The Burglar on the Prowl - By Lawrence Block Page 0,80

lost in the crooked little streets. He may just have been in a hurry to get home. It was still raining, so I was glad I had my umbrella.

Before I got out of the car I reached in my pocket and remembered what I’d been carrying around ever since I spoke to him hours ago. “You could do me a favor,” I said. “Do you think you’d be able to run a print for me?”

He looked at me and made me repeat the question. Then he said, “Could I run a print? Nothin’ to it. Could I run a print for you? Now that’s somethin’ else again. Whose print and where’d it come from?”

“If I knew whose print it was,” I said reasonably, “I wouldn’t ask you to identify it for me. As for the rest, you don’t want to know.”

“Meanin’ you don’t want to tell me. I dunno, Bernie. I’m bendin’ a whole lotta rules today.”

“Rules were made to be bent.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” he said, and held out his hand, and I filled it, and he looked at what he was holding and then at me. “I dunno, Bern,” he said. “This yours? Could be you’re as light on your feet as Valdi Berzins.”

Now, while Carolyn settled in at her computer, I made a few calls on her phone. I reached Marty Gilmartin at home, asked him a couple of questions to which he gave guarded responses, and made a date for lunch the following day. He asked if The Pretenders was all right, and I said it was always fine with me. I might be pressed for time, I said, in which case we could make it a drink or a cup of coffee instead of a full meal, but it would be good to get together.

I hung up and called Barbara Creeley, and when I’d said hello she said she was hoping I’d call. “I called you about half an hour ago,” she said, “but I got your machine.”

“I was out,” I said. “Still am.”

“I’m home.”

“I figured that,” I said, “right about the time you picked up the phone.”

“Oh, right, of course. That was dumb of me, saying I’m home. I mean, you called me, so of course I’m home.”

“I wouldn’t say it was dumb.”

“You wouldn’t?”

She sounded shaky. I asked her if she was all right.

“I guess so. Do you still want to have dinner?”

“That’s why I was calling. I was hoping you’d be home, and that I could take you out someplace for something nice.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Well, sure. I mean, I’m home. And yes, dinner would be nice.”

“Great. What time’s good?”

“What time? I don’t know. You say.”

“Uh, seven?” That would give me plenty of time to go home and change. “Is that good?”

“Seven’s fine.”

“Should we pick a place? It’s Sunday, so not everybody’s open. Do you have someplace you particularly like? Or do you want to meet at Parsifal’s, and we can figure out where to go from there?”

There was a pause, as if two questions at once was too much to deal with. Then she said, “Could you just come over here?”

“If you’d like.”

“That would be good, Bernie. You’ll come over here at seven?”

“I will.”

“You know the address?”

“I do.”

“I’ll see you at seven, then. Or earlier, if you’d like. Whenever you’re ready, just come over. I’ll be right here.”

She hung up. I sat there holding the phone for a long moment, and then did the same myself.

“I’ve got to run home,” I told Carolyn. “I need a shave and a shower. I’ve got a date.”

“With Barbara? That’s great.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said.

Twenty-Nine

It was a little before seven when I mounted the half flight of steps at the brownstone on East 36th Street. I rang and she buzzed me in, and when I got to her floor she was waiting in the doorway. She wore a dress with a bold geometric print, the kind of thing Mondrian might have done if he hadn’t been so firmly committed to the right angle.

I told her I liked her dress. I’d noticed it before, actually, and had admired it then, but it did more for her figure than for a hanger in the closet, which is where I’d seen it. She said she’d taken it to Long Island, to wear at the Sunday brunch, but an informal poll indicated that most of the other women would be wearing jeans or a skirt, so the dress went back in the suitcase. She didn’t know where we’d go tonight, but she