The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,33
I agreed, “but not to me, not that often, and I wasn’t used to it. I got silly.”
“Silly?”
“You know. Playful, goofy.”
“I bet it was somethin’ to see.”
“You should have been there. Anyway, Carolyn and I spent the whole evening together. From the Bum Rap we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, and then we went back to her place on Arbor Court. That’s where I was when I called Mr. Gilmartin.”
He nodded, as if I’d just passed some sort of test.
“I don’t know how it started,” I went on. “I was still a little drunk, I guess, and I got into this routine where I was finding funny names in the telephone book. I was picking out names and reading them aloud to Carolyn and making jokes.”
“The two of you were makin’ fun of people’s names, Bern?”
“It was mostly my doing,” I said, “and I’m not proud of it, but what can I say? It happened. Somehow or other the name Geraldine Fitzgerald came up. Remember her? She was a singer years ago.”
“Is that a fact.”
“Anyway, I said her name sounded to me like a recipe for a perfect relationship. Get it? Geraldine fits Gerald.”
“Geraldine Fitzgerald,” he said. “So?”
“Geraldine. Fits. Gerald.”
“That’s what I just said. What the hell’s supposed to be so funny about that?”
“I guess you had to be there. I couldn’t find a Geraldine Fitzgerald in the phone book, but I found a Gerald Fitzgerald, and I thought that was pretty funny.”
“Yeah, it’s a riot. Wha’d you do, call the guy up?”
A little warning bell went off. “I did,” I said, “but nobody was home. So I flipped through the phone book some more, looking for doubled names like that.”
“William Williams,” he suggested. “John Johnson.”
“Well, sort of, but the ones you just mentioned aren’t particularly funny.”
“Not real thigh-slappers like Gerald Fitzgerald.”
“I know it doesn’t seem all that amusing,” I said, “when you’re sober, but I wasn’t. Eventually I found Martin Gilmartin, and for some reason I thought that one was a real screamer. I should have known better, it was too late to call anybody, let alone a total stranger, but I picked up the phone and called him. He answered the phone, and I made some sort of joke about his name, real high-school humor, I’m ashamed to say.”
“Did he get a good chuckle out of it, Bern?”
“He seemed a little flustered, so I joked with him some more and then hung up.”
“Just like that.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“How’d you know he and his wife went to a play?”
Jesus. “Is that where they were? I knew he was out somewhere because I tried him a few times before I finally got an answer.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’d you keep callin’?”
“Well, they make it easy these days,” I said. “Carolyn’s phone has this button that automatically redials the last number.”
“A real time-saver.”
“So when I finally got through,” I said, “I guess I said something about being glad he was home, and I hoped he’d had a good evening. You know, some kind of smartass remark. But I didn’t say anything about a play.”
He let that pass. “Gilmartin says it was after midnight when you called.”
“I would have said a few minutes before midnight,” I said, “but I’ll take his word for it. So?”
“What did you do after that? Call some more people?”
“No,” I said. “Actually completing a call made me realize what a childish thing I was doing. Besides, it was late and I was tired.”
“You stay the night at Carolyn’s?”
“No, I went home.”
“And you never left your house until morning, right?”
Uh-oh. “That’s right,” I said.
“You got home around one, musta been, and then you didn’t set foot outside your apartment until you came down here and opened up earlier today.”
“Right,” I said. And just as he was about to say something I added, “Except for going to the store.”
“When would that have been, Bernie?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember noticing the time. I put the TV on and watched CNN for a little while, then realized I was out of milk for the morning. I went out and got a few things from the deli. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Well, I’m curious, too,” I said. “According to what you said, Gilmartin got off the phone with me and went looking for his comic books and his Captain Midnight decoder ring.”
“Just his baseball cards, Bern.”
“You mean he didn’t keep all his boyhood treasures in the same place? Never mind. Wherever he kept them, he looked for them and they were gone. Correct?”