The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams Page 10

  “A thousand dollars.”

  “In perfect shape,” I said. “If it’s all beat up from flipping it against the wall, well, it would be worth a lot less.”

  He looked at the notebook again. “Honus Wagner,” he announced. “Hall of Fame shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Back in 1910 they went an’ put his picture on a card, except back then they gave ’em out in cigarette packs instead of bubble gum.”

  “But he didn’t smoke,” I recalled. “And he didn’t want to have a bad influence on kids.”

  “So he made ’em withdraw the card, an’ that’s why it’s so scarce today. You’re a little low, though, when you peg it at a thousand bucks.”

  “Well, I was low on ‘B’ Is for Burglar, too. What’s it worth?”

  “They auctioned one a couple of years back,” he said, “an’ it went for $451,000. Accordin’ to Gilmartin, it’d bring well over a million in today’s market. You honestly didn’t know that, Bernie?”

  “I didn’t,” I said, “and I’m not sure I believe it. A million dollars? For a baseball card?”

  “The T-206 card. There’s other Honus Wagner cards, not advertisin’ cigarettes, an’ they’re not worth anythin’ like that kind of dough.”

  “And Gilmartin had a T-206?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t? Then who cares? Ray—”

  “But he had lots of other good cards,” he said. “He had the Topps 1952 set, with Mickey Mantle’s rookie card. An’ he had a lot of Ted Williams an’ Babe Ruth an’ Joe DiMaggio cards. I wouldn’t mind havin’ a card with Joe D on it, I got to admit it.”

  “If I ever get one,” I said, “I’ll swap you straight up for the Elgin Marbles.”

  “You got a deal, Bern. But the point is, Gilmartin didn’t have Honus Wagner, but what he had was probably worth a lot more than what your mother gave to the sisterhood rummage sale. He had the whole lot insured for half a million dollars.”

  “Half a million dollars.”

  “An’ he says it’s worth more than that. That’s why I was hopin’ you took his cards, Bernie. We could do a little business, do us both some good. An’ you took ’em all right, you poor sap, but you didn’t know what you had. You took ’em sometime between eight o’clock an’ midnight, an’ you went out in the middle of the night to visit one of those wide receivers you know an’ sold ’em cheap. You an’ me, Bernie, we coulda done a deal with the insurance company an’ split a hundred grand between us. I’ll bet you didn’t bring home a tenth of that last night.”

  “I didn’t take the cards, Ray.”

  “You took ’em,” he said. “You were mad at Stoppelgard. You prolly followed him to the Gilmartin place, an’ then when they all went to the theater you went right in. You got back at Stoppelgard by knockin’ off Gilmartin, an’ you got in quick an’ grabbed the first thing you saw that looked like it might be worth somethin’. An’ instead of takin’ the time an’ trouble to find out what you had, you dumped ’em fast an’ screwed yourself good.” He sighed. “You got one chance of gettin’ outta this clean. Have you got the cards?”

  “No.”

  “Can you get them?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said heavily. “Well, in that case, I got a card for you. Where’d I put the damn thing? Here we go. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to consult an attorney. If you do not have an attorney…’ ”

  CHAPTER

  Nine

  “Before I forget,” Wally Hemphill said, “I called your therapist. So that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What therapist?”

  “Patience Tremaine.”

  “You called her? I asked Carolyn to call her.”

  “Well, Carolyn asked me to call her, so I did. I told her Mr. Rhodenbarr had to cancel his eight o’clock appointment, and he’d be calling to reschedule as soon as he was able.”

  “That’s what you told her, huh?”

  “Right, I kept it crisp and professional. I’ve got to say she seems to take more of a personal interest in her clients than most of the shrinks I’ve known.”

  “She’s not exactly a shrink,” I said. “She’s a poetry therapist.”

  “Oh, yeah? You been having trouble with your poems, Bernie?” He looked puzzled, then shrugged it away. “She seemed more concerned about your digestion than anything else. Something about knishes and burritos.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I cleared everything up for her. I explained that the cops had you in a holding pen charged with burglary, but that I was on my way to get a writ and I expected to have you out on bail in a couple of hours. Did I say something wrong?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Wally. Don’t you think you may have been overly discreet?”

  “Bernie, she’s your therapist, right? Obviously she knows your history and what you do for a living. How else could you expect to get anywhere in therapy?”

  “How indeed?”

  “Though she did seem taken aback, come to think of it. Maybe she was upset that you were actually arrested and charged with a crime.”

  “That must be it.”

  “People outside of the criminal justice system, they don’t realize that’s all part of the deal. Anyway, she’ll be waiting for you to call.”

  “With bated breath, I’ll bet. Wally, she’s not my therapist. She’s a woman I had a couple of dates with.”

  “Oh.”

  “We were just starting to get to know each other,” I said. “As far as she knew, I was just a bookseller with a slight case of Delhi Belly. She had no idea I was a burglar.”

  “Well, she’s got a pretty good idea now,” he said. “Bernie, I’m sorry as all hell. I guess I really stepped in it.

  “Forget it.”

  “Were you, uh, sleeping with her?”

  “No,” I said, “but I had hopes.”

  “Rats. I’m sorry, I really am. But hey, you’ll call her in a day or two and you’ll think of something to say.”

  “And so will she. Hers’ll probably be something along the lines of ‘Lose my number, asshole.’ ”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Talking to her, she didn’t seem like the kind of girl to use bad language. Outside of that, you’re probably right.”

  “‘If you do not have an attorney,’” Ray had intoned, “‘one will be provided for you.’”

  Fortunately, that hadn’t been necessary. I had an attorney. You can hardly be in business without one these days, and this is doubly true if your business comes under the broad heading of felonies and misdemeanors. You really need a lawyer you can call your own, and he ought to be the kind you have to pay. I’m sure the fellows and gals at Legal Aid do a commendable job for their clients, but I’m happier personally with legal counsel that’s just a little more upscale.

  Besides, a successful professional criminal with a Legal Aid lawyer is like a billionaire collecting Social Security. Maybe he’s entitled to it, but so what? It’s still tacky.

  For years my lawyer was a man named Klein with an office on Queens Boulevard, a wife and kids in Kew Gardens, and a girlfriend in Turtle Bay, just around the corner from the United Nations. Then one day a couple of years ago I got arrested, through no real fault of my own, and when I went to call Klein I found out he was dead.

  Poof, just like that.

  So I called Wally Hemphill. I knew him from the park, where we would encounter each other evenings, dressed in shorts and singlets and shod in state-of-the-art running shoes. We would jog along together for a mile or so, chatting companionably about this and that, until he sped up or I slowed down. When I met him he was training for the marathon. That was several marathons ago, and he’s never slowed down.

  I, on the other hand, was a lot less dedicated. It’s hard to remember why I started running in the first place, although it may have been a natural outgrowth of the instinct for self-preservation. It’s nice to be able to run a
way if something takes it into its head to start chasing you. Still, I had never felt the urge to run twenty-six miles and change, or to transmute myself into a human whippet, and eventually the day came when running ceased to be one of the things I did and became instead one of the things I used to do, like reading comic books and collecting baseball cards. I still wear running shoes—they work just as well at low speeds—and I still own a few sets of running shorts and singlets, although I no longer get any use out of them. (If my mother lived with me, she’d probably throw them out.)

  “I’m sorry it took so long,” Wally was saying. It was a quarter after ten Saturday morning, some eighteen hours after Ray Kirschmann had read me my rights, and we were in an Ethiopian coffee shop on Chambers Street. I think the restaurant’s previous owners must have been Greek, because they’ve still got spinach pie and moussaka on the menu.

  Wally, who’d had an early breakfast before he came downtown, was working on a chocolate doughnut and a cup of coffee. I had coffee, too, along with a big glass of orange juice and a plate of scrambled eggs and salami and two slices of rye toast. Nothing builds an appetite like getting out of jail, even if you don’t pass Go and collect $200.

  “They were being obstructive,” he explained. “Shunting you around from precinct to precinct like that so that I couldn’t get you out until morning. It’s a nuisance, but it’s actually a good sign.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “What it tells me is they know they’ve got no case. What have they got? As far as evidence is concerned, they can demonstrate two things. One, someone called the Gilmartins from Carolyn’s apartment around midnight Thursday. They can’t even prove it was you that called, and the NYNEX records only show the one call that went through, so there’s no indication you’d been trying the number for hours. Two, they’ve got your doorman’s testimony that you left the building a little after one and didn’t get back until just before dawn. Well, so what? Leaving aside the fact that I could tie the guy in knots on cross, they can’t say you spent that time stealing Gilmartin’s baseball cards, because he had already reported them missing. You don’t have a working time machine, do you, Bernie?”

  “I had one,” I said, “but I could never get batteries for it.”

  “Their contention is you had the cards when you left your place and sold them during the night to person or persons unknown. But they have to do more than contend. Can they prove it?”

  “No.”

  “Suppose they find the buyer?”

  “There was no buyer, Wally.”

  “You know,” he said, “I think I’m gonna have another of these doughnuts. You can’t beat Ethiopians when it comes to doughnuts. You want one?” I shook my head. “It’s good I run seventy miles a week,” he said, “or I’d weigh three hundred pounds. Bernie, it might be a good idea if you beat them to the punch. Give up the fence.”

  “Give up the fence?”

  “Rat him out.”

  “There was no fence,” I said.

  “I know it may strike you as unethical,” he went on, “but standards aren’t what they used to be. Even Mafia guys drop dimes on each other nowadays. Next thing they do is call their agent, set up a book deal and a miniseries. Incidentally, Bernie, when the time comes—”

  “You’re the guy I’ll call, Wally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Wally,” I said, “there was no fence, because I never took the cards.”

  “Whatever you say, Bernie. Listen, if you didn’t fence them—”

  “I just said so, didn’t I?”

  “That case, I hope you got them someplace safe. One reason they kept you overnight was so they’d have time to get a warrant and search your apartment. They must not have found anything, because we’d know about it if they did. Wherever you put the cards—”

  “I never took them.”

  “Bernie, I’m your attorney.”

  “Really? I was beginning to think you were the DA. I never took the cards. I didn’t even know he had baseball cards, and they wouldn’t have tempted me if I did, because who knew they were worth that kind of money?”

  “I thought everybody knew. I must have a dozen acquaintances who collect them. Lawyers, mostly. It’s a great investment.”

  “So I understand.”

  “They go to dealers, spend their weekends at card shows. One woman I know never leaves her office. She sits at her desk, plugged into one of those computer bulletin boards, buying and selling as if she had a seat on the stock exchange. She pays by credit card and they Fed Ex the cards to her at the office. She walks them across the street to the bank and pops them in her safe deposit box. Her biggest hassle is deciding which client to bill her hours to. Bernie, say you did take the cards—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “This is hypothetical, okay? If you took them, or if you just happened to get hold of them, I could probably do an end run with the insurer that would include getting the charges dropped.” He took a sip of coffee. “You really didn’t take ’em, huh?”

  “Don’t tell me it’s beginning to sink in.”

  “So why call Gilmartin?”

  “If I’d just finished knocking off his apartment,” I said, “that’s the last thing I would have done. The thing is, I cased his apartment, and—”

  “I thought you didn’t know about the card collection.”

  “All I knew was he and his wife weren’t going to be home that night. They lived in a good building in a decent neighborhood. It stood to reason I’d find something to steal.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “But I didn’t go, Wally. I resisted temptation, and got a little bit tanked in the process. The real reason I called wasn’t to tweak his tail, it was to make sure he and Edna were home safe so I didn’t have to keep fighting the urge to pop his locks and make myself at home. When I finally reached him I joshed him a little, that’s all. It seemed safe enough.”

  “And then you went home.”

  “Right.”

  “And then you went out again.”

  “Uh.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing you want to hear about, Wally.”

  “Bernie,” he said earnestly, “I’m your attorney. Anything you tell me is a privileged communication. Anything you don’t tell me is a potential stumbling block down the line. For instance, if you had told me that Patience Tremaine was someone you were involved with socially—”

  “How could I tell you that? I never even had the chance to speak to you.”

  “Well, maybe that’s not a good example. What did you do when you left your apartment in the middle of the night?”

  “I let myself into another apartment, stole some money, and then came home.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that, Bernie.”

  “You just said—”

  “I know what I just said. I still wish you hadn’t told me. When I was five years old I begged my older brother to tell me the truth about Santa Claus, and he wouldn’t, and I begged and begged and begged, and finally he did, mostly to shut me up, I suppose. And the minute he did, I wished he hadn’t. Nothing I could do about it, though. I knew there was no Santa Claus, and the knowledge has been with me for the rest of my life.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  “It was.”

  “So I guess you don’t want to hear about the dead body.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So I won’t say anything.”

  He shook his head. “Ignorance may be bliss,” he said, “but knowledge is power, and a good lawyer takes power over bliss any day. So let’s hear it.”

  “Here’s what I think will happen,” he said. “They’ll spend a few days investigating, and when they don’t turn up anything further they’ll drop all charges.”

  “Great.”

  “Unless they find out where you really went after you got home from Carolyn’s. If that happens, I’d hate to be in your shoes.” He paused to glance at my feet.
“Saucony,” he said, recognizing the logo on the shoes in question. “I almost bought a pair of those. How are they holding up?”

  “They’re fine. Of course, the only exercise they get is when I take them out for a walk.”

  “You never got back to running, huh, Bern? I don’t know how you managed to stop. It’s addictive, you know. They’ve done studies.”

  “I know.”

  “How’d you break the addiction?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I just substituted another addiction for it. I found something even more addictive than running.”

  “What?”

  “Not running,” I said. “It’s got to be the most addictive thing ever. Believe me, a few days of not running and I was hooked.”

  “I don’t think it would work for me,” he said. “I hope I never find out.”

  “Like Santa Claus.”

  “Right. Where was I?”

  “If they find out, you’d hate to be in my Sauconys.”

  He nodded. “Because you won’t have an alibi, and they’ll have a witness or two and possibly some physical evidence, and the guy in the tub raises the stakes. A former president would say you were in deep doo-doo. His successor would probably advise you not to inhale.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Just sit tight,” he said. “Don’t break into any houses.”

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “Well, don’t pull any unplanned burglaries, either. The money’s not worth it. Speaking of money, Carolyn gave me ten thousand dollars.”

  A while back I had built a secret compartment into Carolyn’s closet. It’s small—you couldn’t conceal a Third Cat there—but it’s a perfect hiding place for money and valuables. I’ve always believed in maintaining a cash emergency fund, and it made sense to keep it not only where I could get hold of it, but where she’d have easy access. So I’d stashed ten grand in Carolyn’s apartment, and she’d passed it on to Wally, as per my instructions.

  “They wanted to set bail at half a million dollars,” he said, “because that’s the insurance coverage on the cards. I got that knocked down to fifty thousand, or five thousand in cash, which I posted. We’ll get that back when they drop the charges. My thought is I ought to hang on to the other five as a retainer.”