The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,46

you home.”

“You remember.”

“You’d be hard to forget, Doll.”

“That’s right, you created a new name for me. I’d forgotten, because nobody’s called me that since. When you said it just now it came out sounding like a line from Mickey Spillane. ‘You’d be hard to forget, Doll.’ You should be smoking an unfiltered cigarette and wearing a slouch hat, and there should be something bluesy playing in the background.”

“A girl singer,” I said, “working her way through ‘Stormy Weather.’ ”

“Or ‘Easy to Love.’ Just as you’re saying, ‘You’d be…hard to forget,’ you hear her in the background, singing, ‘You’d be…so easy to love.’ Nice touch, don’t you think?”

“Very nice.”

“I’m sorry. You know what I’m doing? I’m stalling. I have to ask you for another favor and I’m afraid you’ll say no. Could I talk with you?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“I mean face to face. I’m at the coffee shop at West End and Seventy-second. If you come down I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. Or I could come up to your place.”

I glanced around. The elves hadn’t come, nor had I done their work for them. “I’ll be right down,” I said. “How will I recognize you?”

“Well, I still look basically the same,” she said. “I haven’t aged that much in the past two days. My outfit’s different. I’m wearing—”

“Red vinyl hot pants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt.”

“I’ll be in a booth in the back,” she said. “Come see for yourself.”

CHAPTER

Twelve

Faded jeans, a cocoa-brown turtleneck, and a black leather bikers jacket with zipper pockets. No polish on her nails, no rings on her ringers. I slid in opposite her and told the waiter I’d have a cup of coffee. He brought it, and refilled Doll’s cup without being asked.

“I have a few questions,” I said. “How did you know my number?”

“I looked in the book.”

“How did you know my name?”

“You told me, Bernie. Remember?”

“Oh.”

“You told me your name was Bernie Rhodenbarr and you owned a used-book store in the Village. I couldn’t call you there because I didn’t know the name or address of the store, but you’re the only B Rhodenbarr in the Manhattan phone book, and anyway I knew you lived at Seventy-first and West End, because you told me.”

“Oh.”

“You did me a favor,” she said, “and you were totally sweet about it, and I figured maybe I’d give you a call sometime if I didn’t happen to run into you in the neighborhood. And then when Marty told me about you—”

“Marty.”

“Marty Gilmartin,” she said. “You must know who that is. You stole his baseball cards.”

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“All right.”

“I know who Martin Gilmartin is. And I didn’t steal his baseball cards. Wait a minute.”

“I’m waiting, Bernie.”

“Good,” I said, and closed my eyes. When I opened them she was still there, patiently waiting. “This is very confusing,” I said.

“It is?”

“How do you know him?”

“He’s a friend.”

“Well, that clears it up.”

“Sort of a special friend.”

“Oh,” I said.

Archly, I guess, because she colored. “I don’t know how much you know about Marty,” she said.

“Not a whole lot. I know where he lives, and I know what his building looks like because I went over and had a look at it, although I swear I never set a foot inside it. I never met him. I saw his wife once, but I never met her, either. I met her brother because it turns out he’s my landlord, which made it a small world. It got a lot smaller when you mentioned his name.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “Marty’s crazy about the theater,” she said. “He sees everything, and not just on Broadway. He’s a member of the Pretenders, the actors’ club on Gramercy Park. The playbills for half the off-Broadway theaters in town have him listed as a patron or supporter. He’s extremely generous.”

“I see.”

“Marty’s fifty-eight years old. He’s plenty old enough to have a daughter my age, but he doesn’t. He married late, and he and his wife didn’t have any kids.”

“So he’s like a father to you.”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“When I met him,” she said, “I was working at a midtown law firm called Haber, Haber & Crowell.”

“You mentioned them.”

“I know. I said I still worked there, but that’s not true.”

“Marty took you away from all that.”

She nodded. “He was a client. I was a theatrical wannabe, taking classes and running around to auditions. They’re very good about that at HH&C. They represent a lot of people in the theater, and they hire a lot of