The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,48

high school and he’s spent the past fifteen years trying to get a break. He’s had some commercials and bit parts in a couple of soaps, and he had two lines in Sidney Lumet’s last film, and he toured for three months in the road company of Sour Grapes. He pays the rent by tending bar and working for a couple of unlicensed moving companies. Gypsy movers, they call them.” She frowned. “And he likes to see himself as a romantically shady character. One time he jumped out of bed in the middle of the afternoon and put on a suit and tie. I asked him where he was going. The supermarket, he told me. I said, you’re dressing like that for D’Agostino’s? You get more respect, he said, and he grabbed his attaché case and went out the door.

“Twenty minutes later he came back with a bag of groceries. A head of lettuce, a couple of potatoes, I forget what else. A couple of dollars’ worth of groceries. Then he goes, Duh-dah! and opens the attaché case, and inside he’s got two gorgeous strip sirloins an inch thick. You just have to know how to shop, he said.”

“Isn’t that how Jesse James used to do it?”

“At the time,” she said, “I have to admit I thought it was pretty cool. And then when I started seeing Marty, the contrast between the two of them was kind of interesting.”

“I can imagine.”

“He’s sort of a crook. I tried not to know very much about the various hustles he was working, but I know he’s been doing a little small-time drug dealing. He takes a lot of pills himself, uppers and downers, and he pays for them by selling some of them to people he knows.”

“Safer than selling to people you don’t know.”

“At first he thought it was really neat that Marty was paying my rent. He figured I had a hustle of my own going and that made us birds of a feather. He would refer to Marty as ‘the old guy’ or ‘your meal ticket.’ It started to bother him when he began to realize that I really cared for Marty, that the relationship was important to me emotionally.”

“So he was jealous.”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“And then you had a fight and broke up with him.”

“On Monday, and when Marty looked for his baseball cards Thursday night they were gone. I’m sure Luke took them. And it’s all my fault.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I told him about Marty’s apartment, and the things he had in it. Marty took me there one afternoon last month. He and his wife were spending the week with friends in East Hampton, and he had come in for the day, and we went out to lunch and then he said he’d like to show me where he lived. It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Huh?”

“We didn’t…do anything,” she said. “I couldn’t, not in his wife’s house. I felt funny enough just being there. But it’s a beautiful apartment, with a spectacular river view and gorgeous furnishings. When I was with Luke that night I couldn’t stop myself from going on and on about what I saw.”

“Including the baseball cards.”

“They were in his office,” she said, “in a polished rosewood chest lined with cedar. Marty used to keep cigars in it back when he still smoked, and when you opened it there was still a faint trace of the aroma of a good Havana cigar. The box wasn’t even locked, and he kept it right on top of his desk. It was still there Thursday, Bernie, but when he lifted the lid it was empty.”

“Somebody took the cards and left the box.”

“I’m sure it was Luke. He got a lot more excited hearing about the baseball cards than when I told him about the bridges you could see from the living room window. He started talking about how valuable baseball cards were, and how easy it was to sell them. It seems he used to collect them as a kid, and—”

“Everybody did.”

“Well, I didn’t. Anyway, Marty’s collection stirred up feelings of greed and nostalgia both at once. And when he had a chance to lash out at me and Marty, and make himself a bundle in the process—”

“He jumped at it.”

“Right.”

I thought about it. “All right,” I said. “That’s how you fit in, and Marty, and Luke. At least I’ve got a scorecard now, and everybody knows you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The thing is, there’s no