The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,16
you as a shade high? I know inflation’s murder these days, and I understand it’s a seller’s market for Burmese cats, but—”
“Do you have the money?”
“I try not to keep that much cash around the house.”
“You can raise it?”
Carolyn had come over to my side when the phone rang. I laid a reassuring hand on her arm. To my caller I said, “Let’s cut the comedy, huh? Bring the cat back and we’ll forget the whole thing. Otherwise—”
Otherwise what? I’m damned if I know what kind of a threat I was prepared to make. But Carolyn didn’t give me the chance. She clutched my arm. She said, “Bernie—”
“Ve vill kill ze cat,” the woman said, her voice much louder and suddenly accented. The effect was somewhere between an ad for Viennese pastry mit schlag and that guy in the World War II movies who reminds you that you’ve got relatives in Chermany.
“Now let’s be calm,” I said, to both of them. “No need to talk about violence.”
“If you do not pay ze ransom—”
“Neither of us has that kind of money. You must know that. Now why don’t you tell me what you want?”
There was a pause. “Tell your vriend to go home.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Zere is somesing in her mailbox.”
“All right. I’ll go with her, and—”
“No.”
“No?”
“Stay vere you are. You vill get a phone call.”
“But—”
There was a click. I sat looking at the receiver for a few seconds before I hung it up. I asked Carolyn if she’d heard any of it.
“I caught a few words here and there,” she said. “It was the same person I talked to last night. At least I think it was. Same accent, anyway.”
“She switched it on in midstream. I guess she forgot it at the beginning, and then she remembered she was supposed to sound threatening. Or else she slips into it when she gets excited. I don’t like the idea of splitting up. She wants you to go to your apartment and me to stay here and I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Well, who knows what she’s going to try to pull?”
“I have to go downtown anyway. Somebody’s bringing me a schnauzer at eleven. Shit, I don’t have much time, do I? I can’t face a schnauzer with a head like I’ve got. Thank God it’s a miniature schnauzer. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to wash a giant schnauzer on a day like this.”
“Stop at your apartment on the way. If you’ve got time.”
“I’ll make time. I have to feed Ubi, anyway. You don’t think—”
“What?”
“That they took him too? Maybe that’s why they want me to go to my apartment.”
“They said to check your mailbox.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
When she left I went to work on Appling’s stamp collection. I suppose it was a cold-blooded thing to do, what with Archie’s life hanging in the balance, but that still left him with eight and I wanted to render the Appling stamps unidentifiable as soon as possible. I sat under a good light at my kitchen table with a pair of stamp tongs and a box of glassine envelopes and a Scott catalog, and I transferred the stamps a set at a time from their mounts to the envelopes, making the appropriate notation on each envelope. I didn’t bother figuring out the value. That would be another operation, and it could wait.
I was laboring over George V high values from Trinidad & Tobago when the phone rang. “What’s this crap about my mailbox?” Carolyn demanded. “There’s nothing in it but the Con Ed bill.”
“How’s Ubi?”
“Ubi’s fine. He looks lost and lonely and his heart is probably breaking, but aside from that he’s fine. Did that Nazi call back?”
“Not yet. Maybe she meant the mailbox at your shop.”
“There’s no box there. There’s just a slot in the door.”
“Well, maybe she got a wire crossed. Go wash the saluki anyway and see what happens.”
“It’s not a saluki, it’s a schnauzer, and I know what’ll happen. I’ll wind up smelling of wet dog for a change. Call me when you hear from them, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and fifteen minutes later the phone rang again and it was the mystery woman. No accent this time, and no elaborate runaround, either. She talked and I listened, and when she was done I sat for a minute and thought and scratched my head and thought some more. Then I put Appling’s stamps away and called Carolyn.
And now we were in a small room on the second floor of