The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,106
gave them to her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you got to make the famous hill-of-beans speech.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Why’d you do it, Bern?”
“They needed the money,” I said. “I can always use money, but I can’t pretend I had a genuine need for a hundred thousand dollars. They needed it.”
“Hell, Bern, the hip dysplasia people need it, too, and it was all I could do to get twenty bucks out of you.”
“The stamps came from Anatruria,” I said.
“I thought they came from Hungary.”
“You know what I mean. They were issued in the cause of Anatrurian freedom, and if they were worth all that money after all those years, then the money belonged to the cause. If there is such a cause, or if there even is such a country.” That was confusing, and I stopped and took a sip of my drink and started over. “If she hadn’t shown up at the Musette,” I said, “I don’t know what I would have done. I meant to call the king and give him the stamps, and maybe I would have done it, but maybe not. I just don’t know.
“But the point is she did show up. I bought that extra seat, and I swear I wasn’t all that surprised when she wound up sitting in it.”
“And once she did…”
“I held her hand, fed her popcorn, took her home, gave her a fortune in rare stamps, and sent her on her way.”
“With the hill-of-beans speech echoing in her cute little ears.”
“Forget the hill-of-beans speech, will you?”
“Schweetheart, the hopes and dreams of a couple of little shitkickers like you and me don’t amount to a hill of beans when you pile ’em up next to the Anatrurian Alps, and—”
“Dammit, Carolyn.”
“I’m sorry. You know what happened to you, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“All those movies.”
“That’s what I was going to say.”
“You watched Bogart do the noble self-sacrificing thing one time too many, and when the opportunity came your way, you didn’t have a prayer. Poor Bernie. Everybody made something out of this business but you. Ray was the big winner. What did he wind up with, forty-eight grand?”
“He had to spread that around a little. The official story now is that Candlemas killed Hoberman, then went down to the Lower East Side to cop some dope.”
“Right, he was your typical junkie.”
“And got shot when the deal went sour. I would guess somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars’ll wind up in Ray’s pocket.”
“And of course he insisted you take some of the money.”
“It must have slipped his mind.”
“Not fair, Bern. After all, you solved the whole case. He just stood there.”
“He doesn’t just stand. He looms.”
“Good for him. He gets the money, Ilona and the king get the stamps, and the three mouseketeers get the bearer shares and go chasing after the lost treasure of Anatruria. And what about you? You didn’t even get laid.”
“Maybe that was dumb, too,” I said. “But all she’s going to be for me is a memory, and I didn’t have to repeat the experience to be sure I’d remember it. I’m in no danger of forgetting.”
“No.”
I picked up my drink, held it to the light. “Anyway,” I said, “it’s not as though I wind up empty-handed.”
“How do you figure that, Bern?”
“I got the bone woodchuck from Candlemas’s apartment, remember?”
“Wow, Bern.”
“And when I stopped by Charlie Weeks’s place, the stamps weren’t all I swiped. I got the mouse carving Hoberman gave him.”
“Gee, you can just about retire when you sell those two little beauties, can’t you?”
“No, I think I’ll hang on to them as souvenirs. My real profit comes tomorrow night.”
“What happens tomorrow night?”
“A man named Sung-Yun Lee goes to see The Chink in the Armoire.”
“Is that a show?”
“On Broadway, at the Helen Hayes. Very hot ticket. I got a pair from a scalper and it cost me perilously close to two hundred bucks.”
“All in the interests of getting him out of the house,” she guessed. “But who the hell is he, and what house do you want to get him out of? Oh, wait a minute. The people downstairs from Candlemas, but I forget their names.”
“The Lehrmans.”
“And he’s in their place on an exchange program. Right?”
I nodded. “And they’ll be gone for another month, and their place is absolutely overflowing with good stuff, and you couldn’t ask for a better setup. The security is nothing, the locks are child’s play, and the guy who’s living there won’t have a clue that anything’s missing, because it’s not his stuff. He’ll go on being careful not