The Burglar who thought he was Bogart

CHAPTER Thirteen

“Mr. Thompson,” Charles Weeks said. “I remember you now. I didn’t get more than a glimpse of you the other night, and I couldn’t picture you in my mind. I wasn’t sure I’d recognize you, but of course I do. Come right in, won’t you? And tell me how you know Cap Hoberman, and why you think I can be of help to you.”

I’d had a clear picture of him in my mind, but I don’t know if I’d have recognized him if I’d passed him in the street. The other night he’d been in shirtsleeves and suspenders and wearing a homburg, and this morning he’d left the hat on the shelf and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt over white cotton trousers and espadrilles. He was bald now except for a gray fringe. I suppose he’d been every bit as bald the other night, but the hat had concealed it.

“If you’d called five minutes earlier,” he said, “you would have missed me. I have a cup of coffee upon rising, and then I walk for an hour, or close to it. On the way home I pick up my newspaper, and I read it with my breakfast. I used to have it delivered and read it with my coffee, but I found I’d never get out the door for my walk. This morning I was just breaking an egg when you called.”

His eyes were on me as he nattered away, and I sensed he was watching me carefully. “So your timing was excellent,” he went on, “but for all I know you called more than once, because I don’t have an answering machine. I’m retired, you see, and I don’t get that many calls, and few of them are terribly urgent. A disheartening percentage of the ones I do get are to advise me that someone of my acquaintance has died, and you can’t leave that sort of news on an answering machine, can you?” He smiled gently. “At least I couldn’t, although I’m sure there are people who can. There’s coffee, but I’m afraid it’s the sort with the caffeine left in it, and I must warn you it’s rather strong.”

“That’s the way I like it.”

“I’ll just be a moment.”

He went off to the kitchen and left me in a room comfortably outfitted with traditional furniture, everything showing wear but nothing shabby. It could have been a room in the house I grew up in. There were books in a revolving oak bookcase, the titles running to history and biography. The only art on the walls was an impressionistic landscape in oils in a simple gallery frame.

The coffee was as advertised, almost strong enough to walk on. I expressed approval and he nodded with satisfaction.

“My doctor told me he doesn’t want me to drink strong coffee,” he said, “and I told him he could go to hell. I’m a widower, I’ve no children, and my life’s work is done. Drinking strong coffee is as close as I come to having a bad habit, and I’ll be damned if I’ll change it just so I can outlive a few more of my old friends. You’re William Thompson, or do you prefer Bill?”

“Bill is fine.”

“And if I remember correctly you said you lived here in the building, although I can’t recall seeing you before. Of course it’s a large building.”

“Yes.”

“And you had the chap on the desk call up and announce you, although you could have dropped by unannounced, since I was already expecting you. That was courteous of you. Was that Ramón on the desk, or Sandy?”

Something in his eyes warned me. “I couldn’t say,” I said. “I don’t live here at the Boccaccio, Mr. Weeks.”

“But you did thus introduce yourself the other night, did you not? Or is my memory at fault?”

His memory was as good as ginkgo. “I’m afraid I told an untruth,” I said.

“I don’t suppose that’s anything like a lie, is it?”

I felt as though I ought to have my mouth washed out with soap. “It is,” I said, “and I’m afraid it’s not the only one I told.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not an old friend of Captain Hoberman’s. We met for the first time less than an hour before I introduced myself to you.”

“And this was a stratagem to make my acquaintance?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t have met you at all if things had gone according to plan. When Hoberman and I got off the elevator, it was my intention to get to the staircase before he rang your bell.”

“What went wrong?”

“The elevator operator was watching.”

“So you had to appear to be visiting me. But you had business elsewhere in the building.”

“Yes.”

“What sort of business, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m a security specialist,” I said. “I’d been enlisted to pay a visit to an unoccupied apartment.”

“In the Boccaccio? I didn’t realize that there were any unoccupied apartments here.”

“Unoccupied that evening.”

He considered this. “In other words, the tenants were not at home. And you had been provided with a key?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then you must be a man who doesn’t require one. Don’t hang your head. There’s no shame in being in possession of a skill, even one that’s so often put to a bad use. By God, is that the only reason Cappy Hoberman came over here? So that he could get you into the building?”

“I’m sure he was delighted to visit you,” I said, “but-”

“I wondered what all that was about,” he said. “Cappy’s not made for deception, never was. Very much a meat-and-potatoes fellow.”

“Tobacco and vodka, too.”

“Indeed. I had a call from him just a day or two before you both came over. I was astonished to hear from him, hadn’t had any word of or from him in years. Didn’t actually know if he was alive or dead.” He paused, his eyes probing. “Wanted to see me, he said. Well, I’ve nothing but time these days. I looked forward to an hour or so of talk about the old days. Wednesday night, he proposed. Late, around midnight. He hadn’t much time to spend in New York, he said, and that was the only time he could fit in a visit. I suggested we might meet somewhere for a drink but he wouldn’t hear of it, said he might be late, didn’t want to leave me stranded. Besides, he had something for me, wanted to bring it to my home.” He cocked his head. “I suppose that was all in aid of getting you into the building.”

“It must have been.”

“A lot of trouble to go through. He had a gift for me, a little mouse. On the table to your left.”

It was a little over an inch long and skillfully carved. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Ivory?”

“Bone.” His gaze was less probing now, and his eyes had a faraway look in them. “I’d seen it before, shortly after it was carved. It was pure white then. It’s yellowed with age. ‘I saw it in a shop window,’ Cappy said, ‘and I thought of you. Almost a match for the one the old fellow carved.’ Well, it’s more than a match for old Letchkov’s work, it’s the very specimen. I knew that much at a glance, and I didn’t believe for a moment that Cappy found it in a shop. When was he ever the sort to go looking in shop windows? But he could hardly have kept it all those years. How on earth had he managed to lay hands on it?” His eyes sought mine. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No.”

“How could you? We knew each other many years ago, Cappy Hoberman and I. Along with Wood, of course, and Rennick and Bateman. The five of us were known back Stateside as the Bob and Charlie Show. Rennick and Bateman were both named Robert, you see, and the rest of us were all Charles. Working together, we had to modify our names. Alliteration suggested Rob for Rennick and Bob for Bateman. I remained Charles, but Wood became Chuck, which was what he’d been called as a boy. And we called Hoberman Cappy.”

“Because he was a captain?”

“Ha! All he ever captained was his college football team. He had the air of a leader, that’s all. And we didn’t have ranks. We weren’t military. Officially, we didn’t exist.” He took a sip of coffee. “These are ancient cats I’m letting out of the bag. I can’t think anyone would care at this late date. The Cold War’s over, isn’t it? I don’t know that we’ve won it, but the other side does seem to have lost. Or at least to have wandered off the playing field.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, ages ago. When was Masaryk killed in Czechoslovakia? You wouldn’t remember, but I ought to. 1948? Our little adventure began the year after that. My God, I was only a boy. I thought I was a grown man, I thought I was mature beyond my years, but I must have been callow beyond sufferance.”

“And you were in Czechoslovakia?”

“Why would you think that? Oh, because I mentioned Masaryk. No, we were south and east of Czechoslovakia. We were in the Balkans, mostly. Slipping across borders, exchanging code words in café’s and back alleys. We thought it was a game, and we believed what we were doing was very much in the national interest. And I daresay we were wrong on both counts.”

“What did you do?”

“Raised people’s hopes and risked their lives, and risked our own as well.” He was silent for a moment, thinking about it. “None of it matters now,” he said, “and it can’t have much to do with your recent visit, can it?”

“I think it does.”

“How, for God’s sake? It was almost half a century ago. Most of those people are dead.”

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “Were you ever in a country called Anatruria?”

“Sweet Christ,” he said. “That’s no country. Before Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, they used to say that Italy was just a geographical expression. Anatruria wasn’t even that.”

“They had a king, didn’t they?”

“Old Vlados? I’m not sure if he ever set foot inside his own purported realm. They proclaimed independence around the time of the Treaty of Versailles, you know, but it seems to me they did so from a distance. By the time I heard mention of Anatruria it was three decades later and Vlados was an old man living where you’d expect him to be, in Franco’s Spain or Salazar’s Portugal, I can’t remember which. Anatrurian independence was an idea whose time had come and gone. No one gave it a thought, no one outside of a handful of ethnocentric lunatics who’d been marrying their cousins for a few generations too many.”

“And the five of you?”

“And the five of us, the Bob and Charlie Show. We were supposed to foment a rebellion. Now who could have thought that was a good idea? Or a feasible one?” He shook his head. “A few years later I was back in the States, out of the game. And there was an uprising in Hungary, students hurling Molotov cocktails, trying to take out Russian tanks with bottles of gasoline. The rabbit died there.”

“The rabbit?”

“Bob Bateman. We all had animal code names. I was the mouse, of course. That’s why Cappy brought me the little carving, though how he laid hands on it is something else again. Bateman was the rabbit. Well, he looked a little like a rabbit, didn’t he? A rabbity face, a rabbity nose, a rabbit’s timid manner, although there was nothing timid about him when the chips were down. I didn’t look much like a mouse, but it was somebody’s contention that I was shy in a presumably mouselike fashion. I don’t think I was shy, but I may have been.”

“What about Hoberman?”

“He was the ram, putting his head down and charging straight ahead. Playing college football, I imagine he ran every play right into the middle of the line. Rob Rennick had a sly feline quality, so he was the cat. And you ought to be able to guess Charles Wood’s code name.”

“The elephant,” I said.

“The elephant? Why an elephant, for heaven’s sake?”

“Never forgets,” I said. “Keeps his trunk packed. I never met the man, so why would you think I’d be able to guess his code name?”

“Ah, well. It will become instantly obvious when I say it. His was the only code name with purely verbal origins. His name was Chuck Wood and his code name was the woodchuck. I can’t say he bore any physical resemblance to the animal, but there was a patient but obdurate quality to his work. He would just gnaw away at something forever until he carried the day.”

“And the carvings?”

“A man named Letchkov made them. That’s a Bulgarian name. He was Bulgarian, like most of them in that crowd, although to call him that was tantamount to challenging him to a duel. He would insist he was Anatrurian. Letchkov was an old man then, so he’d be long since dead. An animal for each of the five of us, and there were others in the series, too. A pig, a goat, some I can’t recall. Some of the Anatrurian activists, you see, had animal code names of their own.”

“What became of the carvings?”

“They stayed behind in Anatruria, if you want to call it that. Or at least I assumed they did. My little mouse seems to have found a way to cross the water. A long way for a little mouse to swim.”

“If it’s the same mouse.”

“It would surprise me greatly,” he said, “to learn that it was not. But I’ve talked far too long about a closed chapter of my life, Mr. Thompson, and while I don’t suppose I’ve compromised national security at this late date, I think I’ll give you a chance to tell me how our actions in Anatruria could possibly have linked you with Cappy Hoberman, and brought you into this building.”

“There’s a young woman I’ve been seeing,” I said. “She’s Anatrurian, and-”

“What’s her name?”

“Ilona Markova.”

“That sounds Bulgarian, and could be Anatrurian.”

“She told me she was Anatrurian,” I said, “and she had a map of Eastern Europe on her wall with the borders of Anatruria outlined in red. And a photograph of Vlados and Liliana in a place of honor in her apartment.”

“Liliana,” he said. “That was the queen, all right. I’d forgotten her name. Did your friend tell you how Liliana died?”

“She didn’t even tell me who the two people were. How did Liliana die?”

“In a car crash in the south of France a year or so before the outbreak of the Second World War. Vlados was badly injured but survived. It was an article of faith among Anatrurian separatists that the car was ambushed by agents of IMRO.”

“IMRO?”

“The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and God knows that sort of thing was their style, but would they waste time assassinating the pretender to the mythical throne of a nonexistent nation? My guess is that Vlados was drunk. Or his chauffeur was, if he had one.” He’d been looking across the room at the landscape on the far wall. Now he swung his eyes around to me. “How’d you know it was them? Vlados and Liliana?”

“From the stamps.”

“The stamps? Oh, of course! The Anatrurians we worked with talked about the stamp issue, as if a printing press in Budapest could somehow have established the legitimacy of their cause. I don’t know that any of them had actually seen any of the elusive stamps. You don’t own a set, do you? I understand they’re quite scarce.”

I explained about the illustrations in the Scott catalog.

“All right,” he said. “A friend of yours is Anatrurian, and would seem to regard herself as a loyal subject of Vlados the One and Only. There must be more to explain your interest.”

“She’s disappeared.”

“I see. Utterly?”

“Without a trace.”

“What ties her to the Boccaccio? Was it her idea you break into an apartment here?”

“No.”

“Which apartment? Who lives there?”

“ Apartment 8 – B, and I don’t know who lives there. But he’s another Anatrurian.”

“And how do you know that?”

“He had a photo of Vlados.”

“You’re serious? Yes, I can see you are. The same photo? The same pose, I mean to say, not the same physical object.”

“A different photo. He’s alone in this one, and he’s wearing a uniform.”

“The royals love military dress,” he said, “especially when they haven’t got a country to go with the uniform. You did enter the apartment, then. You must have, in order to have seen the photo.”

“Yes.”

“And left with what you’d gone to get?”

“No. I was interrupted,” I said, and explained how I’d hid in the closet, emerging to find the portfolio gone.

“You must still have been trapped there when Cappy left. He didn’t stay any time at all. I’d expected a longish visit, but I’d guess he was in and out of here in ten minutes. For my part, I can’t say I pressed him to stay. His presence brought up memories, not all of them welcome. His gift had much the same effect. The mouse. I always thought it the best of Letchkov’s carvings, but that may have been because it was mine. My code name, I mean. Now the actual carving’s mine, isn’t it, and I’m glad to have it, but I find I care less and less about possessions with each passing year. What’s happened to Cappy?”

The question caught me off-balance, but I didn’t have to hesitate. I’d known it was coming sooner or later and had made up my mind how I was going to answer it.

“He’s dead,” I said. “Somebody killed him.”