The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,90
what it was, she only felt a sense of urgency relating to this apartment.” She held out both hands, the fingers spaced an inch or so apart. “This apartment is psychically charged,” she told Joan Nugent. “I don’t know how you can possibly live here.”
“It’s intense,” Mrs. Nugent agreed, with a toss of her braids. “But I think the energy is good for my creative work.”
“I never thought of that,” Patience said. “I’ll bet you’re right.”
I felt like a backseat passenger trying to get a grip on the steering wheel. “Whatever it was,” I said, “she baited the trap, bade me good night—”
“With a kiss,” Doll reminded me.
“With a kiss,” I agreed, “and then you scooted past the doorman and disappeared into the building.”
“It was probably Eddie,” Harlan Nugent murmured to his wife. “That incompetent.”
“Maybe you went upstairs and banged on Luke’s door some more,” I went on. “Maybe you stationed yourself where you could keep an eye on the lobby to see if I took the bait. Eventually you gave up and went home, which is what I’d already done. I slept off a larger intake of scotch than is my custom, went downtown to open up the store, and the next thing I knew I was under arrest.”
“It was a legitimate collar,” Ray Kirschmann said. “The phone call you made, your priors—”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “It was a shock, that’s all. I spent Friday night in a cell, and Saturday night all I wanted to do was sleep in my own bed. But I got a late-night phone call from you, Doll. You had a brand-new collection of lies to tell me, and this time you knew just what you wanted me to do. Luke was your boyfriend, you said, and you broke up with him and threw his keys in his face, and you just knew he’d retaliated by stealing your good friend Marty’s baseball cards. And all I had to do was open Luke’s door for you and we could return Marty’s baseball cards and clear my name.”
“Hang on a sec,” Ray said. “She took the cards an’ now she wants to give ’em back?”
“I have a feeling the program would have changed again once she got her hands on the cards,” I said, “but it made a good story for the time being. I knew something was fishy, but I figured I’d play out the string and see where it led. One of the first things it did was catch you in a lie, Doll. You’d said you couldn’t call me earlier because you didn’t know the name of the store or where it was located. So when we split up Saturday night I said I’d meet you the following afternoon at the bookshop, and you said fine. You didn’t have to ask where it was or how to find it.”
“You had told me earlier.”
“Nope. You already knew. And you were there in plenty of time, and we came uptown and I opened Luke’s door.”
“Breaking and entering,” Ray intoned.
“I’ll cop to entering,” I said, “but we didn’t break anything. Didn’t find much of anything, either. Some pills, and what looked like marijuana. A couple of dollars in a jelly jar.”
“We found the drugs when we searched the place,” Ray said, “but I don’t remember no cash in no jam jar.”
“Gee,” I said, “I wonder what could have happened to it. Oh, and there was one other thing. We found a baseball card. ‘A Stand-up Triple!’ it was called, and it showed Ted Williams with his hands on his hips.”
“From the mustard set,” Borden Stoppelgard said. “That was one of Marty’s cards, all right. It’s a great picture of Williams, too.”
“If you like that sort of thing,” I said. “Much of its charm was lost on Doll and me. The message I got from it was that the cards had been there and now they were gone. Doll already knew they’d been there, and now she knew that Luke must have forced the lock on the briefcase. Then he’d started to transfer the cards to a backpack, and then he’d evidently changed his mind, but the one card he overlooked in a compartment of the backpack made it clear what he’d done. So that meant he was making a move on his own, and either he’d sold the cards already or he was in the process of doing so, and either way Doll could kiss the money goodbye, at least until Luke turned up again