The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) Page 9

  “They don’t,” I allowed, “but at the same time I can see why they might want to. But isn’t that a step you decide to take after you’ve met the person and fallen in love? Janine had it the other way around.”

  “Janine of Romania.”

  “She had this picture in her mind—the house, the two kids, and her with a ring on her finger. That’s what she wanted, so she was out hunting for the man to stand next to her in the picture.”

  “And put a ring on her finger, and two buns in her oven.”

  “It seems backwards to me,” I said, “but maybe not. If you go ahead and fall in love first, suppose he turns out to be Mr. Not Quite Right?”

  “You’ve got your heart set on cows, and he’s holding out for dinosaurs.”

  “Whatever. It’s something to think about.”

  And, a little later:

  “Bern, what’s funny is the Romanian girl missed the point completely.”

  “I don’t really think she’s Romanian.”

  “I don’t care if she’s Etruscan, Bern. She looked at your clothes and your bookstore and your apartment, and everything screamed low rent.”

  “Well, of course my apartment rent is low. The place is rent-controlled. I’d be an idiot to move.”

  “Right.”

  “And market rent on the store is as low as it gets, because I don’t have to pay any. Otherwise it would be sky-high.”

  “I know, Bern.”

  “And my clothes—what’s the matter with my clothes? I told you that blazer’s from Brooks Brothers.”

  “Via Housing Works, Bern.”

  “It didn’t say so on the label. You said she missed the point. What point did she miss?”

  “The point that you were actually a pretty good prospect, at least from a financial standpoint. She thought you were irresponsible to pay two hundred dollars for dinner. What you were was a man celebrating a nice windfall. So what if the bookstore wasn’t jammed with buyers? You’d just made thirty-five grand in a matter of hours.”

  “Sure, but how often does that happen?”

  “Often enough to keep you from missing any meals. And your apartment may not be packed full of high-ticket furniture, but there’s a painting hanging on one wall that would bring a seven-figure price at auction.”

  “If I could sell it.”

  “It’s worth the money, whether you can sell it or not. And the fact of the matter is that you could sell it if you wanted to. Not for full price, and not openly, but there are collectors who’ll buy something knowing they can never show it to anyone. Like your Mr. Smith with his manuscript.”

  “So I was actually just the guy she was looking for all along, and she was too dumb to know it. I was that Scarsdale Galahad from the song, ready to buy her a split-level colonial in Westchester and support her in style by breaking into the neighbors’ houses. And if anything went wrong, I’d be just half an hour away in Sing Sing.”

  And later still:

  “Carolyn, I don’t want to get married.”

  “I’m glad you told me, Bern. Here I was building up my nerve to propose, and you just saved me a lot of embarrassment.”

  “Seriously, Carolyn?”

  “Oh, God, of course not.”

  “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. You know what I want?”

  “I hope it’s not pizza. They’re closed at this hour.”

  “I want everything to stay the same,” I said.

  “So do I.”

  “I want to have lunch with you every day, and drinks after work at the Bum Rap. I want Maxine to keep that dead-end job forever, just so she can go on being our waitress.”

  “She wouldn’t dare leave. She knows I’d kill her if she did.”

  “I don’t want to sell books online. I want to keep the bookstore, even if most of the time it’s just me and Raffles in there.”

  “And some girl with a Kindle.”

  “That girl with the Kindle,” I said, “set me up for the hottest night I’ve had in years.”

  “And when it was over—”

  “I felt bad, but it was worth it. And I’ll get over it, and do you know why?”

  “Because there’ll be other girls.”

  “There will,” I said, “and I’ll keep thinking one of those relationships has a future, but it never will, and that’s really the way I want it. One hopeless romance after another, with a lot of good times along the way.”

  “Me too, Bern.”

  “You want to know something? Even when I was in bed with her—”

  “Janine.”

  “Janine, Marie, whatever. Even when we were in outer space, smack in the middle of the Asterisk Belt, there was a part of my mind that knew I’d want to be rid of her sooner or later.”

  “You want to hang on to that part of your mind, Bern. It’s called sanity.”

  “If you say so. Never mind marriage. I knew we’d be through with each other by the time the summer was over.”

  “That soon?”

  “With maybe the occasional one-nighter down the road, for old time’s sake. Is the bottle empty?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, that’s okay. I guess we’ve had enough. Where was I?”

  “Done with Janine, except for an annual reunion.”

  “Same Time Next Year. That was a great play, and then it was a great movie. How often does that happen?”

  “Not too,” she said. “And what it really is, Bern, is a beautiful fantasy.”

  “The best. Carolyn, I’m glad she’s out of my life, I really am. But I’d give a lot for one more night with her.”

  “It was that good, huh?”

  “Yeah. It really was.”

  She thought about it. “I haven’t even met her myself,” she said, “but I think I’ve got a pretty good sense of her from you. And I think she’s gonna find the guy she’s looking for, and she’ll get married.”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it.”

  “And she’ll have two kids, and maybe even three, but my guess is she’ll stop at two. And then they’ll get a divorce.”

  “Why?”

  “Who cares? One way or the other, the odds are pretty good that the marriage will go in the toilet.”

  “Well, I don’t want her to be unhappy, Carolyn. I had a good time with her and I wish her well. I won’t sit around praying for her marriage to fail.”

  “But it probably will, Bern, with or without your prayers. And then she’ll move back to the city, the way people do, and you’ll get another shot at her.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Say the whole process takes seven years. She’ll be what, thirty-five? She’s sure to be a yoga-Pilates-personal trainer kind of girl, so she’ll be in good shape. Of course, she’ll be that much more experienced by then, so God only knows what kind of stuff she’ll want to do in bed . . .”

  I woke up on Carolyn’s couch with a cat on my chest. Don’t ask me which one. It was all I could do to determine the species.

  A note on the kitchen table assured me that she’d feed Raffles on her way to work. “Stay as long as you like. Food in the fridge if you can face it.”

  I couldn’t, nor could I face the world without a shower and a change of clothes. She’d anchored the note with a bottle of aspirin, and I got down a couple of tablets on my way out the door.

  By the time I’d had a shower and a shave I felt surprisingly good. I remembered I’d been meaning to get a haircut, and left the barbershop with my appetite restored. I stopped at the diner, stayed for a second cup of coffee, and it was getting on for noon by the time I got downtown to my store.

  Raffles did his oh-I’m-starving-feed-me number, rubbing against my ankles the way he learned in cat school. “Not a chance,” I told him. “Carolyn already fed you. You think we don’t talk to each other?”

  Speaking of which. I called her to tell her I’d pass on lunch today, thanked her for the use of her couch, and for thinking to feed the cat. “And for being such a
good friend,” I said. “I hope I wasn’t too bad last night.”

  “You were fine,” she said. “You didn’t puke, and you didn’t even get particularly maudlin. I’d have given you the bed and taken the couch myself, because I’m a better fit there, but you, uh—”

  “Passed out. Uh, am I remembering this right? Ginger and Joanne?”

  “Jim and Joseph.”

  “Do they stay in touch?”

  “They’re good buddies, Bern. They go to ballgames together.”

  “Ballgames.”

  “You know. Guy stuff.”

  I had three visitors in the first twenty minutes, or five if you count the two out-of-towners who wanted directions to the Strand. I rang up a couple of sales, and then they cleared out and I picked up my book. I hadn’t read a page before I was no longer alone.

  “Well, it’s about time, Bernie.”

  “You think?” I looked at my watch. “Good afternoon, Ray.”

  “I was here two hours ago,” he said, “and you weren’t. You keepin’ burglars’ hours?”

  “Carolyn and I stayed up late,” I said, “drinking scotch and talking about sex-change operations.”

  “Yeah? For you or for her?”

  “We couldn’t decide.”

  “Well, you’d want to talk it over first. I guess it musta been late by the time you got home.”

  “You’re being sly, Ray.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Asking trap questions. You evidently know I didn’t get home until this morning, and that means you were probably looking for me late last night. Why?”

  “Aw, last night I was sittin’ in front of the TV, and I had this idea. And I was gonna call you, but it was late, and besides I figured it was probably a stupid idea.”

  “And you let that stop you?”

  “Then I woke up this morning,” he said, “and the idea was still there, only it didn’t seem so stupid. So I figured I’d come by your place, maybe catch you before you had your breakfast.”

  “When was this?”

  “Maybe eight, eight-thirty. I pulled up in front of your building and called you on the phone, and I got the machine.”

  “Did you leave a message?”

  “Why would I do that? What I did was I had your doorman ring your apartment, and that didn’t get me anywhere either. So I went and had breakfast my own self, and then I went by the precinct and did a little of this and a little of that, and a little after ten I came down here, because I knew you’d be open.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “No, you weren’t. And that gave me more time to decide if my idea’s stupid, and I think it probably is, but I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

  “Perhaps it would help to share it.”

  “What are you, Dr. Phil? I was gettin’ there.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It has to do with this other thing I can’t get out of my head, which is Mrs. Ostermaier up on Ninety-second Street.”

  “You can’t seriously believe—”

  “Jesus, no, Bernie. I know you didn’t have nothin’ to do with it. What I had was this feelin’ that somethin’ about the crime scene was starin’ me in the face, and I just couldn’t see it.”

  “You want to describe it to me, Ray?”

  He shook his head. “What I want to do,” he said, “is show it to you. You’re a burglar, right?”

  “I used to be.”

  He gave me a look. “What you are is a burglar, Bernie, and what I been thinkin’ is you could give me a burglar’s-eye view of the situation.”

  “In what capacity? What would I be, some sort of civilian consultant to the NYPD?”

  “I suppose you could think of it that way. What you’d be is doin’ me a favor. Over the years I seen you pull plenty of rabbits out of plenty of hats, and a few people went away for murder on account of some quick thinkin’ and fancy footwork on your part. Here’s a nice woman got killed just because she had the sense to leave an opera before the fat lady sang, and that’s not right.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “So what do you say? I’m parked next to the hydrant down the block, we’ll take a quick run uptown on the FDR. I’ll have you back here in two hours.”

  “They’re hours I can’t spare,” I said. “I just opened up, Ray. I’ve got a business to run.”

  “Yeah, I can see how customers are stormin’ the place. It’s hard for you and me to have a conversation the way they keep interruptin’.”

  “How’s six o’clock? I’ll skip drinks with Carolyn and go uptown with you instead. Does that work?”

  “Actually,” he said, “it’s probably better. By then I’ll have the autopsy results. Not that knowin’ what killed her’s gonna make it easier to work out who killed her.”

  “Still,” I said, “it can’t hurt.”

  Bells tinkled, my door opened, and a customer walked in.

  “See?” I said. “What did I tell you? I’ve got a business to run, Ray, just like I said. I’ll see you at six.”

  He left, and I waited until the door had closed behind him, then approached my visitor.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Smith,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  The Ostermaier house was on the uptown side of 92nd Street, a few doors from Lexington Avenue. It fit the local definition of a brownstone, which isn’t limited to edifices with façades of that color. This specimen was fronted with limestone, and I had to agree with the Ostermaier children; it was too big to be occupied by one woman living alone.

  I followed Ray up the flight of stone steps leading to the parlor floor entrance. Yellow crime-scene tape sealed the door, backed up by an NYPD-applied padlock.

  Ray peeled back the tape and reached into his pocket. “Now I know a man with your talents wouldn’t need this,” he said, producing a key, “but how would it look for the neighbors?”

  Inside, the place smelled of air freshener, which was probably all to the good. The air held a trace of what the air freshener was there to mask, and you wouldn’t mistake it for Chanel No. 5. We walked through a mirrored foyer into the large living room, and my eyes went to where the woman had been lying. There was no chalk outline, they don’t even do that on TV anymore, but there might as well have been.

  “On the chair,” I said. “Is that the coat she was wearing?”

  “Musta been. Took it off, dropped it on the chair.”

  “Nice coat,” I said. “Bottle green with a fur collar. She walked in the door, took off the coat, and she would have hung it up but instead she decided to drop dead on the carpet.”

  “As far as anybody knows. Maybe she had it over her arm when she died, and it landed on the floor next to her.”

  “And the intruder moved it? Maybe.” I had a closer look at where she’d fallen. “The carpet’s by Trent Barling,” I said. “American, Art Deco period.”

  “See, that’s the kind of thing you would know, Bernie. But why bother learnin’ about rugs? You have any idea what that thing must weigh? A man’d be better off stealin’ a hot stove.”

  On the other hand, the smaller orientals are readily portable, and there’s an eager aftermarket for the better ones. But I didn’t feel compelled to point this out.

  “It’s easy to see where you found her,” I said, “because the rest of the carpet’s covered with stuff. Books, knickknacks, framed photographs. And a nice clear space for a body. Her head was at that end? Was she prone or supine?”

  “I can never remember which is which. She was layin’ face up.”

  Lying face up, I thought, but how many people get that right? “Supine,” I said. “Face down would be prone.”

  “Like I’ll remember, Bern. What’s it matter, anyway?”

  “It doesn’t.” I knelt down next to a carving, three inches tall, of a man with Chinese features and a wispy beard. He was leaning on a cane.

  “Ivory,” I said.

  “You can’t bring that stuff into the country. On account of the e
lephants.”

  “You could back when this was made. She also had an elephant-foot umbrella stand, Ray. Over there next to the piano, and what do you bet the piano keys are ivory?”

  “Not the black ones.”

  “Ivory and ebony,” I said. “They stopped using ivory for piano keys years ago. I wonder if they still use ebony. You can get it without killing elephants, but for all I know it’s an endangered tree.”

  “Everything’s endangered nowadays,” he said, “except for the crap nobody wants.”

  “Playing cards,” I said. “All over the place. Did anybody bother to count them? It’s not hard to believe there are fifty-two of them here.”

  “Assumin’ she was playin’ with a full deck.”

  “An empty gift box,” I said, continuing the inventory. “The lid’s over there. I wonder what was in the box.”

  “Take your pick, Bernie. Coulda been any of the crap that’s all over the floor. Or maybe it was just an empty box she was keepin’.”

  “See the tissue paper? I bet it was in the box. And there’s a yard or so of blue ribbon. The box is light blue, so dark blue ribbon would be a good choice.”

  “Bernie, what the hell difference does it make?”

  “Who knows? You brought me here to observe, didn’t you? So that’s what I’m doing. Right now I’m observing a cigarette lighter, one of those sterling silver table lighters. Ronson must have sold a million of them.”

  “My folks had one.”

  “Mine had two. I remember we had one, and then somebody gave us another for a present, and my mother had to pretend it was just what she always wanted. You had to have lighters handy for your guests, and plenty of ashtrays, and you’d have cigarette dishes on all the tables, with cigarettes in them, getting stale while your guests smoked their own.”

  “They didn’t get stale in our house, Bernie. You can probably guess who smoked ’em.”

  “And you can probably guess who smoked ours. I remember when you quit, Ray. You had a tough time.”

  “The worst. Did you ever smoke? I’m tryin’ to picture you with a cigarette.”

  “I quit when I went away.”