The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,5
it’s either cash or something he bought for cash. So it’s not insured, which makes it a dead loss to the good doctor.”
“You figure Mapes is really that big a shitheel, Bern?”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’s one of nature’s noblemen. At the very least he’s a bounder, and probably a cad in the bargain. Marty’s got a particular reason to hate him, because he took Marty’s girl away from him before he was done with her. Personally, I’ve got nothing against Dr. Mapes. He hasn’t done anything bad to me, and he’s not likely to, since I haven’t got a girlfriend for him to steal.”
“Neither have I.”
“But I don’t have to hate a man in order to steal from him. I’ve never bothered to justify what I do, because I recognize it’s not justifiable.”
“You’ve said it’s a character defect.”
“It is, and I probably ought to do something about it. And maybe I will, someday.”
“But not today, huh, Bern?”
“Not today,” I said, “and not tomorrow, and not the day after tomorrow.”
“What’s the day after tomorrow?”
“Friday.”
“Thanks, Bern. If I didn’t have you for a friend I’d have to go out and buy a calendar. What happens on Friday?” I just looked at her, and she put her hand on her forehead. “Duh,” she said. “That’s when you’re gonna do it. Friday night? I guess that means you’ll be ordering Perrier at the Bum Rap.”
We meet every day after work at a gin mill around the corner for a ritual Thank-God-It’s-Finished drink, to unwind after a high-pressure day of washing dogs and peddling books. On those occasional evenings when the work has just begun for me, my standard tipple is Perrier water. Scotch, my usual drug of choice, mixes well with any number of things, but burglary, alas, is not among them.
“But that’s okay,” she said, “because I won’t be there myself.” She cocked her head, winked. “I’ve got a date.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Nope. Well, I shouldn’t be so quick to say that. You might know her. But I don’t.”
“You met her online.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which service? Date-a-Dyke?”
“They’re the best, Bern. They’re much better than Lesbe Friends at screening out the teenage boys. What’s the deal with adolescent males and gay women, do you have a clue? Why are they so fascinated with us? Because I can assure you it’s not reciprocal.”
“You mean to say you don’t have fantasies of being a fifteen-year-old boy, or fooling around with one?”
“Oddly enough,” she said, “I don’t. Bern, you were a fifteen-yearold boy once.”
“That was before computer dating and online chat rooms.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t before Sappho. Did you have a thing about lesbians?”
“I did have a thing,” I said, “though I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. As far as lesbians were concerned, I barely knew they existed. I had a pretty elaborate fantasy life, but as far as I can remember it was pretty much dyke-free.”
“I just have this image of a hot chat room conversation, with two gay women pulling out all the stops and telling each other just what they want to do and how they’ll do it, and each one of them is actually a boy. I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“Well, the boys who do this. I mean, they may be crazy but they’re not stupid, right?”
“So?”
“So don’t you figure they know their online buddy is about as much of a lesbian as they are? And if they know, and get off on it anyway, what does that make them?”
“Happy,” I suggested.
“I guess. Anyway, you get a lot less of that crap with Date-a-Dyke. There’s no chatting, you just post messages back and forth. And if you click you make a date to meet.”
“And this’ll be what, your fourth date?”
“Only the third, Bern. I had one all set a week ago, and she canceled.”
“Cold feet?”
She shook her head. “Warm memories. She and her ex were going to try to make it work after all. So it was just as well she canceled, because earlier she’d said she was footloose and fancy-free, that her last relationship was a horror and she never wanted to see the bitch again. If she was going to be carrying all that baggage, well, I’m glad I didn’t waste an evening on her.”
“Figures.”
“The one I’m seeing Friday,” she said, “is a paralegal at a law firm that represents lenders in commercial real estate transactions.”
“She probably tweaked it a little to make it sound exciting.”
“So it’s not glamorous. It’s not as though washing dogs day in and day out is