The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza Part 15

"Are you gonna have to get gla.s.ses?"

"Gla.s.ses?"

"Didn't you say you were going to the eye doctor?"

"Oh. Yeah, right."

"You have to get gla.s.ses?"

"No, but he said I should stop reading in the dark."

"I could have told you that. You okay? You sound a little funny."

She sounded about half lit, but I didn't bother to mention it. "I'm fine," I said. "Just exhausted. A lot of things have happened but I can't really talk now."

"Company?"

"Yes," I said, and then it struck me that I'd better stop this lying before my nose started to grow. "No," I said.

"I knew it was one or the other. But which?"

"I'm alone," I said, "but evidently can't think straight. Are you at home?"

"No, I'm bopping around the bars. Why?"

"Going back to your place later?"

"Unless I get lucky, which it doesn't look like I'm gonna. Why?"

"You'll be home in the morning? Or will you be at the Poodle Factory?"

"I don't work Sat.u.r.days anymore, Bernie. I don't have to, not since I started doing a little burglary to make ends meet. Remember?"

"Maybe you could go over to the store when you wake up," I said, "and pick up your telephone answering machine, and take it back to your apartment."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"I'll be over around ten or so and tell you all about it."

"Jesus, I certainly hope so."

I hung up and it rang again and it was Denise, home at last and returning my call. I asked her how she would like company around one-thirty.

"It's almost that now," she said.

"I mean tomorrow afternoon. All right if I drop in for a few minutes?"

"Sure. Just for a few minutes?"

"Maybe an hour at the outside."

"Sure, I guess. Does this mark a new development in our ever-evolving relations.h.i.+p, Bernie? Are you advance-booking a quickie or something?"

"No," I said. "I'll be over around one-thirty, maybe a quarter of two, and I'll explain everything."

"I can hardly wait."

I hung up and got undressed. When I took my socks off I sat for a moment on the edge of my bed and examined my feet. I had never really studied them before, and it had certainly never occurred to me that they were narrow. They definitely looked narrow now, long and skinny and foolish. And there was no question about it, my second toes extended beyond my big toes. I tried to retract the offending second toes, tried to extend the big toes, but this didn't work, and I must have been d.a.m.ned tired to think it might.

Morton's Foot. I had it, all right, and while it wasn't as dismaying as a positive Wa.s.sermann, I can't say I felt happy about it.

So the phone rang.

I picked it up. A woman with an English accent said, "I beg your pardon?"

"Huh?"

"Is this Bernard Rhodenbarr?"

"Yes."

"I thought I might have dialed the weather report by mistake. You said 'It never rains but it pours.'"

"I didn't realize I'd said that aloud."

"You did, actually, and it is is raining, and-I'm sorry to be calling you so late. I couldn't reach you earlier. My name is Jessica Garland. I don't know if that means anything to you." raining, and-I'm sorry to be calling you so late. I couldn't reach you earlier. My name is Jessica Garland. I don't know if that means anything to you."

"Not offhand, but I don't think my mind's at its sharpest. Not if I'm capable of answering the phone with a code phrase from a spy movie."

"You know, it did rather sound like that. I thought my grandfather might have mentioned me, Mr. Rhodenbarr."

"Your grandfather?"

"Abel Crowe."

My jaw may have hung loose for a moment. Then I said, "I never knew Abel had a grandchild. I never even knew he'd been married."

"I don't know that he was. He was certainly never married to my grandmother. She was from Budapest originally, and the two of them were lovers in Vienna before the war. When the n.a.z.is annexed Austria in '38 she got out with my mother in her arms and the clothes she was wearing and nothing else. Grandfather's parting gift to her was a small fortune in rare stamps which she concealed in the lining of her coat. She went from Vienna to Antwerp, where she sold the stamps, and from there to London, where she died in the Blitz. Grandfather wound up in a concentration camp and survived."

"And your mother-?"

"Mother was five or six years old when Grandmother was killed. She was taken in by a neighbor family and grew up as an English girl. She married young, had me early on, and a.s.sumed her own father was dead, that he'd died in a concentration camp or in the war. It must have been about six years ago that she learned otherwise. I say, I'm doing a great lot of talking, aren't I? Do you mind terribly?"

"I find it rather soothing."

"Do you? Well, Grandfather literally turned up on our doorstep in Croydon. It seems he'd hired agents and finally succeeded in tracing Mother. There was a joyful reunion, but before very long they found themselves with precious little to say to each other. She'd grown up to be a rather ordinary English suburban housewife, while Grandfather-well, you know the sort of life he led."

"Yes."

"He returned to the States. He wrote letters, but they were more to me and my brother than to Mum. I've a younger brother, you see. Two years ago Grandfather wrote suggesting I might care to try living in America, and the suggestion came at just the right time. I quit my hateful job, said goodbye to my dreary young man, and boarded one of Freddie Laker's DC-10s. And to make a long story short-do you know, when people say 'To make a long story short,' it's already too late. In any event, I've been here ever since."

"In New York?"

"In Brooklyn, actually. Do you know Cobble Hill?"

"Sort of."

"I lived at first in a women's residential hotel in Gramercy Park. Then I moved here. The job at which I work is not hateful, and the young man with whom I live is not at all dreary, and I'm hardly ever homesick, actually. I'm rambling all over the lot, aren't I? Chalk it up to exhaustion, physical and emotional. And there's a point to all this, actually."

"I felt sure there would be."

"How very trusting of you. The point is that Grandfather spoke of you, and not only as, oh, shall we say a business a.s.sociate?"

"I guess we shall."

"But also as a friend, don't you see. And now he's dead, as of course you know, and I shall miss him, and I think it's quite horrid how he died and I hope they catch the person responsible, but in the meantime it rather falls to me to get everything in order. I don't know what he would have wanted in the line of funeral arrangements because he never talked about the possibility of his own death, unless he left a letter of some sort, and if so it hasn't come to light yet. And of course the police have the body at the morgue and I don't know when they're likely to release it. When they do I suspect I'll manage some sort of private funeral without any ceremony, but in the meantime I think it would be fitting to have some sort of memorial service, don't you?"

"I guess that would be nice."

"I've arranged something, actually. There'll be a service at the Church of the Redeemer on Henry Street between Congress and Amity Streets. That's here in Cobble Hill. Do you know where it is?"

"I'll be able to find it."

"It's the only church I could find that would allow a memorial service on a Sunday. We'll be meeting there that afternoon at two-thirty. The service won't be religious because Grandfather wasn't a religious man. He did have a spiritual side, however. I don't know if he ever showed that side to you."

"I know the sort of reading he did."

"Yes, all the great moral philosophers. I told them at the church that we'd conduct our own service. Clay, the chap I live with, is going to read something. He was quite fond of Grandfather. And I'll probably read something myself, and I thought you might be able to take part in the service, Mr. Rhodenbarr."

"Call me Bernie. Yes, I could probably find something to read. I'd like to do that."

"Or just say a few words, or both. As you choose." She hesitated. "There's another thing, actually. I saw Grandfather every few weeks and we were close in certain ways, but he didn't mention many of his...business friends. I know you were a friend of his, and I know of one or two others in that category, but perhaps you'll be able to think of some other persons who might properly come to the service."

"It's possible."

"Would you just go ahead and invite anyone you think ought to be invited? May I just leave that up to you?"

"All right."

"I've already spoken to several of the people in his building, and one woman's going to post a notice in the lobby. I suppose I should have made arrangements with a church in that neighborhood. Some of those people find it difficult to get around easily. But I'd already made plans with the Church of the Redeemer before I thought of it. I hope they won't mind coming all the way out to Brooklyn."

"Perhaps it'll be an adventure for them."

"I just hope the weather's decent. The rain's expected to have left off by then, but the weatherman doesn't give guarantees, does he?"

"Not as a general rule."

"No, more's the pity. I'm sorry to have gone on so, Mr. Rhodenbarr, but-"

"Bernie."

"Bernie. It's late and I'm tired, perhaps more so than I'd realized. You will try to come? Sunday at two-thirty? And you'll invite anyone you think of?"

"Definitely," I said. "And I'll bring along something to read."

I wrote down the time and the address and the name of the church. Carolyn would want to come, of course. Anybody else?

I got in bed and tried to think if I knew anyone who'd want to attend a memorial service for Abel. I wasn't acquainted with many other burglars, having a longstanding preference for the company of law-abiding citizens, and I didn't know who Abel's friends were. Would Ray Kirschmann want to make the trip? I thought about it and decided that he might.

My mind drifted around. So Abel had a granddaughter. How old was Jessica Garland likely to be? Her mum must have been born in 1936 or thereabouts, and if she had indeed married young and had Jessica early on, then twenty-four or twenty-five sounded like a reasonable ballpark figure. I didn't have any trouble picturing Abel playing host to a young woman about that age, telling her charming lies about the old days in the Viennese coffeehouses, plying her with strudel and eclairs.

And he'd never once mentioned her, the old fox.

I was almost asleep when a thought nudged me back awake again. I got out of bed, looked up a number, made a phone call. It rang four times before a man answered it.

I stayed as silent as if I'd called Dial-a-Prayer. I listened, and the man who'd answered said "h.e.l.lo?" "h.e.l.lo?" several times, querulously, while in the background music played and a dog interposed an occasional bark. Then he hung up-the man, I trust, rather than the dog-and I went back to bed. several times, querulously, while in the background music played and a dog interposed an occasional bark. Then he hung up-the man, I trust, rather than the dog-and I went back to bed.

CHAPTER Sixteen.

One of the things I'd found time to do between late phone calls was set my alarm clock, and come morning it rang its fool head off. I got up and groped my way through a shower and a shave and the first cup of coffee, then turned on the radio and toasted a couple slices of whole-grain bread, b.u.t.tered them, jammed them, ate them, drank some more coffee, drew the drapes and c.o.c.ked an eye at the dawn.

It looked promising, even to a c.o.c.ked eye. To the east, dark clouds still obscured the newly risen sun. But the sky was clear in the west, and the winds generally blow from that direction, sweeping yesterday's weather out over the Atlantic-which, in this case, was right where it belonged. The sky over the Hudson had a distinctly blue cast to it.

I poured myself one more cup of coffee, settled in my most nearly comfortable chair with the phone and the phone book, glanced ruefully at Morton's feet, and let my fingers do the walking.

My first call was to the American Numismatic Society, located some four miles north of me at Broadway and 156th Street. I introduced myself as James Klavin of the New York Times Times and explained I was doing a piece on the 1913 V-Nickel. Could he tell me a few things about the coin? Was it true, for example, that only five specimens were known to exist? And did he happen to know where those specimens were located at the present time? Could he say when a specimen had last changed hands? And for what price? and explained I was doing a piece on the 1913 V-Nickel. Could he tell me a few things about the coin? Was it true, for example, that only five specimens were known to exist? And did he happen to know where those specimens were located at the present time? Could he say when a specimen had last changed hands? And for what price?