The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza Read online

  We were almost on our way again before I remembered to change my shoes. I’d been wearing Weejun penny loafers at the store, for both nostalgia and comfort, and I switched to a pair of capable-looking Puma running shoes. I certainly had no intention of moving faster than a brisk walk, but you never know what life has in store for you, and the Pumas with their rubber soles and springy insoles let me move as soundlessly as, well, as a panther, I suppose.

  Carolyn lives on Arbor Court, one of those oblique little streets in a part of the West Village that must have been laid out by someone on something stronger than Perrier. Until a couple of months ago she had been sort of living with another woman named Randy Messinger, but they’d had the last of a series of notable battles in early February and Randy had moved everything to her own place on Morton Street. It was May now, late May, and every evening the sun took a little longer to get over the yardarm, and the breach showed no signs of healing. Every now and then Carolyn would meet somebody terrific at Paula’s or the Duchess, but true love had not yet bloomed, and she didn’t seem to mind.

  She put some coffee up, tossed a salad, warmed up a couple wedges of leftover quiche. We both ate sparingly and drank a lot of the coffee. The cats polished off their own food and rubbed against our ankles until they got the unfinished quiche, which they promptly finished. Ubi, the Russian Blue, settled in my lap and got into some serious purring. Archie, his Burmese buddy, stalked around and did some basic stretching to show off his muscles.

  Around eight the phone rang. Carolyn answered it and settled into a long gossipy conversation. I got a paperback and turned its pages, but the words didn’t really register. I might as well have been reading the phone book.

  When Carolyn hung up I did read the phone book, long enough to look up a number, anyway. I dialed, and Abel Crowe picked up midway through the fourth ring. “Bernie,” I said. “I turned up a book I think you might like. Wondered if you’d be home tonight.”

  “I have no plans.”

  “I thought I might stop by around eleven, twelve o’clock.”

  “Excellent. I keep late hours these days.” You could hear the Mittel Europa accent over the phone. Face to face, it was barely detectable. “Will your charming friend be with you?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll provide accordingly. Be well, Bernard.”

  I hung up. Carolyn was sitting on the bed, one foot tucked beneath her, dutifully cutting the palms out of her own pair of rubber gloves. “Abel’s expecting us,” I told her.

  “He knows I’m coming?”

  “He asked specifically. I told him you’d probably show up.”

  “What’s this probably? I love Abel.”

  She got up from the bed, stuffed the gloves in a back pocket. She was wearing slate-gray brushed-denim jeans and a green velour top, and now she added her navy blazer. She looked terrific, and I told her as much.

  She thanked me, then turned to the cats. “Hang in there, guys,” she told them. “Just write down the names if anybody calls. Tell ’em I’ll get back to ’em.”

  Herbert and Wanda Colcannon lived on West Eighteenth Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Until fairly recently that was a great neighborhood to visit if you were looking to get mugged, but somewhere along the line Chelsea became a desirable neighborhood. People commenced buying the old brownstones and sprucing them up, converting rooming houses into floor-through apartment buildings and apartment buildings into single-family houses. The streets were lined with newly planted ginkgo and oak and sycamore, and it was getting so that you couldn’t see the muggers for the trees.

  No. 442 West Eighteenth was an attractive four-story brownstone house with a mansard roof and a bay window on the parlor floor. No. 444, immediately to its left, was the same thing all over again, distinguishable only by a few minor architectural details and the pair of brass carriage lamps that flanked the entrance. But between the two houses there was an archway and a heavy iron gate, and above the gate was the number 422 1/2. There was a bell alongside, and a blue plastic strip with the name Colcannon embossed on it beneath the bell.

  I’d called the Colcannon house earlier from a pay phone on Ninth Avenue. An answering machine had invited me to leave my name and number, an invitation I’d failed to accept. Now I rang the doorbell, giving it a good long poke and waiting a full minute for a response. Beside me, Carolyn stood with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders drawn inward, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

  I could imagine how she felt. This was only her third time. She’d been with me once in Forest Hills Gardens, a ritzy enclave in darkest Queens, and more recently when we hit an apartment in the East Seventies. I was an old hand at this sort of thing, I’d grown up letting myself into other people’s houses, but even so the edgy anxious thrill had not worn off. I have a hunch it never will.

  I shifted the attaché case to my left hand and dug out a ring of keys with my right. The iron gate was a formidable affair. It could be opened electrically by someone in the carriage house pushing a button, or it would yield to a key. And it was the type of old-fashioned lock that accepted a skeleton-type key, and there are only so many types, and I had a ringful of them. I’d looked the lock over some days ago and it had looked easy enough at the time, and easy it was; the third key I tried was a near miss, and the fourth one turned in the lock as if it had been placed on earth to do precisely that.

  I wiped my prints off the lock and the surrounding metal, shouldered the gate open. Carolyn followed me into the covered passageway and drew the gate shut behind her. We were in a long narrow tunnel, all brick-lined and with a damp feel to it, but there was a light at the end of it and we homed in on it like moths. We came out into a garden that nestled between the brownstone in front and the Colcannons’ carriage house. The light that had drawn us did a fair job of showing off the garden, with its flower beds bordering a central flagstone patio. Late daffodils and early tulips put on a good show, and I suppose when the roses bloomed the place might look fairly spectacular.

  There was a semicircular bench next to what looked to be a fish pond fed by a little fountain. I wondered how they could keep fish there without their being wiped out by the local cats, and I would have enjoyed passing a few minutes on the bench, peering into the pond for signs of fish while listening to the tranquil gurgle of the fountain. But the setting was a trifle exposed for that sort of behavior.

  Besides, time was a-wasting. It was twenty to ten—I’d checked my watch before unlocking the iron gate. In a sense we had all night, but the less of it we used the happier I’d be, and the sooner we’d be out of there and on our way to Abel Crowe’s.

  “Lit up like a Christmas tree,” Carolyn said.

  I looked. I hadn’t paid much attention to the carriage house, intent as I was on checking out flowers and fish, and if it didn’t look like a Christmas tree neither did it look like your standard empty house. It stood three stories tall, and I suppose it had once had horses on the ground floor and servants overhead before someone converted it for human occupancy throughout. Now there were lights burning on all three floors. They weren’t the only source of illumination in the garden—there was also an electrified lantern mounted a few steps from the fountain—but they were probably responsible for most of the light that had reached us in the passageway.

  Most people leave a light or two for the burglar, that brave little beacon that shines away at four in the morning, announcing to all the world that nobody’s home. Some people improve on this with cunning little timing devices that turn the lights on and off. But Herbert and Wanda seemed to me to have gone overboard. Maybe they had overreacted to the notion of leaving the place unprotected by the noble Astrid. Maybe Herb had a ton of Con Ed stock and Wanda had overdosed on those five-year light bulbs blind people sell you over the telephone.

  Maybe they were home.

  I mounted the stoop and put my ear to the door. There was noise inside, radio or television, but nothing that sounded like live convers
ation. I rang the doorbell and listened carefully, and there was no change in the sounds within the house. I set down my attaché case and pulled on my rubber gloves while Carolyn put hers on. I said a silent prayer that the house wasn’t hooked into a burglar alarm that I didn’t know about, addressing the prayer to Saint Dismas. He’s the patron saint of thieves, and he must get to hear a lot of prayers these days.

  Let there not be a burglar alarm, I urged the good Dismas. Let the dog really be in Pennsylvania. Let what lies within be a burglar’s fondest dream, and in return I’ll—I’ll what?

  I took out my ring of picks and probes and went to work.

  The locks were pretty good. There were three of them on that door, two Segals and a Rabson. I left the Rabson for last because I knew it would be the toughest, then surprised myself by knocking it off in no more than a minute. I heard Carolyn’s intake of breath when the bolt turned. She knows a little about locks now, and has been known to open her own without a key, and she’s driven herself half mad practicing with a Rabson I gave her, and she sounded impressed.

  I turned the knob, opened the door a crack, stood aside for Carolyn. She shook her head and motioned for me to go first. Age before beauty? Pearls before swine? Death before dishonor? I opened the door and committed illegal entry.

  Lord, what a feeling!

  I’m grateful there isn’t something even more despicable than burglary that gives me that feeling, because if there were I probably wouldn’t be able to resist it. Oh, I’m a pro, all right, and I do it for the money, but let’s not kid ourselves. I draw such an intense charge out of it it’s a wonder lamps don’t dim all over the city every time I let myself into somebody else’s abode.

  God knows I’m not proud of it. I’d think far more highly of myself if I eked out a living at Barnegat Books. I never quite cover expenses at the store, but maybe I could if I took the trouble to learn to be a better businessman. The shop supported old Mr. Litzauer for years before he sold it to me and retired to St. Petersburg. It ought to be able to support me. I don’t live all that high. I don’t shoot crap or snort coke or zoom around with the Beautiful People. Nor do I consort with known criminals, as the parole board so charmingly phrases it. I don’t like criminals. I don’t like being one myself.

  But I love to steal. Go figure.

  The radio program was one of those talk-show things with listeners calling in to share their views on fluoridation and child labor and other burning issues. I stood there and resented its blaring away at me. The lights were a nice touch—we wouldn’t have to turn on lights ourselves, which might draw attention, nor would we have to curse the darkness. But I stood there in the entrance foyer and resolved to turn off the damned radio. It was a distraction. You have to think straight to burgle efficiently, and who could do so with all that noise?

  “Jesus, Bern.”

  “What?”

  “She always dresses so nice. Who figured she’d be such a slob around the house?”

  I followed her into the living room to see what she was talking about. It looked as though an out-of-season tropical storm had wandered far off course, only to sneak down through the chimney and kick the crap out of everything. The pillows were off the couch. Desk drawers had been pulled out and upended, their contents strewn all over the Aubusson carpet. Pictures had been taken down from the walls, books tossed from their shelves.

  “Burglars,” I said.

  Carolyn stared.

  “They beat us to the punch.”

  “Are they still around, Bern? We better get out of here.”

  I went back to the front door and checked it. I’d relocked the locks when we were inside, fastening an additional chain lock for good measure. The three locks had been locked when I found them, the chain bolt unengaged.

  Strange.

  If burglars had come through that door, and if they’d locked themselves in as I had done, wouldn’t they put the chain bolt on as well? And if they’d already left, would they bother locking up from outside? I generally do that sort of thing as a matter of course, but then I’m not apt to leave a room looking as though it had been visited by the Gadarene swine, either. Whoever tossed that room was the type who kicked doors in, not the type who took extra time to lock up afterward.

  Unless—

  Lots of possibilities. I eased past Carolyn and began tracking the radio to its source. I passed through the dining room, where a mahogany breakfront and buffet had been rifled in fashion similar to the living-room desk, and entered a kitchen that had received a dose of the same treatment. A Panasonic stood on the butcher-block counter beside the refrigerator, blaring its transistorized heart out. I turned to Carolyn, raised a finger to my lips for silence, and switched off the radio in the middle of a rant about the latest increase in the price of oil.

  I closed my eyes and listened very carefully to the ensuing silence. You could have heard a pin drop, and I was certain no one had dropped one.

  “They’re gone,” I said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “If they were here we’d hear them. They’re not the silent type, whoever they are.”

  “We better get out.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you crazy, Bern? If they’re gone, that just means the cops are on their way, and even if they’re not, what are we gonna find to steal? Whoever did this already took everything.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Well, they took the sterling. What are we gonna do, swipe the stainless?” She followed me out of the kitchen and up a flight of stairs. “What do you expect to find, Bern?”

  “A coin collection. Maybe some jewelry.”

  “Where?”

  “Good question. What room is the wall safe in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then we’ll have to look for it, won’t we?”

  We didn’t have to look very hard because our predecessors in crime had taken all the pictures off the walls. We checked the library and guest bedroom on the second floor, then climbed another flight of stairs and found the wall safe in the master bedroom. The dreamy pastoral landscape which had screened it from view was on the floor now, along with the contents of both dressers and some broken glass from the overhead skylight. That, no doubt, was how they’d entered. And how they’d exited as well, I felt certain, lugging their loot across the rooftops and into the night. These clowns hadn’t locked up downstairs because they’d never opened the locks in the first place. They couldn’t have dealt with that Rabson in a year and a day.

  Nor had they been able to deal with the wall safe. I’m not sure how hard they tried. There were marks around the combination dial to show that someone had worked on it with a punch, hoping to knock the lock out and get into the safe that way. I didn’t see any evidence that they’d had an acetylene torch along, nor would one very likely have worked anyway. The safe was a sound one and the lock was a beauty.

  I commenced fiddling with the dial. Carolyn stood beside me, watching with more than idle curiosity, but before long we started to fidget and we were getting on each other’s nerves. Before I could suggest it she said something about having a look around. I promised to call her when I got the thing open.

  It took a little doing. I stripped off my rubber gloves—that Jimmy Valentine number of sanding one’s fingertips for increased sensitivity is nonsense, but there’s no point in making things more difficult than they have to be. I did a little of this and a little of that, using the combination of knowledge and intuition that you have to have if you’re going to be good with locks, and I got the last number first, as one always does with combination locks, and one at a time I got the other three numbers, and then I put my gloves on again and wiped the surfaces I’d touched and took a deep breath and whistled for Carolyn.

  She came in carrying a framed print. “It’s a Chagall lithograph,” she said. “Pencil-signed and numbered. I guess it’s worth a few hundred, anyway. Is it worth stealing?”

  “If you want to take i
t out of the frame.”

  She held it up. “I think it’ll fit in the attaché case. Are you getting anywhere with that mother?”

  “I’m just going to try a couple numbers at random,” I said. I dialed the four numbers in their proper sequence, felt a little click in my own head if not in the locking mechanism as the tumblers lined up, then swung the handle around to the left and opened the safe.

  We left the house as we’d entered it. I suppose we could have gone over the rooftops ourselves, but why? I paused in the kitchen to turn the radio on again. A commercial was offering a three-LP set of the hundred greatest rumba and samba hits. There was a toll-free number to call, but I neglected to jot it down. I unhooked the chain bolt and unlocked three locks, and out we went, and I let Carolyn hold the attaché case while I used my ring of picks and probes to manipulate all three locks shut again. In school they taught me that neatness counts, and the lessons you learn early in life stay with you.

  The fountain was still gurgling and the little garden was still being charming. I stripped off my rubber gloves, tucked them into a back pocket. Carolyn did the same with hers. I retrieved the attaché case and we made our way through the dark tunnel to the heavy iron gate. You didn’t need a key to let yourself out—there was a knob to turn, unreachable from the street side. I turned it and let us out, and the gate swung shut and locked after us.

  On the other side of the street, a slender young man with a wad of paper towel in his hand was bending over to clean up after his Airedale. He took no notice of us and we headed off in the opposite direction.