The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza Part 19

"I don't know if you remember me. I had Morton's Foot, and you're going to be making orthotics for me."

"They're not ready yet, of course. It takes a couple of weeks."

"Yes, I understand that. But I gave you a deposit, just a small deposit really, and-"

"I'm afraid I've already sent the order in, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Is there a problem?"

"No problem at all," I said, "but I had a sudden cash windfall this afternoon, as a matter of fact I had a good day at the track, see, and I wanted to pay you the balance due before I blow it on necessities. And I'm in the neighborhood, so I thought maybe I could come up and pay you what I owe you, I guess it comes to two hundred and seventy dollars because I paid a thirty-dollar deposit, and-"

"That's very considerate of you, Mr. Rhodenbarr. Why don't you stop in Monday?"

"Well, Monday's a hard day for me, and for all I know the money might be gone by then. It wouldn't take a minute if I could just come up and pay you and-"

"I can't really take money outside of business hours," he said. "I'm at my apartment. My office is across the hall and it's closed, and I'd have to open up and make out a receipt for you and enter the cash in my books, and I'd rather not do all that."

"A receipt's not important to me. I could just pop up, pay you the cash, and off I'd go."

There was a pause. By now he must have been certain he was dealing with a lunatic, and why should he want to invite a lunatic upstairs? There should have been a way to get to see him, but I had evidently blown it, and everything I said now was only going to make it worse.

"Well, I'll see you Monday," I said. "I hope I still have the money by then. Maybe I'll put it in my shoe in the meantime."

Brooklyn Information had a listing for a J. L. Garland on Cheever Place. The operator had no better idea than I if that was in Cobble Hill, but she said the exchange sounded about right, so I dialed it and got a chap with a sort of reedy voice. I asked to speak to Jessica and she came to the phone.

"This is Bernie Rhodenbarr," I told her. "I'll be there tomorrow, and I just wanted to confirm the time and place. Two-thirty at the Church of the Redeemer, is that right?"

"That's correct."

"Good. There are a couple of people I'd like you to call, if you would. To ask them to come. Neighbors of your grandfather's."

"I already posted a notice in the lobby. But you can call anyone yourself if you think it's advisable."

"I've already invited several people, as a matter of fact. I'd appreciate it if you'd make these particular calls, though. Could you write this down?"

She said she could and I gave her names and numbers and told her what to say. While I was doing this it occurred to me that she might have access to Abel's apartment. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to visit the place in her company, but it looked to be better than not going at all.

So I asked her if she'd been up to the place since the murder, and she hadn't. "I don't have keys," she said, "and the doorman said the police had left strict instructions not to admit anyone. I don't know that they'd let me up anyway. Why?"

"No reason," I said. "I just wondered. You'll make those calls?"

"Right away."

A few minutes after eight I presented myself at Abel Crowe's building. The doorman was a stranger to me, even as I presume I was to him. He looked as a.s.sertive as Astrid the Bouvier and I hoped I wouldn't have to take him out with a tranquilizer dart in the shoulder.

I had the dart pistol along, albeit not at hand. It was in my attache case, along with burglar's tools, a fresh pair of palmless rubber gloves, and my wide-track Pumas. I was wearing black wingtips for a change, heavy and leather-soled and not particularly comfortable, but a better match than Weejuns or Pumas for my funereal three-b.u.t.ton suit and the somber tie with the muted stripe.

"Reverend Rhodenbarr for Mrs. Pomerance in 11- J," I said. "She's expecting me."

CHAPTER Twenty.

"He had European manners," Mrs. Pomerance said. "Always a smile and a kind word. The heat of summer bothered him, and sometimes you could tell his feet hurt by the way he walked, but you would never hear a complaint out of him. Not like some others I could mention."

I wrote "real gent" and "never complained" in my little notebook and glanced up to catch Mrs. Pomerance sneaking a peek at me. She didn't know how she knew me and it was driving her crazy. Since I was clearly the sincere Brooklyn clergyman Jessica Garland had called her about, the obliging chap gathering material for Abel Crowe's eulogy, it hadn't occurred to her that I might also be the Stettiner boy who'd shared an elevator with her a day earlier. But if I was Reverend Rhodenbarr of Cobble Hill, why did I look familiar?

We sat on plump upholstered chairs in her over-furnished little apartment, surrounded by bright-eyed photographs of her grandchildren and a positive glut of bisque figurines, and for twenty minutes or so she alternately spoke well of the dead and ill of the living, doing a good job of dis.h.i.+ng the building's other inhabitants. She lived alone, did Mrs. Pomerance; her beloved Moe was cutting velvet in that great sweatshop in the sky.

It was about eight-thirty when I turned down a second cup of coffee and got up from my chair. "You've been very helpful," I told her, truthfully enough. "I'll look forward to seeing you at the service tomorrow."

She walked me to the door, a.s.suring me she wouldn't miss it. "I'll be interested to see if you use anything I told you," she said. "No, you have to turn the top lock, too. That's right. You want to know something? You remind me of somebody."

"The Stettiner boy?"

"You know him?"

I shook my head. "But I'm told there's a resemblance."

She closed the door after me and locked up. I walked down the hall, picked Abel's spring lock and let myself into his apartment. It was as I'd left it, but darker, of course, since no daylight was streaming through his windows.

I turned some lights on. I wouldn't have done this ordinarily, not without drawing drapes first, but the closest buildings across the way were also across the river, so who was going to see me?

I did a little basic snooping, but nothing like the full-scale search I'd given the place the day before. I went through the bedroom closet, looking at this and at that, and I paid a second visit to the cigar humidor. Then I browsed the bookshelves, looking not for stashed loot but simply for something to read.

What I would have liked was my Robert B. Parker novel. I would have enjoyed finding out what was going on with old Spenser, who was evidently capable of jogging without orthotics and lifting weights without acquiring a hernia. But light fiction was harder to find in that place than a 1913 V-Nickel, and any number of books which might have been interesting were less so because of my inability to read German, French or Latin.

I wound up reading Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism, Studies in Pessimism, which was not at all what I'd had in mind. The book itself was a cheap reading copy, a well-thumbed Modern Library edition, and either Abel himself or a previous owner had done a fair amount of underlining, along with the odd exclamation point in the margin when something struck his fancy. which was not at all what I'd had in mind. The book itself was a cheap reading copy, a well-thumbed Modern Library edition, and either Abel himself or a previous owner had done a fair amount of underlining, along with the odd exclamation point in the margin when something struck his fancy.

"If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets," I read, I read, "he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease." "he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease."

I rather liked that, but a little Schopenhauer does go a long way. I thought about playing a little music, decided that having turned on some lights was as dangerously as I cared to live for the time being.

Some of that ancient Armagnac would have gone nicely. I had a little milk instead, and somewhere between ten and eleven I turned off the lights in the living room and went into the bedroom and got undressed.

His bed was neatly made. I suppose he must have made it up himself upon arising on the last morning of his life. I set the bedside alarm for two-thirty, crawled under the covers, switched off the lamp and went to sleep.

The alarm cut right into a dream. I don't recall what the dream was about, but it very likely concerned illegal entry of one sort or another because my mind promptly incorporated the wail of the clock into the dream, where it became a burglar alarm. I did a lot of fumbling for the off-switch in the dream before I tore myself free of it and fumbled for the actual clock, which had just about run down of its own accord by the time I got my hands on it.

Terrific. I sat for a few minutes in the dark, listening carefully, hoping no one would take undue note of the alarm. I don't suppose anybody even heard it. Those old buildings are pretty well soundproofed. I certainly didn't hear anything, and after a bit I switched on the lamp and got up and dressed.

This time, though, I put on the Pumas instead of the black wingtips. And I put my gloves on.

I let myself out of Abel's apartment, pus.h.i.+ng the latch b.u.t.ton so that the spring lock wouldn't engage when I closed the door. I walked down the hallway past the elevator to the stairwell, and I walked down seven flights of stairs and made my way to 4-B.

No light showed beneath the door. No sound was audible within. There was only one lock on the door, and you could have taken it to the circus and sold it as cotton candy. I let myself in.

Ten minutes later I let myself out and locked the door behind me. I climbed up seven flights of stairs, let myself back into Abel's apartment by the simple expedient of turning the k.n.o.b, closed and locked the door, took off my trusty Pumas and everything else, set the bedside alarm for seven, and got back into bed.

And couldn't sleep at first. I got up, found a robe in the closet, put it on. It dawned on me that I hadn't eaten enough all day to sustain a canary, so I went into the kitchen and knocked off the rest of the Black Forest cake and finished the quart of milk. Then I went back to bed and slept.

I was up before the alarm. I had a quick shower, found a safety razor and shaved with it. It was strange, living in his apartment, as if I'd slipped into the very life my old friend had lately given up, but I didn't let myself dwell on it. I made a cup of instant coffee, drank it, and got dressed. I put on the dress shoes again and packed the Pumas in the attache case, along with another of the books I'd been browsing earlier.

Neither the elevator operator nor the doorman gave me a second glance. They had never seen me before, but I was leaving at a civilized hour of the morning, and even in a stuffy old co-op on Riverside Drive there are surely some tenants of either gender who are apt to have the occasional stranger spending the occasional night, and leaving under his or her own power by light of dawn.

Hair Apparent was on Ninth Avenue a few doors north of Twenty-fourth Street, next to a restaurant called Chelsea Commons. It was closed, of course, with a folding steel gate similar to the one I had at Barnegat Books. A padlock secured the gate across the doorway. I stood there in full view of pa.s.sers-by and used a piece of spring steel to tease the lock until it opened.

n.o.body paid any attention. It was broad daylight-and shaping up to be a beautiful day in the bargain. And I was well-dressed and obviously respectable, and to anyone watching I'd have looked as though I were using not a lock-pick but a perfectly legitimate key. Nothing to it, really.

Not much more to the business of unlocking the door. It took a little longer but it wasn't terribly tricky.

Then I opened the door and the burglar alarm went off.

Well, these things happen, in life as in dreams. I'd noted the alarm when I'd dropped in on Marilyn Margate the previous afternoon, and I'd looked around long enough to spot the cut-out switch on the wall near the first chair. I walked into the shop, proceeded directly to the cut-out switch, and silenced the shrill wailing.

No harm done. The neighbors were very likely used to that sort of thing. Business proprietors set off their own alarms all the time when they open up. It's when an alarm goes off in the middle of the night, or sounds for a long time unattended, that people reach for the phone and dial 911. Otherwise they a.s.sume it's all business as usual.

Anyway, what sort of idiot would burglarize a beauty shop?

I spent better than half an hour burglarizing this one. When I left, everything was as I had found it, with the sole exception of the burglar alarm, which I didn't reset for fear of setting it off again on my way out. I left the money in the register-just a few rolls of change and a dozen singles. And I left the gun Marilyn had pointed at me; she'd returned it to her employer's drawer, and that's where I let it remain.

I wiped the surfaces I was likely to have touched-rubber gloves didn't go well with my outfit. And I locked up after myself, and drew the window gates shut, and fastened the padlock.

Carolyn's number didn't answer. I started to call Denise, then changed my mind. I walked east on Twenty-third Street and read the plaques on the Chelsea Hotel, which boasted not of pediatricians and podiatrists in residence but writers who'd lived there in the past-Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas. At Seventh Avenue I turned right and walked on downtown. Now and then I would pa.s.s a church, the wors.h.i.+pers all fresh-faced and spruced up as if in celebration of the season. A beautiful morning, I told myself. You couldn't ask for a finer day to bury Abel Crowe.

Of course, I reminded myself, we wouldn't actually bury him today. That would have to wait. But, if the service went as I hoped it would, perhaps we could lay my old friend to rest-his spirit if not his body. I had spent a night in his apartment, the apartment in which he'd been struck down and killed, and I couldn't say that I felt the presence of a restless spirit, an unquiet ghost. Then again, I'm not much at feeling presences. Someone who's more sensitive to that sort of thing might have felt Abel's shade close at hand in that living room, pacing the oriental carpet, crying out for vengeance. Just because I'm not aware of those things doesn't mean they don't exist.

I walked down below Fourteenth Street and had a big breakfast at a coffee shop in the Village-eggs, bacon, orange juice, toasted bran m.u.f.fin, plenty of coffee. I picked up the Sunday Times, Times, threw away all those sections n.o.body reads, and took the rest to Was.h.i.+ngton Square. There I sat on a bench, ignored all the obliging young men who offered to sell me every mood-altering chemical known to modern man, and read the paper while watching people and pigeons and the occasional ditsy gray squirrel. Kids climbed on the monkey bars. Young mothers pushed prams. Youths flung frisbees to and fro. b.u.ms panhandled. Drunks staggered. Chess players advanced p.a.w.ns while kibitzers shook their heads and clucked their tongues. People walked dogs, who ignored the signs and fouled the footpath. Drug dealers hawked their wares, as did the sellers of hot dogs, ice cream, Italian ices, helium-filled balloons, and organic snacks. I spotted my favorite vendor, a black man who sells large fuzzy yellow ducks with bright orange bills. They are the silliest d.a.m.ned things I have ever seen, and people evidently buy them, and I have never been able to figure out why. threw away all those sections n.o.body reads, and took the rest to Was.h.i.+ngton Square. There I sat on a bench, ignored all the obliging young men who offered to sell me every mood-altering chemical known to modern man, and read the paper while watching people and pigeons and the occasional ditsy gray squirrel. Kids climbed on the monkey bars. Young mothers pushed prams. Youths flung frisbees to and fro. b.u.ms panhandled. Drunks staggered. Chess players advanced p.a.w.ns while kibitzers shook their heads and clucked their tongues. People walked dogs, who ignored the signs and fouled the footpath. Drug dealers hawked their wares, as did the sellers of hot dogs, ice cream, Italian ices, helium-filled balloons, and organic snacks. I spotted my favorite vendor, a black man who sells large fuzzy yellow ducks with bright orange bills. They are the silliest d.a.m.ned things I have ever seen, and people evidently buy them, and I have never been able to figure out why.

I walked from the park to the subway, and by one-thirty I was in Cobble Hill and twenty minutes later I was at the Church of the Redeemer. I met Jessica Garland and the young man she lived with. His name was Clay Merriman, and he turned out to be a lanky fellow, all knees and elbows and a toothy smile. I told them both what I had in mind. He had a little trouble following me, but Jessica grasped it right away. Well, why not? She was Abel's granddaughter, wasn't she?

We looked over the room where the service was to take place. I told her where to seat people, a.s.suming they didn't grab seats on their own. Then I left her and Clay to greet the guests as they arrived, biding my time in a room down the hall that looked to be the minister's study. The door was locked, but you can imagine the kind of lock they put on a minister's study.

At two-thirty the canned organ music started. By now the guests should have arrived, but stragglers will straggle, so the service itself was not going to start for another ten minutes. I waited out those ten minutes in the minister's study, doing a little pacing of the sort one probably does when rehearsing a sermon.

Then it was time. I took two books from my attache case, refastened its clasps and left it in a corner of the room. I made my way down the corridor and entered the larger room where a fair crowd of people had a.s.sembled. I walked down the side aisle, mounted a two-foot platform, and took my place at the lectern.

I looked at all those people and took a deep breath.

CHAPTER Twenty-one.

"Good afternoon," I said. "My name is Bernard Rhodenbarr. I'm here, as we all are, because of my friends.h.i.+p for Abel Crowe. Our friend and neighbor was struck down in his own home this past week, and we have a.s.sembled here to pay final tribute to his memory."

I looked over my audience. There were a great many unfamiliar faces in the crowd, and I guessed the older ones belonged to Abel's neighbors from Riverside Drive while the younger ones were Cobble Hill friends of Jessica's. Among them were quite a few people I recognized. I spotted Mrs. Pomerance in the second row, and my hearty podiatrist was one row behind her. Over to the left Ray Kirschmann sat beside a skinny young man with a lot of forehead and not much chin, and it didn't take a great leap of logic to guess I was looking at George Edward Margate. His ears were no longer than anybody else's, and his nose didn't exactly twitch, but it wasn't hard to see why they called him Rabbit.

His sister Marilyn was in the first row all the way over on the right. She was dressed quite sedately in a black skirt and dark-gray sweater, but all the same she looked like a wh.o.r.e in church. The man sitting beside her, a round-faced lumpish lout, had to be Harlan Reese.

Denise and Carolyn were sitting together all the way at the back. Carolyn was wearing her blazer. Denise had a sweater on, but I couldn't see whether she was wearing pants or a skirt. No smock, though, and no smile.

As chief mourner, Jessica Garland sat front row center, with Clay Merriman on her left. A pity we hadn't all met before this unhappy occasion, I thought. Abel could have had us all over of an evening, Clay and Jessica and Carolyn and I, and we could have fattened up on pastry while he regaled us with stories of Europe between the wars. But, oddly, he'd never mentioned a granddaughter.

Three men in dark suits sat together at the right of the third row. The one closest to the center was tall and balding, with a long nose and very thin lips. Beside him sat the oldest of the trio, a gentleman about sixty with wide shoulders, snow-white hair and a white mustache. The third man, seated on the aisle, was a small and slightly built fellow with a b.u.t.ton nose and thick eyegla.s.ses.

I had never seen them before but I was fairly certain I knew who they were. I paused long enough to meet the eyes of the white-haired man in the middle, and while his face did not change its stern expression he gave a short but distinct nod.

At the opposite end of the second row sat another man I recognized. Oval face, clipped mustache, slate-gray hair, little mouth and nose-I'd seen him before, of course, but Jessica had known where to put him because Herbert Franklin Colcannon had obligingly worn a carnation in his lapel.

I winced when I saw it. Somehow with all the running around I'd done I hadn't remembered to get to a florist before they closed. I suppose I could have let myself into a shuttered flower shop that very morning, but the act seemed disproportionately risky.

Anyway, I'd just introduced myself to the company. So Colcannon knew who I was.