The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,78

see the opportunity go to waste.”

“What do you mean?” He studied me with those see-through-everything eyes of his. “You can’t be planning another visit to that apartment on the eighth floor.”

I shook my head. “Whatever the guy had down there,” I said, “he doesn’t have it anymore, and I didn’t see anything else terribly exciting in his place. But there’s a couple on Nineteen, he’s a muni bond specialist in a big brokerage house downtown, and I think she’s a Vanderbilt on her mother’s side. And I happen to know they’re in Quogue for the weekend.”

“Ha!” he cried, delighted. “You’re the weasel, all right.”

“Of course, if they’re by any chance particular friends of yours…”

“Not at all, weasel, not at all. I don’t know anyone on the nineteenth floor, certainly not a huckster of municipal bonds. But you’ll be careful, won’t you? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“It’s always dangerous,” I said, flashing a raffish grin. “That’s what makes it interesting.”

“Oh, what a weasel! Can’t keep him out of the chicken yard.”

“But I’ll be careful,” I assured him. “I’ll be in and out in an hour, and this”—I patted the flight bag—“should weigh a little more then than it does now.”

“And then you’ll simply head for home?”

“I’ll take the stairs this far,” I said, “for the elevator operator’s benefit. So if you happen to see me in the hallway an hour or so from now, don’t be alarmed.”

“I hope to be sleeping soundly by then,” he said. “I’ll rest easy, secure in the knowledge that the weasel is hard at work six stories above me.” He thrust his hand at me. “Good hunting, weasel.”

“Thank you, mouse.”

“Animal names,” he said with satisfaction. “They serve a purpose. Until tomorrow, my good little weasel.”

“Until tomorrow,” I said, and we shook hands and went our separate ways. His led back to his apartment, mine to the stairwell and, presumably, the nineteenth floor.

Except that’s not where I went.

I did climb two flights of stairs for starters, then sat at the fifteenth-story landing for a few minutes working things out in my mind. (Yes, I went up two flights and got from Twelve to Fifteen. You read that right. There’s no thirteenth floor at the Boccaccio, which is why the mouse could anticipate my doing the work of a weasel six stories above him.)

He could anticipate it, but that didn’t mean it was going to happen.

After a good long moment of uffish thought on Fifteen, I retraced my steps and kept on going clear down past Twelve, where Charlie Weeks would soon be sleeping peacefully, and past Eight, where Mike Todd would be sleeping or not, with or without the enigmatic Ilona Markova. I went all the way down to the fifth floor, where I satisfied myself that the hallway was clear before traversing most of it en route to apartment 5-D. I rang the bell, remembering how I’d very nearly neglected to do so the last time I’d been to the eighth floor. In the present instance I’d have been astonished if anybody had been home, and nobody was. I set down my flight bag, took out my tools, picked the two locks, and let myself in.

For all I knew there was a bond salesman on Nineteen, married to a Vanderbilt and weekending in Quogue. It was entirely possible. And it was unquestionably the case that there were quite a few apartments in the Boccaccio unoccupied that weekend, their tenants in the Hamptons or Nantucket or Block Island, their valuables left behind, easy pickings for a weasel, or any reasonably resourceful burglar.

But I didn’t have a clue which apartments they were, or an easy way to find out. What I had managed to learn, by calling a slew of realtors from the Lehrman apartment that afternoon, was that there were at least three Boccaccio apartments currently offered for sale. One of them was occupied at present by its owners. A second was sublet for a handsome monthly fee, and would be available to its purchaser when the sublease expired the end of August.

The third, 5-D, was vacant.

The woman who told me about 5-D was a Ms. Farrante, from the Corcoran Group. As Bill Thompson, I’d made an appointment to see it with her on Wednesday afternoon, but I’d decided I couldn’t wait that long. So here I was now.

Once I’d locked up I took a quick tour of the premises, using my pocket flashlight to supplement what light came in from the windows. The apartment fronted on Park Avenue,