The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,49
it was an old-timer you shot, he’d probably take a couple of kay to roll over in court and fudge the testimony. ’Course, if it was an old-timer, he probably woulda shot you instead of waitin’ to get hisself shot in the foot. So I guess you break even on that one, Bern.”
We went a few more rounds, me proclaiming my innocence while he told me how I could cop a plea and probably get off with writing “I won’t steal no more” one hundred times on the blackboard after school. Eventually I shifted gears and told him there was something specific I wanted from him.
“Oh?”
“I have three phone numbers. I want you to run them down for me.”
“You nuts, Bernie? You know what’s involved in tracin’ a call? You gotta set up in advance, you gotta be able to reach somebody at the phone company on another line, and then you gotta keep the mark on the phone for a couple of minutes and even then they sometimes can’t make the trace work. And then if you—”
“I already know the three numbers, Ray.”
“Huh?”
“I know the numbers, I want to know the locations of the phones. As if I already traced the calls successfully and I want to know where I traced them to.”
“Oh.”
“You could do that, couldn’t you?”
He thought it over. “Sure,” he said, “but why should I?”
I gave him a very good reason.
“I don’t know,” he said, after we’d discussed my very good reason for a few minutes. “Seems to me I’m takin’ a hell of a chance.”
“What chance? You’ll make a phone call, that’s all.”
“Meanwhile I’m cooperatin’ with a fugitive from justice. That’s not gonna go down too good if anybody ever hears about it.”
“Who’s going to hear?”
“You never know. Another thing, how in the hell are you ever gonna deliver? You make it sound good, but how can you deliver? If some rookie with high marks on the pistol range whacks you out, Bern, where does that leave me?”
“It leaves you alive. Think where it leaves me.”
“That’s why I’m sayin’ you oughta surrender.”
“Nobody’s going to shoot me,” I said, with perhaps a shade more confidence than I possessed. “And I’ll deliver what I promised. When did I ever let you down?”
“Well…”
“Ray, all you have to do is make a phone call or two. Isn’t it worth a shot? For Christ’s sake, if Wake Forest is worth a twenty-dollar investment—”
“Don’t remind me. My money’s gurglin’ down the drain and I’m not even watchin’ it go.”
“Look at the odds I’m giving you. All you got with Wake Forest is ten points.”
“Yeah.” I listened while his mental wheels spun. “You ever tell anybody we had this conversation—”
“You know me better than that, Ray.”
“Yeah, you’re all right. Okay, gimme the numbers.”
I gave them to him and he repeated them in turn.
“All right,” he said. “Now gimme the number where you’re at and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”
“Sure,” I said. “The number here.” I was about to read it off the little disc on the telephone when Carolyn grabbed my arm and showed me a face overflowing with alarm. “Uh, I don’t think so,” I told Ray. “If it’s that easy for you to find out where a phone’s located—”
“Bern, what kind of a guy do you think I am?”
I let that one glide by. “Besides,” I said, “I’m on my way out the door, anyway. Best thing is if I call you back. How much time do you need?”
“Depends what kind of cooperation I get from the phone company.”
“Say half an hour?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good. Try me in half an hour, Bernie.”
I cradled the receiver. Carolyn and both cats were looking at me expectantly. “A camera,” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ve got half an hour to get a camera. A Polaroid, actually, unless you know somebody with a darkroom, and who wants to screw around developing film? We need a Polaroid. I don’t suppose you’ve got one?”
“No.”
“Is there one you could borrow? I hate the idea of running out and buying one. The midtown stores are likely to be crowded and I don’t even know if there’s a camera place in the Village. There’s stores on Fourteenth Street but the stuff they sell tends to fall apart on the way home. And there’s pawnshops on Third Avenue but I hate to make the rounds over there with a price on my head. Of course you could go over there and buy one.”