The Burglar in the Rye Page 16

  The doorknob turned. The door opened.

  CHAPTER

  Fourteen

  But by then I was standing in the bathtub, cowering behind the shower curtain, feeling every bit as secure about the whole enterprise as Janet Leigh in Psycho.

  She turned on the light as she entered. This didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t make me happy, either. The shower curtain was somewhere between opaque and translucent. I could see shapes through it, but only if I worked at it. The more light there was, the more clearly I could see.

  If the shower curtain had been designed by the inventor of the one-way mirror, I might have welcomed the extra illumination. But every quid has a pro quo, and the better I could see, the more easily I could be seen in return.

  Even with the light on I couldn’t tell much about my visitor. Based on the ordinariness of her silhouette, I could estimate that she was not too tall and not too short, and neither a wraith nor a blimp. But I could have guessed as much without having seen her at all, and I’d have been right ninety percent of the time. Anyway, I had more to go on than the blurred shape visible through the plastic curtain. I’d seen the clothes in her closet.

  Well, I knew one thing more now. I knew she was proper, even prim. Fastidious, at the very least.

  Because the first thing she did after turning on the light was close the door.

  I don’t know. Maybe everybody does this, or maybe it’s a girl thing. But when I’m alone in my apartment, I’ll tell you right now that I don’t close the bathroom door when I have to take a whiz. I’m sure there are people who do—I was in a room with one of them now—even as I am sure there are people who run water in the sink while they are thus occupied, so that they won’t be able to hear what they’re doing.

  She didn’t do that, and I could hear her loud and clear. This might have been provocative, even exciting, if I’d been a little kinkier than God made me, but under the circumstances all it was was disturbing. Not because I was offended, but because I was envious. The gentle tinkling sound made me aware that I, too, had a bladder, and a hitherto unnoticed need to empty it.

  I’m not going to dwell on this, but it’s something to profit from if you’ve been contemplating a life of crime. It’s not all glamour and big profits. You’re going to spend a fair amount of time wishing you had the chance to pee.

  My guest had the chance, and she was taking it. Then she stood up and flushed, and then she washed her hands, and who could have expected less of someone who’d bothered closing the door?

  Then she opened the door and walked through it, and then my blood froze, because, casually and conversationally, she said, “Your turn.”

  Not that I wouldn’t welcome a turn, as I’ve already explained. If I hadn’t quite reached the shifting-one’s-weight-from-one-foot-to-the-other stage, I could already see it looming on the horizon. But when had she spotted me, and how had she masked her discovery so well, only to tip it off so offhandedly? “Your turn”—and while I was taking my turn she’d be on the phone, telling the number-cruncher downstairs to call 911.

  And she left the door open.

  I should point out that all of this happened quickly, and that I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it. Otherwise I’d have figured it out, as you very likely have, but before my drunk/hungover (choose one) mind could run through its gears, a taller silhouette passed through the door, pausing to draw it shut. Then he strode manfully over to the commode, bent over to raise the seat, straightened up, and went at it.

  I’d draw the curtain here, but for the fact that I was behind it. He did what he’d come there to do, flushed, washed his hands, dried them on a towel, and switched off the light on his way out the door. He didn’t close the door this time.

  So I got to hear them making love.

  Some years ago, when I was a teenage kid embarking on a career in burglary, the whole enterprise (I blush to admit) bore a distinct undercurrent of sexual energy. You can blame it on my youth; it seems to me there was a sexual aspect to everything back then.

  I suppose a Freudian might have contended that I started breaking into houses in the first place in hopes of sneaking a peek at the primal scene—i.e., my own parents, doing the dirty deed. God knows what lurks in the unconscious, but I have to tell you that was the last thing in the world I wanted to see, and if I’d wanted to spy on my folks I wouldn’t have gone looking for them in other people’s houses. I’d have stayed home.

  But that’s not to say I wouldn’t have welcomed a glimpse of somebody else doing something I wasn’t supposed to see. I didn’t go looking for it, and in fact took great pains to make sure other people’s houses were empty before I came calling. All the same, I was frequently stirred by what I found. An unmade bed would send my mind reeling, just at the thought of what might have taken place in it mere hours before I arrived on the scene. A bra, a pair of panties—I didn’t steal them, I didn’t stand around sniffing them and pawing the ground, but I was damn well aware of them.

  Once, then, I’d have found it thrilling to be so close to a coupling couple, intensely aware of them even as they were wholly unaware of me. Maybe, if I’d managed to get in touch with my Inner Adolescent, I could have summoned up some excitement even now, but I’m not so sure. I think those days are gone, and good riddance.

  Because, as much as I enjoy the sport as a participant, I’ve long since outgrown any interest in it as a spectator. I’ve seen a few XXX-rated movies over the years, and I don’t think I’m a prude about it, but I’d just as soon get through life without ever seeing another.

  So I stood there and listened to their lovemaking, wishing I or they or all of us were elsewhere, engaged in some other pursuit. Watching TV, say, or playing pinochle, or sharing a pizza. I didn’t have to close my eyes—they were in the other room, and I was behind a curtain—but I’d have liked to put my fingers in my ears, to shut out sounds I didn’t much want to listen to.

  And I did that at one point, only to take them out a moment later. Because, see, I needed whatever information my ears might bring me. I didn’t know a damn thing about them beyond the fact that one was male and the other female. So far I hadn’t heard a word out of him, and the only words she’d said were “Your turn” as she left the bathroom, and that hadn’t been enough to let me know if it was a voice I recognized.

  Maybe they’d talk. Maybe they’d say something that would serve to tell me who they were, or answer some of the questions on my unwritten list. So I listened, and all they did was make the sounds people make when they’re thus engaged. Some grunting, some groaning, some mumbling, some moaning, and the occasional sharp intake of breath and small sigh of appreciation.

  And then, at the very end, it got discernibly exciting for her. It may have been every bit as thrilling for him as well, but he was man enough to keep it to himself. She got verbal, and pretty noisy, and I tried to tune it out, and then a phrase caught my attention and I listened more intently than ever, and yes I thought yes it was yes!

  I knew who she was.

  I don’t know how the dictionary defines “anticlimactic.” I suppose I could look it up, but so could you, if you care. I don’t, because I know what it is. It’s standing in a bathtub, desperate for a pee, after two people in the next room have finished making love.

  Now what?

  I couldn’t hear a thing, and just what did that mean? Probably just that they were lying there in companionable silence, either gathering their strength for another round of the same or drifting off to sleep. Either way, I was stuck.

  I stayed where I was, and I found myself thinking about Redmond O’Hanlon and the candiru. Suppose I was swimming in the Amazon, feeling the same urgency I felt now, and knowing that to pee was to send an engraved invitation to every candiru in the neighborhood. How long could I hold out?

  Well, you get the idea. I don’t know how far I might have gone with that line of thought, or what action it might eventually have prompted, but sounds from the other room in
truded. They were moving about, I realized, and having a conversation, though in voices too low-pitched for me to make out.

  Footsteps approached, and the bathroom light came on. Oh, Christ, were they going to shower? It wasn’t exactly unheard-of after a romp of this sort, but—

  It was the woman, and I was pleased to discover that she was less fastidious than I’d thought earlier. She wet a towel in the sink and dabbed herself with it, then blotted herself dry with another. She left, and it was his turn, and wouldn’t you know the son of a bitch peed again? And flushed, and washed his hands, and switched off the light and left.

  Then there were more sounds of movement, and then the light went out. Not the one in the bathroom, that was already out, but the one in the bedroom. And next I heard an unimaginably sweet sound, that of a door closing and a key turning in a lock.

  I waited a moment—to make sure that was really what I’d heard, to give them a chance to come back for whatever they’d forgotten. I’d have waited longer, to give them a chance to walk clear to the elevator and back, but I have to say I’d already waited long enough.

  I drew the shower curtain, climbed out of the tub. I didn’t have to raise the toilet seat. He’d left it up, loutish inconsiderate male that he was.

  Not me. I am, after all, a sensitive New Age guy. When I was done, I put the seat down.

  I’ll tell you, all I wanted to do was get out of there. But I did remember to check the closet. The suitcase was still in place. I don’t even know that either of them ever bothered going into the closet. It seemed to me they were too busy scuttling in and out of the bathroom.

  I took a good look at the tag on the suitcase, and the name on it was Karen Kassenmeier, with an address in Kansas City. I thought about copying it down, but why bother? I recognized the sounds she’d been making toward the end. I’d heard them before, and the woman who’d made them certainly hadn’t introduced herself as Karen Kassenmeier.

  And who was he, and why did he get to make those particular sounds come out of her mouth? I probably should have nudged the shower curtain aside just long enough to get a quick look at him. But I’d have just seen the back of him while he was using first the toilet and then the sink. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

  They’d made the bed, I noticed. But they hadn’t changed the sheets, so there was a good chance he’d left some DNA behind. And it could damn well stay where it was as far as I was concerned.

  Odd that they’d stop to make the bed….

  I went back for another look, and my legendary powers of observation determined that they hadn’t made the bed, having never unmade it in the first place. The chenille bedspread bore unmistakable (not to say unmentionable) evidence of the very sort of activity I had so recently overheard. They were what you’d expect, along with one thing I wouldn’t have expected—a blackish mark, roughly the size and shape of the palm of one’s hand, directly above one of the pillows.

  I wondered what it was. I didn’t much want to touch it, but I took a long look at it. Could it have seeped through from beneath? If so, I didn’t much want to see the source of the seepage. But I made myself lift up a corner of the spread for a peek at the pillow beneath it, and what I saw was an ordinary white pillowcase, with no blackish mark on it, and indeed nothing out of the ordinary about it.

  And was that what I wanted to be staring at when she—or both of them—came back?

  No, emphatically not. I wanted to be in my own room, staring at the undersides of my eyelids. And, in not much time at all, there I was and that’s what I was doing. It was getting on for five o’clock, and I’d draw less attention leaving the hotel at a decent hour than slinking off before dawn. And why chase all the way uptown to my apartment only to hurry back a couple of hours later to open my shop? My rent was paid. I might as well get some use out of the room.

  It says right on the aspirin bottle not to take the stuff more often than every four hours, but the person who wrote that didn’t have any way of knowing how I was going to feel right now. I’d gulped a couple more first thing upon returning to the room, and now I lay on the bed in the dark and waited for them to kick in.

  Paddington Bear lay beside me. I’d taken off all of my clothes. He’d kept his on, including his boots. I tried to keep my mind on Paddington, but it would have none of it.

  It kept insisting on returning to Room 303, and what I’d encountered there. Well, no, there hadn’t been an actual encounter, and thank God for that, but I’d glimpsed her through a plastic shower curtain and heard her through an open door.

  The glimpse didn’t tell me much more than that she sat down to pee. The unmistakable cries of passion, cries that had previously resounded within the walls of my own apartment, they told me a good deal more.

  The luggage tag swore she was Karen Kassenmeier. But I knew better.

  She was Alice Cottrell.

  CHAPTER

  Fifteen

  Remarkably enough, I was open for business a few minutes after ten. Raffles met me at the door and rubbed up against my ankles, assuring me he was on the brink of starvation. It was a convincing performance, but it didn’t stop me from calling Carolyn at the Poodle Factory.

  “I didn’t feed him,” she said. “I just opened up myself a few minutes ago. It was a long night.”

  “For me, too.”

  “I know,” she said, “because I tried to reach you and I couldn’t. I called late, too. Where were you, anyway?”

  Someone was at the door. “I’ll tell you during lunch. What kind of food should I get?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing too far out, okay? I couldn’t face breakfast this morning, so that’ll give you an idea. Lean towards bland.”

  I don’t know what kind of a night Raffles had had, but he had no trouble facing breakfast. My first customer was joined by a second, and while they poked around in different corners of the shop I went through the bag of books Henry Walden had persuaded a woman to leave for my appraisal. They’d looked good at first glance the previous afternoon, and they looked even better after a thorough examination. No great rarities, no Tamerlane and Other Poems, but good salable books in decent shape, the sort that look good on my shelves and move quickly off of them.

  I made notes and jotted down numbers and worked out how high I could safely go for the books, and I’d just come up with a figure when Henry Walden stepped over my threshold, looking as though he’d spent the previous night meditating at a Zen temple instead of knocking them back at the Bum Rap. He was wearing a different sport jacket and a clean shirt, and his eyes were bright and his skin clear. His silver beard and mustache were, as always, perfectly groomed, and his tan beret was cocked at a rakish angle.

  “Good morning,” he said. “That was enjoyable last evening.”

  “I enjoyed it myself,” I said. “As much as I remember of it, anyway. The drinks hit me pretty hard.”

  “Really? You didn’t show it.”

  That was nice to hear, but I didn’t want to put too much stock in it. People say it all the time. “Oh, really? Both the dog and your mother-in-law? That’s funny, because you didn’t seem drunk at all.” Yeah, right.

  We chatted a bit, and then he found some books to look at while I made a couple of phone calls. I reached Marty Gilmartin at his office and told him the books he was looking for—I didn’t want to say rubies—were in a safe place. I didn’t add that the safe place was halfway to the bottom of a sack of dry cat food in my back room.

  “But don’t say anything,” I said. “To either of them.”

  “John or Isis,” he said. “Not until we know what we’re going to do with the, uh, books.”

  I rang off and tried Alice Cottrell’s number, or at least the number she had given me, which now seemed no more credible than anything else she’d told me. There was no answer, and I can’t say I was surprised.

  The woman who’d left the bag of books still hadn’t turned up at noon. I hung the cardboard clock face in the window, i
ndicating I’d be back at one, and asked Henry if he felt up to giving me a hand with the table. I wound up leaving the table out on the sidewalk and retrieving my clock sign.

  “I’ve got a shop-sitter,” I told Carolyn. “A customer with time on his hands. I can’t afford to pay him anything, but he doesn’t seem to want to be paid. He likes hanging around, and he says he’s learning the business.”

  “I had that guy Keith,” she said. “Remember him? He wanted to be my apprentice. He was happy to do all the shit work if I’d just teach him the dog-grooming game. It would have been a good deal, but I couldn’t stand having him around. He got on my nerves.”

  “I don’t think Henry’ll get on my nerves,” I said. “He didn’t this morning, and they’re pretty raw.”

  “Your nerves?”

  I nodded. “Rough night.”

  “You and me both.”

  “I thought you were with Erica.”

  “I was.”

  “I thought you stayed with Lavoris and soda when you were with her.”

  “I thought so, too,” she said. “What’s for lunch, Bern? I couldn’t face breakfast, so I’m pretty hungry.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I don’t know what’s for lunch.”

  “You bought it and you don’t know what it is?”

  “I went to the Uzbek place.”

  “Two Guys from Tashkent?”

  “Right, and you know what that’s like. The menu’s on the blackboard, but who knows what any of the words mean? I just pointed at things and handed them money, and one guy gave me food and the other guy gave me change.”

  “That makes two guys, all right.” She opened a container, sniffed. “Somehow,” she said, “I don’t think this is going to be bland.”