The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,109
was that they didn’t. They left them trussed with tape, which held them while they had a quick look around the apartment to see if it held anything else worth taking. It would also keep the Rogovins incapacitated while they quit the building and left the area. After that, what threat did the two of them represent? They could hardly file a police report. In any case, they didn’t know the identities of the men who robbed them. Killing them would just generate heat, and to no purpose.”
“And the doorman? He suffocated before the cops found him.”
“That was unfortunate,” Quattrone said. “It was an accident, and it should never have happened.” His eyes flicked ever so briefly toward the doorway, where one of his goons was looking at the floor with the fascination of someone who had never seen carpet before. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, “if the person responsible didn’t very much regret what happened.”
“Someone shot those two people,” I said. “They were all taped up, and they’d been shot in the head. If it wasn’t your hypothetical men—”
“It wasn’t.”
“—then who was it?”
“Bern?” I turned at Carolyn’s voice. “The high bidder,” she said. “He was on his way over, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “There was a second party of visitors to the apartment on East 34th Street. The doorman was still hors de combat, so all they had to do was walk in and go upstairs. They’d have found the door unlocked and the safe wide open and the occupants all taped up. Maybe they took the tape off one of their mouths long enough to get some questions answered. They wouldn’t have liked the answers, wouldn’t have been happy to go away without the book of photos, and without a chance of recovering the twenty grand they’d paid in front. Whether that was half in advance or payment in full, it was a big chunk of dough, and there was no way to get it back.”
I could feel eyes staring at me, and they were Georgi Blinsky’s. “You were the high bidder,” I told him. “You showed up to keep the appointment. When the Lyles couldn’t supply either the photographs or the money, you executed them and left.”
“You can prove nothing,” he said. “You have no evidence and no witnesses. When all of this was taking place, I was with large party at Georgian nightclub on Oriental Boulevard. Many people will swear to this.”
“I’m sure they will. Why kill them?”
He looked at me, as if he found the question disappointing. Then he said, “No book, no money. So? No witnesses, either. But I was with friends, in nightclub. I can prove this, and you can prove nothing.”
“The next thing that happened,” I said, “is that my apartment was broken into. It had already been searched by the police, but the men who broke in probably didn’t know that. My doorman was trussed up and locked in the parcel room, the same as the Lyles’ doorman, so it seems safe to assume the same people were responsible.”
“I can see where you’d assume that,” Michael Quattrone said.
“They tore the place apart. What do you suppose they were looking for?”
“The missing photos,” he said without hesitation. “Whoever sent them must have heard about these photos of a missing Russian, and none of the pictures in that chemistry textbook looked like they could have been that man. And there were pages missing from the book, as if somebody had torn them out. Four pages, which would work out to one set of four photos.”
“And you had a use for them?”
“A lot of people wanted them. It’s human to want what everybody wants. Besides, who’s to say what else a person might find in a burglar’s apartment? It seemed worth a visit.”
And while they were there, I said with my eyes, your ham-handed thugs broke open my secret cupboard and took my money.
When you find money, his eyes answered back, you take it, and if I were you I’d be glad they left you the passports.
Funny how much information can be exchanged without a word being spoken…
“I’m having trouble following this,” Lacey Kavinoky said. “I mean, maybe I’m not supposed to follow it. I’m not sure what I’m doing here in the first place. But I thought the photographs were in the book. But I gather some pages were torn out. Those were the photos of this Russian? The Black Scourge of Riga?”