The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (4 page)

And it might be months before Appling ever knew they were gone. It was likely that he’d detect their absence the first time he pulled out an album and paged through it, but it was by no means a sure thing. I’d left twenty times as much as I’d taken, in volume if not in value, and he might open a book, turn to a specific page, add a stamp, and never notice that other pages were missing.

It didn’t really matter. He wouldn’t notice the minute he walked into the house, and when he did notice he couldn’t say when the theft had taken place—it might have occurred before or after his Greenbrier jaunt. His insurance company would pay, or it wouldn’t, and he’d come out ahead or behind or dead even, and who cared? Not I. A batch of pieces of colored paper would have changed ownership, and so would a batch of pieces of green paper, and no one on God’s earth was going to miss a meal as a result of my night’s activities.

I’m not offering a moral defense of myself, you understand. Burglary is morally reprehensible and I’m aware of the fact. But I wasn’t stealing the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, or the bread from a child’s mouth, or objects of deep sentimental value. I’ll tell you, I love collectors. I can ransack their holdings with such little guilt.

The state, however, takes a sterner view of things. They draw no distinction between swiping a philatelist’s stamps and lifting a widow’s rent money. However good I get at rationalizing my pursuit, I still have to do what I can to stay out of jail.

Which meant getting the hell out of there. I turned off lights—there was a Tiffany lamp in the study, too, wouldn’t you know—and I made my way to the apartment’s front door. My stomach growled en route and I thought of checking the fridge and building myself a sandwich, figuring they’d no more miss a little food than a fortune in rare stamps. But Sing Sing and Attica are overflowing with chaps who stopped for a sandwich, and if I just got out of there I could buy myself a whole restaurant.

I squinted through the peephole, saw no one in the hallway, and put my ear to the door and heard no one in the hallway, either. I unlocked the door, eased it open,
saw
no one in the hallway, and let myself out. I picked the Poulard lock again, locking it this time so as to spare the manufacturer’s feelings. I did not reset the spurious burglar alarm cylinder, just gave it a wink and went on my way, pausing only to smudge whatever prints I might have left on the outside of the door. Then, attaché case in hand, I crossed to the fire door, opened it, passed through it, and let out a long breath as it swung quietly shut behind me.

I climbed one flight, stopped long enough to strip off my rubber gloves and stuff them into my jacket pocket. (I didn’t want to open the attaché case and chance spilling stamps all over the goddamn place.) I climbed three more flights of stairs, slipped the lock on the fire door, emerged in the hallway, and rang for the elevator. While it ascended from the lobby I checked my watch.

Twenty-five minutes to one. It had been close to eleven-thirty when I said good night to Onderdonk, so I’d spent just about an hour in the Appling apartment. It seemed to me that I should have been able to get in and out in half an hour, but I couldn’t have shaved too many minutes off the time I spent going through the albums. I could have stayed out of the bedrooms, perhaps, and I didn’t have to give as much attention as I did to the Tiffany lamps, but what is it they say about all work and no play? I was out of there safely and that was what counted.

A shame, though, that I couldn’t have made my exit before midnight, when service shifts commonly change at apartment buildings. I’d be seen now by a second elevator operator, a second concierge, a second doorman. Otherwise I’d have been seen by the same set a second time, and which was riskier? Not that it mattered, since I’d already given my name, and—

The elevator arrived. As I stepped into the car I turned toward Onderdonk’s closed door. “ ’Night now,” I said. “I’ll have those figures for you as soon as I can.”

The door closed, the car descended. I leaned back against its wood paneling and crossed my legs at the ankle. “Long day,” I said.

“Just starting for me,” the operator said.

I tried to forget about the camera overhead. It was like trying to forget that you’ve got your left foot in a bucket of ice water. I couldn’t look at it and I couldn’t suppress the urge to look at it, and I did a lot of elaborate yawning. It was, actually, a rather quick ride, but it certainly didn’t seem that way.

A brisk nod to the concierge. The doorman held the door for me, then hurried past me to the curb to summon a taxi. One turned up almost immediately. I gave the doorman a buck and told the driver to drop me at Madison and Seventy-second. I paid him, walked a block west to Fifth, and caught another cab back to my place. On the way I balanced the attaché case on my knees and relived some of the hour I’d spent in apartment 11-B. The moment when the Poulard lock, teased and tickled beyond endurance, threw up its tumblers and surrendered. The sight of that inverted airmail stamp, alone on a page, as if it had been waiting for me since the day they misprinted it.

I tipped the cabby a buck. My own doorman, a glassy-eyed young fellow who worked the midnight-to-eight shift in a permanent muscatel haze, did not rush to open the door of the taxi. I suppose he’d have held the lobby door for me but he didn’t have to. It was propped open. He stayed on his stool, greeting me with a sly conspiratorial smile. I wonder what secret he thought we shared.

Upstairs I fumbled my own key into my own lock, for a change, and opened the door. The light was on. Considerate of them, I thought, to leave a light for the burglar. Wait a minute, I thought. What was this
them
stuff? I was the one who’d left the light on, except I hadn’t, I never did.

What was going on?

I put a foot inside, then drew it warily back, as if trying to get the hang of a new dance step. I went on in and turned toward the couch and blinked, and there, blinking back at me like a slightly cockeyed owl, was Carolyn Kaiser.

“Well, Jesus,” she said, “it’s about time. Where the hell have you been, Bern?”

I pulled the door shut, turned the bolt. “You picked your way through my Rabson lock,” I said. “I didn’t think you knew how to do that.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t tell me the doorman let you in. He’s not supposed to, and anyway he doesn’t have a key.”

“
I
have a key, Bern. You gave me keys to your place. Remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“So I stuck the key in the lock and turned it, and damned if the thing didn’t pop open. You ought to try it yourself sometime. Works like a charm.”

“Carolyn—”

“Have you got anything to drink? I know you’re supposed to wait until it’s offered, but who’s got the patience?”

“There’s two bottles of beer in the fridge,” I said. “One’s going to wash down the sandwich I’m about to make, but you’re welcome to the other one.”

“Dark Mexican beer, right? Dos Equis?”

“Right.”

“They’re gone. What else have you got?”

I thought for a moment. “There’s a little Scotch left.”

“A single malt? Glen Islay, something like that?”

“You found it and it’s gone, too.”

“ ’Fraid so, Bern.”

“Then we’re fresh out,” I said, “unless you want to knock off the Lavoris. I think it’s about sixty proof.”

“Child of a dog.”

“Carolyn—”

“You know something? I think I’m gonna go back to saying ‘son of a bitch.’ It may be sexist but it’s a lot more satisfying than ‘child of a dog.’ You go around saying ‘child of a dog’ and people don’t even know you’re cursing.”

“Carolyn, what are you doing here?”

“I’m dying of thirst, that’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re drunk.”

“No shit, Bernie.”

“You are. You drank two beers and a pint of Scotch and you’re shitfaced.”

She braced an elbow on her knee, rested her head in the palm of her hand and gave me a look. “In the first place,” she said, “it wasn’t a pint, it was maybe six ounces, which isn’t even half a pint. We’re talking about three drinks in a good bar or two drinks in a terrific bar. In the second place, it’s not nice to tell your best friend that she’s shitfaced. Pie-eyed, maybe. Half in the bag, three sheets to the wind, a little under the weather, all acceptable. But shitfaced, that’s not a nice thing to say to someone you love. And in the third place—”

“In the third place, you’re still drunk.”

“In the third place, I was drunk
before
I drank your booze in the first place.” She beamed triumphantly, then frowned. “Or should that be the fourth place, Bernie? I don’t know. It’s hell keeping track of all these places. In the fifth place I was drunk when I got back to my place, and then I had a drink before I came up to your place, so that makes me—”

“Out of place,” I suggested.

“I don’t know what it makes me.” She waved an impatient hand. “That’s not the important thing.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“What is?”

She looked furtively around. “I’m not supposed to tell anybody,” she said.

“’To tell anybody what?”

“There aren’t any bugs in this place, are there, Bern?”

“Just the usual roaches and silverfish. What’s the problem, Carolyn?”

“The problem is my pussy’s been snatched.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, God,” she said. “My kid’s been catnapped.”

“Your kid’s been—Carolyn, you don’t have any kids. How much did you have to drink, anyway? Before you got here?”

“Shit on toast,” she said, loud. “Will you just listen to me? Please? It’s Archie.”

“Archie?”

She nodded. “Archie,” she said. “They’ve kidnapped Archie Goodwin.”

“T
he cat,” I said.

“Right.”

“Archie the cat. Your Burmese cat.
That
Archie.”

“Of course, Bern. Who else?”

“You said Archie Goodwin, and the first thing I thought—”

“That’s his full name, Bern.”

“I know that.”

“I didn’t mean Archie Goodwin the person, Bern, because he’s a character in the Nero Wolfe stories, and the only way he could have been kidnapped would be in a book, and if that happened I wouldn’t run up here in the middle of the night and carry on about it. You want to know the truth, Bern, I think you need a drink more than I do, which is saying something.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

It was more like five. I walked down the hall past my friend Mrs. Hesch’s apartment to Mrs. Seidel’s. Mrs. Seidel was visiting family in Shaker Heights, according to Mrs. Hesch. I rang her bell for safety’s sake, then let myself into her apartment. (She’d gone off without double-locking her door, so all I had to do was loid the springlock with a strip of plastic. Someone, I thought, would have to talk to Mrs. Seidel about that.)

I came back from there with a mostly full bottle of Canadian Club. I poured drinks for both of us. Carolyn had hers swallowed before I had the cap back on the bottle.

“That’s better,” she said.

I took a drink myself, and as it hit bottom I remembered that I was pouring it into a very empty stomach. It would be a lot easier to get me drunk than to get Carolyn sober, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I opened the fridge and built a sandwich of thin-sliced Polish ham and Monterey jack cheese on one of those dark musky rye breads that comes in little square loaves. I took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully and could have killed for a bottle of Dos Equis.

“What about Archie?” I said.

“He doesn’t drink.”

“Carolyn—”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be drunk, Bern.” She tilted the bottle and helped herself to a few more cc’s of the CC, as it were. “I went home and fed the cats and had something to eat, and then I got restless and went out. I kept bopping around. I think I had a touch of moon madness. Did you happen to notice the moon?”

“No.”

“Neither did I, but I’ll bet it’s full or close to it. I kept feeling as though the problem was that I just wasn’t in the right place. So I’d go somewhere else and I’d feel the same way. I went to Paula’s and the Duchess and Kelly’s West and a couple of straight bars on Bleecker Street, and then I went back to Paula’s and played a little pool, and then I hit this pigpen on Nineteenth Street, I forget the name, and then I hit the Duchess again—”

“I get the picture.”

“I was bouncing is what I was doing, and of course you have to have a drink when you go to a place, and I went to a lot of places.”

“And had a lot of drinks.”

“What else? But I wasn’t looking to get drunk, see. I was looking to get lucky. Will true love ever come to Carolyn Kaiser? And, failing that, how about true lust?”

“Not tonight, I gather.”

“I’ll tell you, I couldn’t get arrested. I called Alison a couple of times, which I swore I wasn’t gonna do, but it’s all right because she didn’t answer. Then I went home. I figured I’d make it a reasonably early night, maybe have a brandy before I turned in, and I opened the door and the cat was missing. Archie, I mean. Ubi was fine.”

Archie, full name Archie Goodwin, was a sleek Burmese given to eloquent yowling. Ubi, full name Ubiquity or Ubiquitous, I forget which, was a plump Russian Blue, more affectionate and a good deal less assertive than his Burmese buddy. Both had started life as males, and each had received at a tender age the sort of surgical attention which leaves one purring in soprano.

“He was hiding somewhere,” I suggested.

“No way. I looked in all his hiding places. In things, under things, behind things. Besides, I ran the electric can opener. That’s like a fire alarm to a dalmatian.”

“Maybe he snuck out.”

“How? The window was shut and the door was locked. John Dickson Carr couldn’t have slipped him out of there.”

“The door was locked?”

“Locked up tight. I always double-lock my dead bolt locks when I go out. You made me a believer in that department. And I locked the Fox police lock. I know I locked all those locks because I had to unlock them to get in.”

“So he went out when you left. Or maybe he snuck out while you were letting yourself in.”

“I would have noticed.”

“Well, you said yourself that you’d had a few drinks more than usual to celebrate the full moon. Maybe—”

“I wasn’t that bad, Bern.”

“Okay.”

“And he never does that anyway. Neither of the cats ever tries to get out. Look, you could say this and I could say that and we’d be going around Robin Hood’s barn because I know for a fact the cat was snatched. I got a phone call.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what time I got home and I don’t know how much time I spent looking for the cat and running the electric can opener. There was a little brandy and I finally poured some for myself and sat down with it and the phone rang.”

“And?”

She poured another drink, a short one, and paused with the glass halfway to her lips. She said, “Bern? It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Huh?”

“I mean I could see how it could be a joke that got out of hand, but if it was, tell me now, huh? If you tell me now there won’t be any hard feelings, but if you don’t tell me now all bets are off.”

“You think I took your cat.”

“No I don’t. I don’t think you’ve got that kind of an asshole sense of humor. But people do wacky things, and who else could unlock all those locks and lock ’em up again on the way out? So all I want you to do is say, ‘Yes, Carolyn, I took your cat,’ or ‘No, you little idiot, I didn’t take your cat,’ and then we can get on with it.”

“No, you little idiot, I didn’t take your cat.”

“Thank God. Except if you had I’d know the cat was safe.” She looked at the glass in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. “Did I just pour this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I must have known what I was doing,” she said, and drank it. “The phone call.”

“Right. Tell me about it.”

“I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman. It was either a man making his voice high or a woman making her voice husky, and I couldn’t tell you which. Whoever it was had an accent like Peter Lorre except really phony. ‘Ve haff ze poosycat.’ That kind of accent.”

“Is that what he said? ‘Ve haff ze poosycat’?”

“Or words to that effect. If I want to see him again, di dah di dah di dah di dah.”

“What are all the di dahs about?”

“You’re not gonna believe this, Bern.”

“He asked for money?”

“A quarter of a million dollars or I’ll never see my cat again.”

“A quarter of a—”

“Million dollars. Right.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Dollars. Right.”

“For—”

“A cat. Right.”

“I’ll be a—”

“Child of a dog. Right. So will I.”

“Well, it’s nuts,” I said. “In the first place the cat’s not worth any real money. Is he show quality?”

“Probably, but so what? You can’t breed him.”

“And he’s not a television star like Morris. He’s just a cat.”

“Just my cat,” she said. “Just an animal I happen to love.”

“You want a hankie?”

“What I want is to stop being an idiot. Shit, I can’t help it. Gimme the hankie. Where am I gonna get a quarter of a million bucks, Bern?”

“You could start by taking all your old deposit bottles back to the deli.”

“They add up, huh?”

“Little grains of water, little drops of sand. That’s another thing that’s crazy. Who would figure you could come up with that kind of money? Your apartment’s cozy, but Twenty-two Arbor Court isn’t the Charlemagne. Anyone bright enough to get in and out and lock up after himself—he really locked up after himself?”

“Swear to God.”

“Who has keys to your place?”

“Just you.”

“What about Randy Messinger?”

“She wouldn’t pull this kind of shit. And anyway the Fox lock is new since she and I were lovers. Remember when you installed it for me?”

“And you locked it when you left, and unlocked it when you came back.”

“Definitely.”

“You didn’t just turn the cylinder. The bar moved and everything.”

“Bernie, trust me. It was locked and I had to unlock it.”

“That rules out Randy.”

“She wouldn’t have done it.”

“No, but somebody could have copied her keys. Do I still have my set?” I went and checked, and I still had them. I turned, saw my attaché case propped up against the sofa. If I sold its contents for their full market value, I might have two-fifths of the price of a secondhand Burmese cat.

Oh, I thought.

“Take a couple of aspirin,” I said. “And if you want another drink, have it with hot water and sugar. You’ll sleep better.”

“Sleep?”

“Uh-huh, and the sooner the better. You take the bed, I’ll take the couch.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’ll take the couch. Except I won’t because I don’t want to go to sleep and I can’t stay here anyway. They said they would call me in the morning.”

“That’s why I want you to get to sleep. So you’ll be clearheaded when they call.”

“Bernie, I got news for you. I’m not gonna be clearheaded in the morning. I’m gonna have a head like a soccer ball that Pelé got pissed at.”

“Well, I’ll be clearheaded,” I said, “and one head is better than none. The aspirin’s in the medicine cabinet.”

“What a clever place for it. I bet you’re the kind of guy who keeps milk in the fridge and soap in the soap dish.”

“I’ll fix you a hot toddy.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I have to be at my place for when they call.”

“They’ll call here.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because you don’t have a quarter of a million dollars,” I said, “and who could mistake you for David Rockefeller? So if they want a hefty ransom for Archie they must expect you to steal it, and that means they must know you’ve got a friend in the stealing business, and that means they’ll call here. Drink this and take your aspirin and get ready for bed.”

“I didn’t bring pajamas. Have you got a shirt or something that I can sleep in?”

“Sure.”

“And I’m not sleepy. I’ll just toss and turn, but I guess that’s all right.”

Five minutes later she was snoring.