The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,62

do?”

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I’m going to go to sleep. I was going to shower first, but I think I’ll let that go until morning.”

“But—”

“You’re upset,” I said, “because he was your boyfriend. But I never even met the guy.”

“My fingerprints are all over his apartment.”

“You just said the apartment’s in somebody else’s name. Maybe they’ll never get there.”

“They’ll get there,” she said. “They’ll talk to the right person at the rooming house and find out he didn’t live there anymore, and then they’ll call the Actors Equity office and get the right address. Shit, all they really have to do is look in the phone book. Lucas Santangelo, 304 West End. Even the cops ought to be able to figure that out.”

I wasn’t so sure of that, but I let it pass. I told her that she might get drawn into the case, if anybody happened to volunteer the information that she had been romantically involved with the dead man. If that happened, all she had to do was tell them an abbreviated version of the truth. “You didn’t know him that well,” I said. “He was one of several men that you were friendly with—”

“God, that makes me sound like a tramp.”

“—and you broke up with him recently, and saw him for the last time a week ago. If you left fingerprints in his apartment, well, so what? I’d be surprised if they gave his apartment a second look. I gather they think he may have killed himself.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know why anybody would do it,” I said, “but it’s something people seem to do all the time. Maybe it just struck him that his life wasn’t working out.”

“Right, he had half a million dollars’ worth of baseball cards in his attaché case and it depressed him so badly that he shot himself. Where would he get a gun?”

“Maybe he had one all along.”

“You searched his apartment top to bottom this afternoon,” she said. “Did you see a gun?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “On the other hand, you couldn’t really expect him to put it back in his sock drawer after shooting himself upstairs in 9-G.”

“I didn’t think of that,” she said softly.

“No, because you’re too upset to think clearly. I’m not upset, but I’m certainly exhausted. It’s been a long day.”

“It’s been almost twelve hours since I met you at your bookstore.”

“And I’d already put in half a day by then. I opened up around ten.”

“So you’ve been up since what, eight o’clock?”

“Something like that.”

“I should let you go to sleep,” she said. “I guess I just want to be reassured that there’s nothing I have to worry about.”

“Is that all? That’s easy. There’s nothing you have to worry about, Doll. Get some sleep yourself. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I got undressed and decided I wanted a shower after all, no matter how late it was or how long I’d been up. Afterward I put on a robe and checked the pocket of my blazer for “A Stand-up Triple!” The back of the card enumerated all the three-base hits Ted Williams had had in the years through 1949, and told which years he’d had them in, and whether he’d secured them in Fenway or on the road. There was no indication, though, as to how many had been stand-up triples of the sort illustrated on the card’s face and how many times he’d had to slide.

Damn, I thought. Inquiring Minds Want to Know…

I sighed, and got out the step stool, and stood on it while I removed the little screws that held the panel that makes the back wall of my closet appear to start a few inches sooner than it does. I could have put my picks and probes to bed in the compartment I thus opened, but I decided not to. I’d gotten used to having them on my person lately. I don’t know that I’d have felt naked without them, but I decided to go on providing pocket space for them for the next little while.

I could have helped myself to all or part of Harlan Nugent’s $8,350, too. It was still there, where I’d tucked it away Friday morning. Sooner or later I’d want to relocate it to Carolyn’s hidey-hole, in case she had to bail me out again. But that could wait.

So what I did instead was take out a tan attaché case of Hartmann’s best belting leather, its corners reinforced in brass. The case