The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,52

brushing the bars on either side, and I thought of Archie’s whiskers and found myself feeling uncommonly sorry for the poor cat. There were two people dead already and I was charged with one murder and might very well be charged with the other, and all I could think of was how forlorn Carolyn’s cat must be.

I looked up a number, picked up the phone and dialed it. Denise Raphaelson answered on the third ring and I said, “This is Bernie, and we never had this conversation.”

“Funny, I remember it as if it were yesterday.”

“What do you know about an artist named Turnquist?”

“That’s why you called? To find out what I know about an artist named Turnquist?”

“That’s why. He’s probably crowding sixty, reddish hair and goatee, bad teeth, gets all his clothes from the Goodwill. Sort of a surly manner.”

“Where is he? I think I’ll marry him.”

Denise was a girlfriend of mine for a while, and then she rather abruptly became a girlfriend of Carolyn’s, and that didn’t last very long. She’s a painter, with a loft on West Broadway called the Narrowback Gallery where she lives and works. I said, “Actually, it’s a little late for that.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“You don’t want to know. Ever hear of him?”

“I don’t think so. Turnquist. He got a first name?”

“Probably. Most people do, except for Trevanian. Maybe Turnquist’s his first name and he doesn’t have a last name. There are a lot of people like that. Hildegarde. Twiggy.”

“Liberace.”

“That’s his last name.”

“Oh, right.”

“Does Turnquist ring a bell?”

“Doesn’t even knock softly. What kind of painter is he?”

“A dead one.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Well, he’s in good company. Rembrandt, El Greco, Giotto, Bosch—all those guys are dead.”

“We never had this conversation.”

“What conversation?”

I hung up and looked up Turnquist in the Manhattan book, and there was only one listing, a Michael Turnquist in the East Sixties. Things are never that easy, and he certainly hadn’t dressed to fit that address, but what the hell. I dialed the number and a man answered almost immediately.

I said, “Michael Turnquist?”

“Speaking.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I must have the wrong number.”

The hell with it. I picked up the phone again and dialed 911. When a woman answered I said, “There’s a dead body at a construction site on Washington Street,” and gave the precise address. She started to ask me something but I didn’t let her finish her sentence. “Sorry,” I said, “but I’m one of those people who just don’t want to get involved.”

I was lost in something, possibly thought, when a key turned in one of the locks. The sound was repeated as someone opened the other two locks in turn, and I spent a couple of seconds trying to decide what I’d do if it wasn’t Carolyn. Suppose it was the Nazi, coming to swipe the other cat. I looked around for Ubi but didn’t see him, and then the door swung inward and I turned to look at Carolyn and Elspeth Peters.

Except it wasn’t Elspeth Peters, and all it took was a second glance to make that clear to me. But I could see why my henchperson had taken a second glance at the Peters woman, because the resemblance was pronounced.

I could also see why she’d taken more than a couple glances at this woman, who obviously had to be Alison the tax planner. She was at least as attractive as Elspeth Peters, and the airy quality of Ms. Peters that went so well with old-timey lady poets and secondhand books was replaced in Alison by an earthy intensity. Carolyn introduced us—“Alison, this is Bernie Rhodenbarr. Bernie, this is Alison Warren”—and Alison established her credentials as a political and economic lesbian with a firm no-nonsense handshake.

“I didn’t expect you,” Carolyn said.

“Well, I stopped in to use the shower.”

“Right, you were running.”

“Oh, you’re a runner?” Alison said.

We got a little mileage out of that, so to speak, and Carolyn put some coffee on, and Alison sat down on the couch and Ubi turned up and sat in her lap. I went over to the stove, where Carolyn was fussing with the coffee.

“Isn’t she nice?” she whispered.

“She’s terrific,” I whispered back. “Get rid of her.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“We’re going to the museum. The Hewlett.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Look, I just got her here. She’s all settled in with a cat on her lap. The least I can do is give her a cup of coffee.”

“Okay,” I said, still whispering. “I’ll split now. Get away as soon as