The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,62
a little rosewood chest on top of her dresser, and it was full of jewelry, but she kept some of her better pieces in the safe.”
“I’ll bet they’re not there anymore.”
“You’d lose. I left the papers, and I left all the jewelry.”
“That’s not like you, Bern.”
“All things considered,” I said, “I’d just as soon the police never hear about what we just did. Not that they’re likely to figure out who did it, let alone prove it, but they can’t begin to investigate it if they don’t even know it happened. If I took the jewelry, Mapes would have a reason to report it. It’s probably insured, and they can’t make a claim unless they file a report. But if all I take is cash, and it’s cash he never declared, what sense does it make for him to bring the police into it? He’s not insured for the loss, he can’t logically expect them to recover any of it, and all of a sudden he’s got people from the IRS wondering where the cash came from.”
“So you think he’ll just bite the bullet and keep smiling?”
“He’ll probably piss and moan,” I said, “but he’ll do it in private. He probably thought of the cash as easy come, and now he can think of it as easy go.”
“That’s great,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It really is. The shitheel’s out a bundle, and he can’t do a thing about it. How much is it going to come to, do you have any idea?”
I shook my head. It was a mix of bills, I told her, from hundreds all the way down to singles, some in rubber-banded stacks, some crammed into envelopes, some loose. I figured it was more than a hundred thousand and less than a million, but I was just guessing.
“Enough so that you can give Marty his finder’s fee and still have a lot for yourself.”
“Don’t forget your cut,” I said.
“It shouldn’t be much. All I did was keep you company.”
“All you did,” I said, “was save my life. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be half in and half out of the closet.”
“I had a girlfriend like that once, Bern. It’s no fun. Okay, I was helpful, but I didn’t take any risks.”
“If you’d been caught, what would you tell them? That you were only keeping me company?”
“No, but—”
“Marty gets fifteen percent off the top. You get a third of what’s left after his fifteen percent comes off.”
She was silent while she did the math. “I don’t have pencil and paper,” she said, “so maybe I got this wrong, but the way I figure it I’m getting something like thirty thousand dollars.”
“It’ll probably come to more than that.”
“Gosh. You know how many dogs I have to wash to make that kind of money?”
“Quite a few.”
“You said it. Bern? What’ll I do with all that cash?”
“Whatever you want. It’s your money.”
“I mean do I have to, you know, launder it?”
I shook my head. “It’s not that much. I know, it’s a fortune, but you’re not looking to buy stocks with it. You just want to be able to live a little better, without worrying whether you can afford an extra blue blazer, or tickets for The Producers. So you’ll stick it in a safe-deposit box and draw out what you need when you need it. Believe me, if you’re anything like me, it’ll be gone before you know it.”
“That’s a comfort.”
We stayed on Broadway all the way to my neighborhood, where we picked up Columbus Avenue and cruised past Lincoln Center. The plaza was crowded with people on their way out, and for a moment I thought Don Giovanni was over, but it was too early for that. There was a concert in Avery Fisher Hall tonight, too, and it had just let out, and if I’d stolen a cab instead of the Sable I could have had my pick of fares. I passed them all by and headed for the Village.
“Bern? If I’m in for a minimum of thirty thousand, you’re going to get upwards of sixty. Right?”
“Right. I figured two-to-one was fair, but if you think—”
“No no no,” she said. “It’s more than fair. But that’s not where I was going. The thing is, if you’re getting all that money, and you don’t have to deal with a fence, you don’t have to worry about the cops—”