

"I'm afraid I can't say the same," I said. "If I don't get enough sleep I'm a terrible grouch the next day. Anyway, I couldn't get hold of the coin at this hour even if I wanted to, which I don't. I'm afraid it'll have to be tomorrow."

"What time tomorrow?"

"That's hard to say. Give me a number where I can reach you."

This time I got the chuckle. "I think not, Rhodenbarr. It will be better if I continue to call you. Estimate how much time you'll need to gain possession of the coin, then return to your apartment at an appointed hour and I'll telephone you. Merely tell me the hour."

In other words, be at a specific place at a specific time with the coin in my hand. "Inconvenient," I said. "Tell you what. There's another number where I'll be tomorrow afternoon at two."

"And the number?"

I gave him Carolyn's. She sublets her rent-controlled apartment from a man named Nathan Aranow, and as he remains the tenant of record her phone is listed in his name. (Half the people in New York operate this way. The other half pay $500 a month for a studio apartment.) I didn't think he could get the name and address from the number, and if he did how was he going to find Nathan Aranow? Carolyn simply mailed a money order in that name to her landlord every month. For all any of us knew, Nathan Aranow had been wiped out years ago in a flash flood.

He repeated the number. "And the coin," he said. "Who else knows you have it?"

"Nobody."

"You had no accomplice?"

"I always work alone."

"And you haven't spoken to anyone?"

"I've spoken to plenty of people, but not about the coin."

"So no one else knows you have it."

"As far as I know," I said, "nobody else even knows it's missing. Just you and I and Herbert Franklin Colcannon, unless he's told somebody, and I don't think he has." Or else Ray Kirschmann would have been sniffing after half a million dollars, and if that had been the case he'd have been drooling all over my rug. "He might not report it, not if it wasn't insured. And if he had reasons."

"I'm sure he didn't report it."

"Of course Rabbit might talk."

"Rabbit?"

"George Edward Margate. Isn't that why you fingered the Colcannon place for him? You should have picked someone who knew how to punch a safe. I guess the nickel was supposed to be your finder's fee for setting up the job."

A long low chuckle. "Clever," he said. "I should have made my arrangements with you in the first place."

"You certainly should have. It might help if I knew your name."

"It might," he said. "I'll call you tomorrow at two o'clock. That number's in the Village, isn't it?"

"I own a bookstore on East Eleventh Street. There's two phones, one listed and one unlisted. I gave you the number of the unlisted one."

"Shall I simply meet you at your store, then?"

"No," I said. "Call the number at two."

I hung up and returned to my Scotch and milk. The milk was warmish, but that's supposed to be an advantage when you're trying to go to sleep. I sat down and sipped and thought that I'd done rather a lot of lying. Well, Dial-a-Prayer hadn't said anything provocative about honesty. Just being of service to one's fellow man, and if I wasn't that, then what was I?

The phone rang. I picked it up and it was Carolyn. "Been calling you all night," she said. "What the hell happened to you, Bernie? Either nobody answered or the line was busy, or once in a while I would get a wrong number. What's been happening?"

"Everything."

"Are you gonna have to get glasses?"

"Glasses?"

"Didn't you say you were going to the eye doctor?"

"Oh. Yeah, right."

"You have to get glasses?"

"No, but he said I should stop reading in the dark."

"I could have told you that. You okay? You sound a little funny."

She sounded about half lit, but I didn't bother to mention it. "I'm fine," I said. "Just exhausted. A lot of things have happened but I can't really talk now."

"Company?"

"Yes," I said, and then it struck me that I'd better stop this lying before my nose started to grow. "No," I said.

"I knew it was one or the other. But which?"

"I'm alone," I said, "but evidently can't think straight. Are you at home?"

"No, I'm bopping around the bars. Why?"

"Going back to your place later?"

"Unless I get lucky, which it doesn't look like I'm gonna. Why?"

"You'll be home in the morning? Or will you be at the Poodle Factory?"

"I don't work Saturdays anymore, Bernie. I don't have to, not since I started doing a little burglary to make ends meet. Remember?"

"Maybe you could go over to the store when you wake up," I said, "and pick up your telephone answering machine, and take it back to your apartment."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"I'll be over around ten or so and tell you all about it."

"Jesus, I certainly hope so."

I hung up and it rang again and it was Denise, home at last and returning my call. I asked her how she would like company around one-thirty.

"It's almost that now," she said.

"I mean tomorrow afternoon. All right if I drop in for a few minutes?"

"Sure. Just for a few minutes?"

"Maybe an hour at the outside."

"Sure, I guess. Does this mark a new development in our ever-evolving relationship, Bernie? Are you advance-booking a quickie or something?"

"No," I said. "I'll be over around one-thirty, maybe a quarter of two, and I'll explain everything."

"I can hardly wait."

I hung up and got undressed. When I took my socks off I sat for a moment on the edge of my bed and examined my feet. I had never really studied them before, and it had certainly never occurred to me that they were narrow. They definitely looked narrow now, long and skinny and foolish. And there was no question about it, my second toes extended beyond my big toes. I tried to retract the offending second toes, tried to extend the big toes, but this didn't work, and I must have been damned tired to think it might.

Morton's Foot. I had it, all right, and while it wasn't as dismaying as a positive Wassermann, I can't say I felt happy about it.

So the phone rang.

I picked it up. A woman with an English accent said, "I beg your pardon?"

"Huh?"

"Is this Bernard Rhodenbarr?"

"Yes."

"I thought I might have dialed the weather report by mistake. You said 'It never rains but it pours.'"

"I didn't realize I'd said that aloud."

"You did, actually, and it is raining, and-I'm sorry to be calling you so late. I couldn't reach you earlier. My name is Jessica Garland. I don't know if that means anything to you."

"Not offhand, but I don't think my mind's at its sharpest. Not if I'm capable of answering the phone with a code phrase from a spy movie."

"You know, it did rather sound like that. I thought my grandfather might have mentioned me, Mr. Rhodenbarr."

"Your grandfather?"

"Abel Crowe."

My jaw may have hung loose for a moment. Then I said, "I never knew Abel had a grandchild. I never even knew he'd been married."

"I don't know that he was. He was certainly never married to my grandmother. She was from Budapest originally, and the two of them were lovers in Vienna before the war. When the Nazis annexed Austria in '38 she got out with my mother in her arms and the clothes she was wearing and nothing else. Grandfather's parting gift to her was a small fortune in rare stamps which she concealed in the lining of her coat. She went from Vienna to Antwerp, where she sold the stamps, and from there to London, where she died in the Blitz. Grandfather wound up in a concentration camp and survived."

"And your mother-?"

"Mother was five or six years old when Grandmother was killed. She was taken in by a neighbor family and grew up as an English girl. She married young, had me early on, and assumed her own father was dead, that he'd died in a concentration camp or in the war. It must have been about six years ago that she learned otherwise. I say, I'm doing a great lot of talking, aren't I? Do you mind terribly?"

"I find it rather soothing."

"Do you? Well, Grandfather literally turned up on our doorstep in Croydon. It seems he'd hired agents and finally succeeded in tracing Mother. There was a joyful reunion, but before very long they found themselves with precious little to say to each other. She'd grown up to be a rather ordinary English suburban housewife, while Grandfather-well, you know the sort of life he led."

"Yes."

"He returned to the States. He wrote letters, but they were more to me and my brother than to Mum. I've a younger brother, you see. Two years ago Grandfather wrote suggesting I might care to try living in America, and the suggestion came at just the right time. I quit my hateful job, said goodbye to my dreary young man, and boarded one of Freddie Laker's DC-10s. And to make a long story short-do you know, when people say 'To make a long story short,' it's already too late. In any event, I've been here ever since."

"In New York?"

"In Brooklyn, actually. Do you know Cobble Hill?"

"Sort of."

"I lived at first in a women's residential hotel in Gramercy Park. Then I moved here. The job at which I work is not hateful, and the young man with whom I live is not at all dreary, and I'm hardly ever homesick, actually. I'm rambling all over the lot, aren't I? Chalk it up to exhaustion, physical and emotional. And there's a point to all this, actually."

"I felt sure there would be."

"How very trusting of you. The point is that Grandfather spoke of you, and not only as, oh, shall we say a business associate?"

"I guess we shall."

"But also as a friend, don't you see. And now he's dead, as of course you know, and I shall miss him, and I think it's quite horrid how he died and I hope they catch the person responsible, but in the meantime it rather falls to me to get everything in order. I don't know what he would have wanted in the line of funeral arrangements because he never talked about the possibility of his own death, unless he left a letter of some sort, and if so it hasn't come to light yet. And of course the police have the body at the morgue and I don't know when they're likely to release it. When they do I suspect I'll manage some sort of private funeral without any ceremony, but in the meantime I think it would be fitting to have some sort of memorial service, don't you?"

"I guess that would be nice."

"I've arranged something, actually. There'll be a service at the Church of the Redeemer on Henry Street between Congress and Amity Streets. That's here in Cobble Hill. Do you know where it is?"

"I'll be able to find it."

"It's the only church I could find that would allow a memorial service on a Sunday. We'll be meeting there that afternoon at two-thirty. The service won't be religious because Grandfather wasn't a religious man. He did have a spiritual side, however. I don't know if he ever showed that side to you."

"I know the sort of reading he did."

"Yes, all the great moral philosophers. I told them at the church that we'd conduct our own service. Clay, the chap I live with, is going to read something. He was quite fond of Grandfather. And I'll probably read something myself, and I thought you might be able to take part in the service, Mr. Rhodenbarr."

"Call me Bernie. Yes, I could probably find something to read. I'd like to do that."

"Or just say a few words, or both. As you choose." She hesitated. "There's another thing, actually. I saw Grandfather every few weeks and we were close in certain ways, but he didn't mention many of his…business friends. I know you were a friend of his, and I know of one or two others in that category, but perhaps you'll be able to think of some other persons who might properly come to the service."

"It's possible."

"Would you just go ahead and invite anyone you think ought to be invited? May I just leave that up to you?"

"All right."

"I've already spoken to several of the people in his building, and one woman's going to post a notice in the lobby. I suppose I should have made arrangements with a church in that neighborhood. Some of those people find it difficult to get around easily. But I'd already made plans with the Church of the Redeemer before I thought of it. I hope they won't mind coming all the way out to Brooklyn."

"Perhaps it'll be an adventure for them."

"I just hope the weather's decent. The rain's expected to have left off by then, but the weatherman doesn't give guarantees, does he?"

"Not as a general rule."

"No, more's the pity. I'm sorry to have gone on so, Mr. Rhodenbarr, but-"

"Bernie."

"Bernie. It's late and I'm tired, perhaps more so than I'd realized. You will try to come? Sunday at two-thirty? And you'll invite anyone you think of?"

"Definitely," I said. "And I'll bring along something to read."

I wrote down the time and the address and the name of the church. Carolyn would want to come, of course. Anybody else?

I got in bed and tried to think if I knew anyone who'd want to attend a memorial service for Abel. I wasn't acquainted with many other burglars, having a longstanding preference for the company of law-abiding citizens, and I didn't know who Abel's friends were. Would Ray Kirschmann want to make the trip? I thought about it and decided that he might.

My mind drifted around. So Abel had a granddaughter. How old was Jessica Garland likely to be? Her mum must have been born in 1936 or thereabouts, and if she had indeed married young and had Jessica early on, then twenty-four or twenty-five sounded like a reasonable ballpark figure. I didn't have any trouble picturing Abel playing host to a young woman about that age, telling her charming lies about the old days in the Viennese coffeehouses, plying her with strudel and eclairs.

And he'd never once mentioned her, the old fox.

I was almost asleep when a thought nudged me back awake again. I got out of bed, looked up a number, made a phone call. It rang four times before a man answered it.

I stayed as silent as if I'd called Dial-a-Prayer. I listened, and the man who'd answered said "Hello?" several times, querulously, while in the background music played and a dog interposed an occasional bark. Then he hung up-the man, I trust, rather than the dog-and I went back to bed.