The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,53
it, that you and I split what Marty pays out. But the whole pie is half a million dollars—”
“And Marty gets half of that, and we get the other half.”
“That’s if you count you and me as a team, Doll.”
“I think we make a great team, Bernie.”
“I’m sure we do, but there’s another way to look at it, and that’s that you and Marty are already a team, and your team winds up with three-quarters of the half million dollars.”
We sat there for twenty minutes, arguing over money an insurance company hadn’t yet paid for a box of baseball cards we hadn’t yet seen. She gave ground grudgingly, and we wound up agreeing to a three-way split. Marty would pay each of us a third of whatever he got from his insurance company.
“But don’t even think about going in there tonight,” I said. “The public has this romantic idea of burglary as night work, but that’s the most dangerous time for it. The later it gets, the worse it is. Right now it’s past midnight, and the average person looks suspicious at this hour without even doing anything.”
“But—”
“Look around you,” I said. “Here are a bunch of perfectly nice people having coffee and doughnuts, and just because it’s the middle of the night they look like riffraff and lowlife trash.”
“That’s what they are, Bernie.”
“See? Case closed.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “The jeans and the jacket are great on you, but leave them home tomorrow. Dress up nice and meet me at the bookstore at two. We’ll go straight from there.”
I got to the bookstore the next morning at ten minutes of ten. The first thing I did was call Carolyn. “I’m at the store,” I told her. “You said you’d walk over and feed Raffles for me, but you didn’t have a chance yet, did you?”
“I’m still on my first cup of coffee.”
“He’s acting like a famine victim,” I said, “but I’ve learned not to trust him, so I thought I’d better check. I’ll feed him, so you don’t have to.”
“I was gonna come over around eleven. How come you opened up? You’re always closed on Sundays.”
“Well, maybe I’ve been making a mistake all these years,” I said. “Maybe I’ve cost myself a bundle by closing on Sundays.”
“You really think so?”
“No, but I’m meeting somebody here at two o’clock.”
“You’re four hours early.”
“So? Everybody’s got to be someplace. Come by and keep me company if you feel like it.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You really did have a quiet evening at home, didn’t you? That’s why you’re so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I don’t know if I can take it.”
“Take what?”
“Your good mood.”
I considered this. “You didn’t have a quiet evening at home,” I said.
“I was going to,” she said, “but I stopped in at DT’s Fat Cat. I figured I’d sleep better if I had a drink.”
“Did you?”
“I slept fine,” she said, “once they closed the place so I could go home. I may not get there, Bern, but I’ll see you tomorrow for sure. Go feed the cat, he must be starving.”
I filled his food dish, freshened his water, flushed his toilet, and came back and watched him eat. That reminded me I hadn’t had anything myself since last night’s moo shu pork, so I went to the deli and picked up a couple of bagels and a container of coffee. After I had my bargain table set up outside I settled in behind the counter and ate my breakfast. The cat came over and sat on my lap for a while, watching me eat, but eating only held his interest when he was the one doing it. He leaped down onto the floor and sat there as if waiting for something to happen.
I finished one bagel and crumpled the paper it had come wrapped in. The noise caught Raffles’ attention and he reacted, the way they do. I let him stare in my direction. The minute he looked away I crumpled the paper some more, then tossed it past him. Except it didn’t get past him, because he sprang to his right and snagged the ball of paper on one hop. Then he batted it to and fro, chasing it up one aisle and down another and slapping it silly. Finally he decided it was dead and wasn’t going to come back to life, so he turned and walked away from it.
“Bring it back,” I said, “and I’ll throw it again.”