The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,55

taking her time about it. And then, when she had me ready to slay dragons, or at least jump through hoops for her, she disappeared. I don’t get it.”

“It’s puzzling. But then the Anatrurians are a puzzling people.”

“Evidently.”

“Candlemas is puzzling enough to be Anatrurian. Did he have an accent?”

I shook my head. “He spoke educated American English. I’d guess he was born here, though not necessarily in New York. His name certainly doesn’t sound Anatrurian.”

“He sounds like the sort of fellow who could have had many names over the course of a lifetime. Candlemas would be English. It’s a church holiday, you know. In the winter, if I’m not mistaken, after Twelfth Night but well before Lent. It celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Christ in the temple. Early in the year, probably so many days before or after a new moon. Hugo Candlemas—perhaps it is indeed the name he was born with. It would be an odd one to invent.”

“Names,” I said. “Candlemas, Tsarnoff, Rasmoulian. All I’ve got is a batch of names and nothing to go with them. Maybe I should drop the whole thing.”

“Why don’t you?” he said. “You don’t have a great investment. A night’s work went for nothing, but I suspect that must happen now and then in your line of work.”

“More than now and then,” I said.

“I can understand your infatuation with the woman. But she would seem to have disappeared voluntarily. Have you any reason to suspect she’s in danger? Or in need of your assistance?”

“No. And if she wants to see me again I’m not that hard to find.”

“Exactly.” He leaned forward, eyes bright. “It can’t be hope of profit, can it? Since you don’t know who has the portfolio or even what’s in it, you can’t be counting on it to make you rich. The police aren’t after you, so you don’t need to solve the crime in order to clear yourself. So why don’t you go back to selling books and breaking into people’s houses?”

“I feel committed,” I said.

“Just that, then. You feel committed, irrespective of the illogic of it all, and without regard to the consequences. You’re in all the way, and devil take the hindmost.”

“I guess it sounds pretty stupid.”

“Stupid? By God, my boy, if we’d had a few more like you in Anatruria it might have been a different story.” He sat up straight, rubbed his hands together. “I have some ideas,” he said. “It’s been a while, but I’m not entirely without experience in these matters.”

He drew lines and circles on his note pad as he talked, suggesting avenues of approach, clarifying what we did and didn’t know so far. I didn’t see the point of the lines and circles, but his thinking was right on target.

“This is great,” I said at length, “but I’m taking up far too much of your time, and—”

“My time? You’ll be taking up far more of it before we’ve seen this through to the end. If you’re committed, so am I.”

“But why? I mean, you’re not remotely involved, so—”

“I don’t know if this will make any sense to you,” he said evenly. “But there was a time when Cappy Hoberman and I worked together as if our lives depended upon it, as indeed they did. I hadn’t seen him in years, I’d lost all contact with him, and when he turned up with that mouse like a Greek bearing gifts it turned out that we didn’t have a great deal to say to each other. Whatever we’d once been to one another, a vast stretch of years had passed. There was all that water under the bridge, or over the dam, or wherever it goes.

“Water.” He snorted. “If we’d been kin, I’d say that blood was thicker than water. But we were something else. We were partners in an enterprise, and that slender fact puts me under an obligation. I don’t expect you to understand this. I’m sure it’s hopelessly old-fashioned.” He sat up straighter, raised his voice a notch. “But when your partner is killed, you’re supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t matter how you felt about him, or what sort of man he was. He was your partner, and you’re supposed to do something about it.”

I looked at him. “Mr. Weeks,” I said, “this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

“Indeed it could,” he said, and reached to pump my hand. “Indeed it could. But let’s forget Mr.