The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,39
a coat or a watch.”
“And what I figured,” Gert said, “is why would you be coming here, anyway? ‘He wants to get rid of witnesses,’ I told Artie. ‘Remember, he already killed once.’ ”
“What I said is what did we ever witness? I told her, I said forget all that. Just hope it’s the burglar, I told her. All we need is some insurance snoop. You don’t care for the shortbread, young lady?”
“I’m sure of it, honey. Meeting him, seeing the two of you, my mind’s a hundred percent at ease.”
“He was framed, Gert. That’s why we’re here. To find out who really killed Madeleine Porlock.”
“If we knew,” Arthur Blinn said, “believe me, we’d tell you. But what do we know?”
“You lived in the same building with her. You must have known something about her.”
The Blinns looked at each other and gave simultaneous little shrugs. “She wasn’t directly under us,” Gert explained. “So we wouldn’t know if she had loud parties or played music all night or anything like that.”
“Like Mr. Mboka,” Artie said.
“In 3-C,” Gert said. “He’s African, you see, and he works at the U.N. Somebody said he was a translator.”
“Plays the drums,” Artie said.
“We don’t know that, Artie. He either plays the drums or he plays recordings of drums.”
“Same difference.”
“But we haven’t spoken to him about it because we thought it might be religious and we didn’t want to interfere.”
“Plus Gert here thinks he’s a cannibal and she’s afraid to speak to him.”
“I don’t think he’s a cannibal,” Gert protested. “Who ever said I thought he was a cannibal?”
I cleared my throat. “Maybe the two of you could talk to Carolyn about Miss Porlock,” I suggested. “And if I could, uh, be excused for a few moments.”
“You want to use the bathroom?”
“The fire escape.”
Blinn furrowed his brow at me, then relaxed his features and nodded energetically. “Oh, right,” he said. “For a minute there I thought—But to hell with what I thought. The fire escape. Sure. Right through to the bedroom. But you know the way, don’t you? You were here yesterday. It’s spooky, you know? The idea of someone else being in your apartment. Of course, it’s not so spooky now that we know you, you and Carolyn here. But when we first found out about it, well, you can imagine.”
“It must have been upsetting.”
“That’s exactly what it was. Upsetting. Gert called the super about the pane of glass, but it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything around here. Generally he gets more responsive right before Christmas, so maybe we’ll get some action soon. Meanwhile I taped up a shirt cardboard so the wind and rain won’t come in.”
“I’m sorry I had to break the window.”
“Listen, these things happen.”
I unlocked the window, raised it, stepped out onto the fire escape. The rain had stepped up a little and it was cold and windy out there. Behind me, Blinn drew the window shut again. He was reaching to lock it when I extended a finger and tapped on the glass. He caught himself, left the window unlocked, and smiled and shook his head at his absent-mindedness. He went off chuckling to himself while I headed down a flight of steel steps.
This time I was properly equipped. I had my glass cutter and a roll of adhesive tape, and I used them to remove a pane from the Porlock window swiftly and silently. I turned the catch, raised the window, and let myself in.
“That’s what I was talking about before,” Gert said “Listen. Can you hear it?”
“The drumming.”
She nodded. “That’s Mboka. Now, is that him drumming or is it a record? Because I can’t tell.”
“He was doing it while you were downstairs,” Carolyn said. “Personally I think it’s him drumming.”
I said I couldn’t tell, and that I’d been unable to hear him from the Porlock apartment.
“You never hear anything through the walls,” Artie said. “Just through the floors and ceilings. It’s a solid building as far as the walls are concerned.”
“I don’t mind the drumming most of the time,” Gert said. “I’ll play music and the drumming sort of fits in with it. It’s in the middle of the night that it gets me, but I don’t like to complain.”
“She figures it’s the middle of the afternoon in Africa.”
We had a hard time getting out of there. They kept giving us shortbread and coffee and asking sincere little