The Burglar in the Closet - By Lawrence Block Page 0,13

but I never heard of a one who doesn’t like to steal jewelry. I’m not talking about crap from the costume counter at J. C. Penney. I’m talking about the real stuff. Diamonds and emeralds and rubies and lots of fourteen- and eighteen-carat golderoo. Stuff any burglar would be proud to stash in his swag bag.”

I wanted to tell him not to use what he evidently thought was thieves’ argot. But what I said was “Urg.”

“You betcha, Bern. But open a little wider, huh? That’s the ticket. Let me get to the point. You remember Crystal, don’t you? She worked for me, but that was before your time. Then I made the mistake of marrying her and lost a great dental hygienist who put out and gained in return a slovenly wife who also put out—for half the world. But I know I’ve told you my troubles with that bitch. I poured that tale into any ear that would stand still for it.”

How could any ear escape it when it shared a head with a mouth with Mr. Thirsty slurping up the saliva?

“Bought her all the jewelry in the world,” he went on. “Sold myself on the idea that it was a good investment. I couldn’t just hold onto money, Bern. Not built that way. And she gave me this song and dance about investing in jewelry, and I had all this undeclared cash I couldn’t invest in stocks and bonds, it had to go into something where you can pay cash and keep the whole thing off the books. And you can get good bargains in the jewelry line if you’ll do business that way, believe me.”

“Urg.”

“Thing is, then we went and got divorced. And she got all the pretties, and I couldn’t even pitch a bitch in court or the IRS might stand up and start wondering where the cash for those pretties came from in the first place. And I’m not hurting, Bern. I make a good living. But here’s this bitch sitting on a couple hundred thousand dollars in jewelry, plus she got the house and everything in it, the co-op apartment on Gramercy Park with a key to the fucking park and everything, and I got my clothes and my dental equipment, and on top of that I pay her a healthy chunk of alimony every month, which I have to pay until she dies or remarries, whichever comes first, and personally I wish that what comes first is her death and that it comes yesterday. But she’s healthy, and she’s smart enough not to remarry, and unless she drinks and screws herself to death I’m on the hook forever.”

I’m not divorced, never having gotten married in the first place, but it seems to me that everyone I know is either divorced or separated or thinking of moving out. Sometimes, when they all carp about alimony and child-support payments, I feel vaguely out of it. But most of the time what I feel is grateful.

“You could knock her off easy,” he went on, and then he began explaining just how I could go about it and when she was apt to be off the premises and all the rest. He went into greater detail than you have to know about, with me supplying the urgs whenever he stopped for air or zeroed in for some serious work on the old molar. When the drilling was done he had me rinse and then he set about putting in a filling, and throughout the whole process I heard just what an easy score it would be and how profitable I would find it, and more than anything else, what a bitch she was and how she had it coming. I suppose a lot of this last part was rationalization. Evidently he figured I would be happier stealing from a bad person than a good one. In point of fact I’ve found that it doesn’t make much difference to me, and that what I really prefer is to burgle a victim about whom I know absolutely nothing. This business works best when you keep it as impersonal as you can.

He went on, did Craig Sheldrake, World’s Greatest Dentist, and so did the elaborate process of filling my tooth. And finally his conversation was finished and so was my tooth, and Mr. Thirsty made his exit and so did all the now-sodden wads of cotton, and there was a spate of rinsing and spitting, a bit of opening wide