The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,29

suppose I could have chopped the words off instantly, but I didn’t.

“Now ain’t that the truth,” my visitor said. “Truer words were never spoken, not by Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernard, at any rate. A burglar through an’ through, that’s what you are, all right, an’ all you’ll ever be if you live to be older’n Methuselah.”

I felt, if not as old as Methuselah, as though I could easily pass for his younger brother. “Hello, Ray,” I said. “How’s crime?”

He sighed and shook his head, and when he spoke the jaunty banter was gone. “As if you didn’t know,” he said. “You really put your foot in it this time, Bernie. You screwed up big time. I don’t know how the hell you’re gonna get yourself out of this one.”

Eleven

That’s a nice suit,” I said. “Armani?”

“Close,” he said, and held back the lapel to show me the label. “Canaletto. Another of your Eyetalians, an’ you can’t beat ’em for suits.”

Whichever fine Italian hand had crafted his suit, the price tag would have been too high for a policeman’s income, but then Ray Kirschmann had never attempted to live on what the city paid him. Fortunately no one would look at him and guess that his suit cost a bundle, because it had stopped looking expensive the minute he put it on. It was, as I’d said, a perfectly nice suit, but whatever suit he wore wound up looking as though it had been carefully tailored for another man, and a differently shaped one at that. The suit of the moment, navy with a subtle gray stripe, was too roomy in the shoulders and too tight at the waist, and the stain on the sleeve didn’t help, either. It looked like spaghetti sauce, which was another thing the Italians were acknowledged to be good at.

“As for you,” he said, “I have to say you look good in stripes.” I was wearing a striped polo shirt, a red and blue number Lands’ End had introduced a year ago with an excess of optimism; I’d picked it up last month from their catalog of overstocks. “It’s a damn shame,” he went on, “that the prisons quit issuing striped uniforms, because they’d look great on you.”

“They still wear them in cartoons,” I pointed out. “When a cartoonist wants you to know that somebody’s a convict, he always puts him in stripes.”

“Is that a fact? Well, I guess you’ll be stayin’ out of the funny papers, because what they’re gonna put you in is one of them orange jumpsuits. I’m glad you think that’s funny, Carolyn. Maybe you’d like to explain the joke to me.”

“I was just trying to picture you in an orange jumpsuit,” she told him. “I figure you’d look like the Great Pumpkin.”

“You’d look like a beach ball,” Ray told her, “but then you always do.”

“Always a pleasure, Ray.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” he said. “An’ for a change you’ll come in handy. You can lock up after I take your pal here downtown.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “It’s beginning to dawn on me. Ray, you’re serious.”

“Serious as a positive biopsy. You been gettin’ away with it long enough, Bernie, but I don’t see how you’re gonna get out from under this one.”

“Well, maybe you can help me,” I said. “For starters, why don’t you tell me what I’m supposed to have done?”

“I got a better idea. Why don’t I ask the questions an’ you tell me a few things?”

“Well, I suppose we could try it that way.”

“For starters, where were you last night?”

“Home. I was watching Law & Order.”

“I didn’t watch it myself, but I can tell you what happened. The cops put a great case together and the rest of ’em screwed it up. That’s what makes it a good show. It’s always true to life. You were home, huh?”

“All night long.” I decided to hedge a little. “Of course Law & Order doesn’t come on until ten, and it had already started by the time I got home.”

“Whatever you did before ten o’clock is your business, Bernie.”

“Actually,” I said, “you could say the same for whatever I did after ten o’clock, but it happens I was home, and I made it an early night. I must have been asleep well before midnight.”

“And slept right through?”

“Except for getting up to pee, and I couldn’t tell you when that was because I didn’t look at the clock. I suppose I ought to keep track of that sort of thing, in case a minion of the