The Burglar who thought he was Bogart

CHAPTER Twenty-three

It was unquestionably an accident, he explained. He had never meant to harm anyone. He was not a killer.

Yes, admittedly, he had been armed. He had outfitted himself that evening with a pistol and dagger as well, although it was never his intention to use either of them. But this was New York, after all, not Baghdad or Cairo, not Istanbul, not Casablanca. This was a dangerous city, and who would dream of walking its streets unarmed? And was this not even more to be expected if one was of diminished stature and slightly built? He was a small person, if not the dwarf that a certain hideously obese individual was wont to label him, and he could only feel safe if he carried something to offset the disadvantage at which his size placed him.

And yes, it was true, he had received a telephone call from Mr. Weeks, with whom he had had occasional business dealings over the years. At Mr. Weeks’s request, he’d driven to the Boccaccio and parked across the street with the motor running. When Hoberman emerged from the building he watched him flag a cab and tailed him a short distance to what would be the murder scene. He entered the brownstone’s vestibule just as Hoberman was being buzzed in and caught the door before it closed, following his quarry upstairs to the fourth-floor apartment. But evidently his activities had not gone unnoticed; he was standing in the hallway, trying to hear what was going on inside and deliberating his next move, when the door opened suddenly and Hoberman grabbed him by the arm and yanked him inside.

He had no time to consider the matter. His response was automatic and unthinking; in an instant the dagger was free of its sheath and in his hand, and in another instant it was in Hoberman’s body. He did not know who the man was, nor had he any knowledge of the identity of the other man, the slender white-haired fellow in the suit and checkered vest. He did not know anything of the pursuit in which the two were engaged. All he knew was that he had just killed a man. Reflexively, of course, and in self-defense, to be sure, but the man was dead and Tiglath Rasmoulian was in trouble.

The white-haired man, the one they now seemed to be calling the woodchuck, was far too slow to react. He just stood there, staring in shock, and before he could do anything Rasmoulian was holding a gun on him. He put him against a wall with his hands in the air while he went through the pockets of the man he’d killed until he came up with a wallet. He stuffed it in his own pocket to examine at leisure.

And, while he was kneeling by the unfortunate man’s body, yes, something came over him, some hostility to an old foe. He took hold of the poor man’s hand, dipped the forefinger in the blood, and wrote that foe’s name on a convenient surface, which happened to be the side panel of an attaché case. And if his Cyrillic was imperfect, well, he’d come close enough. It was a barbaric alphabet anyway.

Then came the tricky part. Down the stairs and all the way to where he’d parked the car, he covered Candlemas with one hand in his pocket gripping the pistol; he was ready to fire through his own coat if he had to, and it was a good coat, the very one he was wearing today. It was late and the streets were empty; he waited for an opportune moment, then forced Candlemas to climb into the trunk. He locked the trunk, got behind the wheel, and drove downtown.

And yes, he knew the streets of the Lower East Side, and knew he and his prisoner would be undisturbed in one of the abandoned buildings to be found down there. He had asked Candlemas many questions, and had obtained some answers, but by no means managed to get the whole story. He knew that a bookstore proprietor had been engaged to steal some very valuable documents from an apartment in the building Hoberman had emerged from, and he got my name from Candlemas, and the name of the store. He knew there was an Anatrurian connection, and that was about all he knew.

He might have learned more, but there was another accident. Candlemas tricked him, pretending to cooperate fully, lulling him into inattention, then making a bid to escape. Once again Rasmoulian’s reflexes sprang unbidden into action, and Candlemas, trying to get away, was shot dead. A single bullet had snuffed out the man’s life.

Accidents, two of them. What else could you call what had occurred? It was tragic, he regretted it deeply, he was a man who had always deplored violence. Surely he could not be held accountable for the violence that had taken place in spite of all he had done to prevent it?

“Yeah, well, accidents’ll happen,” Ray said. “Guy who got stabbed, I looked at him lyin’ there and I knew I was lookin’ at one hell of an accident. You see a guy with four stab wounds in him, you know right off he’s been in a real bad accident.”

“My reflexes are good,” Rasmoulian said.

“I guess they are. Candlemas, now, down there on Pitt Street, was tryin’ to escape when he got hisself cut down. I got to say, though, he wasn’t very good at it, because there were powder burns on his ear, so he couldn’t have escaped more than a foot or so from the gun that killed him. Guy like that, he better not set up shop givin’ people escape lessons.”

There was a stretch of silence, broken by Charlie Weeks, who leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs first. “There are accidents and accidents,” he said.

“Can’t argue with that,” Ray allowed.

“It was an accident, for instance, that I myself played an unwitting part in Cappy Hoberman’s death. I’m less inclined to regret Chuck Wood, considering the little stunt he pulled in Anatruria.”

I’d let that pass once, but enough was enough. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“I beg your pardon, weasel?”

“Let’s ease up on the ‘weasel’ routine,” I said. “You can call me Bernie. What I don’t think is that the woodchuck sold out the good guys in Anatruria.”

“Really? That’s what we all thought.”

“I think it was the mouse,” I said. “I think you must be proud of it, too, or you probably wouldn’t hang on to that letter of commendation from Dean Acheson.”

“Now how could you possibly know about that?” Weeks said. “If I had a letter like that I’d certainly keep it in a locked drawer, wouldn’t I? And you’ve never been in my apartment that I wasn’t constantly in the same room with you.”

“It’s puzzling, all right,” I said.

He seemed to shrink under the combined gaze of Ilona and Michael, melting away like the water-soaked Wicked Witch of the West. “It was a strategic decision made at a high level,” he said. “I had no part in the decision and no choice but to implement it.”

“And the good sense to see that it was the woodchuck who got blamed for it, and not the mouse.”

“It happened over forty years ago. I won’t apologize for it now, or explain the justification. I was a young man then. I’m an old man now. It’s done.”

“And the two men Rasmoulian killed?”

“I never thought that would happen,” he said. “I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Cappy Hoberman called up, came to see me on the flimsiest of pretexts, and was eager to be on his way almost immediately. It never occurred to me he was running interference for a burglar. I thought he wanted something, or was setting me up somehow. For all I knew he’d tumbled to the way it all went kerblooey in Anatruria, and he had some curious notion of revenge.” He shrugged. “The whole point is I didn’t know. I needed to call someone who could tag him and report back. And the redoubtable Assyrian tagged him a little more forcefully than any of us would have preferred.”

“It is unfair,” Ilona said.

“Life’s unfair, honey,” Charlie Weeks said. “Better get used to it.”

“It is unfair that you get away with this, while Tiglath Rasmoulian pays the penalty.”

“There should be no penalty,” Rasmoulian said. “An accident, an act of self-defense-”

“I got to tell you,” Ray Kirschmann said. “We got us a problem here.”

Another silence. Ray let it stretch for a bit, then broke it himself.

“Way I see it,” he said, “I got enough to arrest Mr. Ras-” He broke off, made a face. “What I’m gonna do is call you TR,” he told Rasmoulian, “which is your initials, and also stands for Teddy Roosevelt, who it just so happens was police commissioner of this fair city before he got to be president of the United States.”

“Thank you very much,” Rasmoulian said.

“I got enough to arrest TR,” Ray said, “an’ I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s enough to indict him. He confessed to a double homicide after bein’ Mirandized one or two times, dependin’ how you calculate it. So his confession ain’t admissible, since nobody wrote it down an’ got him to sign it, or had the presence of mind to tape it. But anybody here could testify that he confessed, same as a cellmate can rat out a defendant, sayin’ he confessed, except in this case it happens to be the truth. TR here did confess, an’ we all heard him.”

“So?”

He glared at me. “So I can arrest him, an’ as far as the trial’s concerned, well, who knows what’ll happen, because you never know. What I can promise you, though, is he’ll get bail. Was a time nobody made bail on a murder charge, but now they do, an’ my guess is TR here’ll have to post something like a quarter mil max and he’s on the street. And once he’s on the street, citizen of the world that he is, all he’s gotta do is bail out, if you follow me.”

“Bail out?”

“Skip the country, forfeit the bond, and go about his business. And what’s even more of a shame is me and my fellow officers’ll be makin’ life hard for all the rest of you, even with TR here off the hook and out of the country. Takin’ testimony from Mr. Weeks, inquirin’ into the source of Mr. Sarnoff’s income-”

“Tsarnoff, officer.”

“Whatever. Makin’ sure everybody’s papers are legit. An’ of course there’ll be reporters crawlin’ up everybody’s ass, poppin’ flash bulbs at the king an’ queen of Anna Banana-”

“Anatruria.”

“Whatever. Be more important for you people to remember the name of the country, bein’ as they’ll probably wind up sendin’ you back to it. Not Mr. Weeks, though, on account of he’s an American citizen, an’ they’ll most likely want to keep him around so Congress can ask him some questions.”

He went on in this vein, probably longer than he had to. After all, these people were professionals. They’d played the game before, in the Balkans and the Middle East.

Weeks said, “Officer…Kirschmann, is it?” He picked up his homburg, balanced it on his knee. “You know, I got a speeding ticket a couple of years ago in the state of Montana. They had to pass a speed limit there, and in order to qualify for federal highway funds it had to be a max of sixty-five on the interstates and fifty-five everywhere else.”

“That a fact,” Ray said.

“It is,” Charlie Weeks said. “Now, Montana ’s too large and too sparsely settled for those limits to make any sense. And the federal government could make them pass that law, but they couldn’t regulate how they enforced it. So Montana assigned only four state troopers to speed limit enforcement, and you know how large the state is.”

“Prolly as big as Brooklyn and Manhattan put together.”

Weeks’s smile spread across his face. “Very nearly,” he said. “The federal government couldn’t establish penalties for violating the speeding laws, either, so Montana set the fine at five dollars per violation. If one of the state’s four traffic cops nails you for doing a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour in a fifty-five zone, it costs you five bucks.”

“Reasonable,” Ray said.

“Very reasonable, but here’s the point I’m trying to make. Just so no one’s grossly inconvenienced, neither the motorist nor the arresting officer, the fine may be collected on the spot. You pull me over, I give you five dollars, and I go on my way.”

“An’ everybody’s happy,” Ray said.

“Exactly. And the state’s best interests are served. Admirable, wouldn’t you say?”

“In a manner of speakin’, yeah.”

“Officer,” Gregory Tsarnoff said, “if the Assyrian is only going to forfeit bond, perhaps he could post it directly, without going through the usual channels.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Ray said. “It’s irregular.”

“But expedient, surely.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, “but it’d get the job done.”

“Tiglath,” Charlie Weeks said, “how much dough have you got on you?”

“You mean money?”

“No, I’m thinking about starting a bakery. Yes, I mean money. You came here thinking you’d have a chance to bid on those bearer shares. How much did you bring?”

“Not so much. I am not a rich man, Charlie. Surely you know that.”

“Don’t dick around, Tiggy, it’s late in the game for that. What are you carrying?”

“Ten thousand.”

“That’s U.S. dollars, I hope. Not Anatrurian tschirin.”

“Dollars, of course.”

“What about you, Gregorius?”

“A little more than that,” Tsarnoff said. “But can you possibly be suggesting that I help raise bail money for the Assyrian? He wrote my name in blood!”

“Yeah, but credit where it’s due, Gregorius. He spelled it wrong. Do I think you should kick in? Yes, I do.” He frowned. “You know what else I think? I think there’s too many people in the room. We need a private conference, Gregorius. You and me and Tiggy and Officer Kirschmann here.”

“And Wilfred.”

“If you prefer, Gregorius.”

“An’ Bernie,” Ray said.

“And the weasel, to be sure.”

I steered everybody else to my office in the back. That didn’t seem fair to Ilona and Michael, but they didn’t seem to mind, Ilona smiling her ironic smile while the king looked as though he’d suffered a light concussion. Between them they were less irritated than Carolyn and Mowgli, who were unhappy to be missing the next act.

I left them admiring the portrait of St. John of God, the patron saint of booksellers, and got back in time to hear Weeks explaining that he had the bearer shares. “Michael’s a nice fellow,” he was saying, “but that family was never loaded with smarts. After I heard about the burglary attempt, I told him I wanted to check the portfolio. I haven’t given it back to him yet, and when I do the shares won’t be in it.”

Tsarnoff stroked his big chin. “Without the account number-”

“Without the number the shares are just paper, but who’s to say there’s no one alive who knows the number? For that matter, who’s to say you can’t create a hairline fissure in the rock-solid walls of the Swiss banking system? If the three of us threw in together…”

“You and I, sir? And the Assyrian?”

Weeks was smiling furiously. “Be like old times,” he said. “Wouldn’t it, now?”

“Well, now,” Ray said, and there was a knock on the door. I looked up, and the knock was repeated, louder. I gave a dismissing wave, but the large young man at the door refused to be dismissed. He knocked again.

I went to the door, cracked it a few inches. “We’re closed,” I said. “Private meeting, not open for business today. Come back tomorrow.”

He held up a book. “I just want to buy this,” he said. “It’s off that table there, fifty cents, three for a buck. Here’s a buck.”

I pushed the money back at him. “Please,” I said.

“But I want the book.”

“Take the book.”

“But-”

“It’s a special,” I said. “Today only. Take it, it’s free. Please. Goodbye.”

I closed the door, turned the lock. I turned back to the five of them and found they’d made their deal. Rasmoulian had taken off his trench coat and was hunting under his clothes for a money belt. Wilfred handed a manila envelope to his employer, who opened it and began counting hundred-dollar bills. Weeks drew a similar stack of bills from his pocket, removed a rubber band, licked his thumb, and began counting.

“I wish I knew why the hell I was doing this,” Weeks said. “I’ve got all the money I need. What the hell do you think it is, Gregorius?”

“You miss the action, sir.”

“I’m an old man. What do I need with action?” No one had an answer, and I don’t think he wanted one. He finished counting his bundle, collected bundles from the other two, weighed all three in his cupped hands. I gave him a shopping bag from behind the counter and he dropped all the money into it. A few hours ago that bag had contained books, the ones I’d bought from Mowgli for seventy-five dollars. Now it was full of hundred-dollar bills.

Four hundred of them, according to Weeks, who held it out toward Ray.

“I don’t know,” Ray said, and shot a quick glance my way. I moved my head about an inch to the left and an inch to the right. Ray registered this, widened his eyes. I met his eyes, then raised mine a few degrees toward the ceiling.

“Thing is,” he said, “there’s a lot’s gotta be done, a bunch of police personnel gotta be brought in on this. Seems to me forty grand’s gonna spread too thin to cover it all.”

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Charlie Weeks said. “I thought we had a deal.”

“Make it fifty an’ we got a deal.”

“That’s an outrage. We’d already agreed on a figure, for Christ’s sake.”

“Put it this way,” Ray said. “You got yourself a real good deal when that trooper stopped you out in Montana. But you ain’t in the Wild West this time around. This here’s New York.”