The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,35
know it’s not his style.’ ”
“And nobody tried to recruit me for it. The first I heard about it was when I got arrested for it. And if anybody had tried to enlist me, I’d have turned them down—”
“Just what I said a minute ago.”
“—and the last place I’d have gone was Murray Hill, because I’d have wanted to be a long ways away when they pulled the job, preferably in the company of two judges and a cardinal.”
“So you’d have a solid alibi. I get the point, Bernie, but let me put it this way. You know people. You hear things.”
“I try not to associate with criminals, Wally.”
“So do I,” he said. “Present company excepted, of course. But much as I try, my line of work makes it difficult. And so does yours, so there’s a chance you’ll talk to someone who knows something, and if you do—”
“I could do myself some good by passing the word.”
“A whole lot of good. Of course I realize that might go against your code of honor. Nobody wants to be a rat.”
I shook my head. “Not where these clowns are concerned,” I said. “I’d love to see the cops pick them up, and not just because they’d stop bothering me. They killed three people, for God’s sake. It’s jerks like that who give burglary a bad name.”
Thirteen
They came to the Poodle Factory,” Carolyn said, “sometime around two. Ray and two uniformed cops. They had a warrant to search Barnegat Books, and they wanted me to open up for them. On account of I’d locked up after Ray took you downtown. I said just because they had the right to search your place didn’t mean I was under any obligation to shut down my own place of business and open up for them, and Ray said I was absolutely right, but if I didn’t open up they’d have to force their way in, and that would mean using a bolt cutter on the padlocks and window guards. So I figured you wouldn’t want that, and I did what they wanted me to. I hope that was right.”
“Absolutely.”
“When the place was open Ray told me I could go back to work, and I told him I wasn’t budging until they were gone and the store was locked up again. See, I wanted to be there while they searched the place. I didn’t want them making a mess, or upsetting Raffles.”
“How did he take it?”
“I think he just assumed they were customers. But then he’s just a cat, or he’d have spotted them as a bunch of illiterate lip-movers. At any rate, they didn’t knock themselves out searching. It’d take hours to search a bookstore thoroughly, and they didn’t even try. They rummaged around your back office and looked behind the counter, but they didn’t take books off the shelves or anything.”
“The place looked fine to me,” I said. “I didn’t even know anybody had been in it.”
“You went there?”
“On my way here,” I said. We were at Carolyn’s apartment on Arbor Court, a West Village cul-de-sac that’s so quaint and charming hardly anybody knows how to get there. When Carolyn first moved in, she’d had to start from the right place every night or she couldn’t find her way home. Her apartment’s as quaint and charming as the street it’s on, with the tub in the kitchen and a sheet of plywood on top of it to transform it into a table, at which we were currently seated, tucking into some Bangladeshi takeout from No-Worry Curry. I’d spent too much time in the teahouse to agree to Chinese.
“I figured you’d lock up,” I said, “but I wanted to make sure. And I had the rest of that sandwich waiting for me.”
“It almost wasn’t, Bern. One of the boys in blue had his eye on it. I told him if he laid a finger on it I’d have him up on charges. Scared the crap out of him.”
“It wouldn’t have worked with Ray.”
“If I thought Ray was gonna eat it,” she said, “I’d have poisoned it. He had his nerve, running you in.”
“It’s a pretty horrible crime. He’s going to do whatever it takes to solve it.”
“But he couldn’t have thought you had anything to do with it.”
“He probably didn’t, but it was a case of leaving no stone unturned.”
“If he was without sin,” she said, “then he’d have the right to turn the first stone.” She frowned. “I think I know what I meant,