The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,104
the photos were safe there. But you didn’t just drool over them in private. Every once in a while you couldn’t resist pulling the book down and showing off. Every now and then you just had to impress some sweet young thing by showing her the dangerous men whose faces you’d rearranged.”
“They didn’t know the men, they weren’t going to tell anybody, it was perfectly safe…”
His voice trailed off. Everyone was staring at him now, except for Marty, who was gazing thoughtfully at Marisol, and Marisol, who was examining her feet.
“If it was so damn safe,” I said, “how come we’re all here? How come four people are dead?” I sighed. “It might have been safe. Unethical, dishonest, illegal, but safe. Except you forgot one thing. You forgot the long arm of coincidence.”
Thirty-Eight
I liked the phrase enough to say it again. “The long arm of coincidence. The law has a proverbially lengthy arm, but so does coincidence. I checked my Bartlett’s this morning, and a fellow named Haddon Chambers coined the phrase back in 1888, in his play Captain Swift. He was born in 1860 and died in 1921, and except for his one immortal line, that’s as much as I know about Haddon Chambers. Of course you could go and Google him, and you’ll probably get his blood type and his mother’s maiden name, along with Whittaker Chambers and Haddon’s Notch, New Hampshire.
“The long arm of coincidence. There’s a hand at the end of that arm, and it’s left its fingerprints all over this business. Starting with the time a couple of weeks ago when Mapes took Volume Two down from the shelf to show off to his latest girlfriend.”
“That’s terrible,” Lacey Kavinoky said. “On top of everything else, the man cheats on his wife.” She colored, embarrassed by her outburst. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pipe up like that.”
“How could you help it? It’s shocking, and we’re all shocked. Still, there’s a fair amount of it going around. What’s coincidental is that the woman in question was the daughter of a Latvian immigrant.”
“And he showed her Cuckoo’s pitcher anyway?” Ray said. “Not too bright, is he, Bernie?”
“Not the sharpest scalpel in the autoclave,” I allowed, “but all he knew about Kukarov was that he was Russian. The man wouldn’t have mentioned the Riga connection, let alone that he was the Black Scourge thereof. ‘Now this man,’ Mapes told her, ‘came here from Russia to make a new life for himself, and thanks to me he doesn’t have to look over his shoulder for KGB operatives.’ The pictures didn’t mean a thing to her, Before or After. But she knew the name. There aren’t too many Latvians—or half-Latvians, for that matter—who wouldn’t recognize the name of Valentine Kukarov.”
Grisek said something in an undertone, but even in an overtone I wouldn’t have understood it, because he was speaking in his native tongue. I found out later that it was something along the lines of May the fires of Hell consume him, starting at the toes and taking eternity to reach his cursed head. I’d have pardoned his Latvian, but nobody asked me to.
“Marisol was the girl’s name. That doesn’t sound Latvian, but don’t worry about it. She’d heard her father talk about Kukarov, and would have gone to him for advice, but he was back home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. But she had an aunt and uncle in Bay Ridge, and they agreed that she had to get hold of those photographs.
“But how? She’d been to her lover’s office once, at his invitation. There was no reason for him to invite her again, and no plausible way she could invite herself. The way things stood, if the book disappeared he’d never suspect her; he’d put it back himself before ushering her out of the office. But if she were to pay him another visit, and then the book went missing…
“Her cousin Karlis came up with the answer. An artist with a loft in Williamsburg, he made an appointment with Dr. Mapes. He showed up twenty minutes early, looking perfectly respectable in his weddings-and-funerals suit, and when the receptionist was out of the room he pulled down Principles of Organic Chemistry and popped it in his tote bag. He could have torn out the four pages with Kukarov’s photos on them, but maybe that would have taken too much time.”
“I never saw the man,” Karlis said. “Or the photos. So how would I know which ones to take?”