The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (7 page)

“From Tremaine?” the concierge said, and he and the doorman exchanged smiles. “Suit yourself,” he told me, and picked up the intercom phone. “Miz Tremaine? Delivery for you, looks like flowers. The delivery boy’s bringing them up. Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and shook his head. “Go on up,” he said. “Elevator’s over there. It’s apartment 9-C.”

I glanced at my watch in the elevator. The timing, I thought, could not have been better. It was three-thirty. The doorman, the concierge and the elevator operator were not the crew who’d seen me enter last night, nor had they been around when I left with Appling’s stamps in my attaché case. And in half an hour they’d go off duty, before they’d had a chance to wonder why the kid with the flowers was spending so much time in Ms. Tremaine’s apartment. The crew that relieved them wouldn’t realize I’d come delivering flowers and would assume I’d had legitimate business with some other tenant. Anyway, they don’t hassle you as much on the way out, assuming you must have been okay to get past their security the first time around. It’s different if you try to carry out the furniture, of course, but generally speaking getting in’s the hard part.

The elevator stopped on Nine and the operator pointed at the appropriate door. I thanked him and went and stood in front of it, waiting for the sound of the door closing. It didn’t close. Of course it didn’t. They waited until the tenant opened the door. Well, she was expecting the flowers anyway, so what was I waiting for?

I poked the doorbell. Chimes sounded within, and after a moment the door opened. The woman who answered it had improbable auburn hair and a face that had fallen one more time than it had been lifted. She was wearing a sort of dressing gown with an oriental motif and she had a look about her of someone who had just smelled something unseemly.

“Flowers,” she said. “Now are you quite sure those are for me?”

“Ms. Leona Tremaine?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then they’re for you.”

I was still listening for the sound of the elevator door, and I was beginning to realize I wasn’t going to hear it. And why should I? He wasn’t going anywhere, he’d wait right there until she’d taken the flowers and given me my tip, and then he’d whisk me downstairs again. Terrific. I’d found a way to get into the Charlemagne but I still needed a way to stay there.

“I can’t think who’d send me flowers,” she said, taking the wrapped bouquet from me. “Unless it might be my sister’s boy Lewis, but why would he take a notion of sending me flowers? There must be some mistake.”

“There’s a card,” I said.

“Oh, there’s a card,” she said, discovering it for herself. “Just wait a moment. Let me see if there hasn’t been some mistake here. No, that’s my name, Leona Tremaine. Now let me open this.”

Didn’t anyone else in the goddamned building want the elevator? Would nothing summon this putz out of his reverie and float him away to another floor?

“‘Fondly, Donald Brown,’” she read aloud. “Donald Brown. Donald. Brown. Donald Brown. Now who could that be?”

“Uh.”

“Well, they’re perfectly lovely, aren’t they?” She sniffed industriously, as if determined to inhale not merely the bouquet but the petals as well. “And fragrant. Donald Brown. It’s a familiar name, but—well, I’m sure there’s been a mistake, but I’ll just enjoy them all the same. I’ll have to get down a vase, I’ll have to put them in water—” She broke off suddenly, remembering that I was there. “Is there something else, young man?”

“Well, I just—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m forgetting you, aren’t I? Just one moment, let me get my bag. I’ll just put these down, here we are, here we are, and thank you very much, and my thanks to Donald Brown, whoever he may be.”

The door closed.

I turned and there was the goddamned elevator, waiting for to carry me home. The attendant wasn’t exactly smiling but he did look amused. I rode down and walked through the lobby. The doorman grinned when he saw me coming.

“Well,” he said. “How’d you make out, fella?”

“Make out?”

“She give you a good tip?”

“She gave me a quarter,” I said.

“Hey, cheer up, that’s not bad for Tremaine. She doesn’t part with a nickel all year round and then at Christmas she tips the building staff five bucks a man. That’s ten cents a week. Can you believe it?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can believe it.”

I
didn’t keep Leona Tremaine’s quarter for very long. I walked around the corner, passed a watering hole called Big Charlie’s, and had a cup of coffee at a lunch counter on Madison Avenue, where I left the quarter as a tip, hoping it would delight the waitress as much as it had delighted me. I got out of there and started walking uptown until I came to a florist.

It was past four. The shift would have changed by now, unless someone was late. Still, it would probably be easier getting past a crew who’d seen me last night than convincing the doorman and concierge I wanted to make another in-person delivery.

I went in and paid $7.98 for essentially the same assortment that had set me back $4.98 on the West Side. Ah, well. No doubt this chap had higher rent to pay. In any event, I might get another quarter from Ms. Tremaine, and that would offset some of my expenses.

Leona Tremaine,
I wrote once more on the outside of the envelope. And, on the card,
Won’t you say I’m forgiven? Donald Brown.

The staff had turned over at the Charlemagne. I recognized the concierge and the doorman from the night before, but if my face was familiar they didn’t remark on it. Last night I’d been a guest of a tenant, all decked out in suit and tie, while today I was a short-sleeved member of the working class. If either of them recognized me, he probably assumed he’d seen me delivering flowers another time.

Again the concierge offered to see that the flowers were delivered, and again I insisted on making the delivery in person, and again the doorman snickered, guessing that I wanted my tip. It was nice to see they all had their lines down pat. The concierge announced me on the intercom and Eduardo took me up to the ninth floor, where Ms. Tremaine was waiting in the doorway of her apartment.

“Why, it’s you again,” she said. “I can’t understand this at all. Are you
sure
these flowers are for me?”

“The card says—”

“The card, the card, the card,” she said, and opened its envelope. “‘Won’t you say I’m forgiven? Donald Brown.’ What a curious sentiment. More specific than
fondly,
I daresay, but rather more baffling. Who is this Donald Brown and why am I to forgive him?”

The elevator had not gone away.

“I’m supposed to ask if there’s a reply,” I said.

“A reply? A reply? To whom am I supposed to address this reply? It’s quite clear to me that I’m not the intended recipient of these flowers, and yet how could such a mistake have been made? I no more know of another Leona Tremaine than I know any Donald Brown. Unless it’s someone I knew years ago whose name has apparently slipped my recollection.” Her hands, tipped with persimmon-colored nails, unwrapped the elusive Mr. Brown’s offering. “Lovely,” she said. “Lovelier than the last, but I don’t understand why they’ve been given to me. I don’t begin to understand it.”

“I could call the store.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I could call the flower shop,” I suggested. “Could I use your phone? If there’s a mistake I’ll get in trouble, and if there’s no mistake maybe they can tell you something about the person who sent you the flowers.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I really better call,” I said. “I don’t know if I should leave the flowers without calling in.”

“Well,” she said. “Well, yes, perhaps you’d better call.”

She led me inside, drew the door shut. I tried to hear the elevator going off on other business, but of course I couldn’t hear anything. I followed Leona Tremaine into a thickly carpeted living room filled with more furniture than it needed, the bulk of it French Provincial. The chairs and sofa were mostly tufted and the colors ran to a lot of pink and white. A cat displayed himself on what looked to be the most comfortable of the chairs. He was a snow-white Persian and his whiskers were intact.

“There’s a telephone,” she said, pointing to one of those old French-style instruments trimmed out in gold and white enamel. I lifted the receiver to my ear and dialed Onderdonk’s number. The line was busy.

“It’s busy,” I said. “People phone in orders all the time. You know how it is.” Why was I running off at the mouth like this? “I’ll try again in a minute.”

“Well.”

Why was Onderdonk’s line busy? He’d been out earlier. Why couldn’t he stay out, now that I’d finally gotten into his building? I couldn’t leave now, for God’s sake. I’d never get back in again.

I picked up the phone and called Carolyn Kaiser. When she answered I said, “Miz Kaiser, this is Jimmie. I’m up at Miz Tremaine’s at the Charlemagne.”

“You got the wrong number,” my quick-witted henchperson said. “Wait a minute. Did you say—Bernie? Is that you?”

“Right, the delivery,” I said. “Same as before. She says she don’t know any Donald Brown and she don’t think the flowers are for her. Right.”

“You’re calling from somebody’s apartment.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

“Is she suspicious of you?”

“No, the thing is she doesn’t know who this guy is.”

“What’s it all about, Bern? Are you just killing time?”

“Right.”

“You want me to talk to her? I’ll tell her What’s-his-face paid cash and he gave her name and address. Gimme the names again.”

“Donald Brown. And she’s Leona Tremaine.”

“Gotcha.”

I handed the phone to Ms. Tremaine, who’d been hovering. She said, “Hello? to whom am I speaking, please?” and then she said things like “Yes” and “I see,” and “But I don’t—” and “It’s so mysterious.” And then she gave the phone back to me.

“Someday,” said Carolyn, “all of this will be crystal clear to me.”

“Sure thing, Miz Kaiser.”

“Same to you, Mr. Rhodenbarr. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I hung up. Leona Tremaine said, “‘Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.’ Your Donald Brown is a tall, gray-haired gentleman, elegantly dressed, who carried a cane and paid for both deliveries with a pair of crisp twenty-dollar bills. He did not give his address.” Her face softened. “Perhaps it’s someone I knew years ago,” she said quietly. “Under another name, perhaps. And perhaps I’ll hear further from him. I’m sure to hear further from him, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, if he went to all this trouble—”

“Exactly. He would scarcely go to such lengths merely to remain forever mysterious. Oh, dear,” she said, and fluffed her auburn hair. “Such unaccustomed excitement.”

I edged toward the door. “Well,” I said. “I guess I’d better be going.”

“Yes, well, you’ve been very kind, making that phone call.” We walked together toward the door. “Oh,” she said, remembering. “Just let me get my bag and I’ll give you something for your trouble.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “You took care of me before.”

“That’s right,” she said. “I did, didn’t I? It slipped my mind. It’s good of you to remind me.”

If the elevator’s there, I thought, I’ll just give up. But it wasn’t. The floor indicator showed it on Three, and as I watched it moved to Four. Maybe Eduardo had forgotten about me. Then again, maybe he was on his way back.

I opened the fire door and went out onto the stairs.

Now what? Onderdonk’s line was busy. I’d dialed the number from memory and I could have gotten it wrong, or it could have been busy because someone else had dialed the same number a few seconds before I did. Or he could be home.

I couldn’t chance breaking in if anybody was home. And I couldn’t knock on the door first, either. And I couldn’t spend eternity on the stairs, because while it was possible the concierge and elevator operator and doorman would forget all about me, it was also possible they would not. A call on the intercom would establish that I’d left the Tremaine apartment, at which point they could either assume I’d left via the stairs (or even on the elevator) without anyone’s noting the fact or else they’d figure I was still in the building.

In which case they might start looking for me.

Even if they didn’t, the stairway was no place to be. I had to be able to establish via the telephone that Onderdonk’s apartment was empty before I could enter it. And, once I’d entered it, I had to wait until midnight before I left with the painting in tow. Because the staff that was on duty now would certainly remember me, no matter what I did, and what kind of florist’s delivery boy leaves a building an hour after he brings the flowers? I could perhaps get away with it, merely sullying Ms. Tremaine’s reputation a bit, letting them assume we’d passed the time in amorous dalliance, but if they’d checked with her in the meanwhile and already
knew
I’d left—

I climbed two flights of stairs. I loided the fire door, checked the hallway, found it empty, and did the only sensible thing I could think of. Without bothering to put on my gloves, without even taking the obvious precaution of ringing the bell, and certainly without wasting a moment on the mock burglar alarm, I whipped out my ring of picks and probes and let myself into John Charles Appling’s apartment.

F
or a moment I thought I’d made a horrible mistake. The apartment was brighter by day than it had been on my last visit. Even with the drapes drawn a certain amount of daylight filtered in, and I thought there were lights on, indicating someone’s presence. My heart stopped or raced or skipped a beat or whatever it does at such times, and then it calmed down and so did I. I put on my rubber gloves and locked the door and took a deep breath.

It felt very odd being back in the Appling place. There was once again the thrill of illicit entry, but it was diminished by the fact that I’d been here before. You can get as much pleasure the second or third or hundredth time you make love to a particular woman—you can get more, actually—but you can’t get that triumphant sense of conquest more than once, and so it is too with the seduction of locks and the breaching of thresholds. On top of that, I hadn’t broken in this time to steal anything. I was just looking for sanctuary.

And that was strange indeed. Less than twenty-four hours earlier I’d been in a state of high tension that didn’t begin to dissipate until I left this apartment. Now I’d had to break into it all over again just to feel safe.

I went to the phone, picked it up. But why call Onderdonk now? I didn’t want to leave the building until midnight, so why break into his place before then? I could go now, of course, if he was out. I could snatch the Mondrian and bring it back downstairs to the Appling apartment, and I could wait there until it was after midnight and safe to leave.

But I didn’t want to. Better to stay where I was and call Onderdonk around midnight, and if he was out I could break and enter and leave in a hurry, and if he was in I could say, “Sorry, wrong number,” and give him three or four or five hours to go to sleep, and then do my breaking and entering while he lay snug in his bed. I’d rather not hit a dwelling while its occupants are at home, intent as I am on avoiding human contact while I work, but the one advantage of visiting them when they’re already at home is you don’t have to worry about their coming home before you’re done. In this case I wanted one thing and one thing only and I didn’t have to search for it. It was right out there in the living room, and if he was asleep in the bedroom I wouldn’t have to go anywhere near him.

I dialed the number anyway. It rang half a dozen times and I hung up. I’d have let it ring longer, but since I wasn’t going in anyway, not for at least seven hours, why bother?

I crossed the living room, edged the drapery aside with a rubber-tipped finger. The window looked out on Fifth Avenue, and from where I stood I had a fairly spectacular view of Central Park. I also had no need to worry about anyone looking in, unless someone was perched half a mile away on Central Park West with a pair of binoculars and a whole lot of patience, and that didn’t seem too likely. I drew the drapes and pulled up a chair so that I could look out at the park. I picked out the zoo, the reservoir, the band shell, and other landmarks. I could see plenty of runners, on the circular drive and the bridle path and the running track around the reservoir. Watching them was like observing highway traffic from an airplane.

Too bad I couldn’t be out there with them. It was a perfect day for it.

I got restless after a while and moved around the apartment. In Appling’s study I took down a stamp album and paged idly through it. I saw a number of things I really should have taken on my last visit but I didn’t even consider taking them now. Before I’d been a burglar, a predator on the prowl. This time around I was a guest, albeit uninvited, and I could hardly so abuse my host’s hospitality.

I did enjoy looking at his stamps, though, without being under any obligation to make them my own. I sat back and let myself relax in the fantasy that this was my apartment and my stamp collection, that I had located and purchased all those little perforated rectangles of colored paper, that my fingers had delighted in fitting them with mounts and affixing them in their places. Most of the time I have trouble imagining why anyone would want to devote time and money to pasting postage stamps in a book, but now I sort of got into it, and I even felt a little guilt about having looted such a labor of love.

I’ll tell you, it’s a good thing I didn’t have his stamps with me. I might have tried putting them back.

Time crawled on by. I didn’t want to turn on the television set or play a radio, or even walk around too much, lest a neighbor wonder at sounds issuing from a supposedly empty apartment. I didn’t have the concentration for reading, and there’s something about holding a book in gloved hands that keeps one from getting caught up in the story. I went back to my chair by the window and watched the sun drop behind the buildings on the west side of the park, and that was about it, entertainment-wise.

I got hungry sometime around nine and rummaged around the kitchen. I filled a bowl with Grape-Nuts and added some suspicious milk. It probably would have curdled in a cup of coffee but it was all right in the cereal. Afterward I washed my bowl and spoon and put them where I’d found them. I went back to the living room and took off my shoes and stretched out on the rug with my eyes closed. My mind’s eye gave itself over to a vast expanse of white, and while I was observing its pure perfection—virgin snow, I thought, or the fleeces of a million lambs—while I was thus waxing poetic, black ribbons uncurled and stretched themselves across the white expanse, extending from top to bottom, from left to right, forming a random rectangular grid. Then one of the enclosed spaces of white blushed and reddened, and another spontaneously took on a faint sky tint that deepened all the way to a rich cobalt blue, and another red square began to bleed in on the lower right, and—

By God, my mind was painting me a Mondrian.

I watched as the pattern changed and re-formed itself, working variations on a theme. I’m not sure just what consciousness is and is not, but at one point I was conscious and at another I wasn’t, and then there came a moment when I caught hold of myself and shook myself loose of something. I sat up, looked at my watch.

Seven, eight minutes past twelve.

I took another few minutes making sure I left Appling’s apartment as I’d found it. I’d slept in my rubber gloves and my fingers were damp and clammy. I stripped off the gloves, dried the insides of the fingers, washed and dried my hands, and put them back on again. I straightened this and tidied that, drew the drapes, put back the chair I’d moved. Then I picked up the phone, checked Onderdonk’s number in the book to make sure I got it right, dialed it, and let it ring an even dozen times.

I turned off the one light I’d had on, let myself out, locked the door after me and wiped the knob and the surrounding area and the doorbell. I hurried through the fire door and up four flights to Sixteen, let myself into the hallway, crossed over to Onderdonk’s door and rang his bell. I waited for a moment, just in case, said a fervent if hurried prayer to Saint Dismas, and knocked off a four-tumbler Segal drop-bolt lock in not much more time than I’d spent pouring the milk over the Grape-Nuts.

Darkness within. I slipped inside, drew the door shut, breathed slowly and deeply and let my eyes adjust. I put my ring of picks back in my pocket and fumbled around for my penlight. I already had my gloves on, not having bothered to remove them for the quick run upstairs. I oriented myself in the darkness, or tried to, and I raised my penlight, pointed it to where the fireplace ought to be, and switched it on.

The fireplace was there. Above it was an expanse of white, just what I’d envisioned on Appling’s floor before the black lines insinuated themselves across its length and breadth. But where were the black lines now? Where were the rectangles of blue and red and yellow?

Where, for that matter, was the canvas? Where was the aluminum frame? And why was there nothing above Onderdonk’s fireplace but a blank wall?

I flicked off my light, stood again in darkness. The familiar thrill of burglary took on the added element of panic. Was I, for heaven’s sake, in the wrong apartment? Had I, for the love of God, climbed one too few or one too many flights of stairs? Leona Tremaine was on Nine, and I’d gone up two flights to Eleven, where I’d been a guest of the Applings. From Eleven to Sixteen was four flights, but had I counted flights as I went and included the nonexistent thirteenth?

I flicked the light on. It was likely that all of the apartments in the B line had the same essential layout, and each would have a fireplace in that particular spot. But would other apartments have bookcases flanking the fireplace? And these were familiar shelves, and I could even recognize some of the books. There was the leatherbound Defoe. There were the two volumes, boxed, of Stephen Vincent Benét’s selected prose and selected poetry. And there, faintly discernible in that expanse of white, looking almost like the negative image of an Ad Reinhardt black-on-black canvas, was the slightly lighter rectangle where the Mondrian had lately hung. Time and New York air had darkened the surrounding wall, leaving a ghost image of the painting I’d come to steal.

I lowered the light to the floor, made my way into the room. The picture wasn’t there and the picture should have been there and something didn’t compute. Was I still asleep? Was I dozing on Appling’s floor, and had I merely dreamed the part about waking up and going upstairs? I decided I had, and I gave a mental yank to pull myself out of it, and nothing happened.

Something felt wrong, and I was feeling more than the unexpected absence of the painting. I moved farther into the room and played my light here and there. If anything else was missing, I didn’t notice it. The Arp painting still hung where I’d seen it on my first visit. Other paintings were where I remembered them. I turned and swung the flashlight around, and its beam showed me a bronze head, Cycladic in style, on a black lucite plinth. I remembered the head from before, though I’d paid it little attention then. I continued to move the light around in a slow circle, and I may have heard or sensed an intake of breath, and then the flashlight’s beam was falling full upon a woman’s face.

Not a painting, not a statue. A woman, positioned between me and the door, one small hand held at waist level, the other poised at shoulder height, palm out, as if to ward off something menacing.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re a burglar, you’re going to rape me, you’re going to kill me. Oh, my God.”

Be a dream,
I prayed, but it wasn’t and I knew it wasn’t. I was caught in the act, I had a pocket full of burglar’s tools and no right to be where I was, and a search of my apartment would turn up enough stolen stamps to start a branch post office. And she was between me and the door, and even if I got past her she could call downstairs before I could get anywhere near the lobby, and her mouth was ajar and any second now she was going to scream.

All for the sake of some goddamn cat with a clever name and an assertive personality. Six days a week the ASPCA’s busy putting surplus cats to sleep, and I was going to wind up in slam trying to ransom one. I stood there, holding the light in her eyes as if it might hypnotize her, like a deer in a car’s headlights. But she didn’t look hypnotized. She looked terrified, and sooner or later the terror would ease up enough for her to scream, and I thought about that and thought about stone walls.

Stone walls do not a prison make, according to Sir Richard Lovelace, and I’m here to tell you the man was whistling in the dark. Stone walls make a hell of a prison and iron bars make a perfectly adequate cage, and I’ve been there and I don’t ever want to go back.

Just get me out of this and I’ll
—

And I’ll what? And I’ll probably do it again, I thought, because I’m evidently incorrigible. But just get me out of it and we’ll see.

“Please,” she said. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Don’t kill me.”

“Nobody’s going to kill you.”

She was about five-six and slender, with an oval face and eyes a spaniel would have won Best of Breed with. Her hair was dark and shoulder-length, drawn back from a sharp widow’s peak and secured in unbraided pigtails. She was wearing oatmeal jeans and a lime polo shirt with a real alligator on it. Her brown suede slippers looked like something a Hobbit would wear.

“You’re going to hurt me.”

“I never hurt anyone,” I told her. “I don’t even kill cockroaches. Oh, I put boric acid around, and I guess that’s the same thing from a moral standpoint, but as far as hauling off and swatting ’em, that’s something I never do. And not just because it makes a spot. See, I’m basically nonviolent, and—”

And why was I running off at the mouth like this? Nerves, I suppose, and the premise that she’d be polite enough not to scream while I was talking.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I’m so frightened.”

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Look at me. I’m shaking.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I can’t help it. I’m scared.”

“So am I.”

“You are?”

“You bet.”

“But you’re a burglar,” she said, frowning. “Aren’t you?”

“Well—”

“Of course you are. You’ve got gloves on.”

“I was doing the dishes.”

She started to laugh, and the laughter slipped away from her and climbed toward hysteria. She said, “Oh, God, why am I laughing? I’m in danger.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am, I am. It happens all the time, a woman surprises a burglar and she gets raped and killed. Stabbed to death.”

“I don’t even have a penknife.”

“Strangled.”

“I don’t have any strength in my hands.”

“You’re making jokes.”

“You’re sweet to say so.”

“You’re—you seem nice.”

“That’s exactly it,” I said. “You hit it. What I am, I’m your basic nice guy.”

“But look at me. I mean don’t look at me. I mean—I don’t know what I mean.”

“Easy. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“I believe you.”

“Of course you do.”

“But I’m still frightened.”

“I know you are.”

“And I can’t help it. I can’t stop trembling. On the inside it feels like I’m going to shake myself to pieces.”