The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,53

apartment, then. You must have, in order to have seen the photo.”

“Yes.”

“And left with what you’d gone to get?”

“No. I was interrupted,” I said, and explained how I’d hid in the closet, emerging to find the portfolio gone.

“You must still have been trapped there when Cappy left. He didn’t stay any time at all. I’d expected a longish visit, but I’d guess he was in and out of here in ten minutes. For my part, I can’t say I pressed him to stay. His presence brought up memories, not all of them welcome. His gift had much the same effect. The mouse. I always thought it the best of Letchkov’s carvings, but that may have been because it was mine. My code name, I mean. Now the actual carving’s mine, isn’t it, and I’m glad to have it, but I find I care less and less about possessions with each passing year. What’s happened to Cappy?”

The question caught me off-balance, but I didn’t have to hesitate. I’d known it was coming sooner or later and had made up my mind how I was going to answer it.

“He’s dead,” I said. “Somebody killed him.”

CHAPTER

Fourteen

“This man Candlemas,” Charles Weeks said. “It would seem obvious that he killed Cappy, wouldn’t it? But why leave the body in his own apartment?”

We were in his kitchen, sitting at an oval pine table and drinking more of his coffee. Once I’d told him about Hoberman there didn’t seem to be any reason not to tell him the rest of it.

“Unless,” he went on, “he didn’t expect it to be found.”

“It would have been hard to overlook,” I said. “The way I heard it, it was right in the middle of the room.”

“Bleeding into the carpet.”

“Right.”

“And writing a truncated form of his own name on an attaché case.”

“Yes.”

“Specifically, your attaché case, though I don’t imagine there was any significance in his choice of a writing surface. It was very likely the only thing at hand. I wonder if the murder was just as impulsive a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I were Candlemas,” he said, “and you were Cappy Hoberman, and I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t snatch up a knife and have at you right in the middle of my own living room. But suppose I wasn’t planning to kill you. Suppose I was suddenly presented with a strong motive for wishing you dead and a means for achieving it. Suppose time was very much of the essence. Awkward or not, inconvenient or not, I couldn’t afford to wait.”

“Hoberman was here,” I said.

“For ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.”

“When he left here, he probably went straight back to Seventy-sixth Street. I was going to be bringing the portfolio there directly, so he must have wanted to be there when I arrived.”

“But well before you could arrive, Candlemas struck him down. To avoid splitting the take, even before there was any take on hand to split?” He waved a hand, dismissing the question. “We don’t need to know the reason. It was a sudden and urgent one, so that Candlemas felt obliged to do what he would have greatly preferred to do at another time and in another place. In his own residence, and with you likely to appear at any moment, he plunged a knife into his fellow.”

“And left him there.”

“Left him to write his last words, quite as mysterious as the only trace of the original colonial settlement at Roanoke Island. They’d all utterly disappeared, you know, and they’d left the word CROATOAN carved in a tree trunk, and no one’s ever been able to make head or tail out of it. What could they possibly have meant? And what could Cappy have meant by CAPHOB, and why did Candlemas let him write it?”

“If somebody other than Candlemas killed him, it still doesn’t figure that he’d go away and leave the dying message behind.”

“No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t. But if it was Candlemas, he’d have a problem.”

“I’ll say. The problem would be lying right in the middle of his living room.”

“Exactly. What would he do about it?”

“He’d have to get rid of it.”

“How? Cappy was still a big man. Was Candlemas a huge brute, capable of slinging Cappy over his shoulder and carrying him downstairs?”

“Hardly. He was no more than medium height, and slightly built.”

“Not a weight lifter, certainly.”

“No.”

“Well, what was he going to do? What would you do in his position?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Suppose you found yourself with a dead body on your hands. It’s