The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,47

that’s just as well. I may need them.”

“Bern, what was it you remembered?”

“The photograph.”

“The one of King—”

“Vlados,” I supplied. “Right. I thought I recognized it from the stamps. But I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? But you checked in the Scott catalog, and there he was, big as life and twice as ugly.”

“Not ugly at all,” I said. “He’s a good-looking man. Or was, because he’d have to be a hundred and ten by now. But one thing he certainly wasn’t in the stamp catalog was big. The pictures are tiny. I had to use a magnifying glass to make sure it was the same person I saw in the photograph.”

“So?”

“So the point is I recognized him from another photograph, and that was what triggered the memory.”

“What other photo? The one of Ilona with her mother and her father?” Her mouth dropped open. “Bern, is it the Anatrurian version of Anastasia? Is Ilona a long-lost princess? Bern!”

“What is it?”

“Don’t you see? That explains why she packed up and disappeared. She’s in love with you, Bern.”

“That would explain it, all right.”

“No,” she said, impatient. “Don’t you get it? She can’t marry you because you’re a commoner!” She got a faraway look in her eye. “Maybe she’ll abdicate, like the Duke of Windsor, giving up the Anatrurian throne for the man she loves. Why are you looking at me like that, Bern? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“It’s not?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think she’s a princess, either, any more than that apartment was Buckingham Palace. Ilona’s father didn’t look anything like Vlados the First. They’re two different guys.”

“Oh.”

“The photo I’m talking about,” I said, “was the one at the Boccaccio.”

“At the Boccaccio?” Light dawned. “In the apartment you burgled!”

“Tried to burgle.”

“There was a photo of a guy in a uniform. And it was him? Vlad the Unveiler?”

“I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at the photograph,” I admitted. “At the time I didn’t notice much besides his teeth and the way he combed his hair. It was parted in the middle and slicked down.”

“He sounds like a dreamboat.”

“And his uniform,” I said. “I noticed his uniform. He looked like a member of the palace guard in a Sigmund Romberg operetta. That was before I went to Ilona’s apartment, and there was something faintly familiar about the guy, but I just thought he looked like Teddy Roosevelt would have looked if he was going on a date with a flapper. Then the next night I saw Ilona’s photo and I knew I’d seen the guy somewhere before. But I wasn’t thinking of the photo from the Boccaccio, not consciously. I don’t know, maybe Max Fiddler’s right. Maybe I ought to start taking ginkgo biloba.”

“If you can remember to buy it,” she said, “you don’t need it.”

“Good point. Anyway, when I saw Ilona’s photo Thursday night it rang a bell, and I didn’t know why. Last night it finally came to me.”

“And you couldn’t wait to get downtown with the news. Except you forgot to tell me.”

“I had other things to tell you. And the reason I was in a rush to come downtown, well, I didn’t want to go into my own building.”

“Why not?”

“I had a feeling somebody might be waiting there for me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t mean Ilona. You mean somebody dangerous.”

I nodded. “I already had a gun pulled on me. I snapped at Rasmoulian to behave himself and put it away, and damned if he didn’t. But how many times can you get away with that? The next time around he might shoot me. How did he know to come to the bookstore? He even knew my middle name, for God’s sake.”

“Is he Anatrurian, too, Bern?”

“I don’t know what he is. Rasmoulian sounds as though it could be Armenian. And Tiglath might be Assyrian.”

“Assyrian? You mean like from Assyria? Is that a country?”

“Not recently,” I said. “Remember ‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold’? It’s a poem, but that’s the only line I remember. I think the king of ancient Assyria was Tiglath-Pileser. But I might have him confused with somebody else.”

“How do you know all this, Bern? Did Tiggy happen to have his picture on a stamp?”

I shook my head. “Will Durant wrote about him, but I forget what he said. You read that stuff and it’s all very interesting, but then you put the book down and it all runs together. I think Tiglath-Pileser kicked a lot of ass back in ancient times, but then most of them