The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian - By Lawrence Block Page 0,63
tore them into small pieces, and arranged them in a pile on the desk top. I ate the other sandwich and drank the coffee, looked up something in the Manhattan phone book, and dialed a number. A woman answered. The voice was familiar but I wanted to be absolutely certain, so I asked to speak to Nathaniel. The voice told me that I had the wrong number.
I made a couple of other calls and talked to some people, and then I dialed 0 and said, “This is Police Officer Donald Brown, my shield number’s 23094, and I need you to get an unlisted number for me.” I told her the name and read off the number I was calling from. She called back less than a minute later and I wrote down the number she gave me. I said, “Thanks. Oh, and what’s the address on that?” and she told me the address. I didn’t have to write it down.
I dialed the number. A woman answered. I said, “This is Bernie. You wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Ah, darling,” I said. “I can’t eat, I can’t sleep—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
I sighed and dialed another number. I went through channels and then a familiar voice came on the line. “Okay, give,” it said. “How’d you know?”
“They found Seconal?”
“Chloral hydrate, the ever-popular Mickey Finn. How’d you take one look at a dead man with his head beaten in and figure drugs? Even on Quincy they gotta run tests and stick things in microscopes.”
“I’m working up a new series. Bernie Rhodenbarr, Psychic Pathologist.”
We said a few more reasonably pleasant things to one another. I hung up and made a couple more calls, rummaged in some desk drawers and pawed through a filing cabinet. I left the contents of drawers and cabinet as I’d found them. Then I dropped the lunch bag and wrappings in the wastebasket, along with the bread from the pastrami-and-turkey sandwich and the empty coffee container. I opened the case I’d brought along, and a few minutes later I closed it and fastened its clasps.
“Off we go,” I said.
On the way out I checked my watch and entered 12:51 under time of departure.
The sun was out so I switched to sunglasses and caught a cab at the corner of Broadway and John Street. I gave the driver a West Village address. He was a recent arrival from Iran with uncertain English and a very vague sense of the geography of Manhattan, so I guided him and we both got lost. But we wound up on a familiar street and I paid him off and sent him on his way.
I entered a building I’d never been in before, carding my way past the locked vestibule door. I walked through the building to another locked door which led to a rear courtyard. The lock wasn’t a problem, and I left part of a toothpick jammed up against the springbolt so it would be even less of a problem on the way back.
The courtyard held some garbage cans and a neglected garden. I crossed it and clambered over a concrete-block fence leading to another courtyard, where I peered into a window, then opened it, and then closed it. I retraced my steps, case in hand, scaling the block fence, retrieving my broken toothpick as I reentered the building, finally emerging on the street and walking a few blocks and catching another cab.
Back at the Narrowback Gallery, Jared let me in and eyed the case I was carrying. “You’ve still got it,” he said.
“Right you are.”
“Now is it filled with swag?”
“See for yourself.”
“Still empty.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. You keep it. I’ll tell you, I’m sick of carrying the damn thing around.” I walked over to where his mother was eyeing a canvas. “Looks good,” I said.
“You bet it does. We’re lucky Mondrian didn’t have acrylics to play with. He could have painted five hundred pictures a year.”
“You mean he didn’t?”
“Not quite.”
I extended a finger, touched paint. “Dry,” I said.
“And as ready as they’ll ever be.” She sighed and picked up a menacing-looking implement with a curved blade. I think it’s a linoleum knife. I’m not made of linoleum, but I’d certainly hate to irritate somebody who had one of them in his hand. Or her hand, for that matter.
“This goes against the grain,” Denise said. “You’re sure about this?”