The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,34
hanging there for years.* My burglar tools were back in my hiding place, along with both passports, and they could make a little trouble for me if they found them, but I didn’t think they would. They never have in the past.
“Nothing from the break-in last night,” Wally said.
“I wasn’t there, Wally.”
“Just making sure. Nothing from, uh, any other place you might have been?”
He hadn’t asked what I’d been doing in Murray Hill, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a good idea. Not a thing, I told him, and he seemed satisfied.
“More tea, Bernie?”
“Uh, sure.”
“When I think of all the coffee I used to drink,” he said, “it’s enough to give me the jitters. Tea’s better for you, you know.”
“It must be.”
“It’s got these compounds in it, I forget what they’re called, but every day it seems they’re finding something new that they do, and that’s good for you. All I know is I find it invigorating. How about you, Bernie?”
“I’m invigorated,” I said.
“Me too. You been seeing anybody new, Bernie? Getting anywhere in the love life department?”
I shook my head. “How about you?”
“Zilch. Between my practice and my workouts in the dojo, I don’t have a hell of a lot of time on my hands. Still, the old urge is always there, you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean.”
“What I’d really like to do,” he said, “is get something going with our waitress. You happen to notice her?”
“I wasn’t paying too much attention.”
“I think she’s beautiful. The Mysterious East and all that, and those silk robes she wears drive me nuts. I think they call them cheongsams.”
“Is that a fact.”
“All I know for sure is I’d like to get into hers. I’d ask her out to dinner, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t speak any English. I mean, even if I managed to make myself understood, and even if she was willing to sit across a table from a round-eyed foreign devil, what would dinner be like?”
“I don’t know. How are you with chopsticks?”
“I mean the conversation, Bernie. We couldn’t even make small talk. I’ve been thinking of learning Mandarin.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Well, it could come in handy. The Chinese population keeps growing, and some of them need lawyers. Don’t you think they’d be more comfortable with an attorney who understood their language?”
“They’d probably be more comfortable with one who was Chinese to begin with.”
“You’re right, dammit. The only reason to learn the language is so I could talk to the waitress. The thing is, I think she likes me.”
“Oh?”
“Every time I come here,” he said, “she goes through the whole rigmarole, teaching me to make the tea. And I’m here three or four times a week, so it’s obvious I know the drill by now. So why go through it each time? I figure she likes spending time with me.”
“That’s possible.”
“Well, what other explanation could there be?”
“Maybe she doesn’t remember you from one day to the next, because all Caucasian guys look alike to her.”
“You think?”
“Or,” I said, “maybe she figures you’re not bright enough to retain the information from one tea-brewing session to the next.”
“You really know how to make a guy feel good,” he said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am I brought up the subject in the first place. Bernie, I’ve got to ask you a question. I know you weren’t on the scene last night, you’re about the least likely person I can think of to be involved in something like that, but do you know anything about it?”
“Only what I heard from Ray.”
“You were never approached? Like somebody invited you in on the job, and you said you’d pass, but you’d keep mum about it?”
“What makes you think that, Wally?”
“Well, it might explain what you were doing in the neighborhood, and why you couldn’t tell Kirschmann. Maybe you hung around to see how the whole deal went down.”
I shook my head. “Nothing like that. I’ll tell you this much, I had a reason to be in Murray Hill, although I have to admit it wasn’t a very good reason. And it was something I wasn’t willing to share with Ray Kirschmann, and it’s not something you need to know about.”
“Got it.”
“And it had no connection whatsoever with the Rogovin burglary, which incidentally I wish people would stop calling a burglary, because that’s not what it was. It was a home invasion, and that’s something I’ve never been involved in.”
“First thing I told them. ‘If you know anything about the man, you